It was not an exciting answer. It was the right one, and Eli understood that later when he realized how many disasters began with someone insisting on proving they were cleverer than the danger in front of them.
The clock on the wall now showed a time Eli struggled to reconcile with what he felt. It had been less than two hours since he followed Rascal into the woods. His mother would have finished dinner. She would have searched the backyard, checked the creek path, and called him so many times that her own fear would have begun to feel like anger. He wanted to reach her, but his phone had no signal and the evacuation had narrowed his world to the building and the people inside it.
Ronan caught him looking at the clock. "Your mother?"
Eli nodded.
"Cutter has her number?"
"It's in my phone."
"We'll call her as soon as we're outside and can get a signal."
"She's going to be furious."
For the first time that night, Ronan smiled properly. "Good. It means you've got somebody who loves you enough to be frightened."
Eli swallowed. The smile vanished from his face as suddenly as it had come. He had spent three years wondering why a father could leave without explanation and how a person was supposed to trust the adults who stayed. His mother had stayed. Uncle Jonah had stayed. And now a strange man in a leather vest was worrying about how to get him safely home.
The contrast made his throat ache, and he turned away before anyone noticed.
Mara called that only eight club members remained inside. Several had volunteered to stay behind and assist others, but she ordered them out in turn, refusing to let courage become an excuse for unnecessary risk. Garrett argued briefly that he should remain until his entire visiting chapter was accounted for. Ronan told him his thirty-one people were already outside and that he would do more good confirming them at the gathering point. Garrett obeyed.
When the window count reached fifty-eight, Cutter looked at the narrow hall leading to the hidden room. A faint odor had reached the main room, something unfamiliar beneath the smell of rain and damp wood. Eli noticed it, too. Neither could say whether it came from the compromised system or from the broken glass, dust, and equipment disturbed during the evacuation. But it made the need to leave more urgent.
"Time?" Ronan asked.
"We don't know exactly," Eli said. "The sequence showed more than half an hour left when I read it, but it may not be the only thing happening."
"That's enough for me," Ronan answered. "Everyone out."
He called Mara over and gave her the names of the remaining five club members. Four were near the east wall. The fifth was Cutter, who was helping them. Ronan planned to remain until the last member reached the ground, then follow. Eli would go as soon as a space opened, not after everybody else.
"I'm not leaving you inside," Ronan told him.