They waited until the ordinary loaders came out.
Juno counted them from the maintenance side without writing names. A supervisor checked the cleared passage and shut the outer loading doors. The final worker wheeled an empty trolley toward the public road, stopped to retrieve a glove, and went back inside. Eli’s whole body wanted to treat the first departure as the beginning of their chance. He waited through the return.
The worker emerged again. This time the supervisor followed, arguing about a shift credit. Their voices moved away together. The reopened delivery passage lay dark except for a narrow service lamp.
Eli and Juno went in without Mira. She stayed at the checked outer point with the return contact, where a warning would not require all three of them to run through the same narrowing corridor. No inherited talent was part of the entry plan. Eli had ordinary tools, an ordinary light, and the complete stop that had followed the walkway rescue.
A locked service hatch barred the shortest way.
Eli crouched beside it, listening. The faint signal Juno had measured outside had become a pulse he could almost feel in his teeth. He could not tell how much was expectation and how much was the machinery beyond the wall.
