The ground was still vibrating when Hale and Gray broke through the last barrier.

The dome’s interior had changed — no longer a chamber of cables and steel, but a hollow sphere of glass-like strata, pulsing faintly with residual light. Every echo of the breach’s collapse radiated from the center — where a crater of melted circuitry marked the heart of the implosion.

The air shimmered. Electric dust floated like ash in zero gravity.

Gray stumbled forward first, hand raised to shield ...