The weekend.
No meetings.
No briefings.
No strategy sessions.
The building ran on a different rhythm when most of the staff were gone — quieter, slower, the specific quiet of a large space that had been built for noise and was now sitting with the absence of it.
Damian stayed.
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He told himself it was because of the cameras.
Which was true.
The cameras outside had multiplied since the press release.
Three outlets had permanent photographers stationed at the building entrance.
Two more had rotating shifts.
Leaving meant running a press gauntlet in both directions — out to wherever he was going and back, every departure and return documented and uploaded and available for commentary before he'd had time to get wherever he was going.
He had done it once, on Thursday, to pick up his own suppressant refill from a pharmacy seven blocks away.
It had taken forty minutes.
The photographs had appeared online before he got back.
So: the cameras.
That was the reason.
