The chat had pivoted in under a minute. Where the room had been laughing with him five minutes ago, it now suspected him of running an elaborate Tomb Tunnel operation under the cover of content. Sam let out a long, weary breath through his teeth."If it weren't for the system reward," he muttered under his breath, "who in their right mind would haul a kit like this out to a graveyard at midnight."Right now, though, he had nothing to argue with. Every staged effect, every layered atmosphere, every thoughtfully placed prop, all of it had quietly inverted into evidence against him. The fishing line. The fog machine. The paper talismans scrubbed wet on the tree. Each detail he'd been so proud of an hour earlier was now cited in court, in the chat, as premeditation.Even Alex, who knew exactly what every piece of gear in those bags had been bought for, had gone quiet beside him.Sam's breath thickened. He wasn't thinking about heat or trending boards anymore. He was

"There it is. The prompt finally popped up."Sam Sparks stared at the floating system notification hovering in the corner of his vision and let out a slow breath. So all he had to do was keep pushing forward. Simple in theory, brutal in execution. The road to that lottery draw had been anything but smooth, and yet, knowing a reward waited at the end, he found a strange kind of peace settling over him. Hard work paid off eventually. That was what he kept telling himself, anyway.Then, just as that small sense of relief began to bloom, a glaring red banner slashed across the top of his livestream window.[Warning: this stream's content is suspected of crossing platform red lines.][The incident has been reported to platform regulators in the backend.]His stomach dropped. That was it. Game over. Were they really about to nuke his channel? If the stream got shut down, the whole quest tied to tonight's broadcast would collapse with it, and every miserable hour s

The chat went dead silent for a beat, then exploded all over again. Forget the viewers. Sam himself was caught off guard."Wait, am I really that good?" he muttered, then the cocky lopsided grin crept back onto his face. "Actually, scratch that. Of course I am. I'm the luckiest streamer on the entire internet. This kind of thing's basically par for the course."The traffic was about to go absolutely vertical. He could feel it in his bones. Streamers who hauled gear into a Memorial Grounds at midnight were already a rare breed, and the ones who happened to crack open an active investigation while doing it? That was a category of one.He was right too. In dim apartments and twenty four hour offices all over the city, content account editors and indie creators were tearing apart their drafts and rewriting headlines from scratch. Traffic was currency, the hour was late, the competition was thin, and an opportunity like this only came around once in a long while. You did n

"I've been drinking. I can't drive," Conrad Lockwood said to the attendant standing near the hotel entrance. "Get me a designated driver."He hadn't felt it inside the restaurant, not with the warmth of the private room and the easy flow of conversation. But the moment he stepped through the revolving doors into the cool night air, the alcohol hit him like a wall. His head swam, and even his steps wobbled slightly on the polished marble."Right away, sir."The attendant turned to leave, but Conrad called after him. "One more thing. My two bodyguards are still upstairs in the private room, both passed out. Get them a hotel room and put it on my tab."At least he had enough decency not to leave them slumped over the table until morning.The designated driver arrived within minutes. When the man saw the car he'd be driving, a Bentley gleaming under the hotel's accent lighting, he froze for a solid three seconds before collecting himself. Eventually it was the d

Conrad Lockwood's new villa sat at the end of a private drive, all clean lines and cold marble. Beyond the man himself, only a handful of bodyguards occupied the sprawling estate. Normally, they never disturbed him unless something demanded his attention. Conrad glanced at the door when the knock came, then gestured for George to answer it. George had barely closed his fingers around the handle when the world exploded inward. The door blasted off its hinges with a deafening crack, catching George full in the chest and launching him backward like a ragdoll. He hit the floor hard, skidded several feet across the polished tile, and didn't move again. Conrad froze. Beside him, David went rigid, his expression locked somewhere between disbelief and animal alertness. This wasn't possible. Conrad knew exactly what George was capable of. In the underground fighting rings overseas, he'd watched the man dismantle over a dozen hardened fighters single-handedly. Even when th