Luciano

"Boss? She's left the room, I don't know where she is?"

I sigh, irritated.

Why must I do everything myself?

"Fine," I snap into the phone. "I'll check the cameras."

That sly...

I look at the monitors, seeing her dash out of her room.

Did she think I didn't have cameras?

I unlock the door for her, just to see what she'd do.

She wanders in, gaping awe.

I watch her gaze narrow on the piano, and it's like nothing else is there.

She just gravitates toward it, and I wonder if it's playing a song I can't hear.

Gingerly, she sits at it, brushing the keys. Then she zones out.

And for five whole minutes, she was somewhere or somewhen else.

Like a switch, she returns to reality, once again staring down the piano as if she were afraid of it.

I'm tempted to use the intercom and threaten her until she starts to sing.

Softly at first and then,

"When you call my name,

I don't answer.

I don't know her anymore."

She can sing. She sings like an angel, it's...amazing.

"Things just aren't the same

They're not better

Just a different cage.

And I can pray to myself

I can pray to the sky,

But nobody hears when I cry,"

Her finger start playing, but it's like unconscious, she doesn't know what she doing.

But the beat matched perfectly, so I assume it's a song.

"So I will make music

I will make peace

I know how to do this

With a stroke of the keys

I will make music

Until I learn to fly

I will make music

As a prayer to the skies.

I will make music

I will be free

I know I can do this

It's apart of me

And they tried to take it

They tried to kill my soul

But I will music until I go cold."

After all of that, the swell music, the feeling she had, that look she had, I'd never seen her look like that.

I've never seen anyone look like that.

After all of it, she cringes away from the piano, as she committed a heinous crime and she couldn't believe her own audacity.

There is nothing more depressing than watching her kill her spirit.

It's decidedly the worst thing in the world because she has so much of it.

In a blur she's up, and she running. I catch her shake her head, as if scolding herself.

"Hope is for suckers," I hear, before she disappears from the screen.