The weeks following Mark's arrival at the schoolhouse were a blur of high-intensity training and cognitive exhaustion. To the rest of the team, he was Dr. Turner, a dedicated researcher mapping the neural pathways of Pandora's flora. But in the quiet moments behind his eyes, he was a man building a fleet.
The Link-Room Grime:
Every morning began in the Link Room, a sterile chamber filled with the hum of coolant fans and the rhythmic beep of heart monitors.
"Okay, Turner, let's see if that Oxford brain can handle a real-time sync," Grace muttered, her voice echoing through the headset as Mark lay back in the link-bed.
He wasn't in an Avatar—not yet. He was being used as a "mapping ghost," a human mind tasked with navigating the massive data streams of the Neural Trees. As the interface engaged, Mark felt a sensation like a thousand electric needles whispering against his consciousness.
"Focus, Mark," Grace's voice commanded. "Don't look at the whole forest. Look at the synapses. Trace the signal from the root-tip to the fungal mat. Tell me what you see."
What Mark saw was a masterpiece of networking. But where Grace saw a biological miracle, Mark saw a control system. He watched the way the trees communicated through chemical and electrical pulses, and his mind translated it into fly-by-wire schematics.
While his physical hands stayed still, his mind was fan-boying over the possibilities. If I can tap into this, he thought, watching a pulse of violet light ripple through the holographic display, I wouldn't need a steering wheel. The ship could feel the wind through the Medusoid's sensors before the gust even hits the hull.
The Fan-Boy and the Shadow:
During his "off" hours, Mark was a man possessed. He sat at his workstation, ostensibly writing reports on silica-density in Pandoran wood. In reality, he was using the RDA's structural analysis software to run unauthorized simulations.
He filled a physical notebook—something the RDA's digital surveillance couldn't easily track—with detailed sketches. He drew the "Medusa-Sling," a system of tension-cables designed to cradle a massive jellyfish creature above a ship's hull.
As he sketched, a phantom pressure at the back of his skull intensified. It was a static hum that synced with the forest's pulse. Whenever he touched RDA tech, his vision would flicker with ghostly translucent lines—wireframe ghosts of the machines' internals.
"You've got that look again, Turner," Trudy said one night, catching him staring at a blank screen. "The 'I'm-building-a-death-star' look. Just make sure whatever you're dreaming of is fast enough to outpace a Scorpion gunship."
The Mission Briefing:
The summons came at 05:00. The lab was dim, lit only by the bioluminescent samples and the blue glow of monitors.
"Everyone, eyes up," Grace announced, slapping a hand against the central holographic table. A 3D map of the Northern Shelf shimmered into existence. "Satellite recon caught a massive bloom of Hydromusa—giant Medusoids—drifting into the high-altitude plateaus. The RDA is already salivating over the hydrogen density in their lifting sacs. They want to harvest them for fuel cells."
She zoomed in on a specific plateau, a jagged finger of rock stabbing into the clouds. "If they start 'harvesting,' they'll disrupt the entire local ecosystem. We need to get there first. I want atmospheric samples, tissue biopsies, and a full read on their neural frequency. We need to prove they are sentient enough to fall under the 'Protected Species' clause."
She looked directly at Mark. "Turner, you're on the structural readings. I want to know how they maintain buoyancy at that altitude. If we can prove their 'lifting' is tied to the planetary magnetic field, the RDA can't touch them without risking a navigation blackout."
"I'm on it, Grace," Mark said, his heart racing. He wasn't thinking about conservation. He was thinking about seeing his "engine" up close.
The Flight to the Shelf:
"Thirty minutes to the LZ! Secure your masks!" Trudy's voice crackled through the comms as the Samson banked hard over the Hallelujah Mountains.
Mark leaned out the open bay door, his exopack mask hissing as it delivered filtered oxygen. Below, the world was a riot of emerald and violet. But as they climbed higher, the forest gave way to vertical cliffs and swirling white mist.
Suddenly, the mist parted.
"Holy... look at the size of them," Trudy whispered over the radio.
Floating in the thin mountain air were dozens of Medusoids. They were beautiful, gargantuan organisms—translucent bells the size of a suburban house, pulsing with a rhythmic, cyan light. Their long, gossamer tentacles trailed hundreds of feet below them, brushing against the rocks like ghostly fingers.
The Sampling and the Glitch:
Trudy set the Samson down with precision on a narrow finger of rock. The mist swirled around them, thick and smelling of wet moss and ozone.
"I can't stay on the ground long, Grace," Trudy warned, keeping the rotors spinning to fight the squirrelly mountain gusts.
Mark stepped out, the silence of the plateau heavy and melodic. "Alright, Turner, don't just stand there fan-boying," Grace said, handing him a telescopic sampling pole. "I need a reading from the primary gas bladder of that juvenile drifting near the ledge. Steady hands, Doc."
Mark approached the edge of the cliff. A Medusoid drifted just ten feet away, its membrane rippling like silk in the wind. As he reached out with the pole, he felt a sudden, sharp spike of heat—almost like a fever—behind his eyes.
The moment the metal tip of the pole touched the creature's membrane, his world shattered.
A violent flash of electric blue light strobed across his vision, so bright it made him wince. For a split second, the physical world vanished. He didn't see the jellyfish; he saw a translucent, glowing blueprint overlaid onto the creature's body. Numbers and geometric vectors spiraled in his peripheral vision, calculating lift-to-weight ratios and structural integrity in a language of symbols he'd never seen but somehow understood.
[CORE SYSTEM AWAKENING...]
[SOURCE IDENTIFIED: ORGANIC LIFT ENGINE]
[INTEGRATION POTENTIAL: HIGH]
[UPGRADE PATH: 'THE LEVIATHAN' KEEL - LOCKED]
Mark gasped, recoiling as if he'd been hit by a live wire. He stumbled back, the sampling pole clattering loudly against the rock.
"Turner! Watch your step! You're two inches from a thousand-foot drop!" Grace shouted, lunging forward to grab his arm and steady him.
Mark blinked rapidly, his heart hammering against his ribs. The blue light was gone. The numbers had vanished. Everything was back to normal—the mist, the damp rock, the pulsing jellyfish—but the ghost of that data felt burned into his retinas.
"I... I'm sorry," Mark stammered, rubbing his eyes through the mask. He was sweating despite the cool mountain air. "The light... it hit the membrane and I got a massive glare. I'm fine. Just a bit dizzy."
He looked back at the Medusoid, his mind reeling. What was that? It wasn't just a hallucination. It felt like a machine had just turned on in his head, scanned the world, and then retreated into the shadows.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Grace muttered, checking his vitals on her tablet. "Your heart rate just hit 160. Take a minute and breathe. I don't need you passing out on the extraction."
Mark nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on the Medusoid. He wasn't just seeing a creature anymore. He was seeing the first part of a construction list. The 'System' had blinked at him—and he was terrified of what would happen when it stayed open.
As he turned back toward the Samson, his vision flickered one last time. A small, translucent text box appeared in the bottom right corner of his gaze, pulsing with a low, rhythmic throb.
[CRITICAL RESOURCE DETECTED: 0.1% PROGRESS]
[REMAINING BLUEPRINTS: 4]
[SCANNER OFFLINE... REBOOTING IN 168 HOURS...]
The words shimmered, distorted like a bad signal, and then dissolved into nothingness. Mark stopped in his tracks, his hand reaching out to touch the empty air where the text had been.
"A week?" he whispered to himself, the filtered air of his mask tasting like copper. "It takes a week to reboot?"
The wind howled across the plateau, dragging the mist with it, leaving Mark standing alone in the silence. He had more questions than he had before he'd landed. Was he a pilot, a scientist, or a host for something he didn't understand? He looked at his hands—his human, five-fingered hands—and wondered just how much of him was still human at all.