Story code: ST-000013
Part 3: Terms of Service
The agonizing scrape of dragging metal filled the cabin of Chloe’s sedan as she wrestled the steering wheel, forcing the crippled car away from the congested boulevard. Her front bumper, cracked from her desperate escape over the college median, acted like a haphazard plow against the asphalt. She turned into an empty commuter parking lot tucked behind a row of overgrown arborvitae trees, hoping the dense branches would shield her.
She stomped on the brake pedal, throwing the car into park. A thick cloud of white steam hissed from the warped hood. Her hands trembled so violently they rattled against her knees. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to formulate a rational plan. Her workplace was compromised, her apartment was surrounded by a mob, and her license plate was public.
A deafening blast of a car horn made her jolt upward.
A heavily decaled Jeep Wrangler careened into the deserted lot, tires smoking as it skidded to a halt diagonally across her rear bumper, boxing her in. A man in a tight black t-shirt leaped from the driver’s seat. He wore a chest harness supporting a smartphone on a stabilized gimbal. A blinding LED ring light framed the lens, and a fluffy directional microphone angled aggressively forward.
It was Vance. She recognized his face instantly from the watermark on the viral video.
“Chat, we got her! The plaza attacker is boxed in!” Vance screamed, his voice booming with theatrical, hyper-masculine outrage. He rushed her driver-side door, shoving the blinding ring light inches from the glass. “Look at the front of her car! She was fleeing the scene!”
Chloe’s heart hammered against her ribs. Her every instinct screamed at her to honk the horn, to yell for help, to throw the car into reverse. But as she stared into the glaring white circle of the LED light, she saw the reality of her situation.
Vance wanted a monster. The internet had convicted her based on a single frame of her baring her teeth from physical strain. If she screamed at him, if she showed even a fraction of the sheer terror boiling in her blood, he would have his ultimate, damning follow-up video.
Chloe took a slow, deliberate breath. She reached forward, turned the key to accessory mode, and pressed the window button. The glass lowered precisely three inches. She pulled the keys entirely out of the ignition, dropping them onto the dashboard, and placed her empty hands flat on the top of the steering wheel.
“Give us a statement, Chloe!” Vance shouted, wedging the fuzzy microphone near the gap in the window. “Why do you hate veterans? Are you sorry you attacked that old man? Defend yourself!”
Chloe looked directly into the camera lens, ignoring Vance entirely. She summoned the detached patience she used to mediate disputes in her sociology seminars.
“My name is Chloe,” she said, her voice pitched low, steady, and devoid of emotion. “I did not attack anyone. A man fell off the curb yesterday. I held his metal cane up so the rushing crowd would not trample it, and I used my other arm to brace him. The video you are broadcasting is selectively cropped.”
Vance scoffed, a loud, exaggerated sound meant for his audience. “Listen to the lies, chat! She’s trying to play the victim!”
He waited, pushing the camera closer, practically vibrating with anticipation for her to snap back.
Chloe simply stared at him, her expression deadpan. “You are running a targeted harassment campaign for internet traffic. I am sitting in a broken car. I am not going to scream at you. I will not give you the violent reaction you are trying to monetize.”
Vance shifted his weight, his confident posture fracturing. He glanced at the screen on his rig. “She’s… chat, look at her, she’s a total sociopath. Zero remorse!”
“I have nothing to be remorseful for,” Chloe replied, her voice barely above a conversational murmur. “You can film me sitting quietly all afternoon. It is going to get very boring for your viewers.”
Vance’s bravado faltered. The silence stretching between them was agonizing for a live broadcast. He kicked her front tire. “Get out of the car, coward!”
Chloe did not blink. From the reflection in her side mirror, she saw the chat scrolling rapidly on his screen. The frantic stream of emojis and text was visibly slowing down. People were tuning out. His manufactured outrage had met an immovable wall of utter boredom. Vance grimaced. He reached a finger up toward his screen, clearly intending to cut the feed before his viewer count cratered entirely.
Before his finger touched the glass, a lifted diesel pickup truck roared into the commuter lot.
The truck hopped the curb, spitting loose gravel against Chloe’s sedan, and slammed into park beside Vance’s Jeep. A massive flag bearing Vance’s channel logo fluttered wildly from the truck bed. Four young men piled out of the cab. They were dressed in heavy steel-toed boots, tactical vests, and dark bandanas pulled up over their noses. The driver gripped a heavy steel tire iron.
“Vance-Nation!” the driver screamed, eyes wide with manic energy. “We saw the stream! We got your back, Vance! Drag her out!”
Vance’s eyes widened in sheer horror. He dropped his hand from the phone screen, his theatrical persona instantly dissolving into genuine panic. “Whoa! Hey, guys, stop!” he yelled, thrusting his free hand toward his own radical subscribers.
The driver ignored him, winding back the heavy steel tire iron, aiming directly for Chloe’s windshield.
“Stop!” Vance shrieked, physically throwing himself between the subscriber and the hood of Chloe’s car. “Are you crazy? Do not touch her car! We’re live! That’s a TOS violation, you’ll get me permanently banned!”
The driver halted, his swing frozen midway in the air. He yanked down his bandana, revealing a face twisted in deep confusion and sudden anger. “What are you talking about? You just said on stream we needed to take out the trash!”
“It’s rhetoric!” Vance stammered, his voice cracking. “It’s just for the content, man! We just expose them online, you can’t actually smash people’s cars! You idiots!”
The other three men circled closer, gravel crunching heavily beneath their boots. They looked at Chloe, sitting perfectly still and unharmed behind the thin safety glass, and then turned their burning gazes back to Vance.
“Content?” the driver repeated slowly, stepping into the glaring white circle of Vance’s ring light. “We drove forty miles with our plates taped over to stop an enemy of the people, and you’re protecting her? For your stream account?”
“Guys, you don’t understand the algorithm,” Vance pleaded, taking a desperate step away from Chloe’s car, frantically trying to de-escalate the monster he had fed. “I’m just doing journalism. We don’t do felonies!”
“Sellout,” the kid with the tire iron spat, tightening his leather-gloved grip on the steel bar. “You’re just another lying corporate shill defending the establishment.”
The four men took a synchronized step toward Vance. The ring light illuminated the absolute terror setting into the streamer’s pale face as the men he had radicalized completely forgot about Chloe, forming a tight, menacing circle around their former idol.