Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 75: : Plan D -The Heart of Level One

Chapter 75: : Plan D -The Heart of Level One

Ava leaned in, her Blueprint system syncing instantly to Lucas’s monpoly system. The glowing projection hovered above his wrist display, flickering lines forming a wireframe of Level One’s internal architecture—hidden corridors, private vaults, encrypted access shafts.

Not outside the city. Not off-grid.

Everything Lucas was about to destroy... was happening inside the heart of the bunker.

Ava’s eyes narrowed. "You’re hitting her from inside."

Lucas’s golden gaze didn’t waver. "Of course. Angel built her kingdom here. She trusts the walls of Level One. That makes her blind."

The map zoomed in, revealing the southern wing—a restricted access section few even knew existed. There, tucked between faux storage units and repurposed emergency shelters, was a chamber marked in red.

"Subsection 1-A, vault corridor C."

Lucas tapped the red icon. "Looks like a water filtration sublevel on official records. It’s not. She moved her entire backup cache here after the last council audit."

Ava’s system pulsed as it decrypted the layout. She saw it now—private server cores, insulated ammo crates, and a climate-stabilized vault with heat-scrambling insulation.

"You’ve been watching her movements inside the bunker."

Lucas’s smirk curled. "Calculated for it. The moment she started consolidating resources inside Level One, I knew she was preparing for something bigger. She thinks it’s safe. But she forgot one thing."

Ava lifted a brow. "You lived here too."

Lucas’s eyes gleamed. "Exactly."

Locke stepped forward, arms folded. His gaze was locked on the map, reading the routes, tracing the inner ventilation systems and power junctions.

"What’s the point of origin?" he asked.

Lucas tapped the northwest quadrant of Level One—the trade hall’s maintenance shaft.

"Entry’s through Supply Row. The fourth stall is fake. It leads directly into tunnel G7, one of the original construction routes. It bypasses checkpoint gates, skips Angel’s patrols entirely."

Ava frowned. "How’d you get this?"

Lucas’s smirk deepened. "You’d be surprised how many secrets fall into your lap when you know what everything’s worth."

The trade routes. The storage deals. The fake auctions. Lucas had been building this from inside, not out.

No explosions. No raid. Just surgical strikes in silence.

Ava crossed her arms. "So we hit the vault, rip out her comms, steal her reserves. That enough to crack her?"

Lucas looked at her like she’d asked if water was wet. "She built her entire image on control. Take away her voice, and the illusion collapses. Management won’t hesitate to pull support if she can’t maintain order."

Locke was still studying the map. "Timeline?"

Lucas’s tone was crisp. "Ninety minutes. At shift change. Security lapses just long enough. No one expects movement inside the restricted sectors. We go in, take what we need, and ghost before the first alert triggers."

Ava exhaled. "Three people. One vault. Mid-shift."

Lucas shrugged. "Calculated for that too."

She gave him a sideways look. "Of course you did."

Lucas’s smile sharpened. "This isn’t about damage. It’s about exposure. One clean incision—and Angel bleeds."

Locke’s jaw was tight, his voice low. "Then we move fast. She’ll feel it before we’re even gone."

Ava stepped back, letting the map shrink away. Her system stored the route, updated it with fail safes. This wasn’t war. It was precision.

Ava adjusted the collar of her jacket as the dim lights of Level One flickered overhead. The illusion of order hummed around them—traders bartering in corners, security mechs clanking past on timed patrols, and the ever-present buzz of filtered air keeping thousands of survivors breathing below the surface.

Beneath all that routine, though, something was about to break.

Lucas walked ahead of her, one hand casually tucked into his pocket, the other gliding over the faint projection on his wrist display. He looked relaxed, almost bored, like a man out for a stroll.

Locke trailed behind them, shoulders squared, every step silent. He had changed out of his standard military attire, blending into the crowds in worn worker’s gear—still sharp, still precise, but unremarkable to the eye.

Ava’s system pinged softly.

[APPROACHING ACCESS POINT: TUNNEL G7]

They reached the fourth stall in Supply Row—just another cluttered corner overflowing with fake goods, rusted equipment, and folded crates. The vendor was gone. On break. That had been arranged hours ago.

Lucas didn’t pause. He stepped between two cracked shelves and pressed his palm to the back panel of the stall.

A faint click.

Then the wall slid open just enough for a person to slip through.

Ava followed first. The space was narrow, tight enough that her shoulders brushed the cold concrete on both sides. Lucas ducked in behind her. Locke sealed the panel behind them, locking the route with a short sequence Ava didn’t catch.

Now they were ghosts—moving beneath Level One’s skin.

The tunnel was dark, lit only by the soft glow from Lucas’s interface and the low-power strip lighting that hadn’t been turned off properly when the sector was decommissioned.

"It still stinks in here," Ava muttered.

Lucas grinned behind her. "That’s what makes it perfect. No one with power walks through mold."

Locke spoke for the first time in ten minutes. "Vent shaft ahead connects to power channel six. Leads directly under corridor C."

Ava’s system displayed the split-second reroute. That was their way in.

They turned, navigating the narrow maze of old construction space. Pipes hissed with recycled air, and condensation dripped down from rusted joints. This was a part of the bunker no one talked about. The belly of the machine—forgotten, ignored, and, more importantly, unwatched.

Ava crouched at the next junction. The vault lay above. Two levels up, shielded by old blast plating. Lucas knelt beside her, hands already working.

"Five layers of encryption," he said, voice low, pleased. "She got paranoid."

Ava arched a brow. "You sound impressed."

"I am." He tapped three fingers on his wrist, sending out a coded pulse.

The panel above them glitched once, then again, before sliding open with a reluctant hiss.

Ava climbed first.

The floor of the vault corridor was polished. Clean. Sterile. As if no dust dared to collect here. The silence up here was different—not natural, but controlled. As if the air itself was listening.

Lucas stepped up beside her, eyes flicking to the reinforced door at the end of the hallway.

"There it is. Angel’s heart."

Locke adjusted his grip on the duffel slung over his shoulder. "Let’s cut it out."

Ava’s fingers hovered over her wrist screen. Her system synced with the vault’s signal, searching for cracks. The first line of defense was biometric. She smiled.

"I can fake a fingerprint."

Lucas grinned. "Let me handle the retinal lock."

"And I’ll deal with the alarm node," Locke said, already crouched beside the panel.

Three people. Three systems. All trained, all coordinated.

The lock disengaged.

Ava’s system pinged sharply as the vault opened with a hiss of climate-controlled air.

[SECURED VAULT BREACH SUCCESSFUL.]

Inside were rows of racks, data cubes glowing in containment boxes, stacked weapons, and three separate comm hubs powered down but clearly maintained.

Ava stepped in first, scanning everything.

"This is her leverage," she said quietly.

Lucas was already moving toward the server stack.

"Not anymore."

Ava began to upload everything to her system—logs, encrypted files, blueprints of future storage moves, black market lists Angel had kept hidden. Every piece of data was another cut across Angel’s throat.

Lucas’s voice broke the silence. "I just sent her entire comm library into quarantine. She won’t even know it’s gone until it’s too late."

The vault’s air was chilled, dense with recycled oxygen and the sterile sharpness of long-preserved secrets. Every surface gleamed—metal panels, data cores, stacked black cases sealed with military-grade locks.

Lucas scanned the room once more, then turned to Ava, golden eyes narrowed. "We have an hour. Use your system."

Ava arched a brow. "Be more specific."

Lucas gestured to the chamber. "I want every edge. Every angle. Your Blueprint system—build me a layout of her entire operation. The unseen layers. Hidden routes. Secondary backups. If she squirreled something away, I want it on our map before she knows we’re even here."

Ava nodded slowly, stepping into the center of the vault. Her boots clicked against the polished floor. Her fingers tapped the inside of her wrist, activating the system interface.

A flicker of pale blue light bloomed across her vision.

[SYSTEM SYNC: ACTIVE]

[TARGET ENVIRONMENT: SECURE FACILITY – COMMAND NODE 1-A]

[RUNNING DEEP BLUEPRINT ANALYSIS...]

Her breath steadied as the world around her shifted. Lines stretched out in every direction—walls becoming schematics, wires forming pulse maps, every system singing like a machine just waiting to be rebuilt.

Locke watched from the doorway, posture still, but something had changed in his expression.

Respect.

He had seen systems before—but never like this.

Ava’s pupils dilated as the map unfolded in layers: not just the vault, but the bunker section surrounding it, the conduits beneath the floor, the ghost trails of devices that had once been moved and rehidden.

Lucas moved beside her, silent now, watching with something close to reverence. "That’s the difference," he murmured. "You don’t just see. You understand."

Ava’s voice was calm, her focus locked in. "There’s a second vault."

Lucas’s eyes sharpened. "Where?"

Ava pointed to a thin section of wall behind a row of inert battery cores. "It’s real. Coded into the blueprint, but unmarked on the surface schematics. Looks like cold storage, but the layout’s too refined. She’s hiding something live."

Locke stepped closer, gaze narrowing at the wall. "Can you open it?"

Ava’s smirk was faint. "I can rebuild it from the inside out if I have to."

Lucas tapped her wrist, a single directive. "Do it. If she’s hiding anything that can survive this fallout, we take it."

Ava’s system pulsed again.

[SECURE CHAMBER LOCK SEQUENCE DETECTED]

[CRACKING ENCRYPTION...]

[ACCESS GRANTED.]

A low hiss echoed through the vault. A seamless wall panel folded open with mechanical grace, revealing a long, narrow chamber bathed in blue light.

Inside—sealed stasis drives. Four of them.

Each one humming. Alive.

Ava stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Encrypted biological signatures."

Lucas exhaled. "Angel’s contingency plan."

Locke didn’t speak, but Ava could feel it—the shift in him. The realization that Angel hadn’t just been consolidating resources. She’d been preparing to rebuild if she fell.

Lucas’s voice cut through the quiet. "Not anymore."

He turned to Ava, gaze sharp. "Keep scanning. We don’t leave here until we’ve stripped her to the bone."

Ava nodded. Her system blazed.