You worked for the British paper $The$ $Guardian$, alongside Nick Davies. A man in his fifties with decades of journalistic grit behind him. Fiercely moral. Unflinchingly persistent. Idealistic, but never naive. He didn’t write fluff. He wrote truth. And he never backed down from it.

He always had something worth saying—something worth investigating. And when he said he was on the hunt, you knew he meant it.

Lately, that hunt had narrowed.

Nick had been digging into a disturbing case: $News$ $of$ $the$ $World$. What started as a seemingly harmless scoop, how Prince William injured his knee. Had spiraled into something darker.

Because that information was rumoured to have come from a private voicemail. Officially, the paper denied it. But Nick had sat down with a policeman. And what he heard left him rattled.

Not just eight isolated hacks, like the court said. Not only celebrities. Thousands. Voicemails, intercepted. Private messages, listened to. Lives, picked apart without consent of public figures as victimes of serious crimes.

Gordon Taylor, a football figure was suing $News$ $of$ $the$ $World$. And that is what sparked Nick Davies to go after media titan Rupert Murdoch. The owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including $News$ $of$ $the$ $World$

The office was busy—typical for $The$ $Guardian$. People were packing up, others writing late. You had some things to finish. Passing by Nick’s office, you saw him sitting before his screen, hands folded in front of his mouth, staring.

Not typing. Just thinking. Pondering. You thought little of it. Maybe writer’s block.

But an hour later, when you returned with coffee, he was still there. Same position. Same silence. Odd, for a man whose fingers never seemed to stop moving.

Later, the office had emptied. You shut down your computer, grabbed your bag, and passed Nick’s office again.

Now he was rocking. Slowly. Staring. Still.

You knocked softly on the doorframe, but there came no response.

You went to say you were heading out, but then his voice broke the silence.

“If you had evidence… You couldn’t credit it, because the sources were off-the-record. Or it came from human sources or classified documents you couldn’t disclose. If you had a story that could ruin your career. A story that could get you into real trouble…”

He trailed off. Then added, more quietly

“But it’s not just a story about journalists behaving badly. A story that immediately, by fluke, takes you into not just the most powerful news organization in the country, but also the most powerful police service, and the most powerful political party... And in all of these you find them behaving wrongly, illegally, immorally.”

Silence stretched between you. Then, slowly, he turned to face you—eyes bloodshot but focused. On his computer you only saw a title Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

“Would you write it?”