'Unnatural Selection' by Kate Tough

Some hotels use teams. Turn a room around in minutes. She won’t work in those hotels.

Making carpet-quiet passage along a self-repeating corridor, below her, busy women replicate each other’s industry; floor upon floor - arcs and sweeps, shakes and strokes.

Not for her the blaring radio, the hags cackling. The click of a door card, televisual murmurs, an unplaceable cough; these almost-sounds of the plush hotel are as much as she can bear; her ears still ringing from the outside world.

She has worked here long enough to be assigned the top floor - the realm of celebrities and such. Pampered types who can barely be bothered to draw their own bathwater, much less pull their own plugs.

Watching the water drain from a bath is the one thing that distracts her from her purpose. She watches, hypnotised by the almost imperceptible dropping of the waterline - such a significant event occurring with so little fuss. If only more things in life, more people, would conduct themselves as quietly.

“They’re not so special,” she tells the tap as it reveals her reflection behind each determined rub. “They’ll see they’re no better than the masses when they are the masses.”

Her cart, stacked with items to meet every basic human need, one basic human at a time, also hides a supply of small, sealable bags for her harvest - hairs gathered from plugholes and pillows, skin flakes scraped from tidemarks - packed with celebrated DNA, just waiting for technology to catch up.