Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 85: : Threshold

Chapter 85: : Threshold

The outer gate groaned as it opened, its metal jaws parting with reluctant force.

Ava stepped through first.

The air hit like a slap—sharp, dry, not filtered. Her coat whipped slightly in the wind as she moved past the perimeter, boots crunching on the cracked concrete beyond the security threshold.

Behind her, the heavy door hissed shut.

She didn’t look back.

The bunker was done.

No more repair queue. No more twenty-hour shifts with Lucas sending her schematics at midnight like it was urgent. No more pretending she was just another systemless survivor.

Lucas stepped up beside her, his long coat settling into place with practiced ease. He looked almost comfortable in the dying light, like this wasteland suited him.

Ava scanned the horizon. The city stretched ahead like a jagged corpse, its bones made of steel and ash. Skyscrapers half-eaten by time, bridges collapsed like snapped ribs. The silence out here was thick—nothing chirped, nothing moved.

Just ruins and wind.

Lucas broke it first."Dramatic, isn’t it?"

Ava didn’t answer.

Her eyes traced the skyline, her throat dry. She hadn’t been out this far in weeks—not since the last scavenging trip that ended in fire blood and Linda Zhangs’s body cooling in the dust.

It was the moment Ava life changed for the better since she met Lucas. Not that she was going to tell him how much him helping had changed her.

Lucas tilted his head, golden eyes sharp."Still with me, Beauty?"

"Barely."

They started walking.

The pavement was fractured and uneven. Every few feet, a sinkhole had half-swallowed some piece of old-world infrastructure. Cars melted into the road. Trash burned into walls. Bones occasionally peeked out from rubble like forgotten decorations.

Ava adjusted the strap of her pack.

Two hours later, her legs ached with every step. Her eyes felt gritty. Her shoulders dragged.

Lucas kept moving without pause, hands in his pockets like they were on a leisurely stroll.

She had been awake for over thirty hours. Probably more.

She didn’t say anything, but the fatigue was setting in hard.

Lucas finally glanced back."You didn’t get any sleep before we left, did you?"

Ava scowled."Hard to nap with Jessica in the room breathing fake sincerity all over everything."

Lucas snorted."Let me guess—smiling like she was your best friend while mentally calculating how much your organs would go for on the black market?"

Ava grunted."She didn’t stop talking. Like she thought if she kept me distracted long enough, I’d hand over my system key."

Lucas raised an eyebrow."Would you?"

"Over your dead body."

He grinned."Flattered."

The wind picked up again, whistling through the ruins. A distant metal structure groaned somewhere ahead—nothing immediate, but enough to keep Ava’s pulse high.

Her Blueprint System flickered quietly in the corner of her vision.

[FATIGUE DETECTED]

[RECOMMENDED: REST]

[SLEEP DEPRIVATION: 87%]

She swiped the alert away.

Lucas stepped up onto a collapsed slab of road and pointed past a wall of tangled rebar."We’re close."

Ava blinked."To what?"

"William’s rendezvous point. Should be just past that drainage canal."

She squinted through the mess. In the distance, the edge of a collapsed highway curved upward like a raised fist. Between them and that ridge, however, lay a stretch of ground that had once been a park—or maybe a plaza.

Now it was a nest of open ground. Too quiet. Too exposed.

Ava frowned."You sure he’s coming through there?"

"He always does." Lucas stepped down, brushing dust from his coat."It’s part of the routine. He stirs up attention on the roads, leads the scent away from us, then circles back here."

"He trusts the routine too much."

"William doesn’t trust anything. He’s just very good at making other people think he does."

Ava pushed her hair back from her face. The silver strands in it caught the last bit of sunlight.

She hated how much it looked like ash.

Ten more minutes, Lucas had said.

She hoped he was right.

Because if William didn’t show—

Her system pinged again.

[SUNSET IN 120 MINUTES]

[WARNING: NIGHT RISK – HIGH MUTANT ACTIVITY EXPECTED]

Ava inhaled sharply and quickened her pace.

Lucas kept close, just behind her shoulder now, like he sensed the shift in her tension.

"Tired?"

Ava didn’t bother lying."Dead on my feet."

Lucas stepped past her, brushing off his coat as he angled toward a chunk of collapsed wall nearby."Good thing I always planned ahead."

He knelt beside the debris, pressing his palm against a slab of fake concrete. A faint click echoed, followed by the quiet hiss of hydraulics.

The slab slid open.

Beneath it—dust-covered but intact—was a matte-black motorbike. Low-profile. Modified. Sleek. It looked like it had been parked there long before today, perfectly hidden inside a reinforced checkpoint cache.

Ava blinked."You stashed a bike?"

Lucas smirked as he dusted it off."I stash a lot of things. This one’s just the fun kind."

He kicked it to life. The engine purred—smooth, quiet, tuned for stealth.

Ava stared at it for a second, then back at the long, broken road ahead.

Walking another two hours in her state felt impossible.

Lucas swung a leg over the seat and looked at her, eyebrow raised."Well? You want to keep limping or ride like royalty?"

She sighed and climbed on behind him, arms wrapping tightly around his waist without ceremony.

Lucas revved the engine."We’ve got about two more hours of light. We’ll ride as far as we can, find shelter before it gets too dark."

"And if we don’t?"

"Then we camp in the open. Hope the monsters are polite and wait for sunrise."

Ava muttered under her breath."Comforting."

Lucas smirked."Relax. If it gets too dark, we won’t see them coming. Which means we die faster. Very efficient."

Ava tightened her grip."Drive, Bai."

The bike surged forward, smooth over cracked stone and fractured concrete.

The ruins blurred past, shadows lengthening across the street. The city around them was a silent graveyard—buildings leaning like drunks, windows hollow, alleys yawning wide with secrets.

Above them, the sky kept bleeding orange into black.

And ahead?

They rode straight into it.