Figures in white coats bring a young beastkin girl into the chamber without ceremony.

  They easily overpower her, fastening her to the operating table with metal csps over her wrists, ankles, and forehead. The girl kicks and snarls against the restraints, her skin bruising red where it scrapes against the cuffs, but none of the men so much as gnce her way.

  She’s small—barely more than a child—and wild-eyed, tufts of pale blond hair clinging to sweat-slicked skin.

  A thin line of blood trickles from the corner of her mouth.

  A man approaches, clipboard in hand. He tilts her chin up with two fingers, inspecting the wound. He nods satisfied and steps back, scribbling notes without expression: Subject 97. Coeurl beastkin female. Approximately seven years of age. Subject was apprehended without issue and sustained minimal damage.

  Another man enters, carrying a sealed gss canister cradled in both hands. Inside, something shifts—something alive.

  A stalk, pale and glistening, coils and uncoils within the cylinder. At its tip rests a singur eyeball.

  When the canister passes near the girl, the eye locks unto her.

  The lead technician taps a control rune on the side of the operating table. The restraints tighten until the girl’s back arches painfully against the metal. Her screams turn hoarse, wordless, animal.

  No one reacts, as if this is routine to all.

  “Begin the experiment,” a voice calls out from the darkness.

  “Subject 97. Testing result of fusion between child beastkin female with hyakume eye stalk.”

  The insertion tool hisses to life and a mechanical arm lowers toward the girl’s forehead, bearing a slender surgical spike—and at its tip, a single thread of the living stalk, trembling in anticipation.

  The girl thrashes, but there is nowhere to go. The spike plunges into her skull, resulting in a scream of torture.

  The stalk writhes as it burrows itself eagerly in her head. The girl goes silent and limp.

  A man dressed in an ornate military dress steps out of the shadow and focuses intently on the beastkin. He turns around sharply and walks back into the shadows. “She is weak and worthless.”

  The lead technician nods to the others. “Another failure, then.”

  The others begin disconnecting the equipment without compints. This is not an unexpected outcome.

  The two assistants lift the girl’s limp body from the table and carry her outside. They head to the nearest building, an aviary where they hand her off to a man sitting in the saddle of a horse-sized eagle.

  “Return her where you found her,” one of the assistant instructs.

  Once the girl is properly strapped, the eagle takes flight and head to a sprawling forest. Minutes ter, he dives under the canopy. Quickly, the air turns thick with the buzzing of insects and the distant calls of unseen creatures.

  The eagle perches itself on a rock outcropping near a small stream. The man unfastens the straps, and the girl falls off his mount like a sack of refuse by the wet riverbank.

  She doesn’t stir, and mud smears her limbs. The thin wound on her forehead is already sealed shut, leaving behind only a faint line, easily missed.

  The man looks up and groans. He spits into the ferns and takes off.

  The girl lies there, unmoving, as rain begins to fall. Somewhere deep beneath her skin, the thing they pnted stirs, twitching, urging the body awake. It doesn’t want to die. It will live. It will grow stronger. It will feed.