The press conference ran through the mid morning, Wells fielding most of it himself, calm and articulate in front of the cameras in a way that made the whole project sound inevitable instead of experimental.
Barry gave a handful of shorter interviews of his own, careful, rehearsed answers about optimization protocols and proprietary modeling software, the same practiced deflections he'd been using for over a year now, smooth enough that nobody ever thought to push past them.
He was making his way back toward the lab wing between interviews when he saw DeVoe.
The man stood near the edge of the press gallery, unremarkable in a plain gray coat, watching the proceedings with the quiet, patient attention of someone who had learned to make himself easy to overlook.
He wasn't wearing a press badge or a research credential. Just a simple visitor's pass, the kind given to any member of the public who'd requested a viewing slot months in advance.
Barry felt the change in the air before DeVoe even turned to look at him, the same instinct that had kept him alive through every careful, dangerous thing he'd done over the past year sharpening to a fine point.
"Mr. Allen," DeVoe said, and his voice was calm, measured, entirely pleasant on its surface. "I don't believe we've properly met, despite how often your name comes up around this project."
"Professor DeVoe," Barry said, matching his tone exactly, giving away nothing. "I hear STAR Labs turned down your proposal."
"They did," DeVoe said, without any visible resentment. "Dr. Wells felt our research interests didn't align closely enough to justify formal collaboration. I understood his reasoning." He glanced toward the containment building visible through the glass wall behind them, something unreadable moving briefly across his expression. "Still, I couldn't quite bring myself to miss today. There's something almost poetic about watching a breakthrough happen from the outside, don't you think? Knowing exactly how close you came to being part of it."
Barry held his gaze and kept his voice level, even as every instinct in him went quiet and alert at once.
"I imagine that's a strange feeling," Barry said.
"It is," DeVoe agreed, and something in the way he said it carried a second meaning Barry couldn't quite pin down, careful and deliberate in a way that made Barry wonder, not for the first time, exactly how much this man actually knew and simply chose never to say out loud.
DeVoe offered a small, polite nod and turned back toward the gallery without another word, leaving Barry standing there with the distinct, uneasy feeling of having just been read far more closely than he'd been the one doing the reading.
---
An hour before the scheduled activation, Wells pulled Barry aside for a final walk through of the viewing area, a wide, open plaza several hundred yards from the containment building itself, now filled with rows of temporary seating and a bank of enormous LED screens angled toward the crowd.
"Every camera inside the containment chamber feeds directly here," Wells said, gesturing at the screens as technicians made final adjustments. "Real time, full resolution. Nobody needs to be anywhere near the actual reaction to see every second of it happen."
Barry studied the layout carefully, the seating, the screens, the wide, deliberate gap between the crowd and the building itself, and felt a calculation resurfacing in the back of his mind, one he had worked on for this exact moment.
"This distance," Barry said slowly. "It's not just for a good view."
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