Chapter 66: The Cost of the Pulse

"Stay back," Rangga warned, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that rattled the loose flakes of rust off the steel bulkhead. "If you move too fast, your joints are going to shatter. The cold has already crystallized the fluid in your knees."

In the dim, pulsing gloom of the sub-level holding cell, the captive huddled against the back corner like a broken animal. His skin was the color of skim milk, stretched taut over a skeletal frame that looked ready to snap under its own weight. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, fixed on the unnatural, cerulean glow shining through the fabric of Rangga’s torn sleeve.

"Who... who are you?" the captive rasped, his cracked lips bleeding fresh droplets onto his sunken chest. "Are they... are they sending another clean-up crew? Just finish it. I didn't tell them anything about the lower thermal vents. I swear I kept my mouth shut."

"I'm not with Thorne," Rangga said, stepping forward into the cramped cell despite the warning flares of pain shooting up his own spine. "And you aren't talking to a corporate guard. Look at me. Do I look like I carry a badge?"

The captive squinted through the gloom, his trembling fingers clutching tighter around a thin, filthy thermal blanket wrapped haphazardly around his shoulders. As Rangga drew closer, the blue light pulsing beneath his skin illuminated the harrowing hollows of the man's face—the sunken cheeks, the blue-tinged lips, the unmistakable stamp of prolonged starvation and psychological torture.

"You're... you're glowing," the man whispered, his breath hitching into a sharp, painful wheeze. "The mountain... it got into you, didn't it? I heard the comms chatter before they locked me down here. They said the purge protocol would fry every nerve ending in a human body."

"They were half right," Rangga muttered, kneeling down beside the shivering wreck. He extended a trembling hand, the bioluminescence flaring beneath his skin like liquid neon under cracked glass. "It didn't fry me. It rewired me. But you... your organs are shutting down. If I don't jump-start your circulatory system right now, you won't survive the next tremor."

"Don't touch me!" the captive recoiled, slamming his spine hard against the damp basalt wall with a muffled cry of agony. "I saw what that light does! It burns from the inside out! I’d rather freeze to death in the dark than let whatever is living inside you take over my blood!"

"You think I want to do this?" Rangga snapped, his patience wearing thin as a distant, subterranean groan echoed through the rock walls, shaking dust down from the ceiling. "The shelf above us is collapsing. Thorne is trying to blow the main pressure valve as we speak. If we stay down here, we become permanent fixtures of this tomb. Now give me your wrist before I have to hold you down."

"No—wait—listen to me!" the captive sobbed, thrashing weakly as Rangga caught his forearm in a iron grip. "My name is Miller. I was the lead seismic tech before Thorne classified the site. I know what's at the core of this mountain. It’s not just thermal energy. It’s a closed-loop pressure system. If you pump your energy into me, you're going to drain your own reserve. The mountain will feel it. It'll treat you like a foreign parasite!"

"Let it," Rangga replied coldly, pressing his glowing palm directly against Miller’s ice-cold pulse point.

A sharp, violent hiss filled the tiny cell, like water hitting a white-hot iron skillet. Miller arched his back with a sudden, bone-rattling jerk, a strangled scream tearing from his throat as the blue light surged out of Rangga’s skin and violently flooded his veins. The captive's eyes rolled back, his body stiffening rigidly as the foreign, living energy forced his dormant heart to hammer against his ribs once more.

"Hold on!" Rangga gritted his teeth, sweat instantly beading across his forehead and evaporating in the dry, pressurized air of the vault.

As the energy transferred, the brilliant cerulean glow in Rangga’s arm began to dim, flickering erratically like a dying fluorescent tube. The skin around his wrist turned an alarming, chalky grey, the flesh losing its elasticity and hardening into a rigid, calcified shell. Fine spiderweb cracks formed across his forearm, resembling dried volcanic mud baking under a merciless desert sun.

"Stop... stop, you're killing yourself!" Miller choked out, his voice suddenly surging with unexpected strength as color violently flooded back into his pale cheeks. He tried to yank his arm away, but Rangga’s grip was locked like a vise, the calcifying fingers now feeling less like human flesh and more like solid, jagged stone.

"Shut up and take it," Rangga panted, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as a wave of numbing cold crawled up past his elbow, paralyzing his shoulder muscles. The feedback loop was reversing; instead of the mountain feeding him, his own life force was being violently siphoned away to rescue the broken technician.

With a final, blinding flash of dying light, the transfer completed. Rangga slumped forward, his right arm dropping uselessly to the floor with a dull, heavy thud that sounded distinctly unnatural—not like a limb hitting concrete, but like a heavy ceramic tile shattering against the stone.

Miller collapsed back against the wall, breathing heavily, his chest heaving with deep, ragged inhalations of warm air. He stared down at his own hands, watching in stunned silence as the visible blue veins beneath his skin slowly faded back to a normal, healthy pink.

"You... you actually did it," Miller whispered, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe as he looked up at Rangga. "My heart... it's actually beating on its own. But your arm—oh God, your arm is completely destroyed."

"Never mind my arm," Rangga grunted, using his left hand to push himself up from the damp floor, his balance dangerously unsteady. He looked down at his right limb; the entire forearm was now a dull, ash-grey color, completely devoid of feeling, the surface covered in micro-fractures that powdered off into fine dust whenever he flexed his wrist. "Can you walk?"

"I... I think so," Miller tested his legs, wincing as the stiff joints popped audibly in the cold air. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing the thermal blanket and wrapping it tightly around his shoulders. "Where are we going? The main exit is sealed by the corporate lockdown protocols. Thorne had the blast doors welded shut after the first tremor."

"We aren't taking the exit," Rangga said, turning toward a jagged, narrow fissure in the back of the holding cell where thick, bioluminescent roots were violently tearing through the reinforced concrete. "The mountain is opening new paths. If we move fast enough, we can intercept Arung near the upper ridge before Thorne detonates the secondary charges."

"Arung?" Miller’s eyes widened further in sheer disbelief. "The scout? I thought he was caught in the ice-shelf collapse three sectors over! The corporate search teams reported his tracker went dead hours ago."

"Arung doesn't die that easily," Rangga muttered, stepping into the dark, root-choked tunnel and letting the vibration of the earth guide his footsteps. "And neither do we. Move. Every second we waste here gives Thorne time to finish his work."

Behind them, the distant, muffled sound of a heavy explosive charge echoed through the bedrock, followed immediately by the sickening screech of stressed steel tearing apart. The entire sub-level lurched violently to the left, throwing Miller against the damp stone wall.

"Was that the transport bridge?" Miller shouted over the growing roar of subterranean wind rushing up through the fissure.

"Worse," Rangga called back without slowing down, his grey, calcified arm swinging dead and heavy at his side like a useless club. "That was the seismic valve. Thorne just opened the core. The mountain is waking up, and it's angry."