The scent of fresh manure crept into Sophie’s nostrils, making her cringe. She hated the smell of animals, especially their waste. “You can play with your toys later. Let’s meet up with the others; I want to check out the personnel quarters.”

Emanuel pushed the rim of his glasses higher onto his nose, and made his way across the dirt reluctantly.

“He’s the stereotypical nerd biologist, isn’t he?” Sophie asked Holly, her arms crossed.

Holly chuckled. “Sure is. A side part, glasses, and a five o’clock shadow. He basically radiates nerd.”

An image from their past crawled into Sophie’s mind: her and Emanuel, their bodies wrapped up under the soft sheets of a bed in the bowels of a bunker as they rode out the solar storms. She recalled the panic of knowing that the world was dying around them—and that the only cure was intimacy, the feeling of him being inside her, as if they were the last two humans on Earth.

The thought was dangerous. She knew she couldn’t risk that happening again. Not now, not like that, and not during the mission. There was too much at stake. She didn’t need any distractions, and besides, she wasn’t the type of person to try something that had failed once before. Her life wasn’t a science project.

She pressed on, her shoes hardly making a sound as she walked toward their quarters. It was less than a minute’s walk from the livestock chamber. She wasn’t an architect, but if she were, these were two areas she would have separated. Sleeping with the stench of manure wasn’t her idea of a good night’s rest, but it could help suppress any unwanted desires she might have.

Her concern disappeared when Biome 4 came into view. She poked her head into the first room. It was much more spacious than she had imagined, and impressively welcoming. A large bed protruded out of the concrete wall. It was attached only by small wires on both ends, and appeared to hover in place. On the nightstand was a thin tablet. It was encased in carbon, and her name had been engraved on the back.

“Not bad, NTC, not bad,” she muttered aloud on her way to the hallway.

“What do you think?” Holly shouted from the entry of her room.

Sophie smiled. “I won’t lie; I’m impressed. The conditions are much nicer than I thought they would be.”

“These tablets are great!” an excited Emanuel piped up. “They’re connected to the central mainframe. We’ll have access to live data about any of the chambers at our fingertips.”

“Not too shabby,” Sophie agreed. She looked down the hallway, noticing how different the chamber’s design was from the others. Instead of being a single circular space, Biome 4 was built around a massive mess hall. Three hallways branched off the central room and led to their sleeping quarters, the medical ward, the kitchen, and the command center.

By the time Sophie and the others got to the cafeteria it was late in the day. Timothy and Saafi were busy tinkering with their tablets at one of the metal tables. A blue hologram shot out of Saafi’s, illuminating Biome 2 on the middle of the metal table.