Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 76: : Blueprint Unleashed

Chapter 76: : Blueprint Unleashed

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 stepped forward, her system still running scans, cataloging everything.

But behind her, Locke didn’t move.

He stood at the threshold, silent.

His posture rigid, arms folded tight across his chest—but it wasn’t caution. It was something else.

Something far more personal.

Lucas noticed first. He glanced at Locke, golden eyes narrowing slightly, then leaned casually against the vault frame, arms crossed.

"You okay there, Captain?"

Locke didn’t answer at first. He was staring at one of the cryo-units near the back. It wasn’t marked. No label. But Ava’s system pinged it anyway.

[Personal Signature Match: A. Tang]

Angel’s vault. Her final contingency.

Her secrets.

Locke’s voice, when it came, was low and measured—too careful to be natural.

"She didn’t love me."

Ava looked over, startled by the simplicity of it. Lucas didn’t even flinch. He just sighed, pushing off the frame.

"No," Lucas said softly. "She doesn’t love anyone."

Locke’s jaw tightened, but he kept his eyes on the pod. "But I loved her. That part’s real."

Lucas nodded. "Yeah. I know." He walked slowly, not toward the vault, but toward Locke. His voice dropped, not sharp, not mocking—just honest. "To be honest, the two of you? You made sense."

Locke turned toward him. "What?"

Lucas shrugged, casually as ever. "If the Collapse never happened... if systems weren’t genetic, if the world didn’t fall into a pit of hierarchy and chaos... we’d be looking at a different story. You know that, right?"

Locke said nothing.

Lucas’s gaze sharpened, more serious now. "Lady mogul. Angel Tang. And her knight. The loyal soldier with a clean heart. The man she trusted more than anyone."

Ava held her breath.

Lucas gestured toward the pod. "She loved you for a while. Not the way you wanted—but enough. Enough to keep you close, to make you think you were chosen."

Locke’s face didn’t move, but Ava saw it—the flicker in his eyes, the way his throat tightened.

"But she never picked you," Lucas finished. "Not really."

Silence.

Then Locke spoke, voice quieter now.

"She didn’t need to pick me. I already picked her."

Lucas sighed. He stepped forward, pulling his hand from his coat pocket, revealing a small ring—gold, clean, untouched.

"You’re not the only one she kept close, Captain."

Locke stared at it.

Lucas turned the ring over between his fingers, casually. "Engaged since I was fifteen. An arrangement. A show of power. Something to parade when necessary."

His smile was sharp, but bitter. "Never really about me."

Ava looked between the two men.

For once, they weren’t enemies.

They were two sides of the same blade—two men who had been used by the same woman for very different reasons.

Lucas tucked the ring back in his coat.

"That’s why this ends tonight."

Chapter 254: Burn the Past

Ava stood in the center of the vault, the iron ring clenched in her hand like a ghost she hadn’t meant to carry. It was warm from Locke’s touch, but heavy in a way that had nothing to do with metal.

Behind her, Locke said nothing.

He didn’t have to.

Lucas exhaled, tapping a command into his wristband. His system synced with Ava’s interface, and the holographic blueprint of Level One reappeared—this time marked in red. A warning overlay.

"Angel will come looking when she realizes we’ve gutted her core."

Ava nodded, her voice low. "How long do we have?"

Lucas’s eyes flicked toward the upper corner of the projection, where a timer ticked down from forty-seven minutes.

"Less than an hour before she notices the silence."

Locke finally stepped forward, past the storage crates and into the center of the vault. His hand brushed the empty cryo-pod—one of four Angel had kept sealed, empty except for power signatures.

"There’s nothing personal here," he muttered. "No letters. No photo. Not even a name etched anywhere."

Lucas didn’t look up. "That was the point, Captain. Angel never planned to remember anyone. She always planned to rebuild herself without attachments."

Ava studied the vault, her system now synced to every access point Angel had hidden. Hidden storage in the power station. Backup chips in ventilation shafts. Layered code buried in the hydro-grid.

It wasn’t just paranoid. It was psychotic.

She looked down at the ring in her hand, then passed it to Lucas.

"You burn things better than I do."

Lucas grinned, flipping the iron ring between his fingers. "You’re not wrong."

He slipped it into a sealed case marked for short-range detonation.

"She won’t even get to mourn it."

Locke didn’t flinch. But Ava saw his fists tighten.

Lucas turned back toward the vault’s mainframe. "We pull the drive, upload the contagion code. The rest collapses by the time we’re back in neutral zones."

"Neutral?" Locke asked.

Lucas smiled darkly. "That’s what I call anywhere Angel can’t scream."

Ava tapped her system, confirming the sync.

[EXTRACTION PROTOCOL: FINAL PHASE]

[INITIATING NETWORK DISSOLUTION]

[ESTIMATED TIME TO SYSTEM COLLAPSE: 39:46]

Ava looked to Locke. "We leave. Now."

Lucas stepped past them, his voice cool and clear.

"Burn the past. Save nothing."

And with that, they turned their backs on the vault and walked into the dark.