DATE: Year 487-A, Sol 2

  LOCATION: Hotel Florida, Penthouse (Europa)

  The sound started like a knock deep in the walls, a not unfamiliar sound to Juntin Broad, who had lived luxuriously, if unwillingly, in one of the penthouse units of the Hotel Florida for the last dozen or so weeks, his parents holding him there while they negotiated with a couple of families with an excess of daughters as well as a representative from the Martian Trading Corporation who had traveled all the way to Ganymede.

  For the Broads, Juntin represented the culmination of their work on genetic engineering. He was a lanky, like the humans raised in low-gravity, and a heavy-bone, like those born on Mars. He was better than a pristine, and most importantly, he was pliant. The start of the new year opened up the books, particularly for the MTC, and the Broads expected to have Juntin sold by the end of the week

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  The Broads had Juntin in the traditional style, injecting the child-bearing Broad with a biochemical cocktail to trigger the first phase of genetic modifications. After birth, Juntin was given growth hormones that accelerated his aging. He was educated in a rote manner, and a steady stream of injected pharmaceuticals helped shape his personality.

  Juntin recognized the knocking sound as something in the hotel that hadn’t been working but was starting to. He’d noticed the sound during the faux seasonal shifts at the Hotel, when the manner of gases used for environmental controls became different.

  The knocking turned into a kind of creaking or ripping sound, building in tension, slowly at first, and then like a runaway train. And then the sound exploded, pulling the walls and floors of the hotel as if out of their supports and into the fire that bubbled below.