Page 8 of Stream & Scream
No trial. No press. No fucking therapy.
Just a paper trail and a plane ticket. A muzzle of silence and a check with enough zeroes to keep me quiet. They dumped me back in the States and hoped I’d disappear. Fade like smoke. Like a ghost.
Instead, I found Milo Vane.Or maybe he found me. That slippery little rat always had a nose for ruin. For blood.
“You ever think about going pro?” he asked me, like he wasn’t already jerking himself off to the Lamal tapes and body cam footage that got leaked. He slid a folder that reeked of gunpowder and death onto the bar. I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.
He grinned like he could already taste it. “All those instincts. All that damage. You wanna rot in a basement somewhere, or you wanna put thatdarknessto use?”
He offered me a contract. A mask. A kill count.
A fucking game.
I didn’t even blink. I took the alias of the hunter and made it my fucking face. Myeverything.
Because once you learn tolikethe blood, there’s no going back. Once you hear what a scream sounds like when it’s real—when it’searned—you stop craving silence. You start craving more.
They think this show made me. But the truth? The truth is… I brought this game with me. They just gave it a spotlight.
Back in the woods, the timer ticks in my ear.
Sixty seconds until it begins.
Olivia is crouched now, hand brushing over a crumbled log, her eyes tracking something in the dark. She doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t play for the drone. Doesn’t flirt with the camera, giggle, scream or beg for more followers. The others are doing all of that. Tara won’t stop bitching about the lighting. Riley’s shirtless despite the cold and flexing like his pecs are gonna save him. Lexie’s holding her wristwatch out like she's adjusting her makeup in the tiny camera.
Liv just moves.
Effortless. Smart.
No wasted steps.
I can’t see her full file. Milo keeps the good ones locked. But I’ve pieced together enough.
And I want to see what it takes to break her.
Thirty seconds.
I slide the helmet over my head. The inside smells like old leather and sweat. It hums when I breathe. My vision shifts—thermal overlay, heat signatures. Liv glows like a heartbeat in the dark.
My hands flex around the knife at my side. Not drawn yet. Not for her. Not until she earns it.
I’ve killed a hundred of them. Pretty girls with fake cries. Tough guys who crumple once the game turns real. This one’s different.
This one… might actually survive.
But only if I let her.
Ten seconds.
The voice of Milo Vane cracks through the trees, loud and too fucking bright.
“Contestants—lights are green. Let the show begin. Make it count.”
The forest doesn’t change. Not to the eye.
But I feel it.
That shift in the air. That moment where the world tilts, where every tree becomes a corridor and every step could end in death. The camera drones rise. The signal beeps green.
