Page 9 of Stream & Scream
And I move.
Not toward her.
Not yet.
Let her breathe a little.
Let my little clickbait run.
I want to see how far she gets before I decide to take her apart.
CHAPTER THREE
Olivia
Friday Night. The game begins.
The countdown echoes through the forest, each syllable louder than the last.
"Ten... nine... eight..."
My heart hammers against my ribs, but I force myself to stay calm. Around me, the other contestants are wild-eyed and ready, some bouncing on their toes like they're about to run a marathon, others shaking out their hands to relieve their nerves.
"Seven... six... five..."
I adjust the straps on my backpack, checking that they’re tight.
"Four... three... two..."
The forest around us stills.
"One. Stream & Scream is LIVE!"
Chaos.
Absolute fucking chaos.
Fifteen people explode into motion all at once, crashing through the underbrush in every direction. Screams of excitement mix with the sound of branches whipping acrossfaces and roots catching ankles. I watch Chase Durant trip spectacularly over a fallen log, his "wilderness expertise" apparently not extending to watching where he's going. Emily Cho disappears into a thicket of thorns, her panicked shrieks echoing back through the trees.
I head northeast, following the subtle slope of the land and the sound of moving water.
Behind me, I can hear Riley Torres barreling through the woods, probably following his "strategy" of running as far as possible as fast as possible. Because that's totally how you survive in the wilderness—by burning through your energy reserves in the first five minutes.
The forest feels different now that the game has started. The afternoon light filters through the canopy in rays of gold and green. Outside of the fleeing contestants, it’s too quiet. There are no birds singing, no small animals rustling in the underbrush. Like everything with any sense has already left the area.
I push the thought away and focus. The sound of running water reaches my ears before I see it, and a small, victorious smile cracks across my face. The stream is perfect—clear, fast-moving, about three feet wide and maybe a foot deep.
I follow the stream for another hundred yards until I find what I'm looking for—a small clearing on the bank, sheltered by an overhang of rock and screened by thick bushes on three sides.
I drop my pack and immediately start gathering materials. My first priority is fire. The temperature will drop once the sun goes down, and hypothermia will take me out long before hunger or thirst will.
The forest floor provides everything I need—dry tinder, kindling from dead branches that snap cleanly when I test them, larger fuel wood from the deadfall scattered around the clearing. I build my fire pit in a depression near the water, surrounding it with rocks to contain the heat.
My hands work quickly, muscle memory from summers spent at camps that were supposed to "build character" but mostly just taught me that adults lie about a lot of things. The foster parents who shipped me off to those camps thought they were teaching me discipline and self-reliance. What they actually taught me was that I could depend on myself when everyone else let me down.
The tinder catches on my third attempt with my flint, tiny flames licking hungrily at the dry grass and bark shavings. I feed it carefully, adding progressively larger pieces until I have a solid fire that will burn for hours with minimal maintenance. I’ll be able to hide out until morning.
Only now do I allow myself to really look at my wrist device.
