“The other reason,” the old Basilisk said with one of his faint, evil smiles, “is to test what we hope will be a fun new toy for our side. So you’re going to be a bit of a guinea pig for this assignment. We have something that we’ve been working on, and we believe it’s nearly ready for use in the field. Congratulations, agent, you get to take it for its trial run.”

I suppressed a wince. A hatchling or rookie agent might’ve been excited for this news, willing and eager to test out something new. I was not. I knew what kind of “toy” I’d be working with, and frankly, it scared the crap out of me. Talon had always been on the cutting edge of science and technology, knowing that keeping ahead of the times was not only profitable, it was essential for our survival. As a race, we had survived because we had evolved, and knowledge was power. Talon hoarded knowledge like they did wealth, turning everything into profit for the organization. Not only did they fund countless research centers, they had their own laboratories, where the most brilliant minds the organization could find worked tirelessly, uncovering secrets, pushing boundaries, experimenting with things best left alone.

Things like magic. Magic still existed in the world today, otherwise how could a fifteen-ton dragon shrink down into a two-hundred-pound human body? Just because nobody used it anymore didn’t mean magic didn’t exist. In the Elder Wyrm’s time, at least according to the stories, magic was everywhere. There were witches and demons, monsters and ancient swords, wizards, the Good Neighbors and even the rare unicorn, wandering the deepest parts of the forest. But with the rise of civilization and technology, magic had been long forgotten. Even the Elder Wyrm didn’t use it anymore, or maybe there wasn’t a lot of the ancient power left in the world. Because we had lost the capacity for it—or perhaps because we really didn’t need it anymore—Shifting into human form was the last bit of old magic we could do.

But, in recent years, the Talon laboratories had been coming out with strange, crazy, unexplainable things. Bodysuits that wouldn’t tear when you Shifted, drugs that specifically targeted the dragon anatomy, weird crap like that. According to rumors, they were experimenting with blending old magic and science, mixing them together, though that should’ve been impossible. There were also whispers that these tests were just preliminary; that the scientists were working on something “big.” Something that would change the dragon world forever. I didn’t know how much of that I believed, but whenever the labs came out with a brand-new “toy,” somehow my trainer was the first to get his hands on it.