#;ch1

It’s not the first time Sabine’s found herself in the courtroom. Hardly an extraordinary event.

What is extraordinary, however, is the way she’s crouched in front of the judge’s podium, with what appears to be a disassembled alarm clock lying by her side. The job’s not complete, not by a long shot, but there are still odds and ends of mechanical innards strewn about the ground.

Frowning, she’s about to knock on the podium for, like, the eighty-fifth time, but the sound of someone entering has her frozen. Her gaze flicks over to the newcomer.

“Oh. Hey. I’m, uh...”

Maestro was pissed.

(Really, what else was new.)

He’d effectively moved from his and Retriever’s suite to the Aggregate Gambit room, holing himself up and refusing to come out except for when he absolutely had to. There was work to be done. Music played on and on in his mind—crushing crescendos that he could practically feel, but couldn’t ever seem to articulate in a legible form on paper. Which just angered him even more.

Fucking hell.

Right now, though, Maestro wasn’t working. He was in the kitchen, making what appeared to be some kind of basic soup. But when he heard someone behind him, he jolted and turned around, brandishing a spoon.

“Putain de merde! Don’t—don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Stupid. All that work of figuring out who killed the bastard, and he ended up killing himself. Still, she felt bad for the poor son of a bitch, he just wanted to commit murder and get out of here, and yet his own stupidity lead to his demise. 

She found her legs getting weak as she walked out of the court room, waves of fatigue and anger rushing over her and swallowing her whole. Before she knew it, she was face up on the floor, a little bit down the hallway. She was tired, and most of all she was pissed.

This dream has gone on long enough, and she was done with it. She wanted to wake up and be home, this was all too much for her to handle.