TRIBES (SURVIVOR - WEEK 1)

Baltimore, Maryland. Summer 1998.

"It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under." — Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (The Message)

Summers in Maryland were one thing, but in inner-city Baltimore they were a completely different ballgame. Instead of private pools and air-conditioned living rooms, life happened outdoors. Kids spent their time at public pools in Druid Hill or Riverside or whichever Boys and Girls Club would let you in the door.

For some kids, with school out, a new world opened up around them that threatened to swallow them whole.

Coltrane, age ten, stood outside the window of Jasmine Green's bedroom. He wasn't alone. Across from him stood Darius Young. Darius was two years older and half a head shorter and that math worked out fine for Darius, because Darius had Coltrane.

Two boys came around the corner. Coltrane didn't know them.

"What up?" Darius nodded towards the two boys, who Cole assumed were around Darius' age.

"You got the stuff?" one of the kids inquired and Darius nodded, digging into his pockets, and produced a small bag of green leafs.

"This is it. You sure you want it?"

"You sure this stuff is legit?"

"Would I play you?"

Coltrane wasn't listening anymore. He was looking past them, through the window, at Jasmine flipping channels. Springer, Povich, Springer again. She'd started saving him half her lunch this year. Then she'd asked him if they were friends or more than friends, and he'd shrugged, and she'd gotten mad about the shrug, and he still didn't know why.

"I mean… it smells like it," one of the boys said, holding the bag up to the sun. Coltrane wasn't certain what it was supposed to smell like. Like trees? Of course it would smell like that.

"Of course it does!" Darius said. "What, you think I'm gonna pass you fake weed?"

"Man, I don't know. Where you even get this stuff from?"

"That's for me to know. Money. Let's go."

The money changed hands. Darius looked at Coltrane and Coltrane opened his fist without knowing why, and the crumpled bills landed in it.

"That boy big," one of them said.

"I know. He'll fuck you up if you try anything."

Coltrane had never hit anyone in his life. Nobody had bothered to ask him about that part.

"Alright, we out. You get more of this, you let me know."

"I got you."

The second they were gone, Darius started laughing. Really laughing, doubled over.

"Those clowns," He plucked the bills out of Coltrane's hand. "I just grabbed some leafs off the ground and sprayed some shit on it. They don't know nothing."

Coltrane's brow furrowed.

"You did good though, Cole. Real good. Definitely too scared to question it now"

Inside, Jasmine had stopped flipping. A man in a shirt stood in front of something huge and fake and made of plastic rock, and kids were climbing it, and letters flashed across the bottom of the screen.

AGGRO. CRAG.

He'd never heard those two words. Not separately. Definitely not together.

"Come on." Darius was already walking. "We got things to do."

"Yeah," Coltrane said, and followed him out to the street.

Anderson Gym. July 1, 2026.

"What's the next move when you don't know what the game is?" — Bridge of Spies (2015)

Coltrane sat in his office and felt a migraine coming on. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Below him, through the floor, he could hear his students working the bags. Normal Tuesday. Except his half-siblings were sitting across the desk from him.

"So, we've had a chance to look at this contract," Max started.

"Did you even have a lawyer look at this?" Madison followed.

Coltrane sighed. "I figured it was just a standard. Compete for a few years, get paid. Is it not that?"

Max laughed. Coltrane shot him a look. Max immediately stopped.

"On the surface, yes. Three years, exclusive to PRIME, booked as they see fit. The money's better than I expected. You could get out of that shack, get Alex and Jamie somewhere decent, take care of your mother, keep the gym. All of that's real."

"So what's wrong?"

"Not wrong, just things you won't enjoy. Press. Autograph signings. Promotional posts. Ads for shows. Local radio, probably. Social media."

"I don't have social media." The pressure worsened.

"You do now." Max slid his phone across the desk. A Jabber account. Coltrane's name on it.

"Fuck," Cole groaned. "That's not me. They can just… do that?"

"That's the business, yeah. They're going to make sure you earn more than they pay you. That's not an insult, that's just math. And with merch and licensing on top of your purse, this could be seven figures."

Coltrane's head snapped around. "Wait, what?"

Madison nodded.

"Shit," Max muttered.

Coltrane sat back. Money had never been the point. If money was the point he'd have stayed in his previous life.

He looked back and forth at Max and Madison.

"What about the thing I actually asked you to look at." He said it to Madison. "Not sure why Max is even in the room."

"Not cool," Max shot back. Madison raised her hand.

"You two, I swear." Madison put a hand up. "Max has an MBA, he's not dead weight. And 'legal background' is underselling my JD from Harvard."

"Yeah, yeah. Daddy loved you both more than me, we get it." The room went quiet in a way rooms go quiet when someone's said something true and ugly on purpose. Coltrane leaned into the desk.

"I was blindsided by the Survivor announcement. On the surface, I could care less about it, it's a way for them to get more appearances out of me and probably use me as fodder for the main event stars doing this thing," — he referenced the likes of Kuroyama, Stanislav, and Jiles. "What I care about is what's attached to it. Universal Title shot. At Colossus."

Max leaned in. "You don't want a shot at the Universal Title?"

"Cole, I get the hesitation," Madison said.

"I don't," Max said.

Madison kept going. "The clause in your contract is airtight. They wrote you into Survivor as an addendum. I'm not an expert in this specific kind of language, so I called people who are. They all said the same thing — this doesn't happen."

"Meaning what."

"Meaning somebody at that company specifically wanted you in this. Could be timing. Could be you had no leverage to say no. But somebody wanted you, specifically, in Survivor."

It was the exact thing he'd been afraid of since the announcement. Being moved. Being used for a reason nobody would tell him.

"Daytona Diamonds is Universal Champion now," Max said. "Maybe they need someone who can get the title off him. Someone they can control."

"Daytona's a boy scout compared to where I came from. A fraction of what's in my past gets out—" He didn't finish it. He let it sit there instead, a door he wasn't opening.

Cole." Madison's voice dropped. "It's a double-edged sword. This could put you on top. It could also open things you'd rather keep shut. There's no way to know which until it happens."

Coltrane sat with that for a moment. "Madison, that thing you mentioned—"

"Already on it."

He nodded and then stood. "I appreciate the time. Both of you. Sincerely." He looked at Max last. "You too."

Max sat up, thrown by the compliment. "Can we talk expansion? I've got a contact at the Sun who—"

Coltrane was already out the door and down the stairs.

"Max?"

"Yeah?"

"Give him some time."

A beat.

"Okay, sis."

Baltimore, Maryland. July 7, 2026

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places" — Ernest Hemmingway (A Farewell to Arms)

Coltrane stood in his daughter's doorway. He'd carried her in twenty minutes ago, full of pizza and soda, having watched Ria Lockhart knock her father out on a loop for the better part of an hour. Every replay got the same laugh out of her. He should've been offended.

He wasn't.

"Hey." Alex's voice behind him, and it still did what it had always done to him. He was the biggest person most rooms had ever seen, had been since third grade, and she was the only person alive who made him feel small in a way he didn't mind. She slid an arm around his waist.

"How was the shift?"

"Hell. You know how many gunshot victims came through tonight? Why is your city like this?"

"I'm sorry." He meant it more than she knew. "It's just — different, here."

"You could say that twice." A beat. "Thank you for tonight. They held me late."

"Don't thank me. I needed tonight more than she did."

They moved to the kitchen. "You leave for Pittsburgh tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"You remember the last time we were in Pittsburgh?"

"Steelers and Ravens. Don't remind me."

"You wore the Ravens hat. Into that bar. I don't know how you didn't get jumped."

"A couple guys tried my patience. Didn't matter. We won."

That got a smile out of him.

She opened the pizza box, found the last pepperoni slice, took it without asking. "One box?"

"She ate more than her share. And I'm cutting carbs. For obvious reasons."

"You ready?"

He dropped into a chair, rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know how you'd even prepare for this. This isn't a match, Alex. I can't get my head fully around what this is."

She sat beside him, still in scrubs, still smelling like the ER. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "Your daughter's been watching Survivor. She made you a list."

That got a real laugh out of him. He took the paper.

"This is from the show?"

"Not just the show." Alex grinned. "She also found old PRIME Survivor footage. Did you know somebody once competed with a mannequin as a tag partner? What exactly did you sign up for?"

"I assume not everything is that insane. Then again, the Universal Champion is Daytona Diamonds, so who's to say."

"Fair." A beat passed. "First part's a team challenge. Team wins, you're safe another week. You've got what is the loosest term of team I've ever seen."

"Kuroyama. Jiles. Freeman. Members of Vae Victis, eGG Bandits, and The Red Army all on one team. Then me, the unknown"

"By that math you're gone after week one."

Coltrane laughed. "Possibly. Jiles and Kuroyama are no joke though. Former Universal and Five-Star Champions. Those two are going to fight to make it through. That might save me."

"Or maybe you're the glue. You've got no allegiances, no history, no enemies on that team. You could be the one thing holding it together."

"That's a lot of ego to hold together with two hands."

"You can be convincing when you want to be. Trust me, you got me."

He smiled at that. "True." Beat. "You've still got The Anglo Luchador and Ivan Stanislav anchoring one team and Scott Hunter and Tony Gamble on the other team. This is brutal no matter how you look at it.

"Well. Nothing important riding on it. Just a Universal Title shot in the main event of Colossus."

He nodded and looked down at the table, and Alex felt the whole temperature of the man she loved change. She rose from her chair and walked around to him, wrapping her arm around his shoulders.

"You're not the same man you were," she said quietly, close to his ear. She knew exactly which demons that sentence was standing near.

"I hope not."

"I know you're not."

They stood like that for a while, the rest of the world politely waiting outside the kitchen. Coltrane wished he could stay in it. He was the reason he couldn't.

"You ever see an Aggro Crag? The TV one."

"Once." His eyes stayed on the table. "I probably wouldn't remember it if it wasn't for…" His voice trailed off.

"Cole?"

He looked up. "It was the day Darius started slinging."

Alex watched him. His eyes had gone somewhere she wished would stay closed.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. July 8, 2026

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" - Dante Alighieri (Inferno)

Coltrane stood outside of the AirBNB where his tribe were staying at. The tribe named after Lindsay Troy. He wondered if that was an accident or a message, and then decided it didn't matter, because either way he was standing on the porch of it.

Win the first challenge, stay another week. Lose, and he could be driving home with a duffel bag and regrets.

His phone buzzed.

You make it there okay?

Yeah, he typed back.

The company had booked him a flight. He'd driven instead — four hours each way, his choice. He drove through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, dark, dark, dark, and then the city just opened up on him — three rivers, stadiums on both sides. Even being from Baltimore, he could still appreciate what Pittsburgh had going on.

He stopped for gas at a Sheetz and the kid behind the counter called him "yinz" like it was nothing, like it wasn't a whole different language. Sitting in the parking lot, he remembered the letter he'd received from Jamie and opened it.

Dad's Survivor Tips — by Jamie

1. Don't trust the nice one first. The nice one always goes home first. Everyone knows this. Watch the show.

Was there anyone actually nice in PRIME? Felt like a trick question. Trust was a different story.

2. Make ONE friend, not five. Five friends means five people who can tell everyone your secrets. Also applies to school, you're welcome.

Coltrane didn't have friends as it stood. Making one seemed harder than the Aggro Crag. Kerry Kuroyama, maybe. Except Kuroyama's best friend was on the other team, and that wasn't friendship, that was a landmine.

3. If someone tries to knock you out, MOVE. You let Ria Lockhart hit you like 40 times on purpose and it's not funny anymore, it's just sad.

He rolled his eyes. A smile came through anyway. Fair enough.

4. You don't have to win. You just have to not go home yet. That's it. That's the whole game.

That was all it boiled down to. You don't win in week one, but you can only lose.

P.S. Don't embarrass me. Bring me a shirt.

Alex's sassiness came out through Jamie's words. He was glad she took more after her mother than him.

You don't have to win. You just have to not go home. The thought had stayed with him twenty minutes later as he pulled his bag out of the trunk, slung it over his shoulder, then looked back at the phone and typed one more message.

Do me a favor. Check out this place for Jamie and you. I want to get you both somewhere better.

He pulled up the address Madison had sent him and forwarded it to Alex before pocketing the phone. The house had been behind a gate that required a security guard to let him in.

He knocked. Something loud happened on the other side of the door. There was a shout and a laugh.

HA!

Then the door opened and the Greek God of Cool himself was standing there, looking Coltrane up and down like he'd ordered the wrong size.

"Where's the pizza?" Jiles then walked away. "Kenny! Pay the pizza guy!"

Coltrane groaned and stepped inside.

The place looked like money. High ceilings, a kitchen island the size of the ring apron, and it sounded like a locker room. Someone was arguing about a card game in the next room. A television was on that nobody was watching. Kerry Kuroyama sat on the arm of a couch, boots still on, like he hadn't decided yet whether he was staying the night or leaving in the next five minutes.

He looked up when Coltrane walked in. Didn't smile. Didn't not smile either.

"You're the Baltimore guy," Kuroyama said. Not a question.

"I'm the Baltimore guy."

"Good." Kuroyama went back to whatever he'd been looking at on his phone. "We're gonna need somebody who's not scared to do what it takes to win."

Coltrane set his bag down by the door and didn't say anything back. He didn't have to. If that's what they needed, he already knew his part.