SORRY MISS CEO, YOUR BILLIONS ARE USELESS!

Chapter 8: Operation Baby-Crying Bait

   "The rules of the transaction were very simple, Siska," Rangga said, leaning his chair back until it creaked. He took a sip of his high-grade Arabica, looking through the rising steam with a flat, commercial indifference. "You eat my groceries, you help the building get its tax break. Or, in this case, a genetic core upgrade."

Siska stood there, her manicured fingers trembling around a bucket of soapy water. "You want me to... stand in an armored alleyway... and scream until a giant, acid-pitting swamp monster tries to eat me? Abang, I’m literally five-foot-four and currently malnourished!"

  "You're not malnourished," Zahara chimed in from the stove, her voice as smooth as polished bone. "You ate half my crackers and bitched about the consistency of the oatmeal. You have plenty of storage fat. And you have high-frequency pipes." Zahara didn't even turn around. She was cleaning a 9mm gold-plated pistol she had 'confiscated' earlier from Rangga’s lockers, using a dish rag with unsettling precision.

"We need a distraction that doesn’t sound digital," Rangga explained, bringing up the holomap. A bright red dot flickered two streets down at the ITC Shopping Plaza. The Mandailing Rot-King. "The higher the tier, the more they distinguish between static speakers and living flesh. The vibration of a panicked human vocal cord is like the smell of sizzling fat to these guys."

"Oh, marvelous logic! Genius!" Siska spat, her influencer 'innocence' long since evaporated under the heat of trauma. "And what if your 'safehouse logic' fails and the sumo-wrestler-zombie gets his claws into me?"

"You're within thirty feet of the portable deployment hatch," Rangga replied. He reached into a shelf and pulled out a small, hexagonal device—the 'Fortress Node Mk.1'. "Plus, the Head Maid will be covering you with short-range fire. And the System?"

  "AIYO! DO NOT WORRY, YOUNG CUSTODIAN!" the System’s voice thundered through the bunker, causing a picture frame on the wall to wobble. "IF YOU DIE, I WILL LOG YOUR HEROIC CONTRIBUTION IN THE BACKEND DATA SO THE NEXT TENANT CAN LEARN FROM YOUR STATISTICAL INADEQUACY! I MIGHT EVEN PLAY THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!"

Siska looked between the apathetic billionaire, the sadistic host, and the empty space where the god-voice lived. "I hate everyone here," she whimpered.

"Deployment in three... two... move it!"

The armored side door of the outer-fortress boundary hissed open with a hydraulic snap. The smell of the old world rushed in—rotting trash, burnt ozone, and the coppery tang of stagnant blood.

They were positioned in a narrow corridor between two cement commercial blocks, effectively a bottleneck. Rangga stood inside the fortified threshold, monitoring thermal signatures on a tablet. Zahara crouched near the steel corner, the long shadows of her "REBAHAN" oversized t-shirt hiding the tension in her powerful legs.

In the center of the kill-zone, twenty feet away, stood Siska. She held a microphone wired back to the base, her eyes darting like a trapped bird. 

"Now?" she whispered into the mic, her voice cracking.

"Now," Rangga’s voice echoed in her ear-piece. "Channel the rage. Imagine a follower just pointed out a pimple on your nose during a TikTok live. Go full-volume."

Siska closed her eyes, squeezed her hands into fists, and let out a sound that didn't just vibrate the air—it ripped through it. It was a masterpiece of auditory suffering. Part scream, part banshee wail, and uniquely flavored with the soul of an entitled drama-queen who was currently washing underwear for a living.

"HELP! HELEEEEERP!" Siska shrieked, truly committed once she realized her life depended on being the perfect snack-wrapper. 

From the mall three blocks away, a rumble responded. 

It started as a heavy thudding sound—not rhythmically fast, but terrifyingly weight-focused. It sounded like someone was swinging bags of cement against concrete. 

"Direct interest acquired," the System whispered excitedly to Rangga. "The target core signal is oscillating at sixty cycles! The big baby is awake and hungry! I've marked him as 'Hungry Sumo #1' on the screen!"

Rangga shifted the camera feed. On his monitor, the high-res drone saw the Rot-King shift its weight off its throne of smashed sedan cars. The thick black veins along its skin glowed with a sickly green iridescence as it accelerated, surprisingly quick for its massive frame. 

The Rot-King bellowed. A deep, seismic sound that turned the marrow in their bones into jelly. 

"He’s fifty yards away!" Rangga barked. "Keep the resonance high, Siska! Zahara, prepare the neuro-static canisters."

"Ready," Zahara muttered. She looked calm—eerily calm for a woman who was technically currently the domestic servant. Her mafia upbringing didn't vanish; it just waited for something worth killing. She primed a small cylindrical device in each hand, her gaze locked on the fog of dust at the alley’s end.

"RAAAUUUUGH-KHORK!" 

A massive grey shoulder, swollen with lumpy muscle, rounded the corner of a department store. The Rot-King’s feet shattered the pavement with every stride. Green saliva dangled from its jaw, which opened vertically like a split bag. Behind him, dozens of regular Walkers streamed forward like trash being pulled into a hurricane’s vacuum.

"Close!" Rangga shouted into his comms. "Run back! Now, Siska!"

Siska didn't need the orders twice. She threw the mic at the concrete and bolted, her expensive sneakers hitting the floor with frantic force. 

The Rot-King lowered its head, aiming its bulbous body straight through the bottleneck toward the source of the high-pitched sound. It was tunnel-visioned, focused entirely on the small girl running toward the steel box. 

Zahara moved with the fluidity of a striking cobra. As the monster's front mass entered the ten-meter threshold, she flipped the canisters across the alley.

A brilliant blast of violet light erupted between the walls—not fire, but ionized kinetic force.

The monster's central nervous system was instantly hit by a localized EM pulse. The massive beast skidded, its forward momentum turning against its own size. Its ankles buckled under the bio-electrical shock.

"He's prone! Move to position C!" Rangga commanded, standing clear of his safe chair and checking the door sensors. 

But Siska, caught up in the pure blinding terror of hearing the monster’s rhythmic growling right at her heels, stumbled over a loose pipe on the concrete. She crashed down hard, her knees scraping. 

She turned back to see the paralyzed giant, its head twitching violently as the purple neuro-toxins sizzled against its mutated biology. It was barely five feet away. The Rot-King focused its glowing red eyes on her—one of them partially blind—and emitted a gurgling, deep-chested warning. 

A stream of bright-green acid bubbled up from its gullet, ready to melt her into soup.

"I said... focus on the porcelain," a sharp, rhythmic voice whispered from above Siska.

Zahara Nasution landed between the girl and the mutant boss. She stood over Siska like a guardian demon in designer joggers. She held a custom-weighted machete that she’d spent three hours sharpening in silence.

The monster recovered, lifting one massive, pock-marked arm to smash Zahara into paste. 

Zahara ducked the heavy arc, the displacement of air whistling past her head. She spun once, twice, using the Rot-King’s own proximity against him. The machete sliced into its distended side, black tar-blood erupting like oil.

"He’s building kinetic immunity!" Rangga shouted, adjusting his terminal's data stream. "Core saturation in five minutes! Use the heavy turret to support her, now!"

"Host! Energy draw-in confirmed!" the System barked. "Charging external pulse cannons!"

Above the bunker, the two Gatling barrels tracked lower than ever before. 

But down in the grime of the street, the fight was too close for big cannons yet. Zahara scrambled up the monster's massive back. 

"Hostility confirmed!" Zahara yelled as she jabbed a small energy-receiver beacon—provided by Rangga—directly into the monster's neural node at the base of its spine. "Hit him with the drone signal!"

Rangga mashed a sequence on his deck. 

The hover drone dropped from the sky, its spotlight aimed like a burning spear into the beast’s forehead. A high-decibel frequency, mimicking the Rot-King’s internal predator-communication sound, broadcasted full blast. 

The Rot-King threw its head back in a silent, sonic spasm.

"He's fully exposed! Core location identified!" the tablet screamed in neon green. 

Rangga snatched a long-range energy-rifle off the locker and stepped outside his doorway, feet firmly planted. 

Zahara saw the look in his eye and dived to the ground, grabbing Siska by her yoga pants and rolling her safely into the storage alcove under the stairs. 

"Shut your eyes, drama queen!" Zahara snarled over Siska’s sob.

VREEEEEEEEE-CHUM!

   Rangga fired. A bolt of stabilized blue energy streaked through the alley. It hit precisely where Zahara had planted the node. 

There was no gore, no messy bone explosion. It was clean as a surgery. The blue light bored through the mutant tissue until it contacted the shimmering core deep inside the beast’s brain. 

    With a deafening electronic snap, the beast collapsed forward. Its entire biological architecture seemed to lose its cohesion. One minute it was a terrifying engine of slaughter; the next, it was just 600 pounds of gray lard sliding toward the concrete. 

"DING! ALAMAK!" the System celebrated in a flourish of triumphant horns through the internal bunker. "SUCCESSFUL TIER-2 SUPRESSION! COMMENDATION RECEIVED! EXTRACTING BIOMASS! LOOT DROP IDENTIFIED!"

The Rot-King dissolved like sugar in boiling water, leaving only a single, golf-ball-sized translucent shard that hummed with neon energy on the pavement. 

A moment later, everything went deadly quiet. 

Siska sat up slowly, coughing in the neon dust. "Is... is it dead?"

"For now," Rangga answered. He stepped over the black remains, holstering his rifle. He picked up the Tier-2 Core, weighing it in his hand like a gemstone. His cynicism was gone for a brief second, replaced by a glint of genuine landlord ambition. "Good work, Junior Custodian. Your screams alone harvested five hundred loyalty points from the sensor nodes. You were very convincing."

Siska looked up, ready to give him a hug of relief, but stopped when she saw Rangga holding out a clean damp wipe to Zahara, not to her. 

"Zahara," Rangga said, handing his senior-tenant the towel. "Go easy on her tomorrow. But also... tell her to start prepping the new garden extension. We’ve got space to grow tomatoes now."

Zahara wiped her face clean, regaining the aura of the Queen of Nusantara with a simple shrug of her shoulders. She glanced down at Siska with the sort of detached amusement one reserves for a pet fish that finally learned a trick.

"Hear that?" Zahara nudged Siska with the tip of her designer sneaker. "On your feet. If the hydroponics fail, guess who the alternate protein source is?"

Siska didn't wait to hear the answer. She practically levitated off the ground, jogging back toward the safety of the titanium cube, vowing silently that she’d never try 'bait' ever again, unless the salary came with something better than extra crackers. 

"Mission Successful," Rangga breathed as he closed the fortress gates behind them.

"WE ARE INDEED PROSPERING, HOST!" the System chirped. "UPGRADING TO THE CULINARY WING! LEVEL 2 BREAD MAKERS INCOMING!"

"God help me," Rangga whispered, and then he closed his eyes as the scent of safety surrounded them once more.