Work Text:
It was 5:00pm when Olivia arrived at the radio station. She had a duffle bag and her purse over one shoulder, and carried a plastic box with slices of her formerly frozen pizza in her other hand. As a morning talk-show host, this was not her idea of a good evening. She was not part of the station's night staff, but somehow that changed.
Olivia was in black yoga pants, a plain blue tank top and a black button up that hung open. Her black hair was still in pigtails - it wasn't long enough to put into a ponytail, and it was just long enough to be a pain when she was doing her afternoon workout. She didn't put her sneakers back on, though. Those were stowed away in her duffle bag, and she wore sporty, black flip-flops instead.
The Citadel had issued an alert to the networks across the city with special instructions to bring in anyone who could speak to the public. It was a worrying message, especially after all of the changes that had happened over the past few days. Barricades had gone up in some parts of the city and there was a larger presence of Crownsguard vehicles. She even noticed some lights on and activity happening in some of the older buildings - ones that historically housed bunkers for past incidents. Some temporary signs were even going up on some of the roads and other, less used roads were being shut down.
You had to be dumb to not see it. Something was going on. She and Silas even talked about it on this morning's show. It was a pretty animated discussion. Olivia was a little sad that they were on the radio because Silas' gestures were, at points, comical. They had to do their best to make light of something that left a trail of dread in the back of her mind.
After her shift, she had gone home to run some errands, get in an afternoon workout, and was finally at home, baking a frozen pizza in the oven when the call from her studio manager threw her plans for a relaxing evening out the window. She was told to pack a bag for who-knows-how-many days and to get her ass to the station as soon as possible.
Pack her bags? Get there right away? What kind of message did the studio get?
"Olivia!" She heard Silas call her name as he joined her in the hallway. "What's going on?"
"Not a clue." She offered the box. "Have you had dinner yet? Tomas called right when I had just pulled this pizza out of the oven."
"Great, I'm starving. I didn't even get a chance to pick up dinner or anything." What kind of person stays in their khakis from earlier in the day all day? Well, Olivia knew Silas was that sort. He was still in his button up, too. Clearly, his day had been busy and he didn't even have a chance to dress down. Even his reddish brown hair was still styled back. At least he had taken the time to remove his contacts and wore glasses instead. Olivia knew she could safely bet that the case for them was in one of his backpack's pockets, though.
Once they arrived at the studio office, Olivia could tell that they were part of an all hands called in tonight. Everyone who had something to do with anything on the broadcasts was in the room waiting. This was something that was really big.
"Are we finally hearing what the Citadel's been up to?" One of the sound engineers spoke up as people were filing in.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Tomas said. He was sitting on one of the desks with a couple of sheets of paper in his hand. "The message we received is that a Civil Danger Warning is going to be going out at 6pm." He waved the sheets to emphasize his words. "The media has been told to be prepared since we will be critical in relaying information to the public."
"A Civil Da-..." Silas began to repeat as he numbly dropped into a chair behind him. The rest of the room fell to an unsettled hush.
Tomas continued, "If any of you have family, once the message goes out, you can call them here. We've been told to give you shelter for the period of the warning, and we have enough space to provide it for others as well, if necessary."
There was a strange sound, much like a sob from one of the equipment managers. She sat down on the edge of a desk and took a deep breath as one of her coworkers reached over to hug her. Olivia knew that they had warnings for pending attacks on the Wall, to keep everyone calm if something were expected to hit it. For those, however, the Citadel only issued statements. This was a warning.
Tomas looked at the papers in his hand and took a deep breath to recompose himself. He was clearly struggling despite what little information they had, "Obviously, we can't tell the public anything yet. The Citadel has also told us that we will be provided the message approximately five minutes before it goes out to the public via the emergency alert system.
"Olivia, Silas. Our listeners trust you two a lot. I want you two to spearhead the initial message and be live right when it goes out."
Olivia forced a smile. "Sounds good." She looked to Silas, popped open her lunch box and offered him a slice of the pizza. "We should get ready."
He was quiet. She didn't blame him. Who could? He took a deep breath and quickly snatched the top piece from the box and shoved a part of it in his mouth. "Let's do this." The words were muffled through dough, sauce, and pepperoni.
Olivia found a place to set her bag, got a couple of slices of pizza for herself, then gave the rest of it away to her coworkers. She decided that everyone was going to need some comfort food tonight. She and Silas took their seats and started their regular routine of their pre-show checks in their preferred sound booth. Tomas made sure that they had their most comfortable place for this.
Their usual director was also with them. "We'll have the team hand off the message to you once we receive it." He held out a small basket to them and the engineers. "Place your phones in here. We can't have them in the sound booth. The EAS is going to sound an alert on them and we won't be able to silence it. We don't want it heard on the show."
"Right." Olivia rarely used her phone during the show anyway. She pulled hers from her purse and set it in the basket, followed by Silas doing the same.
A signal from one of the engineers led Olivia to start her speech tests. While she had the meter in front of her, she checked for plosives and adjusted the pop filter in front of her mic in the process. Once she gave the team her thumbs up, they moved on to ask for the same from Silas.
The next forty minutes went by quickly.
The door was opened and an assistant arrived to place out several sheets of paper on the table. Olivia snatched hers up immediately. They were at go time, since this appeared to be a print out of the message that would soon be issued to the rest of the city.
As she read it, she didn't have to say anything. Silas did it for her. "What the... hell?"
"King Noctis Lucis Caelum...?" She echoed. "A... weapon of mass destruction... what is this...?"
She and Silas both looked up at each other at the same time. Olivia realized that this was far, far worse than anything she could have imagined. She suddenly felt very afraid.
Suddenly, her headset crackled alive with the voice of one of the booth engineers on the other side of the glass. "Phones are going off. The alert has gone out. Olivia, Silas. You will be live in 15 seconds."
Suddenly, she felt her heart in her throat. Never in her years of being on radio had she ever felt afraid of the message she was going to deliver. She reached across the table to Silas and held her hand out. He took it and gave her a firm squeeze in return. She simply mouthed to him: We got this. We are going to be okay.
If the Crown Prince that they interviewed last year had become king, there was no telling what happened out of their sight. There may be others who would be worried, based on the rumors about Noctis, but she could tell that they were wrong about him. He was smart and passionate. Whatever was going at the Citadel, she knew that he was probably doing his best for them.
Silas nodded to her and they both looked at the director seated at the table with them. He held five fingers up, lowering them one by one.
Once all of them were down, Olivia trusted that her mic was hot and began. "Good evening everyone. This is Olivia and Silas of Buzz and Brew." Her tone wasn't the normal cheerful tone, and she held herself together. Work was the way to go to keep herself in the right frame of mind. "We must interrupt your evening's regularly scheduled program with a special alert from the Citadel itself."