Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 152: : What I Want

Chapter 152: : What I Want

The doors to the lower study hissed open as Lucas stepped through, coat still half-zipped from the ride, boots tracking a faint trail of city dust onto Bai Manor’s immaculate black stone floor.

Ava followed but said nothing.

She hovered in the doorway—arms loose at her sides, eyes unreadable—offering no commentary. No interruption. Just support. Her silence filled the room like a perimeter.

Inside, Bai Senior stood with one hand resting on the console, the other idly flipping through holographic logs above the Rewrite Core interface. Data streamed around him like quiet rain—sync permissions, origin codes, rewritten policies waiting for digital signatures.

He didn’t look up.

"I expected you back hours ago."

Lucas pulled off his gloves, tossing them onto the desk.

"Expected you to be more surprised I came back at all."

Senior lifted his gaze—sharp, calm, infuriatingly neutral.

"You’ve never run from anything, Lucas."

Lucas chuckled, bitter at the edges. "You sure? I’ve been running this since I was thirteen. You just left the pieces in a box and told me to build something better."

Senior’s brow didn’t move. "You did."

"Yeah," Lucas said, stepping forward. "And now I’m telling you this: I’m done building what you wanted."

The air shifted—only slightly.

Senior folded his arms, finally turning fully toward him. "So what do you want?"

Ava didn’t move.

Lucas exhaled.

Then answered.

"I want to create something that doesn’t need me."

That caught the room off guard.

Even Senior’s expression cracked slightly at the edges.

Lucas paced once, sharp and controlled.

"I don’t want to be the foundation. Or the master key. Or the name stamped on the next generation’s failure. I want this system to function without me. Clean. Stable. Modular. I want the Bai name to disappear from it entirely. No legacy. No crown. Just results."

He looked up.

"Because this rewrite isn’t a monument, father. It’s a reset button. And I am not its king."

Senior studied him.

Then slowly—very slowly—nodded.

"You sound more like me than you think."

Lucas’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. "And I hate that."

"You’ll thank me for it one day."

"No," Lucas said quietly. "I’ll build better."

He stepped closer to the console, glancing at the pulsing threads of logic and future scaffolding.

"This rewrite? It’ll be smart. Fast. Democratic. Built for speed and decay, not permanence. We’ll cycle out policies like software updates. New blood every ten years. No more god systems."

"You think they’ll accept that?" Senior asked.

"I don’t care," Lucas replied. "I’m not here to be accepted. I’m here to finish it and leave."

He glanced at Ava—just briefly.

"And maybe," he said, "finally live in something that isn’t burning."

Ava’s expression didn’t change. But her fingers twitched, almost imperceptibly, near her thigh.

Senior’s gaze followed the glance.

"I see," he murmured. "You’re planning a future."

Lucas straightened. "Yes. Mine."

Silence stretched.

Then, without warning, Senior turned back to the console. "Good."

Lucas blinked. "What?"

"I didn’t raise a ruler," Senior said. "I raised a replacement."

He keyed in a short sequence and pulled back from the interface.

The lights dimmed slightly.

Data blinked into standby.

"I’ll finish stabilizing the rewrite system," he said. "But you’re right. After that, it doesn’t need us anymore."

He looked at his son—not with pride. Not with challenge.

With peace.

And perhaps... a touch of tiredness.

"You don’t need to come back to this room again."

Lucas stared.

Then nodded, once.

"Thanks."

He turned slightly, already ready to leave.

But Bai Senior didn’t move. His hands remained folded neatly over the edge of the console. His face—always unreadable—shifted just enough to betray something harder to hide.

"Lucas."

The name landed differently this time.

Not tactical. Not instructional.

Just... personal.

Lucas stopped. His back half-turned, one foot angled toward the door.

He didn’t reply.

"You’ve spent your whole life trying not to become me," Senior said. "That’s the part I didn’t plan for."

Lucas’s jaw twitched.

"I didn’t plan for a lot of things either," he said. "Like you going to sleep while the world burned."

"That was the plan," Senior said, too quietly.

Lucas turned back around.

The light from the console painted sharp shadows along his cheekbones. His voice didn’t rise—but it cut.

"No, it was the excuse. You left. You locked yourself away like a failsafe that couldn’t fail. And the worst part?" He took one step forward. "You knew I’d survive. You counted on it."

"I did," Senior said. "Because I knew what kind of son I raised."

Lucas laughed—once. Bitter.

"You didn’t raise me. You programmed me."

Senior flinched. It was small. Controlled. But it was real.

"I was trying to protect you," he said.

"You were trying to survive yourself," Lucas snapped. "Don’t make it noble."

A long pause.

Behind them, Ava stood near the far wall, half in shadow, still as the air between father and son. She didn’t speak. She didn’t shift.

But her system pinged softly in her ear.

[EMOTIONAL LOAD PEAKING – SUPPORT RECOMMENDED]

She didn’t move.

This wasn’t hers to interrupt.

Senior exhaled through his nose. "Maybe I was selfish," he admitted. "Maybe I thought the world wouldn’t fall apart without me in it. Or maybe I just didn’t want to die watching it happen."

Lucas blinked.

That... wasn’t the answer he expected.

Senior looked away for a moment. Then back again. And when he spoke next, the words came slower.

"Do you remember when your mother got sick?"

Lucas didn’t respond.

"She asked me to stop working," Senior said. "Just for a week. She said she didn’t want to die alone in a house full of screens."

Still, Lucas said nothing.

Senior continued anyway. "I didn’t stop. I had six deals running, a war two bunkers away, and an AI system screaming about a new anomaly in the western sky."

He ran a hand over his face. It made him look older. More human.

"She died while I was on a call."

Silence fell.

Ava’s hand curled slightly at her side.

Lucas didn’t breathe.

"She was right," Senior said. "I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know how. I thought that if I just built one more thing, made one more shield, delayed one more collapse... maybe it would mean something."

Lucas’s voice cracked a little when he spoke.

"So you buried yourself in a failsafe."

Senior nodded. "Because the only thing I built that ever mattered was you."

The words hung between them like a trigger left half-pulled.

Lucas lowered his gaze.

He looked exhausted. Not from battle. From trying.

And still—still—he had more to say.

"I don’t want to hate you," he said.

Senior took a step closer. "Then don’t."

"But I can’t forgive you either."

"I didn’t ask you to."

Lucas looked up.

And for the first time since he was a boy, he saw his father not as a symbol—but as a man.

Flawed. Broken. Haunted.

And trying to make peace with the wreckage of his own brilliance.

"I don’t need you to fix it," Lucas said. "I just need you to let me choose how I carry it."

Senior nodded once.

Then stepped forward—slowly—and laid his hand over Lucas’s shoulder.

"I always knew you would," he said. "I just didn’t know if I’d live long enough to see it."

Lucas didn’t speak.

But he didn’t pull away.

Ava finally moved.

Just one step.

Lucas felt it—the presence behind him, quiet and steady. He didn’t look at her, but his shoulders loosened.

The silence turned warm, for once.

Less war. More weathered memory.

Senior dropped his hand.

"You still want to leave this all behind?" Bai Senior asked, voice lower than before.

Not skeptical. Not condescending.

Just... real.

Lucas didn’t answer right away.

He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, thumb rubbing absently over a seam, eyes on nothing. His posture was deceptively casual—like always—but his chest rose with one slow, ragged breath.

"Yeah," he said finally.

Senior watched him.

Lucas looked up.

"I never wanted a kingdom," he said, quieter now. "Not this system. Not the Rewrite. Not the thrones everyone’s so eager to rebuild just so someone else can fall off them."

Senior said nothing.

Lucas kept going. The words were reluctant, almost like pulling out shrapnel.

"I wanted—" He exhaled, laughed once, soft and sharp. "I wanted a quiet life. Somewhere I could breathe. Someone I didn’t have to outthink just to sleep next to."

His throat bobbed.

"I wanted mornings where nothing exploded. Even if it was just for five minutes."

Ava stood silent near the archway, but her gaze had shifted—softer now, deeper. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

Lucas’s voice cracked, just once.

"I wanted my mother to live long enough to see it."

That made Senior blink.

Lucas pressed a hand to his temple, eyes closing briefly.

"I’m not angry because you left," he said. "I’m angry because I stayed. Because I had to. Because I thought maybe if I could control everything, I wouldn’t lose anything else."

His hand dropped.

"But control doesn’t save you. It just slows the bleeding."

He turned, looking Senior in the eye.

"So yeah. I still want to leave."

Senior didn’t argue.

Didn’t defend.

He just stepped forward—slowly, carefully—and this time when he placed a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, it was gentler. Older.

"I thought if I became something unbreakable," he said, voice rough, "it would keep the people I loved from breaking too."

Lucas blinked hard, once.

"Didn’t work."

"No," Senior agreed. "It didn’t."

Silence stretched.

But it wasn’t sharp anymore.

Lucas let out a breath—slow, even.

"I’m not running," he said.

"I know."

"I’ll still be watching. Just not from here."

Senior nodded. "That’s more than I ever did."

Then, quieter:

"Do better, Lucas."

Lucas stepped back.

"I plan to."

He looked to Ava.

Her chin dipped—subtle but steady.

Senior’s eyes flicked between them.

"You chose well."

"I got lucky."

"Same thing."

Lucas offered the faintest smile.

Then turned away.