Mara put a bell beside the register and told everyone it was a practice bell.
Salma looked at it before taking her seat near the office door. Kian remained upstairs with Nia. He had finally fallen asleep toward morning after asking twice where Ellis had gone.
“No one has to make him wake for this,” Mara said.
“I want to know what happens if he does.”
Mara showed her the upstairs refuge route and the sound rooms. The practice would begin with a written alarm from civic, checked against the phrase they had agreed before it went out. Nobody would invent a fire beside a sleeping child to make the lesson feel important.
Gideon had marked the route through the laundry yard to the office for the people working in the uncharged training room. Luis asked Noah to walk it with the treatment supplies before the drill began. He timed the ordinary journey, then made them do it again without carrying the box so someone with less grip could manage the door.
“Put it where a person reaches it,” he said when Noah set the latch cord too high.
Noah lowered it. Mara tried the movement with her scraped hand kept away from the frame. The door opened; the box could wait outside until another person brought it.
