Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 79: : Shadows in the Underground

Chapter 79: : Shadows in the Underground

The corridor was colder the deeper they went—a kind of forgotten cold, like the air hadn’t been disturbed in years. Not abandoned, just... unacknowledged.

The overhead lights flickered with a sickly yellow hue, casting warped shadows over dangling wires and scorched warning signs that had long since stopped warning anyone. Rust trailed down the wall like veins in the skin of a dying beast.

Lucas walked a half step ahead, not fast, not slow—just with purpose. The kind of pace people used when they were following breadcrumbs they weren’t sure were real.

Ava followed, her system casting silent pings. No movement. No heat. But silence didn’t mean safety. Silence was often the best camouflage.

"You going to tell me what this is about?" she asked, voice low.

Lucas didn’t look back. "No. Not until I’m sure."

"Sure about what?"

He glanced at her—just once.

And that single glance said everything: not fear, not annoyance—suspicion.

Not aimed at her. At something else.

Something that had been scratching the back of his skull since the first vault opened too easily.

"Angel’s network," he said, his voice level but cold, "was too perfect. Too clean. You don’t keep that kind of system unless you’re hiding something bigger inside it."

Ava nodded. "Judas got us in. Your traitor opened the path."

Lucas stopped at a rusting steel door that looked like it should’ve collapsed a year ago.

"Which is why it doesn’t make sense."

He kicked the door open. It screamed on its hinges—a sound like metal bleeding.

Behind it, a stairwell descended into dim static light, blinking at irregular intervals like a dying signal trying to finish a message.

"The vault we hit," he said, stepping onto the stairs, "was locked, but not locked enough. Tricky, but not impossible. And Angel? She doesn’t do ’possible’ unless she’s watching the fallout."

"So it was a performance," Ava muttered.

Lucas nodded. "Staged like bad theater. Impressive on the surface, empty underneath."

At the bottom, a low-humming maintenance terminal glowed with weak light. Lucas approached it without hesitation, pulling a black key from inside his coat—a fail-safe. Hidden. Private.

He slotted it in.

The screen didn’t flicker. It shivered, like it recognized the key didn’t belong and was scared to deny access. Then it blinked green.

Access granted.

And the past unfurled.

Old logs. Video archives. Long-buried records flushed from memory cores. Not council-fed. Not bunkered. These had been erased—which meant someone wanted them gone.

Lucas didn’t even glance at the logs. He dove for the camera feeds. Security footage.

He fast-forwarded through them in silence, skipping hours, days, whole weeks—until—

"There."

Ava stepped closer.

The footage was grainy, poorly lit. But there—a man in a lab coat entering a restricted vault. Not armed. No escort. Too clean.

"Is that a scientist?"

"Look at the shoulders," Lucas murmured. "That’s the posture of someone with guilt pouring out of their spine."

Ava smirked slightly. "You profiling his walk now?"

Lucas clicked his tongue. "That’s the textbook treason shuffle. He’s either betraying someone or trying to look innocent while downloading state secrets."

Then—another figure entered.

Broad frame. Cold face. Angel’s colors on his shoulder.

"One of her lieutenants," Ava said.

Lucas grinned darkly. "And not a single record of him being in that location. Isn’t it fun when ghosts show up on camera?"

The lieutenant handed the scientist something—a small vial.

The camera’s low-quality lens caught the faint shimmer of the fluid inside.

Ava inhaled."System enhancement vial. Same kind we saw at the auction. Version 7.2."

Lucas stilled the footage. Behind the hand-off, a code flickered across the vault door. Ava scanned it instantly.

"SYLVA-71."

Her system pinged red.

Lucas gave a long, low whistle. "Containment division. Blacklisted. One of the biotech houses that got shut down for human augmentation before the Collapse."

"She’s not just stockpiling weapons," Ava muttered. "She’s hiding human experiments."

Lucas turned from the console, folding his arms. "You know the trick to every good con?"

"Distraction," Ava replied.

"Exactly." He pointed toward the grainy footage. "That vault we emptied? Left hand. The distraction. Messy, dramatic, full of sparkle."

He gestured toward the nearly hidden door in the background of the feed. "That? That’s the right hand. Holding the knife."

Ava synced her system to the coordinates.She got nothing. No trace. Not even a structural map.

"This place doesn’t exist."

"Which means," Lucas said, "that’s where everything real is."

Ava folded her arms, watching the footage loop.

"She let us rob her."

"And watched to see what we took," Lucas added. "She gave us the box. Kept the trigger."

He snapped the terminal shut. The glow vanished like it had never been there.

His voice was low, but sharp.

"Angel doesn’t give up control. She lends it—so she can watch you choke on it later."

Ava sighed, muttering, "I thought we were supposed to disappear and sleep."

"We will," Lucas said, already walking toward the path the footage showed. "Just maybe in a different name, a different bunker, and probably covered in blood."

Ava’s system pulsed with a flicker of static—the kind that doesn’t scream, just hums, like a wire saw just about to bite.

She followed.

Because Lucas moved like he knew something.

Not just a lead—a hunch. And when Lucas Bai got that look in his eye, the one just shy of reckless and far past reasonable, it meant someone was about to lose something valuable.

He didn’t slow down. Didn’t glance over his shoulder. Just walked with a kind of casual urgency that said we’re running out of time, but we still have time to look good doing it.

"Where are we going?" Ava asked, picking up her pace beside him.

Lucas offered her a faint smile. "Time to clean house."

"Whose house?"

"The third largest trade group on Level One," he replied smoothly, like he was talking about dinner reservations and not a hostile operation. "They’ve been sitting on Angel’s supply line, laundering mutant-level meds through food shipments, and pocketing favors like candy."

"And we’re just going to... walk in?"

Lucas didn’t break stride. "No, Beauty. We’re going to walk through. There’s a difference."

Ava blinked. "You really think they’re still loyal to Angel?"

Lucas gave a half shrug. "Loyalty’s flexible. Just like math. Depends which side of the decimal you’re on."

"That’s not an answer."

"Sure it is. Just not the one you wanted." He grinned, winking without turning.

They passed an old vendor’s row, long since converted to a parts alley. Dim lights buzzed above rows of locked stalls and makeshift shutters. Ava’s system pinged faint black market tags—old smuggling frequencies still half-alive in the wiring.

"You didn’t mention this plan before," she said.

Lucas gave a mock gasp. "I’m wounded. You think I don’t enjoy surprising you?"

"I think you enjoy surprising everyone. Especially yourself."

He chuckled. "Sometimes the best plans are the ones you don’t say out loud. They listen, you know. Walls. Vents. Roaches with recording implants."

Ava shot him a look. "Paranoia doesn’t count as planning."

"It does if you’re good at it," he replied cheerfully.

They stopped at a reinforced side door—unmarked, heavy, sealed with a rotating ID lock. Lucas reached into his coat and pulled out a hexagonal keycard wrapped in silk ribbon.

"Where did you get that?"

Lucas tapped the scanner with it. "A trade. I gave someone a fake death certificate and a real ticket out. In return, they owed me a backdoor."

The scanner blinked green.