Lahat ng Kabanata ng Monster Can Love Too: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

The explosion echoed in Noa’s ears like a pulse from another world. Everything was ringing metal, bone, memory. The scorched remains of Sabine’s synthetic shell smoked nearby, twitching once, then collapsing into itself like a dying star. Her army of clone-puppets lay in chunks, the green tank fluid steaming against the frozen concrete floor. Julian stood in the wreckage like a dark prophecy fulfilled.“Still breathing?” he asked, voice rough as gravel.Noa blinked. “Apparently.”Alessio helped him to his feet, one arm wrapped tight around Noa’s waist, the other still holding a blood-slick blade. His eyes hadn’t left Julian since he’d dropped from the sky like a deus ex bastard. “You’re supposed to be dead.”Julian snorted. “So are half the people in this room. Didn’t stop any of you.”Luca entered from the corridor, rifle raised, followed by Ivy who looked like she was about three lines of code from losing her shit. “We have exactly five minutes before Sabine’s missile system reboots

Noa froze.The voice in the hospital speaker wasn’t Sabine. It wasn’t anyone he recognized. It had weight. Depth. Almost soothing like a lullaby played at a funeral.“You thought she was the only one?” it said again. Calm. Inevitable. Almost… curious.Noa sat upright, heart slamming against his ribs like it wanted out. The second pulse on the monitor throbbed alongside his own, mocking him.“What the fuck…” he muttered, fingers clawing at the IV in his arm. He yanked it out, the pain grounding him. Real. Humans.Not code.Not a ghost.Not again.He stumbled off the bed, bare feet hitting the cold floor. The room swam for a second dizzy, heavy. Like someone else was trying to stand inside his skin.He braced himself against the wall.“Who are you?” he hissed at the ceiling.The speaker crackled.Then the voice whispered:“The contingency.”MeanwhileAlessio was in the hallway, pacing like a caged animal.He hadn’t left the building since they landed. Ivy had tried to drag him out for f

The smell of burning circuitry hit before Alessio’s vision even fully adjusted. It wasn’t just a scent, it was thick in the back of his throat, acrid and metallic, the kind of smell that stuck to your clothes and made your eyes water. He blinked hard, once, twice, trying to force his vision to settle, but the darkness was still oppressive, swallowing the room whole.Tiny motes of light drifted through the black. For a second, his brain wanted to think they were absurd fireflies, wrong before he realized they were tiny shards of glass and scorched insulation hanging in the air. They caught what little illumination there was, winking like dying stars before spiraling to the floor. Somewhere to his right, a blown-out control panel sparked, a blue-white flare so bright it left a ghost-image burned in his vision. Then darkness again.Noa’s body was still in his arms. Still glowing faintly, the same slow, steady pulse, like light was being breathed out from under his skin. It wasn’t natural

The light ripped through the room like it wasn’t just trying to brighten it, but tear it apart from the inside. The walls looked like they were warping under it, bending in strange ways, as if reality itself didn’t know how to hold together anymore. It was so blinding Alessio almost thought he’d gone deaf too, because for a moment, all the sound around him was swallowed by the roar in his own skull, a deep, pounding, vibrating noise that made his teeth ache and his stomach twist.He braced one arm against the wall just to keep himself upright. The other hand was still locked around the clone’s wrist with that cold, too-smooth skin that wasn’t quite human. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him to move, to fight, to do something, but the heat in the air was suffocating. It wasn’t the warmth of life, not the heat of skin pressed against skin. It was the white-hot burn of something unnatural, something that didn’t belong in this world at all.And Alessio was done with it.His jaw

The rain didn’t stop. It thickened. What had started as a steady curtain of water was now a pounding wall, each drop cold enough to sting when it hit skin. By the time the SUVs rolled past the rusted gates of the port, every surface seemed slick and alive, reflecting the harsh glare of distant floodlights in fractured shards. The air smelled heavy salt from the sea, oil from the engines, and something faintly metallic that lingered in the back of the throat, like old blood that had been left too long to rot.Steel containers rose on either side of the narrow lanes like silent giants, stacked high and tight, turning the docks into a maze of metal corridors. Each one cast deep shadows, the kind that could hide a man… or a dozen. Somewhere, the wind groaned through gaps in the stacks, low and hollow, like the place itself was breathing.The dock workers had cleared out hours ago, probably told to, or paid to look the other way. The emptiness made it worse. No distant laughter from a nigh