The back half of the conference center is a dining hall, the largest room in the building by a fair margin according to the map. Most of the doors in and out have been closed and barricaded, funneling traffic to a chokepoint near the auditorium that the map identifies as an 'airlock'.

It is not an airlock. It's not even locked. There's an elderly man dressed in plain white robes sitting in a rocking chair next to the door, holding a lit censer on a chain with both hands, who could theoretically be a guard of some kind. He could also be asleep; it's hard to tell.

Morgan gamely attempts to enter the dining hall without interacting with the nonagenarian cultist.

Apart from being doused with the scent of burnt incense, passing through the 'airlock' does no apparent harm.

The dining hall has been filled to bursting with cubicle curtains to form an ersatz emergency room. Tall humanoid figures in bleached teflon suits roam the corridors, each of them gifted with an imposing, grotesque stature that their shapeless uniforms can't disguise. Neither they nor the cubicles' occupants are particularly loud. The far end of the dining hall is completely hidden by a red theater curtain hung from the ceiling – judging by the sound of unhinged laughter and pneumatic tools, that's where all the mad scientists are at work.

The whole room is filled with the sharp smell of carbolic acid, which was not especially noticeable from the hall outside.

The woman Morgan is supposed to meet isn't difficult to spot. She stands even taller than Semirhage, her body writhing and shifting minutely beneath an oversized medical gown. A pair of crude iron electrodes protrude from either side of her head at the temporal bone; rows of unhealed sutures divide her face into mismatched regions of different ages and colors. Despite her patchwork appearance she's remarkably pretty, a masterwork of plastic surgery. Some might call her inhuman, but humans are the only thing she's made of.

She's in the process of closing a subcostal incision on a jaundiced man in one of the cubicles, though her position allows her to see Morgan the moment the door opens. She tosses his gall bladder into an emesis basin and waves at her.

"You must be Doctor Waller!"

Everyone is bizarrely enthusiastic about their work here – it's not the weirdest part about this place, but it does make the top ten.

"What gave it away?" she asks dryly.

"The CME starts doesn't start until four so that's not it, and you haven't brought any equipment so you're not helping with the construction project either. I suppose you could be here to ask for my help with a rare, life-threatening medical condition?" she adds hopefully.