APOCALYPSE LIVESTREAM: I GET RICH ON GLOBAL PANIC

Chapter 7: Trolling The Behemoth

POV: Gideon Vance

The Iron-Hide Behemoth roared, a sound like tectonic plates grinding together that shattered every remaining window pane along 34th Street. High above, the colossal Syndicate Obelisk pulsed with a violent violet flare, as if acknowledging the boss encounter.

I didn't wait for the beast to charge. I squeezed the trigger on my pneumatic winch, firing the steel grapple line straight into the heavy stone-plate armor behind the monster’s left shoulder. The titanium hook bit deep into a narrow gap between its obsidian scales.

"Gideon, wait!" Lyra’s voice crackled through my earpiece, strained and breathless over the static. "The structural integrity of that Macy's building hasn't been scanned! Alien mortar fire weakened the upper foundation! The interior floor plans are—"

"I’ve got the math, Lyra!" I yelled over the rush of the wind, kicking off the hood of a crushed yellow taxi and letting the winch yank me fifty feet through the air.

I landed hard on the Behemoth’s back, my boots skidding against its slick, bio-luminescent hide. The monster thrashed violently, whipping its massive horned head side to side in a frenzy, but I kept a death grip on the steel cable, leaning low like a rodeo rider on an enraged bull.

[Current Live Viewers: 9,200,000]

[Panic System Points: +180,000]

Syndicate_Watcher_88 (Alien): "SPECTACULAR PRIMITIVE MOUNTING PROCEDURE!"

Syndicate_Betting_Bot: "Odds updated! Participant Vance survival probability: 1.2%."

"Look at this big guy!" I shouted into my chest microphone, forcing a confident, easy grin for the camera Orb hovering ten feet away in the foggy air. "Victor Sterling told you this Red Zone was a death grid! He told you you needed an Apex Guild pass just to breathe the air down here!"

The Behemoth reared up on its hind legs, crashing straight through the shattered glass atrium of Macy's department store. Dust, mannequin limbs, and broken steel joists rained down around us in a chaotic storm.

"All you really need," I continued, ducking under a low-hanging support girder, "is good balance and a strong grip!"

I looked ahead into the ruined main concourse. A massive concrete load-bearing pillar stood near the center display floor. In my head, I calculated the angle based on standard stunt set construction: swing around the pillar, use the monster's forward momentum to flip onto the second-floor mezzanine, and fire an S-Rank plasma charge straight down its open throat. Easy. Clean. Professional.

Except I forgot one crucial detail.

This wasn't a pre-rigged movie set built out of plywood and plaster. It was an eighty-year-old building weakened by three weeks of alien bombardment.

The Behemoth didn't just brush past the pillar. It smashed its entire three-ton stone shoulder directly into the concrete base.

The pillar didn't hold. It sheared completely in half at the floor line, bringing thirty tons of reinforced upper-deck ceiling crashing down straight on top of us in a deafening roar.

"Gideon, move!" Lyra screamed through the comms.

I hit the quick-release lever on my winch, but the steel cable jammed in the scorched aluminum reel—a direct casualty of the chemical flare gel damage from earlier on the rooftop.

CRASH!

A heavy slab of reinforced concrete hit the back of my left shoulder like a speeding freight train.

Pain exploded through my chest, white-hot and absolute. The crushing impact ripped the winch handle clean out of my grip, snapping my left collarbone with a sickening, audible crack. I was launched backward through the dusty air, slamming hard into a steel display rack before crashing onto the cold floor.

A wave of rubble poured over me, burying my legs and lower torso under heavy brick, plaster, and twisted rebar.

My camera Orb tumbled to the dusty ground three feet away, its lens cracked across the center, lying sideways on the concrete. But the stream stayed live.

Inside my HUD, Nova's purple text window flashed frantically in violent crimson.

"CRITICAL BIOMETRIC ALERT! Cardiac rate: 142 BPM! Severe structural trauma to left thoracic wall and collarbone! Internal bleeding detected!"

I couldn't draw a breath. My lungs burned, trapped under the suffocating weight of the concrete slab. Warm, metallic blood filled my mouth, spilling past my lips onto the dusty floor.

"Gideon!" Lyra’s voice was hysterical now through the earpiece, all her cold analytical composure completely gone. "Gideon, answer me! Please!"

I tried to push the heavy stone off my chest, but my left arm was entirely useless, hanging limp and broken at my side. The Behemoth turned slowly in the dust cloud fifty feet away, shaking its massive head, its four glowing red eyes locking straight onto my pinned body.

POV: Victor Sterling

Victor Sterling leaned far over his marble desk, his eyes wide, a slow, dark grin spreading across his face as he watched the live broadcast wall.

On the central display, Gideon Vance was pinned in the dirt like a broken insect—bleeding from his mouth, helpless, and crushed under concrete in the center of the Red Zone.

Victor let out a loud, breathless laugh, slamming his fist onto the desk in pure, unadulterated triumph.

"Override his main feed!" Victor shouted to his broadcast technicians, his voice booming with absolute delight. "Put my face back on every survivor screen in Sector 1 right now!"

The regional feed split into a picture-in-picture view. Victor’s high-definition camera snapped online directly beside the lateral view of Gideon bleeding in the rubble.

"Look at your hero!" Victor roared into his microphone, pointing a manicured finger at the screen, his polished arrogance returning in a overwhelming wave. "Look at the blacklisted stuntman who thought he could ignore the rules! I told you Herald Square was a death sentence! I told you no human survives without Apex backing!"

The live comment section spiked into a chaotic, blinding blur.

User_801 (Human): "OH NO! HE'S PINNED!"

User_112 (Human): "Apex Guildmaster was right... he's gonna get eaten!"

Apex_Official: "Serves the fake hero right! Submit to Apex authority!"

Admin_Xylar (Syndicate): "Climax approaching. Harvest parameters optimal."

"Gideon Vance is an amateur!" Victor proclaimed, leaning close to his camera lens, his eyes gleaming with malicious satisfaction. "He is a fraud who traded on your fear for views, and now he is going to die in the dirt where he belongs! Anyone who wishes to live, bring your drops to Shelter 1 immediately!"

POV: Gideon Vance

The heavy, earth-shaking thuds of the Behemoth's footsteps vibrated through the stone pressing down on my chest. It was twenty feet away. Ten feet.

"Gideon..." Lyra’s voice came through the earpiece, trembling softly. "Listen to me... the underbelly. Beneath the second chest plate... there's a soft tissue joint where the stone armor meets the hide. When it rears up... if you can reach it..."

I spat the blood out of my mouth, coughing as concrete dust settled in my throat. My pulse pounded in my ears like a war drum. One hundred and forty beats. One hundred and fifty.

I looked at the sideways camera lens lying in the dirt three feet away. I saw Victor’s face projected on the split-screen above me, gloating, laughing, declaring my death to nine million viewers.

"Not today, Victor," I choked out, my voice raw, broken, and thick with blood.

I dug my right hand—my good hand—into the dirt beneath the heavy concrete slab. Pain screamed through my broken collarbone, making my vision go completely white at the edges, but I forced my fingers to find leverage against the floor.

I didn't have a stunt team. I didn't have a safety net.

I just had a knife, a cracked camera, and three years of unpaid debts.