BLOOD OF BORNEO

1: The Depths of Baram Hell

           The killing cold was the first thing that stole Damang’s consciousness. The waters of the Baram River no longer felt like liquid, but like a solid concrete wall slamming against every inch of his skin as he fell from the height of the bridge pillar. Dark. Thick. The sound of the thermobaric missile explosion above only reached him as a dull thud far beyond the layers of muddy water.

           Damang tried to move his arms, but a sharp pain immediately locked his nervous system. A suspension steel beam from the bridge, weighing hundreds of kilograms, had landed directly on top of his body, pinning his waist and left leg against the rocky riverbed. His lungs began to throb, demanding oxygen that did not exist.

          “One... two...” Damang counted in his head, trying to control the panic. “Don’t open your mouth. Don’t let the water in.”

He forced his eyes open. Through the murky water clouded with mud and engine oil, he saw reddish lights moving along the surface. It was not fire, but the sensor lights of Thorne’s underwater drones.

          “Sector Four Cleanup Unit reporting position,” a distorted voice came through the remains of the communication device in Damang’s ear, barely hanging on. “Beginning thermal sweep along the riverbed. Primary target: Damang. Status: Find alive or dead.”

                     Damang clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. He had to get out from beneath this steel trap now. He touched the Rajah on his right arm, now glowing faintly beneath the water. The purple light gave him slight visibility of the chunk of metal pinning him down.

           “Argh!” Damang groaned, releasing the last bubbles of air from his mouth.

He focused every remaining ounce of energy into his back and arms. Through the neural connection with the Mandau still strapped tightly to his back, he drew kinetic strength from the river current. Slowly, the steel beam shifted. The scraping of metal against stone produced a screeching sound that tore through the underwater silence.

           “There’s sonar interference at coordinate 12-B,” the voice on the radio said again. “Drone Two, direct sensors beneath the central pillar debris.”

            The red drone sensor lights pierced through the water, drawing closer to Damang’s position. Five meters away. Three meters.

           Damang closed his eyes. He could not move. He allowed his body temperature to drop along with the freezing river water so he would not be detected by the thermal sensors. He stopped breathing completely, entering the suspended-death state he had once learned during special forces survival training.

         “Nothing. Just steel debris,” the drone operator reported. “Continuing the sweep downstream. Current is too strong, target likely carried toward the estuary.”

           “Make sure nothing is breathing in that area,” replied a heavier voice, one Damang recognized as one of Thorne’s field commanders. “Elias doesn’t like unfinished variables.”

           The moment the red light drifted away, Damang unleashed all his strength.

          BANG!

           The steel beam was hurled aside. Damang crawled along the riverbed, ignoring the burning pain in his broken ribs. He did not swim upward. That would have been suicide. He followed the undercurrent rushing violently toward the cliff wall beside the massive Baram waterfall. There, behind the roaring curtain of water, he saw a dark crevice untouched by the helicopter spotlights above.

           Damang surfaced behind the thunderous waterfall. He coughed violently, spitting out water mixed with blood. Oxygen entered his lungs with unbearable agony.

            “Cough! Cough! Damn you, Vargas...” Damang whispered while clutching his chest. He dragged himself across the slippery rocks. 

           His hand touched the cave wall behind the waterfall. The air inside felt different. There was no smell of oil or chemicals. Only the scent of ancient earth and something that felt like static electricity.

           “Who’s there?” Damang asked the darkness, but only the echo of his own voice answered him.

            He lit a waterproof lighter from the pocket of his armor. The tiny flame immediately revealed a sight that made the hairs on his neck stand up. This cave was not naturally formed. Its walls were smooth, carved with ancient reliefs depicting war between humans and shadows. And lining the corridor were stone shelves filled with thousands of human skulls.

          “This isn’t just a cave,” Damang muttered. “It’s a tomb.”

           The skulls were not ordinary. On every forehead was the same carved mark as the Rajah etched onto Damang’s body. They were the former Dayak Commanders, the guardians of the Heart of the Earth who had fallen centuries ago.

          “So this is where you all ended up,” Damang said as he stepped deeper inside, his legs trembling.

           Suddenly, the Rajah across Damang’s body reacted. The inked lines on his skin began glowing with an intense purple light, illuminating the entire cave. The glow was not merely light. Damang felt as though his nerves were being violently pulled from inside his body.

          “AAAAAARGH!”

          Damang dropped to one knee. He gripped the cold cave floor. The pain surpassed anything he had ever felt from missiles or Richter’s blows. He felt his broken bones shifting, forced back into place by energy drawn from the cave walls.

          “What’s happening?! Stop! It burns!” Damang shouted, but his voice drowned beneath the low-frequency hum emitted by the surrounding skulls.

            Through his newly awakened silver vision, he saw bluish energy flowing from the cave walls into his Rajah through the pores of his skin. The open wound in his abdomen began closing at an impossible speed. Torn muscle tissue fused back together, accompanied by a searing pain like acid being poured over it.

           “Do not resist it, Damang,” a whisper echoed in his ear. His father’s voice. “Accept this burden. Blood must pay for blood.”

           “Father? No... this hurts too much!” Damang groaned, his body arching backward.

            Cold sweat mixed with blood poured down Damang’s forehead. He could feel every inch of his shattered ribs knitting back together, producing horrifying cracking sounds deep within the flesh. The Rajah on his back now formed a new pattern, the symbol of a dragon coiling around a Mandau, something that had never been there before.

          “Synchronization process reaching critical threshold,” a mechanical voice from the device on Damang’s wrist, still functioning miraculously, issued a warning. “Biological energy surge detected. Risk of cardiac failure: 40%.”

          “Shut that thing off!” Damang shouted as he smashed the device against the rocks until it shattered. He did not need technological numbers to tell him he was standing at death’s edge.

           At the far end of the cave corridor, within a vast chamber resembling a great hall, stood a single object atop a stone altar. A coffin made from a single piece of black ironwood, bound by rusted brass chains. The coffin vibrated. Low, but constant.

          “That thing... it’s calling me,” Damang whispered through the remnants of his pain.

             He crawled toward the coffin. Every inch of movement caused his Rajah to pulse harder. The moment his trembling hand touched the cold ironwood surface, the vibration suddenly stopped. Absolute silence consumed the cave, overpowering even the thunderous waterfall outside.

          “Why did you stop?” Damang asked the coffin.

           Suddenly, a blast of static energy hurled Damang backward. His vision turned white. He felt his soul being ripped from his body, shown thousands of years of bloodshed across Borneo. He saw the construction of bridges, the destruction of forests, and the awakening of the demon Thorne was now trying to unleash.

           “I can’t do this alone,” Damang hissed with the last remnants of his breath. “I’m not your hero. I’m just a soldier who wants to go home.”

         “You are no longer a soldier,” the voices of the skulls replied as though speaking in unison. “You are our executioner.”

         Damang felt his consciousness beginning to fade. The pain that had once peaked now transformed into a cold emptiness. He collapsed directly before the ironwood coffin. As his eyes slowly closed, he still managed to see the coffin lid shift slightly, releasing black vapor that smelled of incense and death.

         “One more step... Damang...”

That voice was the last thing he heard before total darkness consumed him. Above, in the skies over Baram, Thorne’s helicopters continued circling, unaware that at the bottom of this river hell, something far more dangerous than a mere mercenary had just reached its purest form.

          Damang lay helpless, yet the Rajah on his body no longer glowed. Instead, the ink had become pitch black, as though it had absorbed all the darkness within the cave. And inside the slightly opened ironwood coffin, a massive red eye opened, staring at Damang’s unconscious form with ancient hunger.

          The Baram forest suddenly fell silent. The nocturnal creatures stopped making noise. It was as though nature itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what would emerge from behind the waterfall when the sun rose.

           The balance had shifted, and the price Damang had to pay had only just begun.

The ground beneath Damang’s body began trembling once more, but this time not because of the Harvester machines. It was the vibration of something that had slept for far too long, and now, it had found its host.

“Welcome home, Last Commander.”