Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 146: : Blink Enter

Chapter 146: : Blink Enter

The map blinked once.

Then again.

[ANCHOR IDENTIFIED – LOCATION: WARD 6 – SECTOR 9 (RESTRICTED ZONE)]

[KNOWN NAME: NORA JIN]

[STATUS: LEGACY CORE HOLDER – NEUTRALIZED]

Ava read the words twice.

"Neutralized?"

Lucas leaned over her shoulder. "That means flagged and suppressed. She’s still alive, but her system’s locked down."

"By the Collective?"

"Probably." He pointed to the faded segment on the map. "Sector 9 used to be a clean city. One of the last before everything fell. Now it’s blind. Surveillance up. Network locked. One road in."

"And no system use past the wall?"

Lucas gave a crooked smile. "Not unless you enjoy frying your brain like a handheld charger."

Ava exhaled slowly. "When do we leave?"

"We already did," he said. "Your system’s been sim-mapping while you slept. William pulled a clean route. We take the back road into Sector 8 and jump the grid from there."

She blinked. "And we’re walking?"

Lucas tapped his bracer. A small light flared.

From behind the far bay doors of Bai Manor, an engine purred awake.

It wasn’t the Batmobile.

It was worse.

"This is the ’don’t ask questions’ model," he said. "No AI. No bracer sync. Just oil, gears, and enough armor to make a tank blush."

They left before nightfall.

SECTOR 8 PERIMETER – WARDLINE HILLThe air was heavier here.

Not with weather.

With signal density.

Ava’s system pinged every few steps, trying to trace dozens of minor surveillance frequencies, each one fluttering on old military bands like ghosts whispering through copper wire.

They crouched just outside the visible perimeter—Lucas adjusting a cracked, analog scope with an actual thumbwheel, and Ava calibrating her bracer to run in shadow-only sync.

She grimaced. "Feels like I’m driving blind."

Lucas grunted. "Better than lighting up the sky like a sync flare."

They crept across the ridgeline, descending through dense rock outcroppings toward the city ruins.

What used to be downtown was now a ring of steel walls and solar panels wrapped tight around a grid of broken buildings. Inside, civilian movement was carefully managed. No patrols. Just too many cameras.

"See the clock tower?" Lucas murmured.

Ava nodded.

"Anchor’s in the vault beneath it. Old council shelter. They repurposed it when the sync went active."

"Why there?"

"It’s the only place she wouldn’t be found by accident."

Ava scanned the building. "Two entry points. North and west. But the west side’s got drones on rotational flight paths."

Lucas was already pulling out a sealed disc—one of her own builds. "Then we use your pretty toys."

He twisted the device, threw it like a skipping stone across the gravel. It clinked once, then hissed into the shadows.

[DECOY DEPLOYED]

[SIGNAL INTERFERENCE LIVE – 180 SECONDS]

Three drones veered. One went dark.

"Go," he said.

They moved fast, vaulting the fence, crossing a shattered walkway where weeds and circuit boards grew together in strange, synthetic tangles.

The building loomed.

They slipped inside through a shattered side panel, breathing in stale, metal-scented air.

Inside, the world was still.

And cold.

Ava’s bracer pinged again.

[LOCAL SYSTEM: LOCKED // PASSIVE INTERFERENCE PRESENT]

[CONNECTION LEVEL: -2. HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT]

They went underground.

Down three staircases. Past one body. Not fresh.

At the bottom, a vault.

Not locked.

Just... humming.

Lucas pressed a palm against the panel.

No sync response.

He pulled out a manual override key—black metal, etched with the Bai family crest. One of the last analog tools ever made for pre-system bunkers.

He twisted it.

The vault hissed.

Light spilled out.

And inside—still breathing, still alive, still bound to a chair by sync-seal cables—was Nora Jin.

She looked up, eyes flickering from dim to alert.

But she didn’t speak.

She couldn’t.

Her mouth was bound with a silence loop. The kind only someone with override admin could break.

Lucas stepped in first.

He walked to her, knelt, and touched her wrist.

His system flared—and immediately hissed.

[FORCEFIELD ENCRYPTION: TRAP CODE PRESENT]

He hissed a curse. "They rigged her to explode if removed."

Ava stepped forward slowly.

"Let me."

She crouched beside Nora, bracer flickering.

"Override sequence: blueprint layer only. Let’s see what they forgot."

The silence loop stuttered—then cracked.

Not because of the bracer.

Because Nora’s system responded.

Like it recognized Ava.

A series of old interface runes flared.

[LEGACY-SIG MATCH DETECTED]

[PRIMARY SYSTEM OVERRIDE ACCEPTED: ZHANG, AVA]

Lucas blinked. "You’ve got override authority?"

Ava didn’t answer.

She was focused.

Fingers danced across Nora’s chest panel, slicing the trap code away with invisible wire logic.

Nora gasped—eyes snapping wider.

She didn’t scream.

She just whispered.

"You’re the one they warned me about."

Lucas tilted his head. "That could mean anything."

"No," Nora rasped. "You’re her. The rewrite. They said if you came, I had to follow."

Ava’s voice was soft. "Can you walk?"

"I can run," Nora said.

Lucas helped cut the remaining cables.

"We’ve got five minutes before this place lights up like a warcrime," he said. "We go out the way we came in. Clean and quiet."

They almost made it.

Two levels up, a drone pinged red.

Not theirs.

[COLLECTIVE RESPONSE INCOMING]

[UNITS: 4. SHIFTER-ENHANCED. FULL ARMOR. ONE SNIPER TAGGED.]

Lucas turned to Ava.

"No time for stealth."

Ava sighed. "Loud it is."

She flicked her bracer open.

Four disks dropped from her coat.

All hers.

All dangerous.

She tossed them down the hall and smiled.

"Run."

The discs rolled forward with surgical grace—four of Ava’s oldest but most reliable blueprints:

Flash Fracture – concussion wave.

Echo Splitter – sound-mirror decoy.

Static Web – slows advanced movement systems.

Lung-Taker – short-range air pressure disruptor. Only effective if you don’t warn them first.

Lucas grabbed Nora under the arm with one hand and Ava by the back of her jacket with the other.

"We’re not running, we’re evacuating," he muttered. "Running implies panic."

"Lucas," Ava said, "shut up and go."

Behind them, the hallway exploded.

But it didn’t sound like a bomb. It sounded like a building screaming.

The concussion rippled first—Flash Fracture snapping all compressed metal joints in a three-meter radius. The drone’s flight stabilizers failed instantly, crashing them into the floor like convulsing beetles.

Then came the Echo Splitter—amplifying every footstep and weapon click tenfold. The sound feedback burst eardrums on the two nearest Shifters, who dropped to their knees, hands clutching heads.

Then the Static Web unfurled—netting the corridor in hair-thin lines of voltage. One Shifter tried to leap through and screamed midair as his systems flickered out. Armor spasmed. He dropped.

Lung-Taker didn’t scream.

It exhaled—a wide, silent pulse that slammed into the last attacker’s chest, emptying his lungs like a fist to the diaphragm. He hit the floor wheezing, eyes wide.

Then silence.

Lucas didn’t stop moving.

Nora was staggering but mobile, her sync interface rebooting under Ava’s override patchwork.

Ava followed tight behind, breath fast but controlled.

"Remind me why we don’t do this first next time?" Lucas said.

"Because I like watching you pretend you’re the dangerous one," Ava replied.

"Fair."

They hit the stairwell just as the hallway behind them folded in on itself. Ava’s overload routines triggered a fail-safe burn in the ceiling mounts—melting the nearest panel into a self-sealing mess of carbon slag.

"We’ve got four minutes before heat signatures pull a drone squad," Lucas said. "Straight exit’s not viable."

Ava’s fingers flew over her bracer.

"Rerouting. There’s a side vent on Sublevel B—maintenance shaft. The AI mapped it on the way in."

Lucas helped Nora down the next two levels—no time for grace, just speed.

The vent corridor was dark and wide enough for two—lined with old maintenance rails and low-frequency coil wiring. No cameras.

The perfect hole in the perfect trap.

"This shaft connects to Sector 8’s east trench," Ava said, voice flat. "It’ll dump us behind the solar field—past Collective scan range."

Lucas nodded once. "We ghost from there."

At the mouth of the shaft, Ava paused and turned back, just long enough to toss one last small device behind her—nothing more than a coin-sized disc with a single blinking light.

Lucas frowned. "Another toy?"

She smirked. "It eats surveillance. You’re welcome."

They burst from the exit tunnel seven minutes later into the ruined stretch of what used to be Sector 8’s residential district—flat, grey, wind-swept.

The Batmobile waited where Lucas left it.

Still purring.

William’s work.

Lucas shoved the door open and hauled Nora in, then turned and caught Ava by the wrist as she reached the passenger side.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t smile.

Just looked at her.

Ava blinked. "What?"

Lucas’s voice was low. "You walked into a Collective trap. Rewrote three trigger codes. Disabled four active weapons with under ninety seconds between them."

A beat.

"You’re terrifying."

Ava grinned.

"And you’re late," she said, yanking the passenger door open and throwing herself inside.

Lucas slid in beside her, already pulling the car into gear.

"Where to?" Ava asked.

Lucas looked back once at Nora—half-conscious, syncing slow but stable.

Then forward.

"Anchor Two," he said. "And this time, we go in through the front door."

The engine roared.

And the road ahead lit up.

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