The emergency office had a queue outside for things that had nothing to do with the inscription.
A woman wanted a replacement transport permit after her bag burned. Two workers argued over which route was entitled to a shared pump. A dispatcher stood in the doorway calling the same location into a receiver, waiting for someone at the far end to acknowledge it. Eli had come ready to demand that nothing move until they found the copy. The sight of the queue made the word nothing acquire faces.
Sera showed the dated request to the receiving clerk. She asked for the entry corresponding to the delivery, not for permission to search every desk. The clerk checked the authorization and disappeared through a door with a window too scratched to see through clearly.
Mira watched the door. “If they start removing boxes, we’re standing in the wrong place.”
“If we block this doorway,” Sera said, “we stop the dispatcher too.”
“Then ask him which door they use for boxes.”
Sera did. The dispatcher pointed toward an interior passage and said no one could enter it while a repair shift was checking the ceiling. He did not know whether the restriction would last ten minutes or the rest of the afternoon.
