Ronan told Garrett to begin moving the first groups toward the main exits without alarming the entire hall. Mara would check the structural drawings for alternate routes. Cutter would stay with Ronan, and Eli would come upstairs with them. None of it was presented as a debate. The time for debating whether a problem existed had passed.
As they climbed the stairs, Eli caught a glimpse of the colored indicator through the open door. The light flickered between amber and red, then held steady. It might have been an ordinary status change in an unfamiliar machine. It might have meant that something important was already underway. He had no reliable way of knowing, and that uncertainty frightened him more than a visible countdown would have.
Upstairs, the gathering continued around them. A song changed on the speakers, a burst of laughter rose from the far table, and someone called for more coffee from the kitchen. Garrett moved among his visiting members with quiet purpose, asking small groups to shift closer to the front and side corridors. He did not explain more than he knew. He had accepted Ronan's judgment, though his face suggested he would have preferred a problem that announced itself with an obvious enemy.
Mara found an empty table near the kitchen and spread out the copy of the building diagram she had brought from below. The paper was old enough to have lost color around the folds. Eli stood beside her while she traced the original foundations, the additions, and the places where old service spaces had been sealed behind new construction. She did not talk down to him or praise him for recognizing symbols. She asked questions, waited for his answers, and corrected him when a line he thought was a duct turned out to be an obsolete water supply.
"You read this like somebody who has seen buildings taken apart," she said.
"My uncle repairs them," Eli replied. "He shows me the diagrams before he starts, sometimes."
"Good teacher."
"He says diagrams aren't promises. They're somebody's best record of what they think was built."
Mara looked at him with new interest. "That's a very good thing to remember tonight."
The main room's front door had been reinforced years earlier after a break-in. It carried a normal handle, a manual bolt, and an electronic access system that club members rarely thought about because it usually worked. The side door to the kitchen was simpler, though newer locks had been installed there as well. Mara identified three east-facing windows that appeared to be original glass in old timber frames. They were high enough above the ground to make evacuation awkward, but they were not hidden behind concrete or heavy steel. She marked them on the page with her pencil.
"If the doors fail, those are our exits," she said.
Ronan looked at the marks. "How far to the ground?"
"Six feet in the worst place. Less near the corner if the grade hasn't changed. We need to verify from outside."
"I'll send two men around before the rain gets worse."
He was turning away when every overhead light in the building went out.