The records annex had a tree through its roof.
It had fallen from the shallow bank behind the building and driven a forked branch into the upper storeroom. From the road, the hole looked like a person had opened a dark umbrella inside the rafters. Water ran from it in a slow bright thread, though the morning was dry.
Mara stood beside the vehicle while Gideon checked the entrance. Tessa looked at the roof, then at the wall below it.
“Back half is out,” she said. “We don’t go under that.”
Marisol had matched the diagnostic’s municipal reference to Ada’s annex notes. Mara carried the few dry copies the organizer had brought out before the roads closed. A leaf trembled in the ruined roof; the branch supporting it was thicker than Mara’s waist.
Gideon brought them in through the lower entrance after checking for occupied rooms or signs of recent movement. No charged thread marked this doorway. Mara felt its absence as she passed, the same way she had felt an ordinary stair beneath her feet on the first night.
The air smelled of wet cardboard and plaster. A telephone on the reception desk lay on its side, cord disappearing beneath a fallen brochure rack. On the wall, a sign directed people with identity documents to Window Two.
