The first corridor turned left in front of them.
Not at a corner. The whole wall moved, rolling across its track until the opening that had faced the entry aligned with a passage on the other side. A low tone sounded before the movement began. Painted warning strips along the floor stayed visible throughout.
Sera waited until the strips stopped flashing.
“Now.”
They crossed the threshold together. Behind them the marshal recorded their entry. Ahead, three arches led into rooms with the same gray floor and different arrangements of light. The weighted recovery case was somewhere beyond the first set of moving sections. A full route and the complete numbered load had to reach the return point before the deadline.
Eli recognized the middle arch.
The notch in the stone was wrong, but the proportions were painfully familiar: a shallow landing, a wide opening, a narrow recess on the right. In his first life it had led to a stair that joined the outer floor. He could almost smell the old dust before he remembered that this was a projected training environment arranged around physical mechanisms.
Sera switched on the modified sensor.
