Bouma hesitated and shook his head. “No sir, I don’t think it’s possible. With all due respect, if they got in once, they’ll certainly be clever enough to get in again.”

Overton massaged the metal holster of his .45. “I understand this may be difficult for you to grasp, son, but we have to secure this facility. There is nowhere else to run. Unless you suggest going back outside. Is that what you’re suggesting, Bouma?”

Bouma shook his head again. “No, sir . . .”

“Then get on it!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Bouma said, his back stiffening.

“Alexia, are you back online?” Overton asked.

“Yes, Sergeant Overton. My mainframe is still downloading files, but I am 90 percent operational. How may I assist you?”

Her robotic voice echoed in his ears. Something about the tone reminded him of . . . no, he was just being paranoid. He shook the thought away quickly and stepped forward to get a better view of the blueprints. “I need to know how those things got in our facility.”

Footsteps rang out behind him, and he turned to see Sophie entering the room. Overton nodded at her and turned back to the holograms.

“Sir, for the sake of expediency, I have assigned names to the creatures. I am calling the spiderlike creatures, for the lack of a better word, Spiders. The larger species you encountered in the tunnel is a Sentinel,” Alexia said. “The Spiders appeared to have gained entry to the hangar through a pair of sanitary sewer lines associated with the old NORAD facility. And you saw how the Sentinel penetrated the hangar via the blast doors.”

Overton’s stomach growled. The granola bar hadn’t been enough. He needed more food and desperately needed sleep. He shook his head and looked at the ground, trying to think.

Bouma was right. The facility was just too big to secure, and the Biosphere wasn’t designed with security in mind. If the blast doors couldn’t keep one of those things out, there was no way they could keep them out of the Biomes.

Sophie’s firm voice pulled him back to reality. “What about the device?” she suggested.

“What?” Overton asked, massaging his temples.

“The magnet. Clearly it saved Luke’s life and camouflaged his house from the Organics. Maybe we could get it to work here too?”

Overton blinked, second-guessing his decision to leave Luke’s bunker. Had it been the wrong move? He shrugged off the thought. He had had no way of knowing the Biosphere facility had been compromised. There was also no way he was going to risk heading back outside. Not now, with two children under their care. Besides, he knew most of the team would refuse to go anyway. Their only choice was to hunker down and try their best to make the chambers as safe as possible.

“Do you think you can get that thing up and running?” Overton asked.