Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 82: : The Hunter in the Hall

Chapter 82: : The Hunter in the Hall

Ava caught it too, stepping to the side of the hallway with silent instinct. "We’ve got company."

Lucas didn’t blink. "Then it’s rude not to say hello."

He slipped his coat open, flicked a small black device from his belt, and pressed it once.

The lights died.

Total darkness swallowed the corridor for half a heartbeat—enough time for confusion to ripple through the Syndicate comms.

Then Lucas moved.

He didn’t run. He flowed. Like shadow folded in on itself.

Ava followed, but barely. Even with her enhanced tracking, Lucas was two steps ahead, every move precise and merciless.

A door opened just ahead—wrong sound, fast and loud.

Lucas was already there. A dart hit the first enforcer in the throat.

Thud.

The man crumpled silently.

Two more turned the corner, weapons drawn.

Lucas slid low across the slick bunker floor, sweeping one off his feet with a metal baton drawn from inside his boot. He came up twisting, catching the second in the solar plexus before driving a dart into his neck with surgical grace.

Ava ducked behind cover, scanning. Four more signatures ahead. Heat rising. They were moving fast, cutting the exit route off.

"We’re boxed in," she warned.

Lucas didn’t slow. "Good. I’m tired of sneaking."

He turned sharply and broke right—through a sealed maintenance panel Ava hadn’t noticed. A backup hallway. Thin, tight, wired for ventilation, not movement.

He moved like he’d built the damn place.

The Syndicate team scrambled to follow, but Lucas was already turning them into ghosts.

Another dart. Another drop. A flashbomb—nonlethal, but enough to disorient. The corridor sang with chaos.

Lucas ducked under a steel beam and yanked the support strut loose behind him. The beam collapsed, slamming the path shut just as three Syndicate enforcers rounded the bend.

"That’ll hold for sixty seconds," he said coolly. "Unless they’re smarter than they look. Spoiler: they’re not."

Ava gave him a glance. "You’re enjoying this."

Lucas flashed a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Wouldn’t you?"

They burst into a side chamber—a loading dock. Empty. Almost.

One man waited.

Tall. Full body armor. Twin pulse blades mounted on either wrist.

Lucas slowed.

"Hello, Varrik," he said, voice low, venom-smooth.

The armored man tilted his head. "You stole from us."

"Please. You stole it first."

"Angel wants you alive."

Lucas’s grin widened.

"She wants a lot of things."

The fight was brutal. Sharp.

Varrik lunged—faster than the others. Ava barely had time to track him before Lucas moved.

Steel rang against metal. Sparks flew.

Lucas ducked, twisted, flipped over Varrik’s shoulder, slammed a dart into the back of his neck—but it didn’t drop him.

Armor. Dosed.

Lucas snarled.

"Fine."

He drew the blade he’d taken from the last vault—short, curved, gleaming with reactive edge tech. It hissed against the air as it activated.

The two clashed—Lucas a blur, all fluid motion and pinpoint aggression. Varrik, all force and grind, blades singing as they missed, then hit, then missed again.

A low feint. A kick to the knee. A twist of the wrist. A throat strike.

Then the knife—driven into a weak seam behind the armor’s collar.

Varrik collapsed with a metal clang.

Lucas stood over him, chest rising and falling. He flicked blood from the blade with an almost bored motion, then holstered it.

"Tell Angel," he murmured to the unconscious body, "if she wanted a war, she should’ve sent someone I respected."

He turned to Ava.

"Follow me."

Ava moved in lockstep beside him now—not because she could match his speed easily, but because he wasn’t waiting anymore.

This wasn’t a stealth exit.

This was an announcement.

They weren’t just leaving with stolen tech.

They were leaving with intent.

Lucas cut down another corridor without hesitation, snapping off a magnetic seal on a wall panel and yanking down two handheld detonators. He tossed one to Ava without looking.

"Set it. Corner junction. Leave the other side open."

"Why?" she asked, catching it with one hand.

"Because it’s time they started guessing instead of following." His voice was level—ice through metal.

They planted the charges in seconds. Nothing lethal, just noise and chaos. The kind of distraction that made power-hungry men paranoid and sloppy.

Lucas stepped back and admired his work like a painter finishing a brushstroke.

"I give it thirty seconds."

Ava arched a brow. "You’re being reckless."

"No," he said, grin sliding into place. "I’m being memorable."

The explosion hit behind them as they entered the last stretch of corridor, rolling heat and smoke like stage effects. Red warning lights lit up above every emergency door. Voices shouted in the distance—confused, armed, disoriented.

Lucas kicked open the door to the east exit and walked straight into a security checkpoint with four armed guards.

Ava stopped. Her hand hovered near her weapon.

Lucas raised his hands casually, like he was stepping into a photo shoot.

"Afternoon, gentlemen." His smile was dazzling. "We’re on our way out. No need to get twitchy."

The guards hesitated. Not out of confusion—but because Lucas Bai had that tone. The one that made you pause just long enough to wonder if he was bluffing.

Or if he knew something you didn’t.

One of them raised a weapon. "You’re not authorized—"

Lucas flicked his wrist. A single ID chip landed on the ground at their feet.

The guard glanced down. Then froze.

Because the chip wasn’t just clearance.

It was a syndicate override.

A golden tier. Untouched. Untampered. Absolute.

"Where did you get that?" the lead guard asked, voice suddenly smaller.

Lucas stepped forward, smile sharpening. "From a dead man who used to ask too many questions. Want to join him?"

Silence.

The guards lowered their weapons. One stepped aside.

"That’s what I thought," Lucas muttered, striding past them without a backward glance.

Ava followed, still processing.

"You stole that chip."

"I stole his identity. The chip was a freebie."

"You’re insane."

"And yet, I’m still alive."

They stepped into the open loading bay just as a secondary alarm began to wail. Reinforcements were coming—but from the wrong direction.

Because Lucas had already redirected the Syndicate’s own emergency protocols thirty minutes ago.

They were chasing their own tail.

Ava looked at him. Really looked at him. The gold in his eyes, the casual poise, the way he never even glanced back.

He didn’t just play bold. He was bold.

Dangerously so.

They reached the civilian transport level, where Lucas stopped at a dull metal terminal and tapped in a command sequence.

The wall behind it slid open, revealing an old maintenance tram—off-grid, low-speed, untraceable.

Ava stared. "You planted an exit route?"

Lucas winked. "Beauty, I plant exit routes before I start relationships."

He stepped inside and turned to her, one hand outstretched like an offer, the other already flipping a switch to power the tram.

"Coming?"

Ava hesitated. Just a second.

Then took his hand.

The tram hissed to life, sliding forward on quiet rails through an abandoned tunnel.

They vanished into the dark—

—with the Syndicate in chaos behind them, and the weight of Lucas Bai’s boldest move yet just starting to echo through Level One.