He spoke to it once in the same clipped tone he used in labs when systems pretended not to hear. “Access. Manual service override. Open.”

Nothing.

He tried again, changing pitch, adding pauses, then common prompts he had heard these people use with food walls and transit lifts. No click. No chime. No hidden speaker. The tower gave him nothing. It might as well have been solid stone.

A patch of hanging vine near the rear face had been trained to look wild and careless, but the stems crossed in too neat a grid. Elias pushed the growth aside and found what he had been looking for: a vertical outline in bronze-toned metal set flush into the dark wall. A service door. Narrow. Tall enough for a person. No handle on the outside, just a faint seam around the frame and a dark panel the size of his palm.

“There you are,” Elias muttered.

He put his hand to the panel. Waited. Tried pressure. A firmer push. Knuckles. The heel of his good hand. He leaned his shoulder into the door and stopped at once when pain ran hot from shoulder to hip. He drew back, hissed through his teeth, then set his feet again and pushed with both arms, careful this time, feeling for any give.

Nothing moved.