Chapter 94: A Place to Bleed

"If you throw up on my floor, I will sew your mouth shut with fishing line," Ibu Marta warned, not even looking up from the cast-iron mortar where she was grinding a greenish, pungent root into a thick, bubbling paste.

Arung groaned, sliding down the splintered wooden wall of the back room until his boots hit the uneven dirt floor. His fingers immediately flew to his chest, pressing hard against the raw, agonizing ache of his cracked ribs. Every breath felt like inhaling a handful of broken glass, but the biting, medicinal sting of the ointment Marta was slapping onto his torso helped cut through the white-hot haze of pain.

"I've had better mornings," Arung gasped, his voice thin and wet. He squeezed his eyes shut as Marta pressed a calloused thumb directly over a bruised intercostal muscle, forcing a harsh, involuntary yelp from his throat. "Careful! I'm already half-broken."

"Quiet," Marta snapped, her dark eyes darting across the small, cramped room to where Rangga stood rigidly by the narrow window. "You're lucky to be breathing at all. Kranji doesn't take kindly to men who smell like Thorne's aviation fuel and mountain runoff. And that one..." She jerked her chin toward Rangga, her jaw tightening. "That one smells like a walking tomb."

Rangga didn't flinch. His broad, heavy-set shoulders filled the cramped space of the tiny apothecary, the floorboards beneath his combat boots groaning under a weight that didn't belong on normal human joints. His left arm remained locked at an unnatural, rigid angle, encased in a thickening gray crust of calcified skin that caught the dim light of the single kerosene lamp like polished granite.

"How long until the patrols reach the outer ridge?" Rangga asked, his voice low, vibrating with that strange, stony cadence that made the glass jars on Marta's shelves softly rattle.

"Hours, if the mudslides slowed them down. Days, if the supervisors care more about saving their own skin than hunting strays," Marta replied, finally setting the heavy stone mortar down with a sharp clack. She wiped her hands on a grease-stained rag and turned her full, unblinking gaze onto Rangga. "Mountain sickness, they call it up here when a man spends too long breathing the sulfur vents near the caldera. But I've lived in Kranji sixty years, boy. I've seen miners turn to gray dust before they even hit forty. Never seen one harden into iron while he's still walking around, though."

"It's not a disease," Rangga said flatly, taking a slow step toward the wooden table where Marta kept her medical supplies. The sound of his boots on the dirt was heavy, dull, and entirely distinct—like a mallet striking wet clay. "The corporate extraction site cracked the lower geothermal shelf. The pressure has to go somewhere."

"And it chose you?" Marta scoffed, stepping closer and reaching out with surprising speed to grab Rangga's calcified wrist.

Arung winced, half-raising a hand from the floor. "Don't touch him, Marta—"

The warning died in his throat. Marta's fingers curled around Rangga's forearm, right over the gray, mineral-bound skin. She didn't flinch away, nor did she gasp in horror; instead, her eyes narrowed into sharp, calculating slits as she tapped a yellowed fingernail against the dense surface. A dull, metallic clink echoed softly in the quiet room.

"It's not just stone," Marta murmured, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. She looked up, meeting Rangga's deadpan, unflinching stare. "It's the core's weight. You're carrying the mountain's anchor inside your bones now. Every step you take must feel like dragging an iron anvil."

"It gets heavier by the hour," Rangga admitted, pulling his arm back with a slow, deliberate motion that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. He flexed his fingers—or tried to; the top two joints of his index and middle fingers were already fused solid into a permanent, iron-like grip. "We need transport south. A truck, a cart, anything that doesn't run on corporate fuel codes."

"South?" Marta let out a harsh, barking laugh, turning back to her mortar to scoop up another dollop of the pungent green paste. She marched over to Arung, slapping the cold medicine directly across his bruised ribs with enough force to make him curse aloud. "The regional blockade is locked down tighter than a vault. Thorne's security teams are sweeping every highway between here and the coast looking for the utility truck you stole. If you step foot in the village square looking like a pair of refugees, the bounty scrip they're offering will turn half of Kranji against you before you can blink."

"We didn't come here to blend in," Arung wheezed, biting his lip hard as the herbal poultice began to burn into his skin. He forced himself to sit up straighter, ignoring the hot spike of pain in his chest. "We came here because this is the only place within fifty miles where the corporate surveillance grids don't have direct optical feeds down every alley."

"For now," Marta countered, her expression grim as she dropped the empty rag onto the table. "The local foreman, a company lackey named Gani, has been sniffing around the lower market all morning asking about strangers with burns and torn clothes. It's only a matter of time before someone trades your names for a handful of corporate scrip. Hunger makes a man very honest about who he sells out."

"Then we move before nightfall," Rangga said, his gaze fixed on the narrow, rain-streaked window overlooking the muddy main street of Kranji. Through the glass, he could see the gray, miserable tin roofs of the village packed tightly against the towering, mist-shrouded base of the mountain. Figures in cheap plastic ponchos hurried through the driving drizzle, keeping their heads down, entirely focused on survival.

"Move where?" Marta challenged, crossing her arms over her thin apron. "You can barely walk without cracking the floorboards, and your friend here has a fractured ribcage that will collapse if he takes a hard jog. You're trapped in this valley, boys. The mountain behind you is a graveyard, and the road ahead is a firing squad."

Before Arung could snap back a retort, a sudden, sharp rap echoed against the wooden front door of the apothecary.

The room instantly froze.

In the heavy silence that followed, the sound of heavy boots splashing through the thick street mud outside became unmistakable. A muffled voice—loud, authoritative, and carrying the crisp, sterile accent of corporate security—cut through the patter of the rain.

“Open up! Inspection under regional emergency ordinance. Clear the lane!”

Arung's head whipped around toward Rangga, his eyes wide with sudden, sharp panic. His hand slipped down to grab the heavy steel wrench tucked into his belt, his knuckles turning white. "They found us already."

"Stay down," Rangga ordered in a low, rumbling growl, his massive frame shifting effortlessly into a defensive posture between the doorway and the back room. The calcified plating on his left shoulder flared with a dull, subterranean heat, casting a faint, reddish shimmer across the damp wooden beams of the ceiling.

"Wait—" Marta hissed, holding up a hand as the heavy wooden latch of the front door rattled under a heavy, impatient shove from the outside. "If they break that door down in a village like Kranji, the whole street will light up like a tinderbox. Give me the wrench, Arung."

"Marta, what are you—" Arung started, but the old woman had already snatched the heavy tool from his belt with surprising agility.

Another violent blow struck the front door, splintering the aged timber around the iron frame. A sharp voice barked from the porch: “Last warning! Open the door or we use breaching charges!”

Marta didn't answer the threat. Instead, she turned to Rangga, her eyes flashing with a fierce, defiant spark that matched the heat radiating from his stone-bound arm.

"There's a root cellar beneath the floorboards behind the workbench," Marta whispered rapidly, her voice barely carrying over the pounding rain. "It leads out to the drainage ditch behind the fish market. Go now, before they kick the frame in."

"And you?" Rangga asked, not moving an inch.

"I've lived under Thorne's boot longer than you've been alive, boy," Marta said, a grim, humorless smile touching the corners of her mouth as she hefted Arung's heavy wrench in her frail hand. "Let them try to explain to the district manager why they're beating up an old herbalist for selling cold medicine."

A deafening crack echoed through the small shop as the front door gave way, its iron hinges shearing completely off the wall and crashing into the front display shelves with a shattering cascade of glass jars and ceramic bottles.

"Clear the room!" a harsh voice shouted from the front shop, accompanied by the unmistakable metallic clack of assault rifles being unslung and switched to firing mode.

"Go!" Marta hissed, shoving Arung hard toward the back corner of the room.

Rangga didn't hesitate anymore. His massive, stone-heavy hand dropped down, wrenching the trapdoor in the floor open with a single violent heave that splintered the surrounding planks. Without a backward glance, he grabbed Arung by the collar of his jacket and hauled him down into the pitch-black, damp crawlspace just as the first black-clad corporate operative stepped through the shattered doorway into the apothecary's front room.

"Nobody move!" the lead operative roared, his rifle barrel sweeping across the empty counter.

Above them, the muffled sound of Marta's voice rang out, sharp and dripping with venom: "Break another jar in my shop, you bastards, and I'll feed you to the river dogs myself!"

In the cramped, suffocating dark of the cellar, Arung pressed his back against the damp earth, his chest heaving as he fought to muffle his ragged breathing. Beside him, Rangga loomed like a massive silhouette of solid rock, his calcified arm glowing faintly in the gloom, casting an eerie, reddish light over the dirt walls.

Then, above their heads, the sharp, unmistakable stutter of an automatic rifle burst into the quiet air, followed immediately by the sound of shattering wood and a desperate shout of pain.