CLEARANCE WARNING

This page assumes you have finished Hard Parole and contains spoilers for Book One.

Haven’t read it yet?

Still here?
Excellent.
Your poor judgement continues to impress us.

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Surviving was supposed to be the hard part.

Wraith got out.
Ghost Command is no longer quite as dead as advertised.
Kael Veyne has discovered that walking away from SID is significantly easier than walking away from everything SID did to him.
And somewhere between the Inbetween, the Void and saving Wraith’s life, Kael brought something back with him.
Something that whispers.
Something that has been waiting.
Something an ancient cult already has a name for.

The Returned Sun.

Wraith has no intention of letting anyone turn Kael into their prophecy.
Kael has no intention of becoming anyone’s god.

And Shade—
Well.
Shade has opinions.

Their search for answers will take them to Perdition, into the secrets Ghost Command buried after the War, and towards a truth none of them are remotely prepared to face.

Because the mission may be over.
The war may have been a lie.
But something in the dark is very, very real.

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Welcome back to the Archives

If Hard Parole was about finding the ghosts, Conditional Release is about discovering what happens when you bring them home.

Spoiler:

They do not immediately become emotionally healthy adults.

Instead, expect:

• trauma-bonded found family
• Wraith trying to hold herself together through sheer spite
• Kael discovering that principles are considerably easier when nobody you love is involved
• Shade being, alarmingly, one of the more emotionally functional people in the room
• old Ghost Command secrets
• new betrayals
• cult theology with disturbingly practical consequences
• psychic intimacy and very questionable boundaries
• people refusing to stay dead
• weaponised memory
• knives
• feelings
• significantly too many of both

Also kissing.

Shade insisted that be included.

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The Void has opinions

In Hard Parole, the Inbetween was dangerous.
In Conditional Release, danger becomes personal.

Kael escaped the Void.
Mostly.

Now something lives just beneath his skin, old beliefs are beginning to stir around him, and people who have spent centuries waiting for their promised Sun are paying attention.

The problem with prophecy is that it rarely cares whether the person at the centre of it consents.
Kael does not.
Wraith takes that personally.

This may become everyone else’s problem.

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And then there’s Shade

Ex-soldier.
Ghost.
Void Whisperer.
Part-time cult leader.
Full-time emotional liability.

Wraith has been looking for him.
Kael would probably have preferred that she hadn’t found him.
Shade would like it formally recorded that he is delighted by this entire situation and has absolutely no ulterior motives whatsoever.
Geist has declined to endorse that statement.

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This one is about what comes after

After the mission.
After the reunion.
After surviving the thing that should have killed you.

Conditional Release digs deeper into the relationships at the heart of The Inbetween Archives: loyalty, identity, grief, love, dependency, betrayal—and what happens when the people who know exactly where you are broken choose to stay anyway.

Healing is not linear.
Neither is Ghost Command.

And sometimes the person trying hardest to save you is standing on the edge right beside you.

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If you liked this in Hard Parole…

Wraith & Kael

That situation has not become less complicated.
Quite the opposite.

Ghost Command

More of them. More history. More reasons they should probably all be in therapy.

The Inbetween

You had questions.
You will receive answers.
Unfortunately, those answers come with substantially worse questions.

Shade

Yes.
A lot more Shade.
We apologise to everyone except Shade.

Morally gray decisions

Nobody has suddenly developed good judgement between books.

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Reader advisory

Conditional Release goes darker and more psychologically intense than Hard Parole.

Themes and content include:

• PTSD, trauma flashbacks and dissociation
• psychological manipulation
• religious fanaticism and cult indoctrination
• identity erosion and loss of self
• body horror and possession
• past abuse, imprisonment and war crimes
• violence and death
• intense emotional dependency
• psychological torture
• moral compromise
• weaponised memory
• complicated sexual and emotional relationships

And, according to Shade:

“Feelings. Waaaay too many feelings.”

Please select your emergency comfort character before proceeding.
Geist recommends whiskey.

[VIEW FULL CONTENT INFORMATION]

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Ready to go back Inbetween?

You survived Hard Parole.
Statistically improbable.
Emotionally questionable.

But here you are.

Now find out what happens when Wraith, Kael and Ghost Command discover that surviving the mission may have been the easy part.

The Void remembers.
And it never forgets its own.

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Already survived this one?

Firstly:

Sorry.

Secondly, your clearance level has increased.

[I FINISHED CONDITIONAL RELEASE]

Continue to:

Flight Risk

Six months later, Ghost Command is finally back together.
For the first time since the War, all six of them are in the same place.
It should feel like coming home.

Unfortunately, the universe has other plans.

Or, if you’re not quite ready to move forward:

Go back to the beginning and meet Ghost Command before they became ghosts.
It hurts better when you already know what they lose.

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Conditional Release
Book Two of The Inbetween Archives
by AJ Pryor