"[color=fff79a]Sir, is something wrong?[/color]"

Jules had attempted to pretend that he did not just flinch; the applicant could not hear the feedback screeching from the earpiece, but his reaction betrayed the possibility that she was being eavesdropped upon after all. "[color=8d97bf]Nothing that concerns you, Ms. Boulanger,[/color]" he said, hoping in retrospect that that didn't sound too pretentious. "[color=8d97bf]One of my chips needs a calibration. I've been getting headaches all month. Anyway, you'll receive a call soon![/color]" They shook hands, and Jules saved his sigh for when she had left the room.

Of course she wished, through the shrinking crack of the door, that he'd get better soon. He feared that Ona was there to hear it, the final nail in a casket stuffed with insult. Jules returned to the control room timidly as a dormouse, but seeing that she was not there, unwound substantially in the shoulders.

"[color=8d97bf]Maybe the next one will be a handsome guy. Then she won't be so uptight,[/color]" he grumbled. The handler nodded awkwardly, but hesitated to slander anyone, not when they could walk back into the room any second now. She'd wait til the patchers' backs were turned to start smearing their gossip across the offices. The nod was one of acknowledgement, then, not agreement.

He saw that the coffee was gone. He didn't think to look in the wastebasket, so he assumed the tornado of stress female hormones was carrying it away to another work station; she was shuffling another pile of paperwork like a deck of cards, or at the very least, grabbing another applicant. She had ten minutes, he decided to himself, before he'd do it himself. The assistant needed some practice anyway. It wasn't protocol, but the arteries of protocol were already so fatty and clogged, who would notice?

Jules glanced sidelong. The girl paid too much attention to him, shifting little glances his way when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Then there were the cameras. He couldn't sneak a drink in the blind spot yet, so he twiddled his thumbs, pretending to be bored instead of claustrophobic and anxious, that any sufficient amount of bulletproof glass and chromasteel paneling existed in this building to protect him from the wrath of woman scorned. Frankly he hoped she'd just unload it all on him quickly. Get it over with. But more realistically she'd resent him for weeks now; subtle sabotage following his every step.