If the mission brief had been correct—and military intelligence had to get something right today—even if by sheer luck, the entrance would be less than a hundred feet away. Alice looked up; the black rain had stopped, the lake and steam gone, but the burning forest still blazed around her. The air stank of the fires, her mouth coated with a gritty texture. Her lungs were working hard, and every few steps she had to stop and gulp like a beached fish. The MI had calculated how long the trees would burn, and how much oxygen that would take. It had been wrong, or perhaps the crack in the foundation had opened the dome up to some underground pollutants. The atmosphere was becoming unbreathable.