After the long decontamination procedure is completed, Stone and the team go over their objective: to confirm there is an entity, uncover its structure, then contain and control it.

Stone then presents Hall with a similar key, explaining that as a single male, Hall is the 'odd man' selected to carry the only key that can stop the nuclear detonation, which is on a five-minute delay after being triggered. Using a special key, Stone arms the laboratory's nuclear device, which would destroy the facility should contamination threaten to break out of Wildfire. Stone is puzzled to learn from the communications center that there has been no message from the White House regarding Piedmont, but with the others, begins a sixteen-hour decontamination procedure that takes them through each level of Wildfire until they meet on the lowest, safest level to study the two survivors and the satellite. Stone and Hall then meet Dutton and Leavitt in a remote desert area near Flatrock, Nevada where a nondescript government agricultural station masks the entrance to Wildfire, a five-level, underground biological crisis laboratory designed in part by Stone two years earlier. A little later, Manchek receives a call from the President telling him to delay the destruction of Piedmont for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Robertson immediately agrees, but political advisor Grimes insists on a more cautious approach. While Stone, Hall and, separately, the baby, old man and satellite are transferred to a secret location, Manchek requests authorization to destroy Piedmont. Stone contacts Manchek to request that Piedmont be 'neutralized' by a thermonuclear blast to prevent the spread of the mysterious infection. Hall is then nearly attacked by an old man brandishing a cleaver but when the man collapses on the ground writhing in pain, he is also taken aboard the helicopter. Urged on by their protective suits' dwindling oxygen supply, Stone summons the helicopter, which air-lifts the baby aboard. At a nearby house they find a live baby crying lustily. Recognizing that whatever infected the citizens of Piedmont is not from Earth, the men prepare to depart with the satellite when they are startled by a sound. Hall then inspects the dead physician and when he cuts the man's arm, powdered blood pours out, revealing clotting throughout the entire system. The men track the satellite to the town doctor's office, where Stone is indignant to find the capsule has been opened. As the pair proceeds through the town, Hall notices a car accident victim whose injuries did not bleed. Examining several bodies, they conclude that some victims died quickly while others appeared to have had mental breakdowns before dying. The morning after the satellite crash, Stone and Hall, wearing protective gear, are flown by helicopter to Piedmont. Stone is privately briefed on SCOOP, created by the army's Biological Research Division to collect organisms existing in outer space that could be used as potential biological weapons. Mark Hall, led by Nobel Prize-winning biologist Dr.

Ruth Leavitt and surgeon and blood chemistry expert Dr. Arthur Manchek to declare a state of emergency and summon a special scientific investigative team that includes pathologist Dr. A reconnaissance photography flight over Piedmont reveals dead bodies scattered throughout the small town, prompting duty officer Maj. When the men report their discovery of two dead bodies to Vandenburg Air Force Base mission control, they are ordered to return immediately, but the controllers then lose contact with the men.

After a space satellite launched by the United States as part of a top-secret biological research project code-named SCOOP crashes near the small town of Piedmont, New Mexico, two military recovery technicians arrive.

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