Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mate I Never Chose: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

"Authorization code: Thorne-Delta-Nine," Elias shouted over the rising shriek of the machinery, his fingers slamming down onto the biometric override pad of the central console.Rangga didn't hesitate. He lunged forward across the slick obsidian floor, his cyan-lit veins flaring blindingly bright as he reached out to smash the interface. "You don't know what you've initiated!""I know exactly what I'm doing!" Thorne snarled, violently wrenching his hand back as Rangga's fist smashed into the console, shattering the glass display into a million jagged fragments. "The purge protocol is already uploaded, you absolute fool!"A deep, deafening concussive boom echoed from the bowels of the mountain, vibrating straight through Rangga’s boots and rattling his teeth. The floor beneath them violently jerked sideways, throwing Rangga off balance as a massive fracture split the cavern floor right between them."Rangga!" Thorne yelled, losing his footing as the entire observation platform sheared

"Keep moving! If we stop here, we freeze before the search party even checks the sector perimeter!" Kael shouted over the howling gale, his boots crunching violently against the crusted snow of the upper ridge."I can't... my chest feels like it's caving in," a junior operative wheezed, stumbling against a jagged outcrop of blue-tinted ice. His breath came in ragged, hyperventilating gasps, plumes of white vapor instantly freezing on the collar of his heavy thermal parka."You can and you will unless you want Thorne to leave you out here as wolf food," Kael snapped, grabbing the man by his tactical harness and forcefully hauling him upright. "Move your legs!"The ridge was a treacherous knife-edge of packed powder and exposed granite, lashed by winds that threatened to tear their crampons straight out of the ice sheet. Below them, the massive silhouette of the corporate drilling platform loomed like a wounded mechanical beast, half-swallowed by billowing clouds of steam and sulfur ven

"Over here! Watch your step, the flooring is completely rotted out."Rangga’s voice was little more than a low, gravelly rasp, dragged upward from the very bottom of his lungs as he blindly navigated the jagged, claustrophobic contours of the lower sub-levels. He didn't need his eyes—not anymore. The blinding feedback loop of Thorne’s purge protocol had scorched his vision to ash, leaving behind a persistent, ghost-like smear of white across his mind's eye. But in exchange, the living architecture of the mountain had opened its doors wide. Every tremor, every microscopic fracture in the granite, and every subterranean heartbeat vibrated directly through the soles of his boots and up into the pulsing, bioluminescent network beneath his skin.He reached out blindly with one hand, his fingers trailing along a damp, ice-slicked wall of dark basalt until his palm brushed against a heavy, reinforced steel bulkhead door. It hung awkwardly off a single, warped hinge, groaning with every breat

"Sir, we’ve lost the orbital relay!"The panic in the technician’s voice cut through the hum of the auxiliary generators like a circular saw. On the main plateau of the upper extraction shelf, Director Elias Thorne didn't drop his heavy wrench, but his knuckles turned stark, bloodless white as he gripped the tool."Lost it?" Thorne snapped, his head snapping up to glare at the glowing amber diagnostic screen. "Satellites don't just vanish. Is it atmospheric interference from the thermal venting?""No, Director—it's localized," the tech stammered, his fingers flying across the auxiliary console in a desperate blur of keystrokes. "A complete electromagnetic blackout. Nothing is getting in, and nothing is getting out. We're in a total dead zone."Thorne threw the wrench down, the heavy steel clattering loudly against the frozen metal decking. "Check the repeater arrays on the ridge. Someone must have clipped a fiber line during the last tremor.""I've already checked the telemetry, sir!

"Watch your footing," Rangga said, his voice dropping an octave as he shoved the heavy rusted iron door open. "This isn't standard corporate architecture anymore. The mountain is waking up, and it's digesting everything left behind."The rescued captive, leaning heavily against Rangga’s uninjured side, let out a wet, rattling cough that echoed sharply against the dripping stone walls of the subterranean gut. His skeletal fingers dug frantically into the fabric of Rangga’s jacket, white-knuckled and trembling. "Where... where are we taking me? There's no exit down here. It’s a dead end. I heard the supervisors talking about the lower sumps. They said anyone who falls down here dissolves before they hit the bedrock.""They were lying to keep the workforce from panicking," Rangga retorted, his gaze scanning the twisting, hyper-accelerated nightmare of a corridor ahead. "They didn't want anyone knowing the mountain is a living organism. Look at the walls."The captive raised his bloodshot