Recently I have noticed that they are installing a fire alarm system in
my building with pull stations and in some places detectors. As of now
they have installed a bunch of boxes throughout the building with rigid
pipe conduit and a single red wire fished through.

I noticed that in one spot there is a run of about 4~5 feet in the
ceiling where the red wire is exposed without conduit. It goes through
the wall and into a junction box mounted in the garbage room.

Is the purpose of this red wire only for a 9 volt signal between
alarms? Is that why you don't need to run it inside conduit? Or is this
a major code violation? It would seem silly to spend all of this money
to secure our building from fire and them have a dumb mistake which
compromises the entire system.

Thanks.
-ben