The Most Dangerous Game
Chapter 17 Do It for The Vine
Once they got back to the cave, Sean immediately scrambled to connect the Starlink. Greg dropped to his knees, his legs buckling from the weight of what just happened. His eyes stayed fixed on the dirt floor, the blood, the screaming—the image of Tyler’s face frozen in terror, etched into his mind.
Sean tapped away at his phone, pulling up the video they had just recorded. “I’m posting it,” he said, without looking up.
Greg looked up, his face pale. “You’re seriously posting that?”
Sean turned the screen toward him, showing the blurred thumbnail: Tyler thrashing, the bear lunging, chaos wrapped in a one-minute square. “It’s already edited. Blurred. Pixelated. Just enough to not get flagged.”
Greg winced. “I don’t know, man…”
Sean hesitated for a moment. “You want people to know what happened, right?”
Greg didn’t answer. His hands trembled as he pulled out his phone and stared at the screen. Instagram opened by reflex. A bikini pic filled the screen—a brunette in a thong, arching her back on some beach somewhere. On any other day, Greg would’ve double-tapped without thinking. But now, the image made his stomach turn. It felt like a different world. A joke. A lie.
He flipped the camera to selfie mode. The face staring back at him looked…wrong. Like a mask someone forgot to remove.
“H-hey guys… Greg here.” His voice cracked. His lips twitched into a smile that died halfway. “You’re probably gonna see a video… You’ll know it when you do. It’s real. That was my friend, Tyler. Please… send help. We’re in Vickers Forest. No food. We didn’t think it’d go this far.”
He paused, the next words caught in his throat.
“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
He posted it, hands still shaking.
A minute later, Sean’s voice pierced the silence.
“Yo.” He turned the screen to Greg. “It’s blowing up.”
Greg stood and walked over, reluctant. On the screen, numbers climbed like they were trying to escape gravity—views, likes, comments, shares. The pixelated carnage was being passed around like wildfire.
300,000 likes. 1.4 million views. 800 comments. 2,000 shares.
Greg’s mouth was dry.
Sean muttered, almost to himself, “We might actually make something from this…”
Greg’s stomach twisted. “Sean…”
Sean looked at him, expectant.
“I don’t have the money.”
Sean blinked. “What?”
“There’s no million-dollar prize. I thought—if the video went viral—we’d figure it out. Get sponsors. Ads. Something.”
Sean’s face froze. He looked past Greg, out toward the forest. “So we told people to risk their lives… for nothing?”
Greg stayed silent. The only sound was the Starlink’s hum.
Sean let out a dry laugh. “Well… it worked. The video’s viral.”
They both stared at the screen.
Greg’s voice was barely a whisper. “What do we do now?”
Sean held up the phone. “We keep going.”
Greg looked at him, stunned.
“We document everything. Keep it rolling. If we can’t pay someone a million bucks, we might as well make a million bucks.”
Greg wanted to protest. But the numbers kept climbing. And part of him—a dark, quiet part—agreed.
After a long silence, Greg asked, “You hungry?”
Sean nodded. “Starving.”
Greg dug into his bag, pulled out a coil of fishing wire and a hook. He scanned the cave floor for a decent stick.
“We’ll try the river again,” he said. “Maybe catch something this time.”
As they walked into the trees, the night closing in around them, Greg opened the app one more time. The thumbnail glared back at him—Tyler’s last moment, looped into eternity.
And that quiet voice in his head whispered again:
A million likes would’ve been nice.
