Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 159: : Root Access

Chapter 159: : Root Access

The door didn’t open.

It recognized her.

The moment Ava’s palm touched the weathered wood, a pulse of pale blue shimmered outward—like a pond disturbed from beneath, a memory surfacing rather than light.

The lock clicked softly. Not mechanical.

Personal.

A signature sigh of a system that remembered its creator.

Lucas stood behind her, close, eyes scanning the carved glyph on the doorframe—her name, etched with impossible precision, buried in the layers of system code like a command key and a grave marker in one.

"You sure about this?" he asked.

Ava’s voice was quiet.

"No."

And then she pushed.

What lay beyond wasn’t another simulation node.

It wasn’t a trap.

It was intentional.

A vast, silent library—or something shaped like one. A cathedral of translucent architecture, built from flowing logic rails and crystalline latticework. Data spiraled in the air like airborne circuitry, code woven into the ceiling like constellations.

Every footstep restructured the floor beneath her—responding to her presence in ways that no system ever should.

Lucas followed carefully, boots crunching softly against a logic bridge that assembled beneath him with every step.

"This isn’t a system interface," he murmured. "This is—"

"A space," Ava finished, awed. "Mine."

Lucas looked around. "This... doesn’t feel like something made in a crisis. It’s old. Layered. Deep structure."

"I know," she said.

But her voice wavered.

Because she didn’t.

Ava drifted toward the central dais—an elevated ring suspended in air, rotating slowly above an infinite spiral staircase that didn’t exist in real space. At its center floated a sphere—glowing faintly, flickering with embedded glyphs, whispering with unspoken commands.

She didn’t remember building this.

But it remembered her.

As they approached, the sphere bloomed open like a flower made of data—lines of fragmented code spinning faster, revealing a command terminal at its core.

And then the prompt lit up:

[ROOT NODE FOUND][SUBROUTINE: ARCHITECT’S SHADOW][AUTHORED: AVA ZHANG – INITIATOR: CLASS DESIGNATION ’BLUE SEED’][ASSOCIATED USERS: 16][PROJECT STATUS: DORMANT][ORIGIN: UNIVERSITY NODE – PRE-FALL]

Lucas blinked.

Hard.

Ava’s breath caught in her chest.

"I didn’t..." she whispered. "I don’t remember this."

Lucas stepped beside her, reading. "You weren’t just a system user. You were part of the architecture."

She shook her head. "I was just a student. I we were part of a project designing a system. It wasn’t even coded. Nothing like this."

"The prompt says otherwise."

He pointed to the identifier: BLUE SEED – BACKUP EXECUTION NETWORK.

Ava stared at it.

Memories surged.

Not sharp.

But flashes.

A professor. Strange extra lab hours. Cryptic commands buried in lessons. A project no one talked about. Students grouped by ability—separated, logged, tested.

And one day: the message.

"This is just in case. If the world breaks, someone has to be able to rebuild it."

Fifteen students. Plus Ava.

They weren’t just test cases.

They were a backup plan.

System carriers.

Architects.

Lucas watched her face tighten as realization dawned.

"You were a reset candidate," he said. "A failsafe engineer. That’s what your system is. Not a weapon. Not a power."

"A blueprint."

"For what?"

The sphere answered for her.

[FOR RECONSTRUCTION.][FOR SEEDING THE NEXT AFTER COLLAPSE.][FOR REWRITING THE REWRITE.]

Ava stumbled back.

"I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t choose—"

Lucas caught her shoulder. "You were chosen."

She looked up. "The others... the other sixteen—are they alive?"

[STATUS: UNKNOWN. BLUE SEED UNIT 004 – ACTIVE][REMAINING 15 – OFFLINE OR UNREACHABLE]

Unit 004.

Her.

Lucas’s golden eyes locked on the hovering command node.

"And what happens if you activate it?"

Ava didn’t speak.

Because the answer was already appearing in pale blue text, glowing like prophecy:

[ACTIVATION WILL INITIATE SYSTEM REALIGNMENT.][ARCHITECT’S SHADOW WILL OVERRIDE LOCAL MINDSPACE CODE.][CONTROL WILL TRANSFER TO USER: ZHANG, AVA.]

Lucas let out a long breath.

It wasn’t weariness.

It was the sound of a thousand realizations falling into place like knives on a polished table.

He stepped back from the node, jaw clenched, shoulders tight beneath his ruined coat. Ava could see the math running behind his eyes—the data mapping, the probabilities, the danger—and the disappointment.

Not in her.

In himself.

"My old man knew," Lucas said finally.

Ava turned to him. "What?"

"Senior Bai. He talked around it, like always. White lies dressed in civility. ’Architects,’ he said once. ’They were a myth. A failed contingency, never got past the design phase.’"

He gave a humorless smile.

"Only thing he ever underestimated was how long a lie could live."

"You think he knew about me?"

Lucas gave her a look that was half warning, half regret.

"He knew someone was still alive. The military swept the schools after the Fall looking for residual systems. No public records left. No professor data. But Bai Senior had pieces. He funded the school behind the shell company that trained you. Said he was ’investing in the future.’"

Ava folded her arms, voice low. "You never asked why?"

"I thought it was a tax dodge."

He stared at the glowing node again. His voice dropped.

"To be fair, the old bastard had his problems. Half of them wore uniforms, the other half called him father."

Silence hung for a moment.

Then Ava stepped beside him, eyes steady. "Lucas?"

He looked at her.

"You’re the smart one," she said. "I need a plan."

Lucas blinked.

It hit differently, coming from her.

Not sarcastic.

Not mocking.

Trust.

She trusted him.

He glanced back at the interface, lips twitching in thought. Then his tone shifted—low, tactical.

"This node is sovereign. You have root access, which means for the next hour or so, you’re effectively untouchable unless you open a line out."

She nodded.

"And the Architect’s Shadow?"

"If you activate it, you’ll realign the entire space. Every system around here—Rewrite, Anchor Nodes, even Orator’s leftovers—will get pulled into sync orbit. They’ll respond to your commands."

"Even if they don’t know it?"

"Especially if they don’t know it."

Ava’s brow furrowed. "And you?"

Lucas met her gaze.

"Me?"

She didn’t blink.

"Where do you stand in this plan?"

Lucas stepped closer, the flicker of cold light painting sharp lines on his face.

"I don’t stand. I move."

A pause.

"Your job is to flip the world. Mine is to make sure the ones who can’t handle that fall first."

Then he grinned.

Not the smug grin. Not the guarded, too-clever smirk he wore in business deals or hostage standoffs.

This one was razor-edged and reckless—the kind that belonged to the version of Lucas Bai who did his best work when everything was on fire and the rules had just been rewritten.

He stepped back toward the node, spinning slowly on his heel, arms stretched like a conductor in front of a detonator.

"The best way to flip a table," he said, "is not to argue about the rules."

Ava raised a brow.

Lucas winked.

"It’s to burn the board before anyone knows the game’s changed."

Ava laughed.

Loud. Unapologetic.

Something between thrill and disbelief curling through her chest like oxygen after suffocation.

"I forgot you’re a chaos addict."

Lucas pivoted toward her. "You’re one to talk. You built a world-swap nuke into your high school homework."

She shook her head, smiling now—grinning really—as the lights around the node began to pulse faster.

"Well, Professor Lian did say to think ahead."

"And you did," Lucas said, hands now moving across the floating interface with frightening speed. "Four hundred system threads. Fifteen dead classmates. One hidden architect. Not bad odds."

Ava stepped beside him and shoved his shoulder playfully.

"Stop narrating like you’re about to jump off a rooftop."

He caught her hand mid-air.

"Not unless you’re jumping with me."

She rolled her eyes, still grinning. "God, that was corny."

"Worked though."

The core interface glowed brighter, blooming open like a digital flower.

Ava’s hand hovered above the final switch.

"Are we doing this?" she asked.

Lucas didn’t answer right away.

He just looked at her.

Really looked.

Hair tangled. Jacket burned. Blood drying on her cheek. But smiling.

Not the cold kind. Not the guarded mask she wore in markets and missions.

Free.

He leaned in, just enough for his voice to drop.

"If they wanted a machine, they shouldn’t have made you human."

Ava’s grin widened.

And without breaking eye contact—

She flipped the switch.

And the world fractured.

It wasn’t a shatter. It wasn’t an explosion.

It was a recalibration—like reality itself blinked, reconsidered, and decided to rearrange.

The sphere above them folded inward, the core humming with a low, crystalline tone that wasn’t sound so much as structure. Glyphs spun violently around Ava’s arm, anchoring into her skin with liquid precision. They didn’t burn—they synced. Recognizing her. Claiming her. Obeying her.

The chamber responded immediately.

The floor stretched into a circular grid, spinning into layers of deep system memory. Pillars erupted from the data strata, each one carved with the names of the fifteen other students—some glitched out, some grey, some still... active?

Lucas stepped back, hand already reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. "Ava..."

But she wasn’t hearing him anymore.

She was hearing everything.

Every subnode. Every mirror-layer. Every lingering whisper of code the Rewrite had overridden. The entire skeleton of the Mindspace now fed through her like a pulse, rhythmic and alive.

[CORE ALIGNMENT: 100%][ARCHITECT’S SHADOW ACTIVE][CONTROL NODE VERIFIED][USER: ZHANG, AVA — ROOT AUTHORITY GRANTED]

Lucas raised a brow. "You good?"

Ava blinked. Her eyes flickered faint silver for a heartbeat—then she smirked.

"Define good."

Lucas laughed. "Spoken like someone who just hijacked reality and didn’t even flinch."

"I flinched on the inside."

The chamber shivered.

Then everything shifted.

The Mindspace—this false, forced arena—peeled away, replaced with a version Ava hadn’t seen before. A layered blueprint—not just data flow, but architecture. Foundations. Infrastructure. Access points never visible to normal users.

A back door to every space Rewrite touched.

Lucas whistled. "You just moved from pawn to god-mode."

Ava flexed her fingers. "It’s not control."

"It’s worse?"

"It’s responsibility."

Lucas grinned. "You’ll get used to it. Power’s fun once you stop being afraid of it."

Before she could answer, the air rippled in front of them—like cloth under water—and a voice cut through the chamber:

[INCOMING SYSTEM CONFLICT ALERT][EXTERNAL NODE—UNREGISTERED ACCESS][ATTEMPTED BREACH DETECTED]

Ava’s head snapped toward the pulse. She waved a hand—effortless now—and a feed opened mid-air.

There.

In real time.

A shadow moving through Node Anchor 7B.

Not military.

Not system purists.

Something else.

Something wearing a familiar face.

Angle.

Still alive.

Still glitching.

Still trying to find her way in.

Lucas stepped beside Ava, expression turning cold. "We let her survive too long."

Ava nodded once, her tone now lethal.

"We fix that next."

And the chamber obeyed.

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