Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mate I Never Chose: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

The screech of automated drone alarms tore through the yellow haze of the lower access depot, echoing off the corrugated metal siding of the shipping containers and bouncing across the wide-open asphalt. Overhead, a pair of triangle-winged surveillance units dipped their sleek noses downward, their twin red optical lenses spinning in frantic search patterns as they locked onto the sudden movement near the service hatch."We've been flagged!" Arung shouted over the howling sirens, stumbling out of the dark opening and slamming hard against the side of a rusted utility truck. He clutched his cracked ribs, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps as a dark stain bloomed across the front of his torn shirt. "Rangga, the drones—they're vectoring right toward us!"Rangga didn't look up. His massive frame dropped heavily onto the driver-side running board of the utility truck, the metal chassis groaning audibly under his unnatural, mineral-heavy weight. Without a word of warning, his right

"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

"Keep your voices down," Arung hissed, clutching his bandaged ribs as he stumbled into the suffocating gloom of the corrugated tin corridor. "If the black-ops team hears a peep, we're all walking targets."Rangga didn't answer. His heavy, calcified left arm scraped against the damp aluminum wall with a dull scratch-scree, leaving a faint trail of gray mineral dust in the dim light. He ducked his massive frame beneath a low-hanging cluster of electrical cables, his breathing sounding like grinding tectonic plates. "They're already sweeping the perimeter. I can feel the vibration of their boots through the floorboards.""Which is exactly why we need to move now, not in ten minutes," a low, gravelly voice echoed from the shadows ahead.A figure stepped out from behind a stack of rusted oil drums, holding a flickering kerosene lantern that cast long, jiggling shadows across the muddy alley floor. It was Pak Kasim, the veteran local trucker whose scarred face and bloodshot eyes bore the pe

"It doesn't hurt because the nerve endings are dead, boy," the village blacksmith, old Jafar, rasped, slamming a pair of heavy iron tongs onto the anvil with a deafening clang that echoed off the soot-stained corrugated tin walls of the forge. "Dead flesh rots, but stone just sits there until it crushes whatever's left of you."Jafar stepped closer, squinting through thick, grease-smeared spectacles at Rangga’s rigid, calcified shoulder. With hands calloused from decades of hammering pig iron, the blacksmith tested the jagged edge where gray mineral crust met living, breathing skin. Rangga didn’t flinch. He didn’t even twitch."Get the leather strap ready, Kasim," Jafar muttered without looking back, his eyes fixed on the terrifying transformation eating its way up Rangga’s collarbone. "If we don't brace this joint now, his own weight will snap the collarbone clean in two before we even reach the coastal road."Pak Kasim stepped out from the shadows near the charcoal pit, holding a st

The metallic shriek of the reinforced iron gate tearing off its hydraulic hinges echoed like a thunderclap across the narrow, muddy alleys of Kranji."They're through the outer perimeter!" Arung shouted, his voice cracking as he shoved himself away from the damp brickwork, clutching his bandaged ribs with a sharp grimace of agony. "Kasim, Jafar, get the back door open now before those tactical squads flood the central square!""There is no back door, boy, you know that as well as I do," Pak Kasim yelled back, his hands shaking violently as he yanked the final leather rivet tight against Rangga’s stone-bound shoulder. "The entire workshop was built into the cliffside! We’re boxed in unless we go through the front!""Then we go through the front," Rangga said. His voice carried an unnatural, hollow resonance, vibrating through the small, suffocating forge like grinding tectonic plates. He flexed his left arm; the newly fitted leather brace groaned under the immense strain, holding the r