“And...what will happen to me?” I asked. I tried, once more, to Shift, to burst into my true form and burn my way out of this laboratory of horrors, but the dragon refused to stir. The scientist continued to smile and speak casually, as if he was explaining to a child why the needle wouldn’t hurt.

“Well, for the procedure at least, your memory will be electronically stored,” he replied, nodding to something off to the side of the gurney. I craned my neck around to see what looked like a large computer bank, with several men in white coats hovering around the screens. “We’ve had fairly good success with saving individual memories,” the scientist went on, “though eventually they do break down and are lost. But, ultimately, it will be up to the Elder Wyrm to decide what to do with yours. If she wants to keep you for later use or erase you completely.”

“So, you’re saying that me as an individual, everything that makes me who I am, will be destroyed. Gone forever.” The human regarded me serenely but didn’t answer, and my heart fluttered around my ribs like a panicked bird. I bared my teeth at him. “I hope you know that’s essentially murder. Isn’t there some sort of oath that condemns that? Do no harm? Don’t play God? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Oh, my dear, I’m not a doctor. I’m a scientist.” The two other men returned and began sticking electrodes to my forehead, neck and arms, while the scientist watched them. “And even if I were, the Hippocratic oath only applies to humans. ‘I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.’ If we are going to quote passages at each other.”

He gave me a thin smile as his helpers finished their task and walked away, leaving me with about a dozen wires connecting my skull to the computer bank. “But you are a dragon,” the scientist continued. “In the decades I have spent among your kind, I have seen and come to accept certain things. You are not like us. Your minds are more like a computer than anything else—logical and calculating, capable of retaining massive amounts of information, able to recall the smallest fact across hundreds of years. You are truly a remarkable race, I will admit. But you are not human. And even if the Elder Wyrm was not expecting me to complete this procedure, I have worked on this project for too many years to stop now. Now, at last, we will see if immortality is really possible.”