The recommendation became official at 09:14 a.m.
Elias read it on a thin tablet slid across the table by a legal observer who wouldn't quite meet his eyes. The language was cautious, almost apologetic phrases like revised assessment, procedural overreach, reduced necessity. No one said mistake. Systems never did.
But the meaning was unmistakable.
Conditional release.
Elias set the tablet down carefully. "Conditional," he repeated.
"Yes," the observer said. "Temporary residence restrictions. Monitoring. Scheduled appearances."
Elias nodded. "And Damien Blackwood?"
A pause short, telling. "You'll be permitted contact."
Elias allowed himself a breath. Not relief. Not yet. Relief made you sloppy.
"When?" he asked.
"Today," Dr. Collins said quietly.
He looked at her. Really looked. She seemed smaller than before, or maybe the room had grown. Her hands were steady, though. That mattered.
"Thank you," Elias said
not as gratitude, but acknowledgment.
She inclined her head. "I hope you understand… this isn't an apology."
"I know," Elias replied. "It's a correction."
Damien received the confirmation while standing in an elevator that smelled faintly of steel and rain.
He didn't smile. He didn't move. He simply closed his eyes as the car ascended, the city sliding upward around him.
Conditional release. Today.
He replayed the words like a litany not to soften them, but to anchor them. This wasn't a win. It was a threshold. And thresholds demanded care.
When the doors opened, he walked into his office and dismissed everyone. No witnesses. No congratulations. No hands on his shoulders.
He called Elias.
This time, the line connected without delay.
"I'm coming," Damien said.
"I know," Elias replied.
A beat. Then, softer: "Are you ready?"
Damien looked out at the skyline, at the shape of the city he had learned to command and now questioned daily. "I've never been more deliberate."
"Good," Elias said. "Because they'll be watching."
Damien's mouth curved, just barely. "Let them."
They met not at the facility gates, but two blocks away neutral ground chosen by committee and compromise. A quiet plaza. Trees. Cameras hidden in lampposts.
Elias arrived first, coat buttoned against the wind, posture composed. He felt exposed without the walls not unsafe, but visible in a new way. Freedom came with glare.
Damien crossed the plaza with unhurried steps, hands in his pockets, eyes locked on Elias as if nothing else existed.
They stopped an arm's length apart.
No touch.
Not yet.
"You look thinner," Damien said.
Elias smiled. "You look like you didn't sleep."
Damien exhaled. "Fair."
They stood there, the space between them charged not with urgency, but with restraint. The kind that came from knowing every movement would be recorded, parsed, replayed.
"Walk with me," Elias said.
They did.
Side by side. Not too close. Not distant. The city moved around them, unaware of how much had shifted in so little space.
"They'll expect a narrative," Damien said quietly. "Redemption. Retreat."
"They'll get neither," Elias replied. "Give them consistency."
Damien glanced at him. "You're already thinking three steps ahead."
Elias met his gaze. "So are you."
A shared understanding passed between them
unspoken, solid.
Julian watched the footage later, jaw tight.
They looked calm.
Worse they looked aligned.
"Conditional release wasn't supposed to do this," he muttered.
His assistant shifted uneasily. "Public sentiment is stabilizing. Favorably."
Julian's fingers tapped the desk. "Stability is temporary."
He leaned back, eyes narrowing. "If I can't contain them separately… I'll test them together."
That night, Elias stayed at Damien's penthouse for the first time since everything fractured.
Not hidden. Not secret.
Documented.
They stood in the doorway for a moment, the familiar space altered by absence and return. Memory layered over reality until it felt almost unreal.
"You don't have to stay," Damien said.
Elias stepped inside. "I want to."
The door closed softly behind them.
They moved through the space slowly, reacquainting themselves with the quiet, with the way the air felt when it wasn't monitored by strangers. Damien poured water. Elias set his coat down.
Finally when no one was watching closely enough to misinterpret
they stood close.
Not desperate.
Intentional.
Damien lifted a hand, stopped just short of Elias's cheek. "Is this okay?"
Elias leaned into the touch. "Yes."
The contact was brief, grounding. A promise rather than a claim.
They sat together as the city lights flickered on, speaking in low voices about practicalities
lawyers, schedules, appearances. The work of survival.
But beneath it all ran something steadier.
They had crossed the point of containment.
And whatever came next pressure, retaliation, fracture they would face it not as variables in someone else's equation, but as constants.
Together.