Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 127: – The Market Mind

Chapter 127: – The Market Mind

Ava’s breathing had finally leveled.

Her body, still tangled in his, had stopped trembling. The warmth of his skin, the deep rhythm of his heart, the low thrum of core-laced blood moving through him—it all pressed into her like a sedative.

She didn’t mean to rest her head against his chest.

She didn’t mean to let her eyes drift shut.

But her system had quieted, her pulse had slowed, and for the first time in days, the weight in her muscles began to lift.

Then the lights behind her eyes glitched.

A flicker.

Then—nothing.

A soft hum started in the base of her skull, not audible, not painful, but present. A frequency that made her molars itch and her spine straighten.

She sat bolt upright.

Lucas didn’t move.

But her vision did.

[INTEGRATION LINK DETECTED]

[System: Monopoly Appraisal – Contract-Tether Active]

[Blueprint System: Passive Sync Override Enabled]

[Entering: Main Contract Exchange — User Thread Visibility: INHERITED]

[Warning: This environment is unsecured. Proceed with caution.]

"What the hell—" she started, but she wasn’t speaking.

She wasn’t even in the room anymore.

Not fully.

The world around her flickered like broken film and then reassembled—lines of code, neural inputs, and system threads snapping into place around her like scaffolding.

She was standing.

Somewhere.

The space was digital—yes—but textured, layered, and weirdly grounded. A massive, open structure stretched in every direction: steel beams, hovering panels, high-tech architecture that bent logic. Bits of abandoned interfaces floated like debris, and voices pinged from every corner in broken sentences and strings of data.

And people.

Or the digital projections of people.

Some were fully rendered, others half-coded, like their systems couldn’t keep up with their own image.

It wasn’t a clean interface. It was messy. Wild.

Chaotic.

The floor beneath her shifted every few steps like it was built from a thousand overlapping platforms, constantly rewritten. There were kiosks and stalls—yes, stalls—each manned by avatars shouting in encrypted code, making trades, waving bids, slamming down data-chits.

[FOR SALE – Energy Core: 350 Bunker Tokens or direct trade]

[WANTED: Location of Unit-17 power shelter. No questions asked. 2000 Credits.]

[SYSTEM BOUNTY: Ava Zhang – Reward 75,000 for verified blood sample. Anonymous Contract.]

Her stomach dropped.

Her name hung in front of her like a branded neon sign before the line blurred and rewrote itself into something else.

This wasn’t just a network.

This was a marketplace.No. Not even that.

It was a chatroom economy—a black zone inside system space, where laws didn’t exist and filters were for the weak. Buyers. Sellers. Info brokers. Assassins. Engineers. Data harvesters. Hit contracts. Research requests. Bounty offers. Trade groups.

All jamming the airwaves with shorthand, glitch-speak, and encrypted sales talk.

And every thread was open.

"System," Ava hissed inside her own mind, "This isn’t mine. What is this?"

[Response: Tether Link established through contract-binding with User: Lucas Bai][Access level inherited due to current physical sync + partial blood sample integration.][You are now viewing Threadspace: Core Contract Market – Tier 3 Clearance][Legal Presence: Bai Family Archive – Lawyer Node Dormant]

Of course.

The lawyer.

They had met once—that his system made perfect contracts, clauses, bindings. Lucas, he could see worth in anything. Value in anyone. And now she was standing in the back alley of that worth, watching people sell each other like items on a spreadsheet.

Her eyes scanned the crowd.

A pair of masked users were auctioning off location intel for a Shifter den in what used to be Toronto. Another thread nearby was a kill-for-hire board, and users were voting on targets based on potential payout ratios.

One guy in the corner was live-streaming himself dissecting a mutant to figure out which organ enhanced speed.

Ava’s mouth went dry.

"Lucas," she muttered, turning—but he wasn’t here. Not as a projection. Not as a presence. Just her.

Alone in his world.

Because she’d taken his blood.

Her system pinged again.

[Warning: Emotional Stability Dropping – 58%]

[Environmental Influence: Moderate Cognitive Drift Detected]

[User State: Shock / Cognitive Fracture Potential – LOW]

[Recommendation: Exit Threadspace in 4:59 minutes]

She wasn’t sure she could handle what was about to happen.

Everywhere she turned, someone was posting something. The speed of it all was overwhelming—contracts layered on contracts, replies coming in bursts, encrypted files flashing green as they were downloaded into user cores. Some people weren’t even speaking. Just thinking.

Broadcasting thought-bids in tagged shorthand:

//INFO–F: Alpha Pack // Dead at 0937 // Location cached // PM for drop//SAMPLE-TRADE: Phase III parasite extract – verified stable – 2 doses//BLOOD ID: Bai // Ava Zhang // Confirmed Mutation Pattern//Curious. Who trained her? Anyone know her pre-system triggers? Asking for fun. //

Her jaw tightened.

Someone bumped her—digitally, but the feeling was real enough—and she turned on instinct.

The user was half-coded, face smeared like a corrupted file. But his voice came through smooth.

"You shouldn’t be in here raw," he said. "No firewall? You’re either brave or bleeding stupid."

"I didn’t come in by choice."

He tilted his head. "Then you’re bleeding."

Ava narrowed her eyes. "Not the first time. Won’t be the last."

"Yeah," he said, amused. "That’s exactly what someone new here would say."

She straightened, gaze sharp. "You think I’m new?"

"I know you’re new. You’re blinking too much. Your steps lag by half a beat. And you keep looking around like you’re waiting for a safety rail to appear."

She said nothing.

He leaned a little closer, hands in his coat pockets—digitally rendered, yes, but the movement felt real.

"Let me guess," he continued. "You didn’t log in. You were dragged in. Tethered in. Unsecured, unprepared, system sync wide open."

She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

He clicked his tongue. "Which means your sync partner’s either asleep or dying. Maybe both. Only way someone gets pulled in raw like that is if the host loses command. And judging by the way your threads are flaring... he’s real close to frying out."

Ava’s mouth was dry. "You analyze everyone like this?"

"Only the ones who stumble in like a cub wearing war paint." He smirked. "No offense."

She folded her arms, masking the sudden spike of tension in her chest. "None taken. I’ve had worse commentary this week."

The chaos of the marketplace continued around them—loud, fast, relentless—but for a moment, the noise narrowed. Focused.

"So," she said finally, tilting her head, "what are you doing here, Analyst?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Same as everyone else. Buying what’s rare. Selling what’s dangerous. Hunting what matters."

She squinted. "Cryptic. Unoriginal."

"I try." He smiled faintly, like he wasn’t really trying at all. "Actually, today I’m here for a lead."

"On?"

He looked at her with interest now, the smirk dipping into something more curious. "Lucas Bai."

Ava laughed. Short. Sharp. "Oh, that’s good. That’s a good one."

Ava laughed. Short. Sharp. "Oh, that’s good. That’s a good one."

Kai didn’t laugh with her.

He just tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing, like he was watching something behind her eyes instead of on her face.

"I’m serious," he said. "Lucas and I go back a long time."

"That’s what liars usually say right before they ask for passwords."

Kai chuckled under his breath. "And that’s what paranoid system holders say when they realize they’re not the only one in the room who knows how to read threads."

He didn’t move closer—but the energy around him shifted, subtly. Like he’d leaned forward without actually moving.

"You’ve got the sync haze," he said quietly. "The neural shimmer in your pupils. Slight delay in your grounding loop. Breath cadence elevated, but not from fear—from link drift."

Ava’s jaw tightened.

"You’re tethered to him," Kai finished. "Which means you know where he is."

She didn’t answer. Just stared at him, expression blank.

"I’m not here to steal anything," he added, holding up both hands. "Just tracking down an old friend who stopped answering his side of the table. You know how it is. We don’t all get the luxury of bleeding out on silk sheets."

Ava’s eyes narrowed, but her voice stayed level. "Cassi said you were a smartass."

That gave him pause.

Then he smiled—more genuine this time. "She still alive?"

"Unfortunately."

Kai snorted. "Still dramatic, then."

"She said you and Lucas used to be close. Emphasis on used to."

Kai shrugged. "Things happen. Systems shift. Business pulls."

Ava looked at him a second longer. Deciding.

Then she tilted her head slightly. "If you’re really a friend... I’ll give you a tip."

Kai raised an eyebrow.

"Lucas is at Bai Manor," Ava said, gaze steady. "But if you show up uninvited, you’ll probably get killed before you hit the gate."

Kai didn’t flinch. "Lucas won’t kill me."

Ava tilted her head, lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "No," she said slowly. "But I might."

That gave him pause.

Only a second.

Then he grinned. "Fair enough."

She shrugged, almost lazy. "No hard feelings."

"None taken," Kai said, already turning. "But if someone does shoot me, at least tell him it was a terrible way to lose a drinking partner."

"I’ll let him know while you bleed out," Ava replied sweetly.

He gave her a two-finger salute, walking backward into the chaos of the marketplace. "Looking forward to it."

Then he was gone—threads parting around his exit like he’d never been there at all.

And Ava stood alone in the noise, pulse still syncing with someone unconscious in another world.