All Chapters of The Mate I Never Chose: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

"The tires are locked in the mud, Kasim! Push, or we’re dead before we even clear the village boundary!" Arung screamed over the deafening roar of the idling diesel engine.Water sluiced in thick, greasy torrents off the corrugated roof of the smuggler’s refrigerated truck, turning the dirt track into a churning brown bog. In the rearview mirror, the blazing wreckage of Kranji cast a frantic, flickering orange glare against the storm-blackened sky. Smoke poured from the shattered remains of the village square, where the corporate recovery unit’s non-lethal suppression rounds had sparked a chain-reaction fire among the old fuel shacks.Pak Kasim planted his heavy rubber boots deep into the mire behind the rear bumper, his face contorted in a mask of desperate effort as he heaved against the dead weight of the chassis. "I am pushing as hard as a man with a broken lung can manage, Arung! The axle is buried halfway to the differential!"From the driver’s seat, Rangga stared through the sa

"The damp is getting into my bones, and your footfalls sound like a rolling avalanche, Rangga. If the shipping police hear those stone-bound boots clanking against the steel grates of Pier Four, we won't even make it to the cargo sheds," Arung hissed, leaning heavily against a rusted shipping container marked with the faded crimson logo of the syndicate. His hand pressed hard over his bandaged ribs, fingers whitening as another sharp spike of agony shot through his torso with every ragged breath.Rangga did not break his heavy, measured stride, though the left side of his body shifted with the stiff, unyielding mechanical grind of a tectonic fault line. "They are looking for standard silhouettes, Arung, not a walking quarry. Keep moving. The cold air is freezing the dampness in my joints, and if this arm locks up completely before we find the auditor, we are both dead.""Easy for you to say. You don't have a cracked rib cage grating together every time the wind blows off the black wat

"I am not crawling through a mile of toxic sewage and rotting fish guts just so you can protect your designer trousers, Vane. Move, or I will pick you up and throw you down the hatch myself," Rangga snarled, his voice a low, grinding rumble like shifting bedrock. He gripped the heavy, grease-coated dog-latch of the maintenance hatch with his normal right hand, wrenching it upward with a deafening screech of stressed iron.Vane recoiled from the opening, his nose wrinkling in sheer revulsion as a thick wave of stagnant, oil-slicked vapor billowed out from the dark void below. "That isn't just sewage, you lunatic! That's the primary bilge and ballast overflow for the lower decks! It's choked with industrial runoff, heavy metal sludge, and decades of stagnant bilge water. My skin will literally burn off if I touch that water!""Then hold your breath and try not to splash, because the corporate biometric scanners at the main terminal gates just flagged my face three minutes ago," Arung sn

"And what happens when we pop out on the upper gantry and walk right into an ambush, Rangga?" Arung wheezed, his fingers tightening convulsively into the coarse fabric of Rangga’s jacket as they slogged through the final stretch of the bilge. "We didn't crawl through a mile of industrial grease just to be executed on a loading dock like stray dogs.""You worry too much about dying for a man who is already half-stone," Rangga rumbled back, his voice carrying the ominous, scraping weight of sliding tectonic plates. He planted his heavy right boot against the rusted rungs of the vertical service ladder, his calcified left arm locked rigidly at an unnatural angle to keep the stone-bound joints from freezing entirely. "When we reach the top, stay behind my shoulder. Let them shoot at something that won't bleed."Before Arung could fire back another sharp retort, Rangga hauled his massive frame upward, the sheer density of his mutated muscle and mineralized bone groaning under the strain as

"Drop the weapon, Thorne! Your career, your syndicate, and your extraction license are already floating out to sea in a hundred thousand data packets right now!" Arung shouted, hauling himself up through the hatch and pressing his back hard against Rangga’s stone-clad flank to keep from collapsing."Shut up! Shut your bloody mouth, Arung!" Thorne shrieked, his finger tightening convulsively against the trigger guard as his manic gaze darted between the two men. "You ruined everything! Ten years of extraction surveys, millions in capital investment, and the entire southern concession gone because two low-level paper-pushers decided to play heroes!""You didn't invest capital, Thorne; you buried miners alive to cover up your seismic tampering!" Rangga rumbled, taking a deliberate, heavy step forward that made the rain-slicked steel gantry groan in protest. His calcified left arm caught the pale glare of the overhead crane lights, gleaming like polished granite under a layer of dark, har