Survival Of The Fittest

June 7, 2015, 9:17 am
Editor's Office, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California

Eyes glued to the screen, the face of the man at the desk wore a deathly serious expression, his scowl barely obscured by the thick brown moustache that he wore - his trademark moustache, which he'd had for twenty years. W. Robert Henderson had been the editor of the Los Angeles Times for the last four, and had been an employee at the paper for quadruple that. He was no stranger to trauma and had certainly been forced to report on his fair share of horrific events. The uptick in school shootings in recent years had been a sore spot for every reporter who had to ask questions of victims parents, and the election of what some people in the newsroom generously referred to as a 'right-wing lunatic as the President of the United States had frayed nerves, some even past their breaking points. Survival of the Fittest was an ever-present danger, and many newspapers - the Times among them, had particular departments whose assignments were strictly to cover the major stories that arose from that. So as far as trauma went, W. Robert - Bob to everyone but the major shareholders, was something of an expert. He had a reputation as something of a hard-ass, but ensured that nothing that was printed wasn't of at least some quality, lest the writers know they would have to answer to him.

So as he sat in his office behind the large oak desk; Tracy Nakamura, one of his most junior reporters on the SOTF beat beside him, his scowl barely told any of the story of what was going on within his head. For her part, Tracy was holding up a brave face, but the slight Los Angeles native was keeping her distance, leaning in so as to present a united front, body language betraying her. She was scared of what Bob would do once he saw this tape, and he knew it. A native Angeleno of mixed Japanese and Caucasian descent, she was thought of as someone who had a bright future at the paper. Her articles were potent; a real rising star in the world of journalism. Someone had evidently taken notice, because the video that sat before him right now was one that could only have come from an internal government source, and would not have been leaked to someone who would have been reckless with it. If Tracy was guilty of anything it may have been occasional overzealous enthusiasm, but reckless she wasn't.

"No one else has seen this?" Bob's trademark growl was on full effect here. While the two of them were alone, he was still putting on a bit of a show. He wasn't entirely sure why. Tracy, to her credit, didn't stammer or stumble in her response.

"No, sir," she shook her head, "I came right here when I realized what it was."

His lips pursed, Bob rubbed at his moustache, as he did whenever he was deep in contemplation. Still scowling, he looked up at Tracy, a serious look in his eyes. "And you're certain that this is genuine? Absolutely, one-hundred percent?"

She gulped and nodded, still barely holding herself together. The act brushed loose a stray strand of her short black hair, wrapped back in a messy ponytail. She brushed it behind her ear as she nervously glanced out the window on the wall. The door to Bob's office was closed, but the window looked out onto the newsroom, which was - as per the usual, bustling with activity. Survival of the Fittest's ugly reappearance had created a bit of a news frenzy, and most of his crime beat and world-news reporters were either out meeting with sources or flying out to Arizona to try and be at the scene of the crime. Some would refer to them as vultures, but they had a duty to report the news, no matter how traumatic it would be. All he'd instructed his people before they'd left had been to be respectful, but to get the story.

But they knew, and he was certain that each of them would treat this with as much respect as they were able. Each of them had a personal stake in this, much as he did. Which was why this video coming across his desk was causing him so much concern.

Standing from the desk, he slowly walked over to the window of his office, looking out across the newsroom. Of those that still remained, many were hunched over their desktop computers, pounding out stories about something or other. Some watched videos - he surmised as research, and a few employees were clustered around the coffee machine, staring up at the television mounted on the wall as they waited for the newest batch to brew. If there was one thing that he was proud of his employees for, there was barely any strife in the current iteration of the newsroom. Sure, the odd argument would present itself, or egos might be bruised from time-to-time, but every person that he brought in felt as though they were part of a team, one that had a responsibility to inform the public about what was happening in their world.

He was proud of that. It was part of the reason that he stayed as such a gruff presence. If they needed to get angry at him, or look at him as the mean boss? That was fine, because it unified his staff even further.

His gaze shifted to one of his employees, leaning over a cubicle near the far end of the room, animatedly explaining something to another junior staffer, listening intently and hammering something out on her computer as she listened, occasionally stopping to answer back with a point of her own. The man was tall and lean, his salt-and-pepper hair thinned heavily on top, but giving him a distinguished look. His face was marked with age, but he had a wind-swept complexion, the face of a man who obviously enjoyed spending time outside. He wore a short-sleeved collared shirt that if Bob wasn't mistaken, was a light pink. A bold choice for a bold man. The man was one of his most trusted writers, and someone who had started at the paper almost at the same time as Bob himself. Not just an employee; the man in the pink shirt was a friend.

Bob glanced back at Tracy, who hadn't moved from the desk, but just watched him stare out the window. "Brad doesn't know yet?"

She shook her head once more, and only now did he betray his scowl with a deep sigh. His shoulders sank a little as he slightly shook his head. Brad had been through so much tragedy, and had come out of it shaken, but seasoned. Some people crumbled under adversity, but that man was a goddamned pillar. His commitment to the news was matched only for the care that he took for his family, and even after he'd endured the worst loss imaginable, he'd bounced back, as energetic and as animated as ever.

He dealt with it all better than Bob himself ever would have been able to. Without question.

So what was this video going to do to him?

Turning from the window, he pointed at the computer. "Okay. I assume you have a copy?" She nodded and opened her mouth to reply but he didn't let her finish. "Good. You're going to leave this here, and I need you on the phone with the FBI, immediately. I want a quote, or a confirmation, a comment - something. If they deny, you tell them you have evidence, send them a screen-grab, and you'll go to press with it if they don't give you something."

He strode over to the computer and closed the video window. He pointed to the USB thumb-drive sticking out of the side of the monitor.

"I'm going to keep this here for the time being. I don't want a word of this to anyone but the FBI. If they give you any grief or try and threaten or detain you, you call me at once."

Tracy nodded grimly to her boss, the full scope of what the video meant finally starting to hit her. It was very possible that she could be arrested simply for possessing this footage, and the kicker was that she didn't even know where it had come from. She'd been preparing for her morning run, and had been midway through finding her way into her running tights when she'd heard something slide through her mail slot. She'd assumed it to be nothing more than a morning junk-mail delivery, but then she had rounded the corner and discovered the brown manila envelope with her name on it and a thumb drive within, no note - nothing. It was very cinematic, very cloak and dagger. Her heart rate had gone off to the races, and if she were being honest, her pulse hadn't yet returned back to normal. It was an honest-to-goodness secret letter.

Addressed to her.

And now, that secret letter was going to test her commitment to journalistic integrity, as she had the distinct impression that the FBI was going to be rather unhappy that one of their interrogation videos had landed in the hands of a major - the major newspaper for the western seaboard. She shot Bob one more grim nod, and exited the office quietly.

Now at a lean against his desk, W. Robert Henderson shut his eyes once more as the office filled with silence, the hubbub of the newsroom a faint backdrop for the headache that he felt creeping its way into his brain. Survival of the Fittest, while an abomination on the general populace, was a boon for news. It was a sad reality of being a journalist. When bad things happened to good people, there were always more stories to write. There would always be crestfallen family members who wanted to tell their stories, facts and details to be editorialized about. There were theories, internet blog posts, message boards, Reddit threads, everything. As it was perhaps the greatest failure of the federal and world police agencies over the last twenty years, Survival of the Fittest had far-reaching implications, and any news regarding it that one could break that wasn't from a strictly regulated source was a scoop that any other paper would have killed for.

What he had on his desk was perhaps the biggest piece of news - the biggest piece of good news that he had ever seen in regard to Survival of the Fittest, barring the rescue of some of the students in 2008. Every editor in the country would want this scoop. This was massive, massive news. And yet...

Bob shook his head. It wasn't difficult to understand why this had been leaked to the Times, of all the papers in the country. It was very logical, and it was undoubtedly done by someone who still possessed an ounce of humanity in an age where people were falling further and further away from natural compassion. For all of his newsman instincts, compassion was something that he never could quite forget. While he may have put up the front of being a hard-assed, cigar chomping editor straight out of a comic book (he'd heard more than a few smart-assed J. Jonah Jameson quips over the years) there were certain concessions that he'd needed to make in order to do his job properly. Image was one of them. But even though he thought himself to be a newsman first, even before that, he was a human being.

He had a responsibility to do right when he could. So now, he would.

Standing up, Bob walked to the door of his office, opening it and looking out towards the corner. Brad and his pink shirt were still in animated conversation with the junior reporter.

"Brad!" When he needed it to, Bob's voice could carry, and as it did so, both Brad and Shira; the junior, jumped. Most of the room glanced over towards the senior editor and a hush fell across the newsroom. Bob beckoned, and curtly pointed towards the inside of his office, before retreating in and turning the shutters on the window to obscure the interior of the office. Brad looked down at Shira with a confused expression on his face, and slowly started to head toward the editor's office. The buzz that had momentarily halted from the newsroom resumed, though at a more muted level than before.

Inside of the office, Bob looked at his desk and he couldn't decide whether or not to sit or stand. Was this news better delivered as an intimate conversation? How would Brad react? W. Robert Henderson had delivered the news for many, many years; but this? He gave his head a slow shake. This was completely different.

June 7, 2015, 9:31 am
Editor's Office, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California

"Hey, Brad. Come in and close the door."

In the end, Bob went with a lean against the front of his desk. It was more casual than a face-to-face sit-down, and it indicated that while serious, this wasn't any ordinary conversation - not boss-to-subordinate, but rather friend-to-friend. Brad had sauntered through the open door with a wry look upon his face, the wisdom of his years of experience understanding that this was not a friendly chat. While the lean man was a formidable presence on his own, there were certain lines that one never crossed with W. Robert Henderson, and if he called you into his office in such a manner that he had, odds were you were about to do a whole lot more listening than speaking. Shutting the door behind him, Brad stopped only a foot from it; his guard firmly up, arms crossed.

"What's going on, Bob? I'm right in the middle of assembling the human interest side of the Kingman story." He frowned. Brad never referred to Survival of the Fittest with its formal title, but rather by the city affected. Every time this happened, Brad was a tireless advocate for the families and the people left behind by the tragedy. He'd written hundreds of articles over the years, always fair, and never judgemental, and he had a reputation among the families of the affected as being a sturdy shoulder to rely on.

Which made sense, all things considered. He was the perfect man for the job.

Bob sighed a little, and met the gaze of his employee - his friend. Mouth pursed, he could feel the hairs of his moustache tickling his bottom lip. He thought for a moment, and then spoke, his authority informing that his request was more of a demand.

"I'm going to need you to hand that off for the time being. Shira or someone else can head it up."

Brad's measured demeanour crumbled immediately, the outrage emanating from him in waves. He stepped towards Bob with fire in his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm waist-high in it right now. I can't just 'hand it off'! It's not a football, Robert, these are people's children!"

Not one to ordinarily be put on the defensive, Bob deviated from his usual tactics, holding his hands up in mock surrender, nodding pensively. This halted Brad in his tracks. Yelling matches within the office of W. Robert Henderson were not uncommon and the editor was known to be a man who fought fire with fire, so for him to back off meant that circumstances were unquestionably different.

Something had happened.

Brad's eyes narrowed. "What's going on, Robert?"

The older man's lips remained pursed, but his voice did not possess its usual vigor. He felt old. "I need you on something else. Something far more vital right now."

Brad ignored the slight towards grieving families as non-vital, though he was aware that his superior was choosing his words with a little more care than usual.

"More vital? Than Kingman? Now, of all times?"

Bob shook his head, and gestured to the other end of the desk. "It's related." He ceased his lean and walked over to the desk chair, but didn't sit down. Instead, he pushed the chair out and glanced at it, indicating for Brad to have a seat. Eyes still narrow, the tall man walked over to the desk and sat down, straightening his shirt as he sat down. It was more of a lavender up close, Bob decided. At seeing a blank desktop screen with no windows open, Brad looked up at his editor with a quizzical expression. Bob exhaled - not even realizing that he'd been holding his breath, and began, his tone softer and quieter than Brad had ever heard before.

"The video that you're about to see was leaked to us this morning; we're not sure who did it, or why. It's a five-minute clip from an FBI interrogation that far as we can tell, is from last night. We're still verifying the authenticity of the video, but everything that we've been able to dig up tells us that it's the genuine article." Bob was clinical in his description, and Brad was now instantly hooked. Whatever Bob was about to play for him was obviously something that was a big deal. His outrage melted away, replaced with curiosity and excitement.

"How many people know about this?" He leaned back in the chair, his mind racing at what - or whom might be on the tape.

"Tracy Nakamura was the one who received the video. Outside of her? Just me," he paused, "and now you."

Bob leaned over and took hold of the computer mouse, hovering the pointer over the icon of the video on the desktop.

"As soon as I can verify the authenticity and we get a comment from the FBI on this, I'm going to press. Immediately. The contents of this video are massive, and there's going to be a huge shit-storm heading our way. Even with Kingman going on, this is going to dominate headlines around the world." Bob's shoulders sagged a little. He was stalling. To his credit, Brad seemed energized by being brought into a very closed loop. Yet the expression on his face was shaded with an anxious energy.

"Jesus, Bob. You want me on a headline story? I'm flattered - and you know I'll do it, but..." He trailed off, biting his lip as though he didn't want to admit the truth to himself. "... this isn't really my wheelhouse. You know that."

The senior man nodded solemnly, and clapped his friend on the back. "I do. But this is different." Before he could ask any more questions, Bob double-clicked on the video, leaving his hand resting reassuringly on his friend's shoulder. He might need the support, though he didn't know it yet.

The video window opened to a stark, top-down view of an interrogation room that looked like it could have been in any police station or office in the world. The time-stamp in the corner meant nothing to Brad; they were easily forged, but the date was today's. The room was empty, sans a metallic table with one occupant sitting at it, hands folded together and covering his mouth. The man at the table was bald, with no facial hair, but had a strong build, obviously muscular and probably tall from the look of him. He couldn't see any tattoos or other distinguishing characteristics from the man in the chair, but from the way that he was tapping his fingers against the bridge of his nose, he was obviously waiting with a degree of impatience. Brad's brow furrowed. While he couldn't yet see the man's whole face, there was instantly a degree of familiarity that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Sounds of a door being unlocked were heard, and then two men entered the room, clad in suits that practically screamed Federal Agent. The man at the table sighed in frustration and unclasped his hands, throwing his palms up.

"The fuck took you so long? I've been waitin' here for hours."

Brad slammed the spacebar to stop the video with such ferocity that Robert jumped briefly, but maintained his position at the desk, hand still on his friend's shoulder. Brad's expression was one of confusion, of bare comprehension at the image on the screen. His mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. What he was looking at didn't make any sense at all, and more than that - it was impossible. He looked up at Bob with the look of a man whose universe no longer made sense.

"W-what?"

Lips still pursed, Bob simply gave Brad's shoulder a reassuring squeeze, hitting the play button on the video once more. The file resumed playing as one of the agents responded to the outburst.

"We needed to check out your story. You understand, your claim is," the shorter agent hesitated, "difficult to believe, and given the circumstances..."

The second agent; an older man with darker skin and glasses, interrupted. "Given what's going on in the world right now, we need to be very certain that you're not some con-artist."

The bald man's shoulders sagged, the annoyance visible on his face. Brad still wasn't quite sure of what he was seeing, his brain trying to make the connection that his heart already had.

"C'mon. I've already been through this with you. I didn't have a fuckin' choice. STAR told us that if we ever tried to go home, they couldn't protect us." The bald man shook his head, his aggravation palpable, even through the tinny audio quality of the video. "They ain't protectin' shit anymore. Couldn't even protect themselves. So it's time to come home, terrorists be damned."

Brad reached for the space-bar once more, but this time Bob stopped him, lightly brushing his hand away. He needed to hear the next bit - if not for confirmation, for clarity. The bald man continued, interrupting the older agent as he started to play the bad cop in the age-old routine.

"Look, I've been through this ten times already. I'm not Chris Stone. That's a fake name. My real name's Keith Jackson and pretty much everyone in the world believes that I died in 2007." He waved his hands, the sarcasm evident. "Surprise! I didn't. I fuckin' got out. Go look at a picture or something, c'mon."

It was Bob who pressed the space-bar this time, and turned to look at Brad. The man's face was ashen, as though he had just seen a ghost. The older editor supposed that he had. He'd known Brad for a very long time, and he'd only seen the man so distraught once before in his life. It had been close to ten years ago - eight to be exact.

The day that Brad Jackson's son had been abducted in Survival of the Fittest.

He remembered the weeks that followed, of the tracking, the attempts to follow along.

He'd been with Brad the moment that the feeds cut out, never to return. Never to allow Brad a true account of what had happened to his son.

The terrorists had claimed him to be dead, along with many others who never received the same kind of closure that one did when seeing a family member's broken body.

And now, he knew why.

They lied.

As Brad Jackson slowly turned his head to look up at the editor; the man who had stuck with him through the dark times and offered him a beacon of hope throughout, he barely knew what to say. His brain was still comprehending what he knew. There was absolutely no question in his mind that this recording was genuine. The face was older, but the same as he remembered, and the voice...

It was too distinct a cadence, too unique an accent. Impossible to fake, and yet... it seemed as though the impossible was no longer a concept that held a whole lot of weight to Brad Jackson. His long-dead son, whose absence had cast a pall over their family for eight years, had somehow returned from the dead. People only came back from the dead through fiction, but the proof was sitting on a screen in front of him.

"Bob, that's - I don't know how, but..."

He nodded. "I know, Brad. He's alive."

The new information had shaken the man in the lavender shirt to the core. Robert wasn't sure how long the information would take to fully sink in to his colleague's mind, and he continued to stare at the screen, as though he were expecting the face on the screen to suddenly shift to another, less familiar visage. A silence hung within the office for a few moments. When Brad finally broke the silence, he had composed himself ever-so-slightly, his voice barely a whisper.

"What do you need me to do, Bob?"

Robert, hand still firmly resting on Brad's shoulder, gave his shaken friend another gentle, reassuring squeeze. With his right hand, he pointed at the flash drive, still sticking out of the side of the desktop monitor. "I want you to take that flash drive," Brad tensed under the expectation of instruction, "and go home."

That had been his plan from the very beginning, of course. The shaken reporter gave him a look, as though he didn't understand what he was being asked to do. Bob helped him along.

"This is going to be news, Brad. Big news. But I want you to go and be with your family. Tell them. Process all of this before anything gets out. They should hear this from you, rather than from Twitter or CNN." He disengaged his left hand from Brad's shoulder and looked at his watch.

"You'll have a couple of hours before I can get an official comment or confirmation on this. That's all the time I can give you. After that, we're running it."

Weakly, Brad Jackson nodded. He knew how journalism worked: this was far too large a story to sit on for long, but the fact that his editor - his friend - was willing to do it in the name of giving him a couple of hours with his family? That was a massive gesture, and it wasn't one that he was going to waste. Climbing to his feet, he took a moment to properly eject the flash-drive from the side of Bob's computer. Unclicking the drive, he held it in his hand, taking a long look at his small silver rectangle of hope before slipping it in the pocket of his pants. His eyes then met Robert's.

They were pained and glassy, and much to Robert's own surprise, his own vision had started to blur a bit. Brad struggled for a moment, but eventually was able to collect himself. He stuck his hand out. Reflexively, Robert firmly grasped it.

"Thank you, Bob. I- I won't forget this."

Blinking to hold back his own sudden rush of emotion, he nodded and gestured to the door.

"Go."

The senior man didn't need to say it twice. Brad moved as quickly as his shaken faculties would allow him, leaving the door swinging half-open behind him as he made his way to his desk, and quickly out of the front door of the newsroom, not stopping to speak to anyone on the way out.

Once more, W. Robert Henderson stood in his office, alone. Enough time had passed since he'd dismissed Tracy that he gathered she'd be reporting soon enough about the video and any official acceptance or denial of the leak. After that, a story would need to be written and the video would need to be prepared for upload to the newspaper's website. He'd made a copy before giving the drive to Brad, of course, but as quickly as his newsman instincts were telling him to go, he knew that he had to slow down. It was funny, he thought to himself as he wiped a tear away from his eye. Everyone was so quick to report the news on all of the bad, horrible, no-good things that happened in the world. Things happened, and everyone was right there. They printed pages without any recourse. That was the news. That was how the world worked.

For once, there was some good to be told - and he'd decided to wait. He had to.

There was irony in that somewhere, he supposed, but it would take a more learned man to show him where.

Sighing gently to himself, Robert sat down at the chair of his desk, and shut his eyes. It wasn't every day that you had the opportunity to rewrite the history books. This was a momentous moment for the paper. For his career, for Tracy's. But even larger than that, this was going to be the most significant moment in the lives of Brad and the Jackson family, and somehow that meant even more to him. He smiled. Twenty-five years in journalism, and he'd managed to come out on the other side still a little human after all. The smile remained as he sat, waiting for the phone call that would allow him to break the news that would change perceptions - not to mention lives - forever.

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