“How about taking him to get cleaned up instead?” Sophie suggested. “You’ll feel better after a warm shower, won’t you?”

Owen shoveled more macaroni into his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t like water,” he mumbled, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

“I’ll take him,” Holly offered, pushing in her chair. “We can go for a walk.”

“You sure?” Emanuel asked.

“You can help me if you want.”

With a short nod, the biologist paced over to Owen and grabbed his empty tray. “Let’s go for a walk, bud.”

Sophie watched them disappear into the kitchen, where Emanuel was promising the boy a cookie.

“We need to talk for a second,” Holly said. She crossed her arms and leaned closer to Sophie. In a whisper she said, “Owen is going to need a lot of attention. He’s suffered through some major trauma and I’m going to need to spend some additional time with him.”

“You won’t hear any objection from me,” Sophie replied with a smile. “I trust you, Holly.”

“Owen’s not the only one that’s going to need more attention.”

Sophie’s stomach dropped; she knew what was coming next. She heard the sound of Holly’s voice as she continued to talk, but Sophie didn’t hear a single word. She didn’t want to talk to Holly about what they’d been through, didn’t want to think about the horror of what had happened outside, of what had happened to Saafi. She tried to push the thoughts away, but they kept coming back to her: everyone outside was more than likely dead. Everyone she had known, everyone she had cared about.

All dissolving in floating orbs.

“Are you listening to me?” Holly finally blurted.

“I’m sorry, but I need to go. I need to meet with Sergeant Overton and the others. I’ll find you later, and then we can talk more about this,” Sophie said. “I promise.”

Timothy flattened the holographic image of the Biosphere, pulling out the clumps representing each biome one by one. “As you can see, this place is a fucking bunker. Nothing gets in without setting off the sensors. And I’ve already told Alexia to let us know if anything out of the ordinary pops up.”

“What’s the energy source?” Bouma asked.

“Two mean-ass generators, shielded from EMP attack by some reptilian-looking armor. They’re both run off solar energy and only switch to juice when the sun goes down.”

Sergeant Overton hovered over Timothy’s shoulder, staring at the holographic images. “How long until the juice runs out?”

Timothy ran his hand through his curls. “Man, honestly, they could last years. And when the juice is gone, we can still run them off solar energy if we reroute power to only the critical areas of the Biosphere.”

“Good. So this place is secure and self-sufficient. The perfect place to launch a counterattack,” Overton said.