Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 137: - The Vault Gate

Chapter 137: - The Vault Gate

The last of the shifters fell behind them, smoke still curling from fractured stone and sparking systems. The air reeked of scorched power cores and blood—burnt protein, ozone, and the strange metallic trace of weapons that were never meant to be used in the open.

Ahead, the vault loomed.

A bunker sealed inside another bunker—its doors thick as starship plating, fitted into a mountain of reinforced alloy and cold military pride. It didn’t scream secrecy. It whispered it. A warning dressed as a wall.

Ava’s system pinged.

[LOCATION CONFIRMED: VAULT SECTOR 9]

[MAIN ENTRY LOCK ENGAGED – ACCESS PROTOCOL: ALPHA PAIR]

[AUTHORIZATION MATCH: LUCAS BAI – AVA ZHANG]

Lucas stepped up to the center console beside the first set of doors. His boots echoed like a metronome as he moved, calm despite the tension coiling around them.

Ava followed, slower, her eyes scanning every angle—every camera, every shift of the built-in sensors that blinked in steady intervals.

She touched her bracer to the side panel.

[IDENTITY VERIFIED – BLUEPRINT SYSTEM HOLDER][PULSE LINK ESTABLISHED – SYNCED ACCESS CONFIRMED]

Lucas placed his palm flat against the other console. Gold circuitry flared across the surface like a sun warming to life.

A soft hiss escaped the edge of the door.

[BIOMETRIC MATCH: HEIR BAI, LUCAS — ACCESS GRANTED]

For one quiet second, nothing happened.

Then—an ancient, grinding sound as hydraulics pressurized.

The double doors peeled apart.

Not fast.

Deliberate.

Each slab of alloy sliding inward on gearlocks older than Ava’s school records.

Beyond them was a narrow corridor—steel-paneled, white-lit, walls clean in the kind of sterile way that didn’t come from maintenance, but abandonment. Sealed clean.

Lucas stepped through first, eyes alert.

"Watch the floor," he murmured.

"Why?"

"Because my father didn’t believe in dead ends. If this place is what I think it is—there’s more than just cryo on the other side."

The corridor stretched twenty meters.

At the end: another door.

This one simpler. Less defensive, more surgical. Like it belonged to a lab.

[SYSTEM ALERT: ENERGY READINGS DETECTED – TRACE SIGNALS: CORE-LINKED, LOW ACTIVITY]

Ava narrowed her eyes.

"Lucas. There’s something here."

"I know."

He stepped to the door.

But before he touched the panel, he turned to look at her.

"If something’s behind here that changes what you know about me," he said quietly, "you don’t walk away. Deal?"

Ava didn’t flinch.

"I already saw you throw a drone into someone’s chest cavity."

Lucas gave a half-smile. "Then we’re even."

He placed his hand against the final panel.

The door hissed, unlocked—

And opened.

Inside was cold.

But not the chill of outdoor wind or underground stone.

Cryo-cold.

Built-in cold.

A room lined with twelve sealed cryo chambers, each marked only by number and a faint, breathing pulse of white-blue light.

The temperature dropped instantly.

Ava’s system buzzed.

[CRYO TEMPERATURE RANGE ACTIVE – BODY TEMP DROP REGISTERED][RECOMMENDED ACTION: HEAT STABILIZER ENGAGE]

She activated her suit’s thermal buffer.

Lucas didn’t.

He walked through the center of the chamber like he’d been there before.

He hadn’t.

Not really.

But something about the space... felt familiar.

Too familiar.

Lucas stopped just short of the cryo chamber at the center of the vault. His eyes swept the room—noticing now the lack of dust on certain corners, the clean runes etched faintly beneath each pod, the subtle hum beneath the cold. It wasn’t the hum of preservation tech.

It was movement.

Controlled. Waiting.

Ava frowned behind him. Her system pulsed sharply.

[UNREGISTERED ENERGY SPIKES DETECTED – ORIGIN: BELOW FLOOR PANELS][MOTION SENSORS TRIGGERED – 3.2 SECONDS AGO]

She didn’t wait.

"Ambush," she said, already pulling her sidearm.

Lucas dove sideways.

The floor plates snapped open in a ring—synchronized.

From the gaps, four figures rose—silent, wrapped in black polymer weave suits, faces covered, no emblems. Not soldiers. Wraith-class private guards. Illegal. Expensive.

And deadly.

One moved like smoke—straight for Ava.

[THREAT LEVEL: HIGH – STEALTH SIGNATURE SUPPRESSED]

She fired twice. First shot missed. Second clipped the attacker’s knee just as he twisted mid-air. He still landed hard, slamming a blade down where her head had been a second earlier.

Lucas didn’t look back.

His hands were already in motion.

He activated Violet Dagger, catching one assailant by the forearm and twisting—hard—snapping it backward with a brutal crunch.

Another attacker lunged from behind a cryo pod—gun raised.

Lucas spun and threw the dagger.

[NECK IMPACT – STRUCTURAL FAILURE – NEUTRALIZED]

Ava kicked the blade from the first attacker’s hand and slammed her heel into his solar plexus. He coughed blood—but still moved.

"These guys aren’t normal," she hissed.

"They’re not supposed to be here," Lucas snapped, catching a third attacker mid-strike and jamming his pulse trigger into their ribs.

A sharp shock wave rippled through the air—knocking two of the enemies back.

[ENERGY LEVELS SPIKING – BACKUP DETECTED IN ADJACENT CHAMBER]

Ava’s system flared again.

[CRYO DOOR #09 BREACHING – MANUAL OVERRIDE DETECTED]

Her breath caught.

"Lucas—another pod’s opening."

He didn’t need details.

"Cover it. Now."

Ava darted to the terminal, overriding the breach code before the door could fully unlock.

A hiss. A scream of interrupted pressure.

Whoever was inside hadn’t made it out yet.

Good.

Lucas ducked low as one last attacker dropped from the ceiling—a short-blade fighter, smaller, faster.

Too fast.

Lucas barely dodged the swipe that cut the air in front of his throat.

"Careful," Ava called, yanking the emergency stasis lock on the final chamber. "I only have one medic kit and I already hate using it on you."

"Romantic," he grunted, catching the attacker’s wrist.

Then, with a sudden twist, he headbutted the mask hard enough to fracture the lens.

The figure staggered.

Lucas drove his knee into their chest. Once. Twice.

Down.

Silence returned—but harsher. Like it was trying to smother the violence that just happened.

Lucas stood breathing hard, blood trickling down the side of his face, one arm shaking slightly.

Ava didn’t look much better—cut along her shoulder, hair damp with sweat, bracer sparking at the edge from an overloaded pulse block.

She walked back to him, not asking if he was okay.

Instead—

"They weren’t just guards. They were synced."

Lucas nodded slowly. "Someone buried them here."

"In the cryo vault?"

"To protect it," he muttered. "Or to kill anyone who got too close."

Ava looked around.

Eyes narrowed.

Expression flat.

Then she said, "There’s no way this was just for your father."

Lucas met her gaze.

"Agreed."

Lucas’s voice was low. Final.

His hand was already moving toward the cryo interface, still glowing faintly beneath the frost-lined console. Ava opened her mouth to protest—out of instinct, maybe—but the look in his eyes wasn’t reckless.

It was surgical.

She stepped back without a word.

Lucas keyed in the override.

[CRYO-LOCK: MANUAL WAKE SEQUENCE INITIATED][WARNING: CORE DRAIN WILL EXCEED 43%—PROCEED?]

He didn’t hesitate.

[OVERRIDE CONFIRMED]

The pod hissed, light shifting from blue to orange in a slow cascade. Steam coiled off the seams. The temperature in the room rose a fraction. Fluid inside the chamber began to recede. The figure—Lucas Bai Sr.—floated lower, toes brushing the chamber floor.

Ava’s system flickered.

[PULSE VARIANCE DETECTED – UNKNOWN SIGNAL INCOMING]

"Lucas," she warned.

"I know," he murmured.

The chamber snapped open with a slow hydraulic pull. A rush of cold vapor spilled across the floor like smoke.

The man inside staggered forward as if gravity remembered him. His legs buckled. Lucas stepped in without a second thought, catching him under the shoulders.

The older Bai blinked—twice—then slowly opened his eyes.

Not dull. Not faded.

Golden.

Just like his son’s.

"...Lucas," he said, voice hoarse but functional. "You’re early."

Lucas gave a dry smile. "You’re lucky I’m late."

Ava watched in stunned silence as Lucas helped the man to the bench beside the chamber. The older Bai steadied his breathing in long, deliberate pulls, already adjusting like he’d just stepped out for air, not ten years of cryo sleep.

Then his eyes landed on Ava.

He didn’t smile.

Didn’t blink.

Just tilted his head—fractionally—and studied her like a schematic he’d designed long ago and forgotten to archive.

"Did your parents ever tell you," he said softly, "that you were adopted?"

Ava didn’t move.

Her breath caught—just for a second. Her shoulders tightened, just enough for Lucas to notice.

"What?" she asked. Not defiant. Not confused.

Just cold.

Measured.

As if bracing for the part of the story that always felt... missing.

Lucas looked between them, suddenly alert.

"Ava?"

Bai Sr. exhaled slowly, his voice perfectly even.

"You were part of the original sync-pairing initiative. Group Zero. Twenty-four subjects—children, newborn to five—selected from critical gene-match pools. You weren’t just eligible, Miss Zhang. You were designed to be compatible."

Ava’s system pulsed beneath her skin.

[SYSTEM DATA CROSSCHECK IN PROGRESS – MATCHING FILE TAG: G-ZH12]

She didn’t blink.

"That’s not possible," she said.

But her voice betrayed her.

Lucas was watching her now—not just with surprise.

With worry.

Bai Sr. continued, merciless.

"You were transferred to your parents—temporaries, not biological matches—after the trials were frozen. A cover family, placed in Bunker District Three under a standard fail-safe identity tag. They were told you had no active system. That’s why you were left behind."

Ava took a step back.

One.

"Shut up."

Bai Sr. didn’t.

"You never had a chance to activate naturally. Your system isn’t a random mutation. It’s one of the original self-evolving cores. You are, in a sense, the last fully viable test subject. And your Blueprint System wasn’t meant for defense. It was built to rebuild civilization from inside its own broken tech."

Her hand clenched—hard enough her knuckles cracked.

Lucas moved closer, cautiously. "Ava—"

"I’m fine," she said.

Lied.

Her bracer buzzed softly.

[RESTRICTED FILE FOUND – ACCESS REQUEST FROM PRIMARY DESIGNER CODE][FILE NAME: "ZH12: UNSTABLE CONFIGURATION – MONITOR ONLY"]

She shut it down manually.

Without a word.

Bai Sr. looked at her like a professor reviewing the last piece of a thesis.

"I didn’t think you’d survive the collapse," he admitted. "Let alone come here."

"I didn’t come for you," she snapped.

He tilted his head again. "But now that you’re here—you can help him."

His eyes flicked to Lucas.

"He’ll need you."

Ava turned and walked out.

Didn’t wait for permission.

Didn’t say a word.

Lucas started to follow, but Bai Sr. stopped him with a single glance.

"She’s not your weapon," he said.

"No," Lucas replied, jaw tight. "She’s my partner."

Then he followed her anyway.