Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 81: : The Collector’s Room

Chapter 81: : The Collector’s Room

Next Lucas walk a few doors. Opening with an access card.

Lucas stepped in first, slower this time. Not cautious—contemptuous.

Ava followed, and her first thought wasn’t about what she saw. It was what she didn’t. No noise. No guards. No cameras.

A vault inside a vault.

The lighting was museum-grade—cool, soft, casting deliberate shadows on rows of artifact pedestals and reinforced display cases.

Each pedestal displayed something different. Not labeled. Not explained. Just left there, as if to whisper if you know, you know.

Ava’s system lit up instantly.

[SCANNING ENVIRONMENT...]

[TECHNOLOGICAL SIGNATURES DETECTED: 73]

[THREAT LEVEL VARIANCE: LOW TO EXTREME]

[BEGINNING BLUEPRINT TRACE—]

[ERROR: DATA ENCRYPTION UNSTABLE]

[UNABLE TO PROCESS: UNREGISTERED SYSTEM BIND]

[BEGINNING DECONSTRUCTION ON AVAILABLE FILES...]

Ava blinked.

"Half of these shouldn’t even exist."

Lucas didn’t respond. He was standing still in front of the far-left display, jaw set tight, eyes narrowed.

Ava approached the nearest pedestal—a fluid-packed cylinder suspended by anti-vibration shielding.

[ITEM: NEURAL RE-CALIBRATION CORE]

[GENERATION: PRE-COLLAPSE]

[FUNCTION: UNKNOWN | ORIGIN: DISPUTED]

[STATUS: STABLE | POTENTIAL APPLICATION: NEURAL SYSTEM REWRITE]

[BLUEPRINT REQUEST: DENIED]

"Denied?" Ava frowned. "Seriously?"

Lucas finally spoke. "Get used to that word. This room wasn’t built for your system."

"It’s built to mock it." Ava glared at the scanner as it rejected another trace attempt.

[ITEM: PHASE-MESH ADAPTIVE ARMOR]

[FUNCTION: DYNAMIC SHIFT PROTECTION | BLUEPRINT REQUEST: INCOMPLETE DATA]

She moved to the next display—a weapon this time. Elegant, narrow, clearly custom-forged. It floated, suspended in energy brackets.

[ITEM: VANTIC BLADE - PROTOTYPE]

[METAL TYPE: UNCLASSIFIED | EDGE: AUTO-ACTIVE]

[SYSTEM INTERFACE: NONE | MANUAL ONLY]

[BLUEPRINT REQUEST: PROCESSING...]

[PROCESSING...]

[ERROR: BLACKLISTED FILE STRUCTURE]

Ava exhaled sharply. "Three minutes in this room and my system’s being treated like a toddler."

"It’s not personal," Lucas said dryly, still not looking at her. "This place hates everyone equally."

She turned toward him, scanning his face. He wasn’t smirking. Not really.

"You’ve been here before."

"Once."

"Let me guess: you smiled, complimented the vault owner’s taste, and robbed them blind anyway."

Lucas tilted his head, just slightly. "Actually, no. I walked out empty-handed."

Ava blinked.

"You?"

"Yeah. Didn’t feel like stealing." He looked at her then. Not warmly. Not sharply. Just—tight. Controlled.

Ava didn’t ask. She could tell this room was pulling at something underneath his usual arrogance. Something that didn’t belong to her.

Instead, she turned to the center pedestal. A sealed black cube, three red slashes carved into the side like a warning—or a signature.

Her system flashed red before she even got close.

[ITEM: REDLIST UNKNOWN]

[SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY: REJECTED]

[WARNING: VOLATILE STRUCTURE – DO NOT INTERFACE]

She glanced back at Lucas. "You know what this is?"

"Yeah." His tone was flat.

"You going to tell me?"

"No."

Ava raised a brow. "You’re just full of generosity today."

Lucas finally turned fully toward her. His eyes weren’t smiling.

"You don’t open every door, Zhang. Some are left shut for a reason."

She held his gaze. "And yet you brought me here."

"Because this is plan F. Scan the place."

Ava let her system finish whatever scans it could salvage.

A few fragments. A few images. A corrupted blueprint that she might be able to decode—if she had time and power she didn’t currently have.

Lucas turned away from her, his voice low and curt. "Let’s go before I start breaking things I can’t afford to replace."

He didn’t wait for Ava. Didn’t flash one of his usual smug half-smiles.

He just walked.

And that, more than anything, told her something had cracked beneath the surface.

Ava cast one last look at the cube with the red slashes. Still humming quietly. Still pulsing like a heartbeat no one claimed. Her system refused to touch it—and that was all the confirmation she needed that it mattered.

She followed starting to understand him.

Lucas moved down the corridor with purpose, but not urgency. His steps were precise, like he was dancing between lasers only he could see.

To him, every theft was a conversation. A statement. Sometimes revenge. Sometimes warning.

They passed another locked chamber, this one unlit, with a biometric pad marked in red—high level, likely dangerous. Ava slowed.

"We’re not hitting that one?"

Lucas didn’t stop walking. "Please. That one’s for the desperate and the stupid."

"And we’re neither?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Speak for yourself. I’m an opportunist with great taste."

Ava didn’t laugh, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

They reached the upper service hall, lights flickering above them. Lucas paused there, tilting his head, as if listening for something only he could hear. Then he crouched beside a grated floor panel and removed it with the quiet efficiency of someone who’d done it before.

Underneath: a clean, narrow crawl shaft.

"This wasn’t on any of Angel’s maps," Ava said.

"Because I made it."

He slipped inside, motioning for her to follow. She hesitated only a second before ducking after him.

The crawl space echoed with the distant hum of the bunker’s guts. Every now and then, the sound of voices filtered through—a trade group member arguing, a delivery being scanned—but none of them were close.

Lucas kept his voice low. "Back when Angel still pretended to be subtle, she let me ’handle’ this facility."

Ava snorted softly. "You mapped the place, didn’t you?"

"With style."

"You’ve been stealing from her longer than I thought."

"Beauty," he said, glancing back, his grin returning with a razor edge, "the only thing I’ve ever taken from Angel—was mine."

Ava didn’t reply.

Because there it was again—the fracture under his usual flair. That name twisted something in him.

He ducked into the next access panel, which dropped them into a side hallway near the exit bay. This wing was quiet—storage, mostly. But the doors were tagged with Syndicate Three’s internal routing marks.

Lucas took a moment, leaning against the wall, breathing slow and controlled.

"You alright?" she asked.

He looked at her, expression unreadable.

"I’m always alright."

Lucas straightened, pulled a slender pouch from his coat, and tossed it toward a security scanner on the wall. It landed just right—enough to trigger a harmless static surge. The camera blinked. Reset.

That gave them twelve seconds.

Lucas moved to a nearby door, popped the lock, and slipped inside. When Ava entered, she realized this wasn’t loot.

It was replacement gear. Backup inventory.

Lucas moved fast, but selective. He grabbed a single prototype blade, a data crystal, and a coded stim packet—then sealed the door again before the security blink finished.

Ava stared. "That’s all you’re taking?"

Lucas turned, sliding the pouch back into his coat. "I don’t steal everything. I steal what matters. The difference is subtle, but important."

They stepped into the main exit corridor as lights flickered green.

Lucas stopped dead in his tracks, his gold eyes narrowing.

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