Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 122: – Team of Three

Chapter 122: – Team of Three

By the time Ren returned, Ava had cleared nearly seventy percent of the pending trade board.

He didn’t interrupt.

Just set the coffee down like he was placing a glass lens over a bomb and waited for her to notice.

Yuan came in a moment later, carrying a tray with practiced care—like it was a weapon, not breakfast.

The food smelled unreal.

Crisp herb-buttered toast, thick slices of grilled tomato over eggs still runny in the center, a side bowl of soy-braised potatoes, and something that might’ve been shredded duck wrapped in a golden roll.

Ava blinked. "That smells like civilization."

"Don’t get emotional," Yuan said, setting the tray down beside her workspace. "I just don’t believe in letting command staff starve. Bad for morale."

Ava smirked, finally leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms. "Do all military-grade kitchens serve five-star field meals?"

"I wasn’t military," Yuan corrected. "I taught them how to cook. They taught me how to shoot."

Ren, standing nearby with his hands behind his back, gave the faintest sigh. "The stories improve with age."

"Like my sauces," Yuan replied.

Ava picked up a slice of toast, took a bite—then froze.

Her eyes went wide. "That’s... actually perfect."

Yuan gave a short nod. "I know."

"I might marry this toast."

"Bread’s too flaky," the cook said, deadpan. "Bad long-term loyalty."

Ren cleared his throat politely. "If we may return to business."

Ava grinned around a mouthful of food, then reached toward the holo-table and swept a small pile of marked offers to the center of the display. They blinked once, then opened into a quadrant view—four deals flagged with red.

"These," she said. "All came in from minor trade lines. Same phrasing. Different aliases. No return tag."

Ren stepped closer. "Do you suspect a spoofed node?"

"Maybe. Or someone using third-party shells to test whether Bai’s back on the board."

She rotated one of the deals—a lowball offer for damaged sync-circuitry. The trade value was normal. The timing wasn’t.

"All four came in within the same ten-minute window," she added. "Spread across three bunkers, but all routed through back-end servers with legacy encoding."

Ren nodded slightly. "Someone testing your response time."

Ava looked to Yuan. "Thoughts?"

Yuan leaned forward, hands on her hips, squinting at the display like it owed her money.

"That one," she said, pointing to the fourth offer, "is bait. Look at the wording."

Ava zoomed in.

[Full delivery up front. No lock until receipt. 24-hour expiry. Confirmation on repackage.]

Ava frowned. "That’s unusually generous."

"It’s also familiar," Yuan said, voice sharpening. "That’s Black Nest phrasing. They sell contracts for small-tier mercenaries and smugglers."

Ren looked up. "Then they want to test if we’ll engage with unstable networks."

"Which means," Ava murmured, "they’re looking for weaknesses."

"Or buyers," Yuan said.

"Or someone to steal from," Ren added.

Ava looked at the fourth offer again. Then at the others. Same length. Same pacing. Same subtle prompt tags embedded in the message headers.

Someone smart had written them.

Smart enough to know a system like hers would read between the lines.

She took a bite of egg, chewed slowly, then turned to her two new advisors.

"What would Lucas do?"

Ren didn’t miss a beat. "He’d visit in person."

Yuan snorted. "Probably with explosives."

"Of course he would," she muttered, reaching for the last bite of her duck roll. "Because nothing says diplomacy like showing up in a death jacket and charming people into compliance."

She chewed. Swallowed. Then sighed.

"I can’t do that," she admitted, wiping her fingers on a cloth. "I’m not Lucas."

"You’re not meant to be," Ren said quietly. "You’re meant to be better at what he isn’t."

Ava gave him a look, but didn’t argue. Not with that.

She pushed her chair back from the table, stood, and cracked her neck once. Her bracer chimed softly as the system sync reestablished with her ID.

"Alright," she said. "Let’s do what I’m actually here for."

Ren tilted his head. "And that is?"

"Blueprints," Ava said. "System architecture. Security flaws. Design loopholes. If people are poking at us, I want to know where we’re soft—and fix it before someone tests it for real."

Ren didn’t smile, but his shoulders shifted ever so slightly. Approval.

Yuan gestured toward the hallway. "That means you’ll want the node room."

"I’ll want full access to the internal layout," Ava said, already tapping through her bracer. "Energy routes, AI triggers, every floor plan, drone path, and buried relay cluster. If this place was mapped by Lucas’s father, I’m guessing at least some of it hasn’t been touched in a decade."

Ren gave a slight nod. "Correct. The core infrastructure is original to the pre-quake era. However, we’ve made surface upgrades over the years."

"I want everything," she repeated. "If I’m going to rebuild the bones, I need to know what kind of spine I’m working with."

Yuan picked up the tray with one hand. "Guess you’re not the type who naps after a meal."

"I nap when I’m dead," Ava replied.

She downed the rest of her coffee, handed the mug off to Yuan without looking, and turned back to the display table. Her fingers tapped in a quick override.

"Pulling up full security schematics. Node-to-node."

The lights in the archive hub shifted—subtle, just a shade dimmer, as the system rerouted all active processes through Ava’s bracer ID.

A digital map bloomed into view across the main table: Bai Manor, rendered in thin silver and gold gridwork, its structure spiderwebbed with sync-nodes, access points, hidden panels, redundant backups, and three layers of underground tech tunnels.

Ren stepped beside her, already scanning the layout.

"There are four primary AI clusters," he said. "Two still run on your standard interface. The third was upgraded by Master Lucas two years ago—partially integrated with his bracer. The fourth is legacy code from his father. We don’t touch it."

Ava’s eyes locked on that part. "Legacy?"

"Manual input only. Requires two-factor clearance from estate-blooded users. He never revoked it."

Of course not.

Lucas never deleted his father. He just worked around him.

She turned back to the schematics. "Let’s break it down. Part by part."

She began with external drone paths—reprogramming the patrol routes to reduce overlap, increase edge detection, and add randomized rotations. Then the entry node locks—half of which hadn’t been updated since before the quake.

Ren kept pace beside her, correcting timestamps, uploading new user-tree tags. Quiet. Efficient. No wasted words.

"I’m going to start disabling triple-sync access points," Ava said. "They’re relics, and they’re bleeding power."

"Agreed," Ren replied. "We’ve had fluctuations in the northern wing every week. No direct breach attempts, but enough noise to matter."

She pulled the readouts, highlighted two red-flashing energy drains.

"Those need hardline repair," she muttered. "I’ll need—"

"You’ll need boots," Ren interrupted, already folding a jacket neatly over one arm. "And gloves. And possibly a bit of patience."

Ava looked up. "You’re taking me there?"

Ren’s response was a gentle blink. "This house was built to walk."

That was apparently how the Bai family handled things: no lazy over-the-shoulder commanding.

You earned control by touching the bones.

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