Miss Planner leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of a cheap ball-point pen as she pondered the unpleasant task ahead of her. The lights overhead flickered dimly every now and then, no doubt a result of the windstorm battering the Tower of the Chosen outside... or something.

"Damn it," she muttered to herself, glancing at her watch. It was already 5 o'clock, and she was falling farther and farther behind on her work. "Why do I always get stuck cleaning up after these idiots? How hard is it to deliver the damn product?"

The tiny blonde woman sighed, stood up, and took a deep breath. She needed a smoke, but there was no time. There were a dozen things that needed doing before she could even start to think about slowing down. The enormous quantity of urgent e-mails rolling into her inbox from all directions left her completely overwhelmed.

There had been an incident with a contaminated batch of Nuke on Thursday. Twelve of the Chosen Ones' customers ended up in the hospital, and two almost died. Miss Planner's job was to analyze what happened, root out the problem, and prevent a similar disaster from ever happening again. But before she could do that, she had to deal with the fallout... which meant sorting through e-mails, making phone calls, reviewing records, and coming up with new policies to ensure nothing like this ever happened again.

But she was so tired, and it felt like her brain was melting. Her thoughts kept drifting, going off on tangents.

How did all of this start, again? Contaminated Nuke...

That's right. The team of acolytes who made the contaminated product were put on leave pending further investigation, and then... their replacements fell far, far behind schedule. Sales wasn't made aware of the delay and they started selling stock that hadn't been produced. Most of the Chosen Ones' biggest clients were threatening to switch suppliers unless the missing shipments were delivered soon. Most of their smaller clients canceled their orders entirely and were demanding refunds. And the first big replacement shipment, produced in record time, disappeared into thin air somewhere between the warehouse and the distribution center.

Every action that was taken by the executives only added to the chaos, escalating something as minor as a delayed shipment into an unmitigated catastrophe. A single mistake snowballed into dozens of mistakes. Dozens of mistakes turned into hundreds of problems. Hundreds of problems became thousands of problems. The Chosen Ones' shipment from Friday was now three days past its scheduled delivery date, the drug processing plants were barely operational, the warehouse was understaffed, the transport team was falling behind on deliveries, and the field managers were having meetings about the supply chain every two hours on the dot. And Elder Incarnate was leaving cryptic voicemails on her personal cell phone demanding she get back to him ASAP.

It was Sunday. Miss Planner had been working nonstop since she became aware of the problem on Thursday night. It was her ninth day without a break and her third consecutive day spent entirely at the Tower of the Chosen. In just two hours, she would be meeting with the other division heads to make a plan for the upcoming week. But she already knew they weren't going to be able to come up with anything good. At best, they'd spend the entire meeting arguing over who should take responsibility. At worst, she might end up telling them all to find new jobs.

"Ugh. There's no time for this. I need to figure out where those drugs went... and how to get the next batch delivered faster. We'll deal with everything else later. Let’s make sure the shifts at the warehouse are getting filled, and let’s get someone reliable to keep an eye on the next shipment. Black Wolf can do it....”

The worst part of it all was, this wasn't Miss Planner's problem. Not really. She wasn't responsible for what happened in the processing plants, or in sales, or in the warehouses, or any of the other places where things were falling apart. The people on the ground who screwed everything up didn't report to her, and she consequently had no power to compel them to do their jobs properly, nor did she bear any direct responsibility for the results of their poor performance. It would be so, so easy for her to simply wash her hands of the entire debacle, tell the other division heads to figure it out without her, turn off her computer, and go home. No one would blame her.

Miss Planner thought about it.

She could, if she wanted to. That's what everyone else did. They all went home early on Friday and left the mess behind, figuring that someone else would deal with it... and then it got worse. It kept getting worse, and it would keep getting worse until the processing plant managed to crank out a nice, big batch of Nuke that wasn't tainted with Controller hormones and the distribution division managed to get it into their customer's waiting mouths.

She could walk away. Or she could work her little butt off to smooth things over without stepping on the toes of the executives. Shift a few schedules around, reassign some acolytes, reroute some deliveries, let the customers know they'd have to wait a little longer, and put a nice bow on the whole debacle by calling it the result of a series of unavoidable accidents. She might even be able to cover it up. Make it look like it never happened. But what would come next? Sooner or later, they'd have another tainted batch of Nuke, or another shipment would go missing, then another, then another, and then another... until all the Nuke the Chosen Ones ever produced was lost in transit, stolen, or laced with deadly chemicals.

No, she didn't want to see that happen.

"Nggh... I've got to get a grip," Miss Planner said aloud, holding her 'Young Business Leader' plaque close to her chest. "Oh, God! It's almost time for the meeting!"

The tiny blonde general manager shakily stood to her feet, ran a hand through her disheveled hair, and grabbed her purse off of her desk.

"Just gotta get through the meeting... then, I'll have a quick smoke and take a nap... maybe a snack... ugh, maybe something more substantial."

She took a deep breath, turned on the faucet in the bathroom across from the entrance to the conference room, and splashed a handful water onto her face. Her long blonde hair was oily, and it felt itchy and heavy against her skin like a nasty spiderweb.

"Come on, Jessica. You can do this! The Chosen Ones need you!"