Page 79 of Stream & Scream
He keys the microphone, holding down as he speaks into it.
"Primary target is secure," he says, his voice carrying confidence. "Contract terminated."
The silence that follows stretches until it becomes oppressive, heavy with implications that neither party dares to acknowledge.
"Jaxen, clarify the status. Target eliminated or target extracted?"
"Neither," Jaxen says, and there's dark humor in his tone now. He’s about to deliver news they won't want to hear. "Target has been reclassified as personal property. No longer available for your entertainment."
Another silence, longer this time.
"Jaxen," the voice returns, colder now, edged with authority, "you are in violation of operational directives. Return the target to designated coordinates for proper disposal or face termination of employment and associated benefits."
Termination of employment. The euphemism would be funny if it weren't so obviously a death threat wrapped in corporate language, a promise that refusing orders will result in being hunted by other professionals.
But Jaxen just laughs. Not the predatory sound I've grown accustomed to during our encounters, but something genuinely amused, like he's just heard the funniest joke of his entire life.
"Let me clarify something for you," he says, keying the microphone with one hand while the other rests possessively on my knee. "I do not work for you anymore. You can get fucked."
He pauses, letting that information settle.
"And if you ever—ever—come near what's mine again," he continues, his voice dropping low, "I will hunt down every single person involved in this operation and kill them. Slowly, mercilessly, and on camera to show the world just how fucked up you really are. They won’t mourn you. They’ll spit on your graves when they find out what you’ve done."
The threat hangs in the air, dense and intimidating. I realize I’m holding my breath, not moving at all while they settle this.
"You're making a mistake," the voice says, but the authority is gone now, replaced by a hint of fear. "You know what we're capable of. What resources we have. You can't protect her forever."
"Watch me," Jaxen says.
Then he lifts the radio from its mounting bracket, rolls down his window, and hurls the device into the forest with enough force to shatter it against a tree trunk several yards away.
The sudden silence is deafening, broken only by the rumble of the truck's engine and the sound of me finally releasing my breath.
He did that forme.
To protect me.
"Why?" I whisper softly, because it doesn’t make sense. Why me?
He looks at me then,reallylooks.
"Because you're mine," he says simply, like it's the most obvious truth in the world, like the answer was always there if only I'd been smart enough to see it. "Because I've never found anyone who fit so perfectly into the spaces I didn't know were empty until I met you."
Fit perfectly. The words wrap around my heart.
"Besides," he continues, putting the truck in drive and pulling onto the road that will take us away from this forest of horrors and toward whatever future could possibly await people like us, "normal relationships are boring as fuck. Where's the fun in being with someone who doesn't understand that violence can be an art form when it's applied with sufficient skill and creativity?"
The forest slides past the windows as we gain speed, trees thinning and then the first signs of civilization—billboards, exit signs.
But even as the distance grows between us and the nightmare we're leaving behind, even as the immediate threats fade into memory, I can't shake the feeling that this is just the beginning rather than the end.
The people who created that show, who were money-hungry enough to hire professional killers to eliminate contestants for the amusement of paying viewers—they won't just accept that their investment has been compromised by participants who refused to follow the script.
They'll come for us. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. With more resources, more professionals, more money than I’ll ever see.
But sitting here in the passenger seat of Jaxen’s truck… I don’t feel afraid of being hunted again.
Because I won't be facing whatever comes alone.
