As the gurney rolled forward, I thrashed against the restraints, trying desperately to Shift, to summon the strength to ignore whatever drugs they’d stuck me with. But I felt nothing but a cold sluggishness within, and despair settled heavily in my chest, joining the anger and fear. A man waited in the room beyond, another scientist type in a long white lab coat, smiling at me as I was rolled forward. “Ah, here she is,” he exclaimed, peering at me through his glasses. “Ember Hill, what a pleasure it is to meet you. You must be terribly excited—after sixteen years, your true purpose is finally being fulfilled. To be the Elder Wyrm’s chosen vessel, what a tremendous honor.”

“Yeah, I don’t really see it like that,” I growled at him. He chuckled.

“Nonsense. This is what you were created for. Just think, if immortality can actually be achieved, what will that mean for both dragons and the entire human race? I, for one, am eager to see all my hard work finally come to fruition. Now then, let’s get a look at you.” The scientist pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and put it to my chest. “Hmm, heartbeat is abnormally fast,” he muttered, and I glared at him.

“Oh, really? I wonder why that is.” My voice shook, and I had to force myself to breathe calmly. “You’re just brainwashing and turning me into a zombie so that the Elder Wyrm can move into my head. Nothing evil there.”

“Brainwashing? Oh, no, no, no. This is nothing so crude.” The scientist put the stethoscope back around his neck and smiled at me fondly. “Brainwashing involves high levels of trauma, either physical or mental, to break down a subject’s personality, beliefs and sense of self so that they can be replaced with a new set of ideals. The process can take months, or longer, and the subject still retains who he is at his core. His memories have not been erased, merely suppressed.” He paused as two other scientists converged on me, tightening straps, pulling my eyelids down to shine a light into them, swabbing my skin with something that stung my nostrils. “What we are going to do is a complete mind wipe,” he went on when there was a lull in the ministrations. “We are going to extract your memories and all the emotion, knowledge and skills attached to them, so that your brain will be fully receptive to new memory, skills and personality. Think of it as erasing your computer’s hard drive, removing all files and data, destroying any harmful information or viruses it might’ve picked up and completely starting over.”