It took nearly half an hour to get from the greenhouses to GenM headquarters since the areas were on opposite sides of the ship. Sam followed the crew member (whose name he still hadn’t heard) down to Central Station, but the shuttle from there back up to the GenM levels had broken down.

The crew member cursed when she saw the sign. Then she led Sam through a raucous and wildly colorful commercial district to the nearest lift, which shot them up sixteen levels.

The lift door opened on a beige world of uniformly marked doorways. The banks, lawyers’ offices, laboratories, and production centers were impossible to distinguish unless you looked closely at the small signs above the entrances.

The crew member, who hadn’t spoken to Sam at all since they left the greenhouses, pic...

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