Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 153: : Zone Red Null

Chapter 153: : Zone Red Null

Mindspace Interior Sector: Node Corridor 9B – Red Null Designation

The static came first.

Not loud. Not chaotic.

Just a low hum vibrating under Lucas’s teeth—like the world was holding its breath wrong.

He blinked hard as the simulation space resolved around him. Data shimmered along the periphery of his vision, the system loading in textures, light refractions, ambient motion. Too perfect. Staged.

[REWRITE INITIATED]

[ZONAL STABILITY: INCOMPLETE]

[REGION: NULL-COMPLIANT TERRITORY – ALERT]

[ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY GRANTED – LUCAS BAI]

[AVATAR CODE: LIVE]

[ERROR: REGION RESISTANT TO FULL SYNC]

Lucas’s system pinged again—soft but urgent.

Ava’s voice cut in via link.

[AVA: You’re drifting into dead sectors. This isn’t just redlined. This is straight rogue.]

[LUCAS: That’s why we’re here.]

[AVA: You sure it’s not bait?]

[LUCAS: Almost certain.]

Pause.

[AVA: That’s not how certainty works.]

He cracked a half-smile.

"Better get used to it," he muttered aloud, and stepped forward.

The corridor flickered. Lights overhead surged white, then dimmed into blood-orange. The walls, smooth and hypermodern, warped slightly at the edges—like the system was being held together by brute force, not consensus code.

Then the message hit:

[REGION HEAD: NULL JUDGE – CODE: ORATOR]

[NOTICE: THIS DOMAIN DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE REWRITE DECREE]

[YOU ARE TRESPASSING.]

[YOU HAVE BEEN MARKED.]

Lucas slowed.

"Classic."

He stepped into the plaza—Node 9B’s memory cluster—and saw the trap snap into place.

Ten figures stood at equidistant intervals around the platform. Each one masked. Each one synced to a legacy sync structure. That shouldn’t have been possible.

Except someone had preserved the old world’s garbage.

No AI. No Rewrite. Just analog aggression.

Ava’s voice hissed again in his comm.

[AVA: That’s not a welcoming party. Those are system purists.]

[LUCAS: I figured.]

[AVA: You need to pull out. I’m not nearby.]

[LUCAS: I know. That’s the point.]

[AVA: Don’t you dare martyr yourself, Bai.]

He walked to the center of the platform, hands at his sides.

One of the figures stepped forward.

"You don’t belong here."

Lucas tilted his head.

"That’s the third time I’ve heard that this week."

"This is Orator’s dominion. Rewrite isn’t law here."

Lucas’s bracer glowed faintly.

[SYSTEM AUTHORITY LEVEL: 9

][FORCE-ENFORCEMENT: APPROVED]

[WARNING: MULTI-SIGNATURE RESISTANCE DETECTED]

He ignored the ping.

"You’re using dead code," Lucas said calmly. "Manual sync variants. Fragmented interface overlays. It’s barely holding together."

"Better than your lie," the voice growled back. "Rewrite is just another leash. We cut ours."

Lucas smiled, tight and sharp.

"You sure? Because from where I’m standing, you’re still trapped in a loop someone else built."

Another figure raised a hand. Something like a pulse-cannon formed from their system haze. Lucas’s HUD flared.

[TARGET LOCK: INITIATED]

[RESPONSE: COUNTERMEASURE READY]

Lucas didn’t move.

He just blinked.

His system pulsed out a single wave—a static shockwave, perfectly tuned.

The gun flickered. Vanished.

Three of the masked users staggered back.

[SUBSYSTEM COLLAPSE – 40%]

[SUGGESTED ACTION: RETREAT]

"No thanks," Lucas muttered.

He drew in a breath, closed his eyes for one fraction of a second—and let the Rewrite enforcement protocol engage.

It burned.

His own system pushed harder, syncing down through the node’s lower matrix.

Code scrolled so fast across his vision it blurred into patterns, then memory, then data access logs.

He wasn’t fighting people.

He was fighting ghosts.

Someone had mirrored an old node from before the fall, hardcoded everything to mimic function without central authority. And now they were trying to call that freedom.

He dropped to one knee.

Not out of pain.

Out of calculation.

And then the air cracked.

Six drones breached the Mindspace illusion like underwater darts—Ava’s.

She didn’t wait.

[AVA: You want loud? I brought the whole damn brass section.]

Lasers cut through the node’s perimeter. One of the purists dropped. Another tried to hack one of the Rewrite entry points and got slammed with feedback so hard his avatar snapped backwards like a snapped puppet.

Lucas stood.

"Test’s over," he said, voice low.

"Submit or collapse."

Another figure hissed. "We’d rather die."

Lucas didn’t flinch.

"Then dissolve."

And with a tap of his wrist, the rewrite command flushed.

The floor lit up beneath the purist leader—patterns of collapsing logic and failing syntax.

The mask shattered.

The avatar disintegrated.

Lucas exhaled slowly.

Ava’s voice filtered in again, this time softer.

[AVA: Still breathing?]

[LUCAS: More or less.]

[AVA: We’re not done.]

He looked up as the node began to reformat itself. The legacy code purged, the rewrite core fusing in slow, clean geometry.

[NEW LAW INSTALLED]

[ZONE COMPLIANCE: 78% AND RISING]

[ENFORCER: LUCAS BAI – ACTIVE]

Lucas ran a hand through his hair, voice dry.

"We just made it harder."

Ava’s voice crackled back.

[AVA: Good. I like when they panic.]

The line clicked silent—briefly.

Then the system lit up in red.

[SYSTEM ALERT: ACTIVE CONFLICT – NODE CLUSTER 7C]

[ZONAL COLLAPSE THREAT: IMMINENT]

[REWRITE ENFORCERS OUTMATCHED – CALL FOR EMERGENCY SUPPORT]

Lucas didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the reforming platform of 9B, blinked twice into his system interface, and rerouted instantly.

He didn’t like being pulled in. He hated favors even more.

But this one?

This one had his name on it.

Rogue operatives in blackened mesh armor moved like wolves through the collapsing data-field. Red pulse-rifles laced with compressed sync energy lit up the dark. Enforcement drones scattered in retreat patterns, taking heavy hits across their core plating. One of the junior Rewrite enforcers was already down, system disintegrating around them like smoke off a burning wire.

The rogue leader stood mid-field—faceplate cracked, mouth smeared in blood, laughing like it was a festival.

"You don’t belong here!"

A Rewrite captain leveled a weapon. "This node is under system-wide compliance—"

"Then burn with it!" the rogue spat, and charged.

Lucas appeared mid-step behind the Rewrite team.

He walked forward calmly.

The moment he entered the node’s critical zone, his ID flagged.

[PRIORITY OVERRIDE DETECTED]

[LUCAS BAI – ENFORCEMENT COMMANDER]

[LOCAL AUTHORITY YIELDED]

The enforcers fell back instantly.

The rogue paused mid-charge, blinking as the interface updated in real-time. "Oh," he said, voice changing. "They sent you."

Lucas adjusted the cuffs of his jacket. "You’re not as flattered as I expected."

"I’m flattered," the rogue sneered. "But not impressed. I know what you gave up. You’re not invincible anymore."

Lucas smiled without showing teeth.

"That’s the trick. I never was."

The rogue lunged.

Lucas didn’t dodge.

His system flared, gold and black, and met the strike with something sharper—clean, targeted, vicious. The energy laced his frame like a controlled explosion, and his hand caught the rogue’s wrist mid-swing.

"You made a mistake," Lucas said flatly.

"You showed up too late."

Lucas glanced at the overhead data—confirming thirty-seven enforcement units still active, all clustered outside the central collapse radius.

"You’re not wrong," he murmured.

Then he pulled.

The rogue’s body hit the synthetic stone hard, and Lucas was already twisting, pivoting his heel as he drove a disabling pulse through the rogue’s interface.

The man screamed.

Not because of pain.

Because his system—his rogue structure—was being rewritten line by line.

Lucas leaned down.

"This was a favor," he said, voice low. "You weren’t the objective. You were the distraction."

The rogue’s body spasmed. Behind them, rogue troops started pulling back—too late. Ava’s drones filtered in at rooftop level, peppering the retreat with sync-jamming fields and cryo-lock grenades.

Ava’s voice clicked in.

[AVA: You were supposed to wait for backup.]

[LUCAS: Backup’s slower than drama.]

[AVA: I’m logging that as a strategy.]

Lucas stood up straight.

The rogue leader lay on the ground, twitching. Half of his data-lattice shattered.

Lucas stepped over him and walked toward the central control console of Node 7C.

His eyes scanned the fragmented interface—then tapped a single function.

[REWRITE LAW ENFORCEMENT – FINAL STAMP]

[ZONE STATUS: PURGED][ROGUE ACCESS – REVOKED]

The node stilled.

A beat of silence passed like a gun being holstered.

Ava walked in moments later, armored coat dusted with sync debris.

"Nice speech," she said. "You almost sound like someone who likes this job."

Lucas grunted. "Don’t get sentimental."

"Wasn’t. Just saying you could’ve let them sweat longer."

"They had kids in the subnode," Lucas muttered. "Slower’s not better when the innocent are on the timer."

Ava didn’t speak right away. She adjusted one of the drones manually, her fingers twitching over the controls.

"I checked the housing logs," she said finally. "They weren’t just hiding there. They were relocated."

Lucas turned his head slightly. "Relocated by who?"

Ava’s system blinked once. Then again.

[UNAUTHORIZED REDIRECT FOUND][ORIGIN TRACE: SUPPRESSED][SUBNODE MIGRATION – MANUAL OVERRIDE][ID MATCH: ...UNRESOLVED]

"They were moved out of another node entirely," she continued, voice low. "With someone’s clearance higher than mine."

Lucas’s brow furrowed. "That’s not supposed to be possible."

Ava turned the screen toward him.

"It’s not."

A chill settled between them.

Lucas took a step forward, jaw tight. "Where were they moved from?"

Ava hesitated, then tapped the interface.

The display reloaded. The data glitched for half a second, then stabilized.

[ORIGIN NODE: MINDSPACE ANCHOR 1A]

[STATUS: NON-EXISTENT][RECONCILIATION: NOT POSSIBLE]

[ERROR CODE: 00-LANCE]

Lucas stared.

1A hadn’t been on any current maps. Not since the Collapse.

He looked at Ava. "That node’s not gone."

"I know."

"They’re hiding something in it."

"No," Ava said quietly, eyes scanning faster now. "They’re hiding someone."

She tapped again—and a single image loaded into the corner of the screen. Corrupted. Blurred.

But not unrecognizable.

A familiar face. Cold eyes.

It was Angle.

Still alive.

Still watching.

Lucas stepped back.

[INCOMING TRANSMISSION – UNKNOWN SENDER]

[TEXT ONLY]

Nice cleanup, Bai. You forgot the basement.

The transmission dissolved before Ava could trace it.

Lucas’s expression didn’t change.

But the fire in his system flared.

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