The Upfall.

Contemplating.

Cassandra's desperate words rang painfully in her ears. Maryanne marched tiredly towards Lauren's office. Her fingers were cold and numb. The cold flowed up her arms, through her shoulders, and soon to her neck, which stung every time she turned. That day's dread was still fresh. A brief tremor ran down her body at the memory. Or was it just the prosecutor's walk-by, his heavy clacking soles hitting the wooden floor?

He was then on her far left, by the window. His hair shone under the bright light pushing in through the window. His eyes were across the court, to the witness, but Maryanne felt sickeningly cold under his peripheral view.

"The first time I met her, I just saw a dedicated young lady," Cassandra said. "There was a fire in her eyes, just hungry, I guess, for success."

"Hmm." The prosecutor thrust himself off the wall to his feet and began walking towards the stand.

Maryanne felt the air around her get heavier as he marched by.

"A fire in her eyes," he said, echoing her.

"Yes, like she was willing to do anything," she added, following his crooked steps around the floor. Then he let out another brief hum and groped his chin with his index finger and thumb, looking up at the ceiling. A silence slipped in briefly-one he created to let that answer sink in. And it did, as a light chatter began behind her. More thoughtful hums grew in response.

Beside her, she noticed Dawkins' head shaking so slow and slightly that the judge, from his bench, probably couldn't notice his frustration. His eyes were set on the prosecutor, likely scanning the rough beard scattered around his small bony jaw, wishing he could just run up there with some scissors and chop off whatever was left of it.

Then he picked up his pen chokingly and, with his thumb, pushed in the tiny button on the back of it.

Maryanne struggled to read his crooked handwriting but soon made out the word: Dedicated. She didn't know what he was going to do with that word, though she hoped he would form a barrage of questions that would grill Cassandra to a burnt stake.

But the word was true. She was.

She remembered her first day in a news building. The small, five-storey building of her hometown news network, Daily Siren. She had always hated the name-thought it was corny and not creative at all. As if a fourth-grade dropout had come up with it. But she was eager to work there, starting out as a news writer.

Quickly she realized that writing the news anchor's scripts wasn't all she wished to do. Gazing from the newsroom, the limelight shone bright. She loved the way the lead anchor sat in the middle of the studio while everything around him, from cameras to lights, adjusted keenly to his movements. And that wasn't even the biggest news network, The Great Nation. It wasn't the top news anchor, Cassandra.

"Yes, I'm a mother. I have a son," Cassandra answered, jerking Maryanne back into the room at the very word mother. Maryanne scooted herself back and sat alert in the chair.

"Now how demanding would you say this job is?"

"Oh, it is very demanding. Especially in the lower ranks coming up," Cassandra answered. Then the prosecutor's manufactured silence followed.

Dawkins wrote down dedicated then thudded the pen on the table.

She remembered a day when a script she had worked on an entire evening apparently wasn't satisfactory-that it wasn't all-encompassing of all the information and the emotions the viewers were supposed to feel, one of the producers on Daily Siren said in an annoyingly forced high-pitched voice.

She had to revise it once, twice, then on the third review, it just had to go. "It isn't working," the producer said, breaking out of the forced voice to its usual roughness.

Then she had to go back through all the findings-from the news wires to raw field footage. A job in which the entire team was usually involved. Sitting alone in the newsroom with the producer's muffled runts coming from the studio less than an hour to air.

In her mind, behind her attentiveness to her work, was the thought of giving up and just quitting, but her eyes were on the studio. Peeking constantly through the glass, and admiring the spotlight. She wished herself there one day and swore she would do anything for a seat at that table.

"Counsel, what are you getting at?" The judge's gruff voice shook Maryanne. The prosecutor, who was all the way back at the window, started on his route in front of the judge's bench. Maryanne shuddered at his passing by.

And as he geared up to answer the judge's question, she knew exactly what it was going to be.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. As you have heard, this here is an extremely demanding profession. And you have heard from the defendant's own mentor that she is willing to do anything." He squeezed his throat and shrilled, "Anything to succeed. Who is to say that this does not include..." A glance turned to her. The disgusting smirk from the prosecutor signaled victory. Dawkins sneered, and so did Maryanne.

Then her gaze turned away from his to Cassandra. She noticed her nodding lightly in agreement. Disgust flew through her, turning her stomach, but behind it was another feeling-guilt, that turned it even more and curled it into an uncomfortable fold.

She remembered the choice she once had. Standing in that washroom, looking nervously into her own eyes in the mirror. Her phone lay on the sink's rim with the recording halfway paused, staring back at her temptingly.

Her mentor had once said to her, while half-filling a glass with wine back in room 109. It was about a year back, soon after they had met.

"Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do." She took a tiny sip of the wine. "People bury themselves in their own mistakes. Sometimes you just have to hand them the shovel and claim the ground they leave behind."

"Your Honor, that is all," the prosecutor said and walked towards his table. Maryanne's bones stiffened under her skin as he passed by. A rough cough left her as his perfume whiffed through her nose.

The ramble roared up behind her and filled the room.