Page 2 of Now Streaming

Min couldn’t help but physically jump at the sound of the front door slamming in the area she had just left. Shit, he was telling the truth. She had to find a weapon.

“Keep hiding. I’ll find you wherever you go. You’re my favorite prey, Flame.”

Min rolled her eyes at his dramatics. “I’ll remember you said that when I’m shoving a grenade launcher up your ass.”

She crept into room after room, staying as silent as she could, but there were no signs of any sort of weapon drop, nothing she could use against him. She briefly contemplated the lamp on the nightstand, but even in a video game, his head was probably too hard to feel that.

Min made her way into the last room, thinking, if anything, she could jump out the window. If she hit the button to roll at the right time before impact…

Shaking her head, she knew she was kidding herself. Even the minimal amount of damage from the fall would take her out of the game. Which meant she had to figure something out, and she had to figure it out fast. She sent the camera around the room, searching for anything that could help her out of her current predicament… but the place was empty of anything, a bare room with a closet and a wire frame twin bed. Min was screwed.

The game filtered his heavy footsteps as he walked up the stairs, not even trying to be stealthy or sneaky. He was stalking her, wanting her to hear him and know he was coming, knowing that she didn’t have a lot of health left. He would know she was trapped and considering her limited options. And he knew as well as she did that the fall out the window would kill her.

“Tell you what, Flame. I’ll make you a deal.”Somehow his voice went even deeper, quieter, as if it really were just the two of them in this video game house. Min felt the sound of it slide down her spine, and she fought a shiver as she tried to think of a plan—any plan. Desperate, she angled her camera just right… and saw a marker on the floor.Jackpot. She pressed the buttons for her avatar to pull out her combat knife.

“What kind of deal?” she asked, playing along. She didn’t want him guessing what she was doing, so she very much needed him to drag out this villain monologue as she went to work carving a hole into the floor.

“You come out. We work together and take out the other two players. Then we worry about each other. I know you’re low on health. I have a med kit. It’s yours, as a symbol of good faith.”

A glance at chat showed that they would love this, love any interaction between her and DeathsHead, but especially the novel idea of them working together. She and DeathsHead were rarely on the same team, but when they were, they were unstoppable. Chat was yelling in all caps for her to take the deal, but she still shook her head, the pink hair from her wig hitting her cheeks with the movement. She wasn’t falling for this again.

“You’ve said that before, Death. Remember how that turned out for me?”

His laugh was her answer. The last time he had offered that deal, he had immediately shot her when she showed herself. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

“Okay, that’s fair. But I’m serious this time. You and me against the world, Flame. What do you say?”

His footsteps were right outside the door of the room she was currently hiding in. She knew he knew she was in there. But he was assuming she was hiding, that she was low on health and ammo and therefore out of options.Big mistake.The hole in the floor was slowly growing, and she started to hope she would actually make it out of this room alive.

“I think you know the answer.” She let the sarcasm bleed into her tone, wanting to keep him distracted. She felt the tension in her bones as she sawed away at the marker on the floor, so close to escape, the anticipation of him opening that door running through her veins.Almost…

He gave a deep sigh as if disappointed.“Well. Remember that I offered.”

The door opened just as Min’s avatar ripped the floor up. She laughed in victory as she immediately sent her avatar jumping down through the hole, away from DeathsHead.

Except… when she spun the camera to laugh at his avatar, it wasn’t Death. The guy with the gun pointed at her was another player, KevinKillsU. Min’s mind raced as dread pooled in her stomach. If Kevin was who was coming up the stairs…

Min’s avatar dropped to the floor below, landing with a thud. And she found herself staring down the barrel of a machine gun, held by none other than the masked DeathsHead.

“No!” Min yelled, but it was already too late. The machine gun fired, hitting her right in the chest several times, destroying what was left of her armor and leaving her avatar a bloody and broken mess on the floor. She could hear his dark chuckle as she cursed into the microphone.

“You made a deal with Kevin, you lying son of a—”

“Kevin knows a deal when he’s offered one. Maybe next time you’ll listen to me.”

Min practically growled into her microphone. “The next time we play, I’m going to paint the walls with your blood.”

“You can certainly try.”

Shaking her head, Min glanced at her chat, wanting to commiserate on her loss. But they weren’t talking about her incredible defeat. They were talking about something else, something about a photo drop. Min quickly muted herself in-game, speaking only on her stream.

“Chat, what’s this about a photo?”

As she scrolled through the chat, trying to figure it out, her heart dropped into her stomach, her room spinning. She didn’t even hear the other players on stream as they continued the game.

Someone had posted photos of her online.

Photos of her still in her wig and heavy makeup—the usual costume of her online FlameThrower persona, the one she used to hide what she really looked like while still showing her face on stream. But in the photos, she wasn’t dressed in one of her signature over-the-top outfits, the dresses with a corset and fishnets and some sort of skirt. Nope.

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