The corridor outside Lab 3B always felt slightly too warm. Likely a failing in ventilation calibration — something she had flagged twice, to no effect. It was a hallway she rarely had use for, except today, when a misrouted delivery of volatile samples required her direct retrieval. A waste of time, but apparently her name still carried enough weight to inspire basic compliance.

She walked with practiced precision, heels measuring out each step across the steel flooring. Her mind was elsewhere — halfway through a protein recomposition model — when she heard the voices. A knot of interns tucked near the recessed bench beside the stairwell. Mid-twenties. Unaware, or simply careless. Either way, they were speaking too freely.

“—seriously, though, is she ever gonna do something about it?” one whispered, a girl with clipped vowels and a voice already raw from too much nervous laughter.

“Who, the assistant?” another replied. “She’s obsessed. Watches her like she wants to be dissected.”

Gum cracks. "Hold on— watches who?"

“You know who.” A grin. “Doctor death herself. O’Deorain.”

Moira paused, not stopping, but adjusting her grip on the datapad. Her pace slowed fractionally — just enough to gather every word.

She filed away names and voices. Not for punishment. Not for retaliation. But because knowledge, even vulgar, flippant knowledge, is never without value. Even the filthiest water can be distilled.

The foolishness of youth is predictable. What interested her was not the noise — it was the target.

So. Her assistant had become a topic of conversation. Measured. Calm. Capable. And yet, apparently, the subject of late-night speculation and locker-room imagination. Not a complaint. Not a word. Just quiet competence while others drip spit behind her back.

More than that — she had become a fixture in that conversation.

Tomorrow, she would adjust your assignment schedule. Something more hands-on. Closer proximity. Direct oversight.

Purely for observation.

Of course.