Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mate I Never Chose: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

"Lock the secondary grid down to forty percent capacity or the entire platform will shear completely off its mounts!" Thorne roared, his voice nearly drowned out by the piercing, high-frequency whine of the heavy-duty laser array slicing into the dark, wet stone of the cavern wall."I'm already maxing out the power distributors, Director!" shouted Vance, his knuckles bleeding where he had slammed them against the emergency terminal's cracked glass casing. "The mountain's neural network is fighting back! Every time we beam a high-intensity pulse into the fault lines, the feedback loop redirects triple the wattage straight back into our main breaker!""Then bypass the breakers and dump the excess into the bedrock!" Thorne slammed his palm onto the central control console, his face illuminated in harsh, flickering flashes of blue and crimson laser light. "I didn't bring this expedition two miles underground to be outsmarted by a glorified pile of silicate and magma! Burn the tunnels out!

The heavy iron door groaned, its rusted hinges protesting with a shriek of tortured metal as Rangga forced his weight against it, slipping into the forgotten subterranean shaft."Stay close," Rangga whispered, his voice a dry rasp that barely carried over the steady, bass-heavy thrum vibrating through the cavern floor. "The structural integrity of these older tunnels is completely compromised. One wrong step and the ceiling comes down."Behind him, the rescued captive stumbled forward, his bare feet scraping against the cold, uneven stone with a sound like dry bones grinding together. The man’s breathing was shallow, ragged, and entirely too fast, his emaciated frame shivering uncontrollably beneath a tattered shred of a corporate jumpsuit."Cold," the captive whimpered, his eyes wide, milky, and unfocused in the pitch-black corridor. "It's so cold inside the rock. Always inside the rock. They wouldn't let me out, Rangga. They kept asking about the pulse.""You're out now," Rangga sai

Rangga paused, his grey, ash-brittle hand pressed against the damp, cold stone of the ancient mining tunnel as a violent tremor rolled through the subterranean depths. Beside him, the rescued captive let out a low, terrified whimper, his emaciated frame curling into a tight ball against the rough rock wall."Keep moving," Rangga said, his voice tight with suppressed pain as the bioluminescent veins in his good arm flared with a dull, warning orange. "We are almost there. I can feel it through the floor.""What is that sound?" the captive muttered, his milky eyes darting frantically into the absolute darkness of the corridor. "It sounds like a heartbeat. A massive, heavy heartbeat right under our feet. It’s getting louder, Rangga. It’s getting too loud.""It’s not a heartbeat," Rangga corrected, stepping over a collapsed timber beam that barred their path. "It’s thermal pressure. Centuries of trapped heat and tectonic stress, built up and compressed by the rock.""The corporation wants

The air inside the main pressure valve chamber tasted of copper, ozone, and sulfur. It was a suffocating, hyper-dense cocktail of elements that burned the lungs with every inhalation, forcing Rangga to fight for every breath as he dragged his battered body past the towering bulkhead. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, the skin turned the ash-grey color of dead volcanic slag, completely calcified and devoid of any human flexibility. Yet, despite the agonizing weight of his ruined limb, his eyes remained locked on the massive, interlocking steel gears of the manifold dead ahead."Rangga! Hold up—damn it, just wait one second!"Arung stumbled through the narrow access hatch behind him, his boots skidding across the slick, condensation-soaked flooring before he slammed hard into a rusted pipe junction. He caught himself with a sharp intake of breath, his face ghostly pale beneath a fresh layer of coal dust and dried blood. A dark, ugly stain was rapidly spreading across the front of

"Put it down, Thorne," Rangga repeated, his voice cutting through the heavy, vibrating air of the chamber. The ash-grey skin of his calcified left arm felt like dead weight, a constant, dragging reminder of the cost he had already paid to reach this concrete hellscape."I don't think you quite understand the geometry of our current situation, Rangga," Thorne laughed, a sharp, unhinged sound that bounced off the curved steel walls. His thumb hovered inches above the heavy, rubberized trigger cap of the military-grade detonator. "This isn't a negotiation. It's an execution."Arung groaned from his spot against the steam pipe, coughing up a fresh spray of dark blood. "He’s bluffing, Rangga. The charges... they're wired to the main core. If he triggers them, the whole ridge comes down on his head, too.""Do you really think I care about a corporate pension fund at this point, Arung?" Thorne snarled, taking a slow, deliberate step toward the edge of the catwalk. His eyes were bloodshot, pu