For a few seconds the room remained silent. Then questions began rising from different directions, with people asking what had happened, whether there was a fire, and whether somebody was hurt. Ronan answered what he could and refused to invent answers for the rest. His honesty did more to steady the room than a false promise would have.
Mara stepped forward. "The east windows offer another route out. We're checking them now. Everyone will have help on both sides, and we're moving people in small groups. If you've got an injury, breathing trouble, or anything that might make a short drop difficult, tell us now, not when you're halfway through."
A few hands went up. One man had a knee replacement. Another used a cane for long walks. A third was recovering from a shoulder injury. Mara made notes, assigned experienced people to help them, and sent Garrett to clear the space around the windows. The crowd began to reorganize around a plan instead of around its fears.
Eli stood beside the table with the building diagrams. He had expected the bikers to become louder and more dangerous when they discovered the doors were locked. Instead, most of them became oddly practical. Men who had been arguing over dinner now carried chairs out of the way, offered jackets to those who were shivering, and asked where they were needed. It did not eliminate fear. It gave fear something useful to do.
For a moment, Eli thought the worst might be over. If the windows could be opened, everyone could leave without ever understanding the full purpose of the system downstairs. The fire department could take over. His mother could come get him. Rascal could spend the rest of the evening explaining, in the language of dogs, why none of this should ever happen again.
Then Mara called him back to the table.
"There's something else," she said, pointing to a narrow line on the original plans. "A service corridor running under the north end of the hill. The original architect marked it as an emergency exit. Do you remember seeing a second platform in the storage room?"
"I saw one on the plan," Eli said. "I haven't checked the actual room."
"Neither have I."
Ronan joined them. A route from the old shelter to the north hillside, protected from the storm, could be useful for people who could not manage the window drop. But the diagram was more than half a century old, and nobody knew whether the passage was still open. Ronan made the obvious decision: inspect it, but do not send anybody into it until Mara had assessed it.
They moved toward the north storage room while Garrett continued organizing the window area. The storage room was colder than the main hall, with shelves of spare parts, old tires, cleaning supplies, and boxes of decorations from earlier club gatherings. The lights there were dimmer, and the wind made the exterior wall creak.