Page 104 of Stream Heat
Jace stood apart by the window, watching shadows crawl across the opposite wall. “What does your gut say?”
I really thought about it, not just the guilt, not even the fear, but the ugly, bottomless certainty that had been gnawing at me all along. “That this goes a lot deeper than just Victoria. That if I stay quiet, I’m letting that rot get covered up until the next person gets chewed up by it. But knowing that doesn’t make it less terrifying.”
“You’re already the face of this,” Reid said, his voice unyielding. “The question is how you use that power. That’s the only thing you get to control.”
My throat was raw, and I hadn’t even started talking. “What if I screw it up? What if it ruins everything we’ve built, the new options, the progress, the way we’re finally starting to feel safe again?”
“Then we start over.” Reid’s eyes were gentle. “But we don’t build our peace on someone else’s pain.”
I sat with that for a long minute, the words bruising and true. “If I do it, I want to be sure they’ll protect the others. Not just use their misery as clickbait.”
“Make it a condition,” Malik advised. “Get a read on the reporter. Spell out your limits.”
I nodded, but the anxiety didn’t ease. Tomorrow would change everything, one way or another. “I want to do the call alone. But… after, I’ll let you all know what she says.”
“Deal,” Reid said.
That afternoon, I hunted down everything I could about Sarah Kiminski, the StreamWatch reporter. She was the real deal, bylines going back years, exposés that had forced resignations and policy overhauls at streaming giants. No shadiness about her methods. No bullshit. People described her as relentless but fair, the kind of journalist who understood what it cost to be quoted in a piece like this.
But knowing her resume wasn’t enough. I needed to hear it from her, in plain language.
She picked up after the second ring. “Kara, thank you for getting in touch.” Her voice was clipped, businesslike, but not unkind.
I didn’t waste a second. “I need to understand your approach before I agree to participate.”
“Absolutely. This started long before your case broke, but your story made a lot of other people realize they weren’t alone. They started reaching out after your stream with Callie Cross.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected. “People wrote to you?”
“Nine at Nexus alone. Six are willing to put their names on record and the rest want anonymity. We’re following their lead, across the board.”
I exhaled slowly, tension leaking out of me for the first time all day. “You need specifics about how it worked. The system.”
“That’s right. How suppressants were framed as conditional for employment, the health toll, the incentives and threats. The big picture.”
“And you won’t expose details without explicit consent?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Never. We’re not here to destroy lives, just to make powerful people take responsibility for what they allowed, and encouraged, to happen.”
For half an hour, we drilled down into fact-checking, ethics, the plan for follow-up, every question I could possibly throw at her. By the end, I actually believed she meant it. Nobody was getting thrown under the bus for a headline.
When I wandered back out to the living room, the pack was waiting, all eyes and nervous energy.
“How’d it go?” Malik was first, as always.
“Better than I thought. She’s the real thing. She’s got other people already willing to speak up, and she’s not burning anybody who isn’t ready for it.” I curled up in an empty armchair and let my shoulders drop for the first time. “I think I’m doing it. The interview’s in the morning, before the piece drops.”
A pulse of unease moved through the room, but nobody flinched.
“You sure?” Jace asked. “This won’t just bring heat on you. We’re all going to be in the blast radius.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But… I think I’d rather face it together than pretend it isn’t happening.”
“Let the world know where we stand,” Theo said, lips curling in something close to a real smile.
Reid wrapped it up with the only thing that mattered. “Whatever happens, we stay together.”
That night, curled up under my comforter, fear rolled through me in crash after crash. But under it, there was something else, the solidness of knowing I wasn’t alone in this anymore. That if the fight came, I’d have backup. That the nextkid, the one who didn’t have a pack or a platform, might not have to go through it the way I did.
