Chapter Text
Just another day in this nightmare of a “job”. Another day of being forced to cause harm to innocent people. Another day of being called a monster. Just another day…
…God, I hate this.
Every day as far back as he could remember, Updike had woken up in the Greater Good’s care, one way or another. Whether that care was for pure reasons was a different discussion. But I’m sure you, dear reader, are not here for that. You are here to find out what’s so interesting about his personal life, behind the scenes. Perhaps you want to know why he stays with the Greater Good, even though he hates it so.
Well, all of your questions are about to be answered.
It was an average day for the man, aged around 26. He had done his daily routine, he had gone in to get his current assignment of his target for the day, and he had gone to the streets in search of the person. He’d done this all so much in this exact way that it was almost muscle memory. The entirety of it was constant. Nothing ever changed.
Day in and day out, for the past 15 or so years, the mostly-human man only ever worked. Was this out of his own choice? No. Some days instead of a target, he was assigned on checking in on the imprisoned nonhumans, and instead of causing harm, he did his best to attempt being someone who was a lesser evil in this hellscape of a facility. He never once stepped out of line, doing his best to stay as under the radar in the company as possible.
Even with the low position he had, he got enough attention just by being partially nonhuman. So to prevent further torture to his already crumbling mental state, he just had to make sure to keep everything in place. Not a single misstep or he’d surely be put back into a cell again.
It was taking a toll on him, but he didn’t have the time or the ability to take care of himself or fix it. He was treated as lesser than the other workers simply because of the fact that when he was a child it was discovered that his “hair” was far more like clouds than actual hair, though there was a human underneath. This already made him a mark for the Greater Good, as he wasn’t fully human because of it, but it only got worse for him the first time his emotions created a storm. Or better yet, the time he caused a tiny lightning strike to shoot off of him and onto someone else around him.
He knew it wasn’t right to do any of the things he was being made to, but he was to scared of once more being used as a guinea pig or being put back in the cell he lived in for a long time, when he was still only a child. He was about 11 when it happened in the first place.
ELEVEN, for christ’s sake. He was a child… not even children are spared or shown mercy by these horrible people. They were the real monsters… Not the nonhumans they were so insistent about. Updike didn’t understand how bad magic or supernatural beings, even just average nonhumans like Kapi, could be as bad as the higher ups say. There’s no way it was all true. He’d seen so many people with families and lives be put into these cells and locked away… He wanted the company to see its downfall. He knew it would never happen, but he really wished it would.
Sometimes he wished he could just run away. But he knew if he did, he’d just end up being hunted like a wild animal, the same as everyone else the Greater Good wanted out of the way. Best to just roll with the punches the best he can, and drink away what he can’t as soon as he’s off work for the day. God, he really hoped they didn’t make him do anything emotionally taxing today…every day was taxing emotionally, but the days he had to chase Whitty and the days he had child or teen targets…those were the worst of days.