Chapter 86: The Thaw After the Freeze

"The ridge is going!" Arung shouted, his voice cracking against the brutal gale as a violent wall of freezing downdraft slammed into them from the upper peak. "Hold onto the rock! Hold on!"

"Don't waste your breath yelling at the wind," Rangga replied, his voice grinding like granite slabs rolling over one another in a deep subterranean vault.

The air around them suddenly shifted from a bone-snapping freeze to an oppressive, suffocating humidity. Down the slope, the industrial geothermal vents—massive steel cylinders bolted into the bedrock by Thorne's syndicate—shrieked in protest as superheated steam blew clean through their safety valves. Heavy metal panels tore loose from the extraction rigs, hurtling through the whiteout like metallic leaves caught in a hurricane.

"Look at the ground!" Arung pointed a trembling, blood-streaked finger down toward the lower path. "It’s melting! The whole ridge is turning to liquid!"

True to his words, the thick crust of ancient ice and permafrost beneath their boots dissolved into a raging torrent of muddy mire within seconds. The sudden temperature spike, triggered by the massive thermal venting above, converted the frozen trail into a treacherous slip-slide of liquefied mud and shale. Rangga’s heavy, calcified left arm stiffened further in the sudden atmospheric shift, the stone-like joints locking at a rigid, awkward angle that threatened to throw off his entire balance.

"My arm's locking up," Rangga muttered, his teeth gritting so hard a thin line of red appeared at the corner of his mouth. He slammed his right hand against a protruding boulder, using his raw human strength to compensate for the dead, stone weight of his mutated limb.

"You need to bend it! Force it!" Arung cried out, slipping ankle-deep into the sudden quagmire. He threw his weight against Rangga’s unyielding side, his face pale from shock and blood loss. "If you drop me here, I’m sinking straight down into the tailings pond!"

"I'm not dropping you," Rangga growled, his grip tightening until his fingers cracked the frozen leather of Arung’s jacket. "Grab my belt. Use both hands if you can. We have to clear this shelf before the main tower collapses."

Above them, the primary drilling derrick groaned with an ear-splitting shriek of stressed titanium. Rivets popped like machine-gun fire, raining down around them in a dangerous shower of red-hot metal.

"They didn't build these safety valves to handle a full core purge," Arung gasped, clutching his ribs as another wave of searing pain shot through his torso. "Thorne overrode the pressure limits to maximize the mineral yield! He knew this would happen!"

"Then let him choke on his own steam," Rangga said coldly, hauling Arung forward another ten yards through the thick, ankle-trapping mud. "Move! The slope is giving way beneath us!"

A thunderous roar echoed from directly behind them as the massive observation tower sheared off its concrete foundations and slid into the boiling gorge below, sending a colossal geyser of mud and steam hundreds of feet into the air. The shockwave hit them like a physical blow, driving the wind from their lungs and pushing them hard against the jagged rock face of the ridge.

"Are we clear?" Arung choked out, spitting a mouthful of gritty brown sludge onto his sleeve. His eyes were wide with shock, his skin pale and clammy from rapid blood loss.

"Not even close," Rangga answered, his sharp eyes scanning the devastated landscape below where the trail vanished into a thick soup of red-tinted fog. "The entire access road is gone. We’re walking straight down the drainage chute."

"The drainage chute? That leads right into the heavy industrial yard," Arung protested, his voice rising in panic. "The security garrison is stationed down there! They're still active!"

"Let them try to stop us," Rangga retorted, his stone-bound shoulder twitching as he forced the rigid joint back into a semblance of alignment. "They have guns. I have the mountain. Let's see who holds the better card."

"You're out of your mind," Arung groaned, but he didn't pull away as Rangga hoisted him upward once more. "You're actually insane, Rangga."

"Survival isn't sanity, Arung. It's stubbornness," Rangga snapped back, taking his first heavy, squelching step down the newly thawed slope. "Now keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. We have a long way to fall."