Pathfinder || OC X Neteyam

14 - Quaritch Strikes Again

"Wait!" She pleaded in broken English, putting her hands up in surrender. "Take me. I will go with you. I will do whatever you want. But please leave her."

"Aha'ri, no," Neteyam hissed from behind her. But she ignored his plea.

Aha'ri threw her knife away in a show of surrender and begged, "Please."

Quaritch tilted his head in thought for a moment before signaling the recom to bring Lurei forward. "I'm feeling generous today so I'll take your deal."

Aha'ri almost sighed in relief.

"Aha'ri no," Neteyam pleaded again. "We'll find another way to get her back. Don't do this."

"I have to keep my word, Neteyam. Look after her please." She said as they shoved Lurei over to Neteyam.

He caught her as she stumbled and picked her up without effort.

Lurei was safe and that was all that mattered.

Quaritch twisted Aha'ri's arm behind her back causing her to wince. Then he grabbed her queue and pulled her head back.

A recom came over with a syringe and all Aha'ri could do was watch with wide eyes.

The last thing she could remember was Neteyam's look of horror and her little sister screaming her name before everything went black.

~

When Aha'ri woke, she was slumped against a tree. Her hands were bound behind her back and her hand bindings were attached to the tree behind her, leaving her little room to move around. A cloth was stuffed into her mouth, probably to prevent her from screaming.

She blinked to clear her blurry vision and could make out a bright fire not too far away. Voices murmured by the fire but she didn't know what they were saying. She was a couple of trees away from the fire but the harsh light bled through the forest nonetheless, snuffing out the bioluminescence.

Every part of her body ached. Some parts were weirdly more sore than others but she hoped it was just from whatever was in the syringe that stabbed into her neck. She tried to look around the tree to try and see where the recoms were, but her pain radiated from her neck at the slightest movement.

Eventually, Aha'ri regained her senses enough to partially make out what the recoms were talking about in English around the campsite in the distance.

As the recoms talked among themselves, she could only make out, "...tomorrow...base...tell...Jake Sully...make...help...find."

The words were hard to put together with her mind still foggy and her head still pounding. She sat there for what felt like forever, slowly coming to.

The recoms stopped talking after a while and everything was quiet, but Aha'ri couldn't fall asleep. Her mind was running through all the possible ways she might be able to escape.

During one of her mental schemes, a recom looped around the trees and started walking over to her.

"Oh, look who's awake. Ready for round two are you?" The recom asked in English. He wore a camouflage hat and a chilling smirk.

Aha'ri furrowed her brows and pinned her ears as he continued to get closer.

"You probably don't remember though. That's okay I can remind you," he said kneeling in front of her. He peered around the tree to the fire in the distance before turning back to her and came onto her, pushing her back against the tree and onto her bottom.

The recom glided his hands up and down Aha'ri's body, kissing her neck and trying to pull her into his lap. She tried to push herself away and wiggle out of his grip on her but her bindings didn't let her move much and he was too strong. She tried to tell him to stop but everything she said was muffled behind her gag.

When he began messing with his pants, she panicked. She lifted her knees to her chest and kicked the recom away as hard as she could, hitting her head against the tree beheind her from the force.

He flew back farther than Aha'ri had expected but the relief of getting him off of her only lasted a second.

His eyes darkened, "You little-"

"Ja," Quaritch barked.

Ja blanched, scrambling to his feet and facing the firelight. Aha'ri couldn't see who was talking to him but she knew his voice.

"You're not gonna have much luck, son. They're feral. Don't go creaming your pants over the first female you see."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir," he said saluting. He resumed his guard around the campsite but not before throwing a threatening glare at Aha'ri one last time.

She sat there against the tree in disbelief, panting hard from the fear that just went through her body. She was completely and utterly powerless and was just defiled by an unnatural being not of this world. All Aha'ri wanted to do was scream and take her bindings off so she could kill Quaritch and the recoms in their sleep, ending this once and for all.

But she couldn't even move her hands; couldn't produce a sound louder than a normal speaking voice. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she could do nothing but stand there and try not to imagine what Ja meant by "round two". She had an idea but the thought made her sick to her stomach.

In the back of her mind, there was solace in knowing that these things were happening to her instead of her little sister. Lurei was safe with Neteyam and they could look after each other. If Aha'ri never saw them again, she knew they would both be okay. She prayed to Eywa that she would though. She would find a way out and she would not stop running until she would be reunited with her little sister again.

As she sat there quietly crying, away from the now sleeping recoms by the fire, she heard a noise from behind the tree trunk she sat against.

She twisted herself so that she could look around for where the noise was coming from.

She squinted against the fire light and saw Spider crouching next to the tree, creeping up next to her.

"Hey, sorry I couldn't get to you sooner." He reached up and took the gag out of her mouth. "I needed to wait for them all to fall asleep and Ja to get far enough away. I don't have much time but here, " he said lifting a bowl to her mouth, "drink this."

She flinched away, unsure if she could trust him.

"It's okay, it's just water. I couldn't sneak any food for you but I'll try and get some for you tomorrow."

On second thought, her mouth was so dry from the gag and she realized how thirsty she truly was. Any ounce of reason she has]d went out the window when she saw the water in front of her. Aha'ri couldn't resist and gave in, putting her lips to the bowl and drinking the whole thing. She never knew she would enjoy drinking water as much as she did now.

She swallowed the last gulp of water and set her gaze on the human in front of her. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because you're my friend, Aha'ri. And we're in this together."

Her eyes welled up with more tears. She had never really gotten super close to Spider, despite him and Kiri spending a lot of time together and the fact that he was showing her this much kindness after the day she just had warmed her heart. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Of course. Oh, shoot, I gotta get back to my spot. Ja should be back any second. I'm sorry, I need to put your gag back in so they don't know that I was over here."

Aha'ri took a deep breath. "It's okay," with a thin lipped smile.

He gently put the cloth back inside her mouth before scurrying back behind the tree to wherever he was supposed to be.

The rest of the night she sat there thinking about Lurei and Neteyam and how much she missed them already. Tears fell down her cheeks in hot streaks against the cold night.

She needed to find a way out.