Daily Routine

7 AM, wake up. My alarm’s always set for 9, but Sky’s nonsensical screams of terror wake me up early every day. Sometimes it’s my turn to take care of her, so I need to go to her room and talk her down from whatever nightmare she had. When it’s not, I hide my head under my pillow and unsuccessfully try to will myself back to sleep.

Once morning has made clear its victory over me, it’s out to the kitchen. Lepidus is making breakfast for everyone there. How he manages to appease the tastes f all five proxies living here, I’ll never know. Has to be a gift.

Sky comes in after me. On her good days, she’ll eat whatever we put in front of her in silence. On her bad days, we’re cleaning omelets off the ceiling.

The Jackson Brothers almost always arrive as I’m finishing my meal. They sit down, eat, get up, and walk out the door without acknowledging anyone. They never say where they’re going, we never ask. The perfect arrangement.

And then, it’s time to get to work. My laptop’s inbox is always full of messages from the night before. Have to log which new Runners have been found, and which have disappeared/been killed. Double check to make sure we didn’t lost anyone as well. Then I have to go through all the paperwork to make sure it’s all filled out correctly. We’ve got paperwork for everything: tracking people, killing people, failing to kill people, weapon use, vehicle use, so on and so on and so on.

Money’s always the biggest problem. I need to add up the donation’s we’ve received, any money taken off dead Runners (each time followed by me sending a mass email reminding everyone that, no, you do not get to keep the cash you loot from people,) plus the money the Jackson brothers bring in doing… whatever it is they do. All I know is that it pays very well. Then subtract the cost of bribing the police, maintaining equipment, medical treatment, “various expenses” (You have no idea how much shit proxies try to get away with by labeling it as “various expenses.” I had to deal with a guy trying to purchase a plane because he wanted to carpet bomb the town a Runner was hiding in.) With all of it added together, we usually have enough to ensure every proxy in the area will have food for five days. Which would be fine, except we get money on a weekly basis, which means either we all spend two days starving, or someone is going to end up eating a lot of ramen to make up for the expenses. And by someone I mean me.

Without any distractions, it’s possible for me to finish by dinner. But that never happens. Sky will have a random freak out, or an injured proxy will be brought in for Lepidus to look at, or maybe even Ahriman will deem us worthy to be graced by his presence so he can complain that our productivity isn’t high enough (to which I always respond by telling him that if he has found someone capable of doing a better job than me, I will gladly step down. That shuts him up.) At least Lepidus is nice enough to bring dinner to my room, so I don’t starve in there.

With all those issues to take care of, I won’t be done until midnight at the earliest. Usually much later. Then it’s time to collapse into bed, so this can all be repeated the next morning.

And that’s what I’ve been doing every day for almost a full year now.