APOCALYPSE LIVESTREAM: I GET RICH ON GLOBAL PANIC

Chapter 6: Red Zone Entry

POV: Victor Sterling

Victor Sterling slammed his glass whiskey tumbler against the polished marble desk, shattering it into jagged crystal shards. Amber liquor pooled across a stack of printed analytics reports, soaking into the red numbers showing Apex Guild’s global viewership metrics dropping by forty percent in under an hour.

"Get Administrator Xylar on the private channel!" Victor growled, his voice raspy, his usually immaculately combed dark hair frayed at the temples. "Now!"

"The Syndicate regional representative is refusing private transmissions, Guildmaster," his assistant whispered, cowering near the double doors of the plush penthouse suite. "He... he left an automated memo. He stated that 'Participant Vance’s broadcast metrics are producing superior emotional yield,' and warned that any direct signal jamming on his feed will trigger immediate monetary penalties."

Victor’s hand trembled violently as he stared at the giant display wall. On screen, Gideon Vance’s bloodied, soot-stained face was still plastered across millions of personal interfaces. The blacklisted, broken stuntman he had discarded three years ago was single-handedly dismantling his media empire.

"He’s a fluke!" Victor hissed, grinding his teeth until his jaw throbbed. "He’s a street rat playing with a glitched tool! Activate the sector-wide emergency system. Broadcast a priority bulletin to every shelter. Declare Sector 1’s central district an absolute Red Zone death grid. Announce that anyone entering Herald Square without Apex backing is committed to suicide. Let’s see how much his viewers love him when he’s digested by a Tier-2 Behemoth."

POV: Gideon Vance

The rain had stopped, leaving behind a thick, bio-luminescent purple fog that clung to the shattered storefronts of 34th Street. Floating alien spores drifted through the misty air like glowing dust, and every few seconds, minor gravity glitches caused loose pebbles and broken glass to float three inches off the asphalt before dropping back down.

I sat on a cracked vinyl booth inside an abandoned diner at the edge of Herald Square, my shirt pulled down off my left shoulder. The skin across my upper arm was raw, blistered, and an angry crimson from the chemical flare fluid. Every time my heart beat, a dull, throbbing heat shot straight up into my neck.

"Hold still," Lyra said softly.

She sat across from me in the booth, holding a small squeeze-tube of bio-salve she’d managed to salvage from the shelter’s medical kit. Her thumb was surprisingly gentle as she spread the cool, translucent gel over my burned flesh, though her dark eyes remained razor-sharp, fixed on the injury.

I winced, gritting my teeth against the sharp sting. "It looks worse than it feels."

"It looks like you set yourself on fire because you don't know how to ask for help," Lyra said quietly, not looking up. She capped the tube and handed me a sealed bottle of uncorrupted bottled water. "Your pulse rate might stay at fifty-six beats a minute, Gideon, but your flesh still burns like everyone else's."

I took a long drink of the water, feeling the cool liquid settle in my dry throat. Through the diner's cracked front window, I looked out at the looming, shadowed ruins of the Macy's building across the square. Deep, low thuds echoed from the center of the plaza—heavy, rhythmic impacts that vibrated through the floorboards beneath our boots.

"Victor announced five minutes ago that Herald Square is a designated closed Red Zone," Lyra added, pulling up her diagnostic slate. "He told the whole district that it's impossible to survive in there without Apex heavy armor. He’s trying to scare people back into his shelters."

"I know," I said, leaning my head back against the vinyl seat. "I saw the priority alert on Nova's HUD."

Lyra looked at me, her sharp eyes searching my face. "You're exhausted, Gideon. You've been running on adrenaline, spite, and fractured bones since the sky tore open. You don't have to walk into that plaza right now."

I looked down at my hands. They were calloused, stained with motor oil and ash, the skin around my knuckles split open.

"If I don't walk into that square," I said quietly, "Victor wins the story. He tells everyone the Red Zone is an impossible death trap, so they stay locked in his cages, paying his taxes, surrendering their gear, letting his men lock the doors when the monsters come. People need to see that the monsters aren't the thing keeping us trapped. Victor is."

Lyra was silent for a long moment. She reached out, her fingers brushing the frayed edge of my scorched jacket before she pulled her hand back, setting her tablet on the table.

"My brother always believed people like Sterling would protect us if we just followed the rules," she whispered, her voice tight with an emotion she couldn't quite mask. "He kept telling me to stay quiet, to hand over our extra rations, to play along. And it got him left behind." She looked up, her gaze steady, locking directly onto mine. "Don't die out there, Gideon. I didn't join this crazy stunt show just to watch another person I trust get eaten by alien trash."

I offered her a faint, genuine smile—the first real smile I’d felt on my face in three days.

"I'm a stuntman, Lyra," I said, checking the pressure valve on my pneumatic winch and strapping my broken camera rig over my fresh bandages. "We don't die. We just take hard landings."

"System Assistant Nova," a tiny purple text window popped up over my right shoulder, waving a small cartoon checkered flag. "Sensory diagnostic update! Host Gideon's emotional state has transitioned from 'Pure Spite' to 'Mildly Heroic'! Warning: Entering the Red Zone will trigger a regional boss encounter! Shall I set the broadcast stream title to 'Gideon's Final Stunt'?"

"Change it to 'Breaking the Red Zone'," I corrected, standing up and stepping out of the diner into the foggy street.

The central plaza of Herald Square was a graveyard of overturned yellow cabs, crushed steel girders, and alien bio-mass tendrils creeping up the stone facades. High above, the colossal Syndicate Obelisk cast its cold, violet glare through the fog.

In the center of the square, standing twenty feet tall on four massive, stone-plated legs, was the Tier-2 Iron-Hide Behemoth. Its broad chest hummed with a terrifying green plasma heat, its heavy spiked tail casually crushing an abandoned city bus like an aluminum can.

My camera Orb rose high into the air, its red light burning solid as the global stream counter began to climb once more.

[Current Live Viewers: 6,000,000... 8,500,000!]

[Panic System Points: +220,000 (HIGH-RISK ZONE ENTRY)]

Admin_Xylar (Syndicate): "The Producer enters the Red Zone. Let the harvest begin."

"All right, Victor," I muttered, unholstering my grappling winch as the massive beast turned its four glowing red eyes toward me. "Let's see how your death grid holds up."