Chapter 95: The Company’s Clean-Up Crew

"He is not bleeding," Ibu Marta muttered, her fingers pausing over the dark green poultice smeared across Arung’s bruised ribs. Her gaze flicked sharply past the bamboo privacy screen toward the dim corner of the clinic where Rangga stood motionless. "He is hardening. Like river silt baking in a kiln. If the corporation’s sweepers catch the scent of that geothermal calcification on him, they will skin him alive just to harvest the core-metal."

Arung hissed through his teeth as Marta pressed down hard on a fractured intercostal. "They aren't looking for minerals, Marta. They're looking for witnesses who can prove Thorne's seismic tampering triggered the caldera collapse."

"They are looking for loose ends," a sharp voice cut through the heavy, medicinal air of the clinic.

The heavy canvas flap at the front of the hut pushed aside, letting in a shaft of pale, sickly daylight and the heavy smell of diesel exhaust. A man stepped inside, ducking beneath the low lintel. He wore a crisp, dust-free utility jacket bearing the subtle, debossed emblem of Thorne Extraction Logistics, though the corporate insignias had been carefully scraped away with a blade. Two armed security contractors in matte-black tactical gear filled the narrow doorway behind him, their heavy-caliber suppression rifles held at low-ready.

Arung froze, his hand dropping away from his chest. "Caldwell."

Caldwell offered a thin, mirthless smile, stepping further into the cramped room. His eyes swept over the rough wooden benches, the drying bundles of medicinal herbs hanging from the rafters, and finally landed on Arung. "You really should have taken the extraction shuttle when you had the chance, Arung. Running down the mountain with a broken ribcage and a walking geological anomaly? It’s inefficient. Bad for morale."

"We're out of the Red Zone," Arung spat, sliding his boots back against the dirt floor as if preparing to stand, though his wince betrayed the futility of the effort. "Kranji is outside corporate jurisdiction. You have no legal authority here."

"Jurisdiction?" Caldwell chuckled softly, unzipping his jacket just enough to reveal the polished silver handle of an override terminal clipped to his belt. "Director Thorne’s legal authority burned up with the primary extraction rig. Right now, I am operating under Article Nine of the Emergency Asset Recovery Protocol. Everything—and everyone—within a ten-mile radius of the southern ridge is company property until the spill is contained."

"You're calling a volcanic eruption a 'spill'?" Arung demanded, his voice rising despite the sharp stitch in his side.

"I'm calling it a liability," Caldwell corrected smoothly, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the interior of the hut. "And you two are the remaining variables on the ledger. Where is the other one? The big man with the mineral-choked arms?"

Arung opened his mouth to snap a retort, but a sudden, low hum vibrated through the floorboards beneath his boots. It wasn't the sound of an engine or a generator. It was a deep, sub-audible resonance that made the ceramic jars on Marta’s shelves rattle against the wood.

Caldwell’s smile faltered. He unclipped a small, palm-sized sensor from his belt, watching as the liquid-crystal display flared from a calm green to an aggressive, pulsing crimson. "Thermal signature... off the charts. He's not even running a standard human core temperature."

"Get out of my clinic," Ibu Marta said, her voice unnaturally steady as she picked up a heavy iron pestle from her mortar. She didn't look like a terrified villager; she looked like someone who had buried three husbands and half the valley's corrupt overseers. "You are tracking mud across my rugs, and you are scaring my patients."

Caldwell didn't blink. He raised a gloved hand, signaling the two tactical contractors behind him to step fully into the room. "Granny, save the local color for the tourists. We're here for the asset. Bag them both."

Before the lead contractor could even lift his rifle barrel, the rear wall of the clinic—a makeshift partition of corrugated tin and dried fronds—exploded outward in a shower of splintered wood and flying dust.

A massive, shadowy bulk stepped through the wreckage. Rangga’s left arm was entirely sheathed in jagged, dark-gray stone, the jagged mineral deposits catching the dim light with an oily sheen. The ambient heat radiating from his skin immediately warped the air around him, causing the water droplets clinging to the thatched roof to evaporate into a sudden, stinging hiss of steam.

Caldwell whipped around, his hand flying toward his sidearm. "Suppress him! Use the non-lethal dampening nets—don't let him ground out!"

The lead contractor brought his rifle up, firing a heavy, pneumatic canister designed to deploy a high-tensile wire mesh meant to pin dangerous fauna. The canister whistled across the narrow room, striking Rangga square in the chest with a heavy, wet thud.

It didn't slow him down by a fraction of a millimeter. The kinetic force of the impact merely cracked the outer layer of calcified crust on Rangga's torso, releasing a tiny plume of white, sulfurous smoke.

Rangga didn't grunt. He didn't yell. With a single, fluid motion of his stone-bound arm, he swept his hand outward like a scythe, catching the barrel of the contractor's rifle and twisting it sideways with a sickening shriek of stressed titanium. The weapon was wrenched completely out of the guard's grip, flying across the room to smash into the wall just inches from Caldwell’s head.

"Shoot him!" Caldwell shrieked, backing up a step and drawing his own service pistol. "Shoot the asset!"

The second contractor fired a burst of rubber-slug suppression rounds. The heavy rubber pellets struck Rangga’s shoulders and neck, producing hollow, drum-like impacts that didn't even leave a bruise on his hardened skin. Rangga closed the distance in two thunderous strides, his heavy boots crushing the floorboards into kindling. He grabbed the second guard by the tactical vest, lifting the fully-geared man off his feet as if he weighed no more than a bundle of dry reeds, and hurled him bodily out through the front doorway.

The guard crashed into the muddy street outside with a heavy, breathless crunch.

Caldwell raised his pistol, aiming dead center at Rangga’s chest, his finger whitening on the trigger. "You don't know what you're tethered to, you stone-headed freak. The mountain is dying, and you're going down with it."

Arung lunged forward from the bench, ignoring the agonizing pull of his cracked ribs, and slammed his heavy iron mug directly down onto Caldwell’s wrist. The pistol discharged into the dirt floor with a deafening roar, sending a spray of wood splinters and dust into the air.

Caldwell yelled, dropping the gun as his wrist cracked under the improvised blow. He stumbled backward, tripping over a stool and sprawling flat on his back among the scattered herbal poultices.

Rangga stood over him, casting a long, heavy shadow that swallowed the light from the doorway. The air in the room was stifling now, hot enough to make sweat bead instantly on Arung's forehead, while Rangga's stone-bound arm glowed with a faint, pulsing ember-red from within the deep cracks of the mineral shell.

"We aren't going back to the extraction camp, Caldwell," Arung panted, pressing a hand against his bleeding side as he leaned heavily against the wooden table. "And your clean-up crew just ran out of budget."

Caldwell scrambled backward on his heels, his eyes wide with sudden, unadulterated terror as he stared up at Rangga’s glowing, inhuman arm. "You think... you think you've won because you made it off the ridge? The entire valley is wired. Every road, every rail line, every dock—Thorne has a full battalion waiting at the coast. You're walking into a slaughterhouse."

"Let them wait," Rangga said, his voice carrying that heavy, grinding tectonic rumble that vibrated right through the marrow of Arung's bones.

Outside the hut, the sharp, rhythmic thumping of heavy rotor blades suddenly cut through the humid valley air, shaking the tin roof and kicking up a violent gust of wind that blew the canvas flap wide open. Through the gap, a heavy corporate transport helicopter dropped out of the gray sky, its side doors sliding open to reveal a dozen heavily armed troopers fast-roping into the muddy village square.

Caldwell laughed, a frantic, breathless sound, wiping a streak of dirt from his chin as he looked up at the ceiling. "Too late. They're already here."

Arung looked from the descending troopers outside to Rangga, whose glowing stone arm was beginning to hiss as moisture from the humid air hit its superheated surface.

"We need a vehicle," Arung said tightly, his eyes locked on the open doorway. "A fast one. And we need to move before those rotors touch the ground."

"No vehicles," Rangga replied, his eyes fixed on the approaching shadows outside. He turned his heavy head toward Arung, the heat radiating from his skin scorching the air between them. "We take their transport."