Arna remembered everything that had happened to her in this room. She had tried very hard to forget and sometimes it worked, the memories just a murmur in the back of her head, but they were never really gone. They’d always rise out of the murk in her nightmares, a sharp twinge when she got too close to echoes of the past, and now she was assaulted with them every little second.

She lay on the polished lino, the chill of the floor soaking into her body, her furred chin rested on her front paws as she stared at nothing. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and she already traced the lines of the shelves, the trolleys, the door, the viewing windows, the chair, and the harness she was leashed in.

She remembered how they had clamped the restraints on, attached her to countless machines and drips, fluids flowing in and out of her bloodstream, injections and biopsies piercing skin. Sometimes they leaned the chair back and sliced her open, ignoring her screams with not even a grimace. Then the Presagers and their strange rituals, the pain only excruciatingly worsening with every passing day as the scientists and cultists spent more and more time fashioning her to perfection and forging their design from blood and shadow.

Once she became the demonic shapeshifter the other experiments began – could she fight this infection? This disease? Can we stop her heart? Will she recover from this wound? Will she survive this? How far can we push and pull her apart before she breaks forever?

They took endless samples to test the boundaries of their creation on petri dishes, in test tubes, and sometimes on small rodents, machines always churning away and printing results in a rhythmic drone. The next stage was to upscale, to see if the saviour of humanity could truly fulfil her function, but the end came crashing down upon them before any clinical studies could even begin. And with the lack of evidence they never really knew how to use her.

Her immune system could decimate disease and illness, virus and bacteria mere dust before a violent storm. Her bone marrow, her blood, her skin, her liver could be peeled away and would regenerate before the next patient even knocked on the door, and they would be far superior to any human or manufactured equivalent.

Created to be used and reused, taken apart again and again, drained dry over and over, and that wasn’t even her sole purpose. A saviour of humanity couldn’t purely be a donor, but also a protector for those who could not fight for themselves. A human form to beguile, a human form to establish social connections, a human form to appeal to the masses. The power to shapeshift to match the situation, the remarkable senses to know exactly what was happening, the strength to be both a sword and shield. When goodwill and compassion wouldn’t suffice, she was to be the weapon to slaughter and defend.

But she had saved no lives and stopped no wars. Humanity had fallen before they even put her to task and she had taken the opportunity to run, hoping death would come swiftly and painlessly.

It never did and she had prowled the shadows for so long before meeting the overwhelming gaze of those beautiful green eyes, full of passion and courage. Neri only wished to be the warrior she promised herself to be, to be there for those who couldn’t stand for themselves, to serve and guard who and what she cared for, to be the bulwark against evil and the denier of the grave for those who knew warmth and love.

How many times had Arna told her that she was the strongest person she had ever known? It was the truth and Neri was beginning to believe it too, to trust that maybe she could be the stern wall against fear and danger. And how quickly had Arna shattered that belief? You’re not strong enough. The very words Neri never wished to hear, especially from Arna who she had laid herself bare to. The warrior had shown her vulnerabilities, her weakness, and Arna had seen how the warrior tried to match the Warriors’ Guild expectations, to be that firm insurmountable champion that would never falter.

Now she would never see Neri again, the woman nor the warrior.

A loud click broke the quiet, bolts vibrating as they shuttled back, and the door swung open, the bright light flickering on and burning her eyes. The three cultists who had dragged her here the day before entered the room and the door sealed shut behind them, a dozen faces appearing at the windows to peer in at her like an animal in a zoo.

Most of the cultists wore similar clothing: dark trousers and pristine shirts of varying shades of black. Oddly, the clothes appeared freshly ironed, almost sheening beneath the glaring fluorescent light, and with not a single fray or patch of repair. They wore their clothing like humans before the fall and it was unsettling.

A flick of a turning page made Arna look up. The cultist who spoke to her yesterday held a tattered file open in one hand, slowly reading the pages with a bored expression while he loomed over her. She recognized it: that was one of her files, one of the last that the scientists and cultists had toiled over.

The Presager snapped the file shut, passing it to the female cultist behind him who took it wordlessly. The other cultist seemed more a boy than a man, his face still round like a child’s with barely a hair on his tattooed chin. They both stood back and watched.

A snap of fingers in front of her face, startling her as a low growl rumbled in her throat. She met those cold grey eyes, no trace of a smile on the man’s face. Once he had her attention he leaned back on his heels, appraising her like a rich man at a butcher, looking for the prime cut before dissecting her apart anyway.

“Sleep well?” he asked her, not waiting for an answer as he pulled one of the trolleys over. “I read through your files again and it’s disappointing how close our predecessors were.” He picked up a scalpel, the blade glinting as he pointed it at her. “This would be easier if you shifted.”

A guttural snarl as her response, her claws tensed and grated across the lino as she eased herself up off the floor.

“So be it,” he muttered. He rocked the scalpel between two fingers before tossing it back onto the trolley with a loud clatter. “Micah, Zan – get the blood bags.”

Approaching the shelves and digging around in the cupboards, Micah, the youthful cultist, retrieved a pack of large blood bags while Zan, the dark-haired woman, wheeled over a tall metal stand. They unravelled the tubing and hung three of the bags on the stand, the sharp needles swinging as Zan positioned it right next to Arna.

“Are you sure you don’t want to shift?” the Presager asked again. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the burns puckering across his forearms.

Arna’s heart thundered, eyes flashing from Micah and Zan to the man towering over her, then the ogling faces at the windows. The man picked up the scalpel again.

“Micah, hold her mouth,” he ordered.

A shadowy hand latched firm around her jaws, inky chains curling across bone and fur, and the force shoved her head down to the floor. The man knelt beside her, the scalpel gleaming threateningly close to her throat. A hand pushed her chin to one side, the blade slicing through clumps of fur easily to bare a naked square of pale flesh.

The scalpel now passed to Zan, the cultist reached for one of the swinging needles and unceremoniously jabbed the point into the pulsating blood vessel at her throat. Arna whimpered pathetically as almost immediately thick crimson streamed into the bag hanging above her.

The cultist stood and backed away, the hand and chains dispersing into a thin mist so she could lift her eyes and glare at him. He spared her no attention, instead checking the filling blood bag and nodding at his fellow cultists. “Swap the bag over in an hour.” He then finally looked at her. “I’d recommend not pulling the needle out.”

Arna decided not to argue, lowering herself to the floor once more, being careful not to disturb the tube protruding from her neck. With her incredible regenerative abilities, the fur would grow back quickly but now with the needle lodged amongst it, and she imagined the cultist would ensure it never fell again if she pulled the tube out.

“Kazim, are you sure this is a good idea?” Zan said in a low voice. “We don’t want to drain her dry and lose her now.”

Kazim. If she were a demon born from the old fantasy stories, she could use his name to curse the very air he breathed, but she could only manage a snarl of loathing.

Relinquishing Zan of the scalpel, Kazim toyed with it between his fingers, cold eyes observing Arna like a predator with all the time in the world watching a rabbit helplessly trapped in a snare. “She can produce blood at nearly the same speed we drain it,” he said. “We could hook her up to all three bags and she’d only feel a bit faint.”

“So why don’t we?” asked Micah, impatiently.

Kazim’s fingers stilled around the scalpel. “I have plans,” he simply stated. “I’d rather her be awake for them.”

Micah frowned. “What plans?”

The burned cultist returned the scalpel to the trolley, merely responding to Micah with a noncommittal shrug. “You’ll see.”

The three Presagers looked at her with differing expressions. Micah appeared annoyed, clearly wanting to harvest everything and anything possible right now and then. Worry creased Zan’s brows, more likely to be due to ensuring Arna’s longevity of use rather than actually caring for her. In contrast, Kazim still betrayed no emotion other than hawkish boredom, talons slowly tightening while disinterested in his prey’s aggressive yet lacklustre attempts for freedom.

Time dawdled and ticked on stagnant seconds, Arna’s nights and days coalescing into the shiny gloom of viewing windows and the blinding light of fluorescent bulbs. She distinguished night and day by the cultists’ visits, sometimes only the three of them poking and prodding, cutting and siphoning, scribbling notes in a new file and dicing up the samples they carved out of her. Other times a handful of faceless Presagers scrutinised her through the glass while Kazim ran another agonising test. Every hour Zan clicked the end of the tube attached to her neck into the next blood bag until finally taking the engorged bags away on a trolley, tying Arna’s tube off so her blood didn’t flood across the chamber’s slick floor. Arna assumed the silence and darkness that ruled after Zan trundled the trolley out of the room was when the moon rose high in the skies outside. She longed to feel the warmth of the sun on her face, to gaze upon the silver moonlight and beautiful stars above, and to have N–

No! She shook her head furiously yet remained cautious of the needle, and berated herself for even considering that line of thought. Neri was gone, but still she stupidly yearned for her company. She needed to disregard any dreams of a non-existent future before they could take root and instead have the truth settle heavy as stone. Neri is gone, she is safe, and you are alone.

A noise woke her from a half-slumber of futile daydreams. Well, not completely alone. Arna glanced up at the closing door as the bolts shuddered back into place, Kazim strolling in with a file underarm and a bowl of steaming oats in each hand. He placed one bowl on the lino in front of her, expecting her to lap it up like a good dog.

“Morning,” he said coldly around a spoonful of hot oats. And so began her twentieth day in the grasp of the Presagers.