The maintenance worker would not let Tessa’s team pull the release yet.
They had reached it through the service corridor, following the old plan only as far as he could confirm the actual walls. A new conduit crowded the final recess. Its bracket lay across the handle’s travel, leaving enough space for a hand and not enough for the full movement that should lift the mechanical fastening.
“If we force it here, we bend the rod,” he said.
A volunteer held the lamp while he tested the bracket’s ordinary bolts. One had seized. The other turned with a shriek that made everyone stop and listen for a field answering somewhere deeper in the wall. Nothing changed on the local safety instrument. The worker continued by hand.
Tessa waited at the corridor mouth with the southern group’s contact on a line independent of the interface.
“No one comes in yet,” she told the waiting escort. “They’re exposing the handle. We haven’t opened the route.”
Behind her, the medic assigned to the bottleneck checked what support the first patient would need if the passage worked. There was no room for a vehicle through the last turn. A supported transfer might be possible, but they would test the ordinary litter’s angle empty before asking a patient to occupy it. The waiting group’s handcar could reach the receiving side by another road if someone stayed with it. Its owner was consulted rather than told to abandon it.
