THE NORTH service ramp smelled like old concrete, hot rain, and panic.
People were already inside it.
Hospital staff in blue coats. Two transit workers with dust on their helmets. A mother carrying a little girl whose shoes flashed pink every time she kicked. Three Defense Force medics pushing a bed with one wheel screaming against the floor.
They all stopped when Caleb came through the gate.
Silver light filled the ramp.
For half a breath, every face turned into a question Cassius had spent weeks teaching them.
Caleb put both hands where they could see them.
"The arrows are routes," he said. "They are yours to use or ignore."
Nobody moved.
Then the little girl's shoe flashed again.
She pointed at the white arrow running down the wall. "That one goes up."
Caleb followed her finger.
The arrow curved around a cracked support beam and climbed toward a daylight stair.
"Good eye," he said.
The mother went first.
The whole ramp exhaled after her.
