Rook accepted observers and kept Eli’s surrender in the same sentence.
Sera read the reply without expression. The office had softened the escort language, specified a public entrance, and added a place for an independent witness at the meeting. Eli would still enter under guard and remain in emergency security’s custody afterward.
“The chair moved,” Bram said. “The door didn’t.”
Eli did not argue. He had spent the morning making the continuity arrangements Tessa wanted, and the work had exposed how much he would leave unsettled by treating detention as a personal expense. Contacts needed someone else they could reach. The technical inquiry needed a person empowered to challenge an interpretation without waiting for his approval. Evacuation work needed its own decisions, whether he could attend another meeting or not.
Those changes were useful even if he never went inside.
Sera rejected the offered terms and sent the delegated proposal. Bram and Sera, accompanied by an independent observer, would present the packet on a reduced technical agenda. They could ask about activation and independent examination. They could not negotiate Eli’s legal status, disclose protected witnesses, or accept obligations on behalf of communities whose representatives were not in the room.
Rook’s office did not answer immediately.
