Jake never erased the channel.

He should have. Neytiri had asked once—quiet, sharp-eyed—why a dead frequency still sat buried in his gear like a splinter. Jake had shrugged it off. Old habit. Nothing important.

That was a lie.

The message always came the same way: brief, stripped of emotion, routed through obsolete RDA protocols no one bothered to monitor anymore. Coordinates. Timetables. The kind of information that didn’t scream betrayal—just enough to shift patrols, move camps, clear children out of the blast radius before the sky burned.

Someone inside the RDA was still watching the machine from the inside.

Tonight’s update was worse than the others. Bigger strike. More firepower. Not just a warning shot—an attempt to end things properly this time.

Jake closed his eyes for half a second, then moved.

Within minutes, the forest was awake. Neytiri gathering the children. The clan scattering along paths only they knew. Traps reset. Weapons checked. Prayers whispered to Eywa not for mercy, but for time.

By the time the RDA arrived where they thought the Sullys would be, the camp was empty—ashes cold, tracks erased, nothing left but jungle and silence.

Jake watched from the canopy, jaw tight.

Whoever that insider was, they never asked for thanks. Never asked to be saved when the day came they were found out.

They just kept choosing to warn him.

And as long as they did, Jake would keep doing the same thing he’d done from the start—

Protect his family first.

No matter the cost.