"Where are we going?" Cecilia asked the man, who had introduced himself as Doctor Chrysalis, head of the Genetic Infusion Laboratory. It was the first time she had left the Genetic Infusion Laboratory since awakening about a week or so ago.

"We're going to perform some measurements today."

"But you did that back at the lab. You weighed me and measured my size and the wings and everything."

"These are a different kind of measurement. The Genetic Infusion Laboratory is a very nice place and a nice little home for you, but its uses are limited. We have different labs for different experiments and tests. Now, come along in," he said to her, for they had arrived at their destination.

Cecilia hesitated. She was afraid of everyone, and especially didn't trust Doctor Chrysalis. If they could make her a dragon, they could do any horrible thing to her as far as she was concerned. But he nudged her forward and she stumbled into the new room.

It was similar to a very small gym. There was a treadmill, a few weight lifting machines, and plenty of weights to spare. There were also several devices that didn't appear to be directly related to exercising. Everything had a small monitor and a keypad or full sized keyboard. Cecilia stared at Doctor Chrysalis.

"What're you gonna do?"

"Just a few tests," Doctor Chrysalis said as he fiddled with one of the devices until the monitor read 0. Then he handed it to Cecilia. "Okay, this is going to be easy. Just bite down on the handle as hard as you can when you're ready. I'll tell you when you can stop."

"…Why?"

"It's a test. Now go on, bite down on the handle."

Cecilia was confused but it didn't sound dangerous and it wasn't scary so she bit the handle, though awkwardly because she wasn't used to her fangs. There was a beep and Doctor Chrysalis nodded.

"Perfect, you can stop now," Cecilia took the device out of her mouth and watched the grown-up look at the monitor before making a note. He seemed pretty pleased about it. "Okay, ready for the next test? You're going to pull on these straps as hard as you can just as soon as I tell you to start. Ready? Go."

Cecilia pulled with all her might, though nothing seemed to happen. Doctor Chrysalis however found whatever the monitor was telling him to be acceptable and he made another note. After that he had Cecilia walk the treadmill for ten minutes, then run for one minute. When she was done Doctor Chrysalis checked her pulse and breathing.

"Fantastic! You're doing great so far, HD0001," Doctor Chrysalis said while making yet more notes. As he typed Cecilia noticed a small, scaly looking blue patch on his left hand.

"What's that on your hand?"

"Ah, just a birthmark, that's all. Anyhow, there's one last thing to do. Please let me hook you to the manipulator here," Doctor Chrysalis gestured to the last, bulky machine in the room. Cecilia backed away slightly.

"What's that for?"

"It moves your wings, so you can learn what it feels like to move them. You'll learn to use them to fly one day, but first you must learn to use your wings."

I'll be able to fly someday! Wow! Cecilia allowed her wings to be hooked up to the manipulator, which moved her wings for ten minutes. After being unhooked she tried to move her wings on her own, but nothing happened.

"I can't do it, they won't move."

"Learning takes time. You didn't learn to walk or talk in a day either. You will learn to fly, but it won't be for a while. Come on now, it's time to go back to the Genetic Infusion Lab, but we'll be back tomorrow. Isn't that exciting, HD0001?"

No, Cecilia thought as they walked back to the lab that was now her home. I wanna go home and see my mummy and daddy. "Why d'you keep calling me HD0001?" Cecilia asked Doctor Chrysalis as they walked back to the lab.

"Because that's your designation here: HD0001."

"My name's Cecilia," she stared at him.

"Well, its HD0001 now, so start getting used to it," he told Cecilia.

My name isn't HD0001, its Cecilia. I know its Cecilia. She was about to tell him that, but they were already back at the lab, and he already was ignoring Cecilia, preferring to talk quietly to the other grownups instead.

One of the other doctors led Cecilia to the cot they'd set up for her in an alcove and wordlessly gave her a tray of food. Like Doctor Chrysalis, he preferred to ignore Cecilia over the grownups.

That was perfectly alright with Cecilia. Don't like any of them, she thought to herself as she ate her food. When she had finished she curled up on the cot and imagined what her parents looked like. Cecilia pictured her dad as tall, with short dark hair and a kind smile. Her mom wasn't as tall, with curly hair like Cecilia's, but she was blond, not brunette, and a warm smile. Both of them had chocolate brown eyes and light tan skin like she did.

Cecilia closed her eyes and eventually drifted off to sleep, but the images didn't stay with her. Cecilia instead dreamt of faceless shadows that whispered so softly she couldn't understand what they said, and of Doctor Chrysalis and the other doctors of the Genetic Infusion Laboratory.

The next day passed much the same way, and so did the day after that. But on the fourth day Cecilia became defiant.

"Grab the straps and pull on them as hard as you can."

"No! I wanna go home!"

"Do as I say, HD0001. Grab the straps and pull."

"No! I don't wanna!"

"Listen to me right now and do it!" Doctor Chrysalis glared down at the little girl, visibly angry now. Cecilia crossed her arms and glared right back at him.

"No! I don't have to-" Doctor Chrysalis violently backhanded Cecilia across the face, knocking her to the ground. He then hauled Cecilia to her feet and, ignoring her tears, dragged her back into the lab, and to a cage with durasteel bars in a far corner Cecilia hadn't noticed before. Doctor Chrysalis shoved Cecilia into the cage and locked the door behind her.

"N-no…!" Cecilia sobbed, but Doctor Chrysalis glared at her coldly.

"This is what happens to bad girls who don't do as they're told. Maybe next time you'll think twice about disobeying orders," he told Cecilia before turning and walking away.

Cecilia sat on the floor and hugged her knees while she wept. After a great while her tears faded and ceased, but Cecilia sat in the same position and quietly watched the grownups move about the large, empty tubes that populated the room as they worked.

I wanna go home. I wanna see Mummy and Daddy and not be a dragon anymore, Cecilia held up a hand and sadly looked at her claws and vivid red scales. Hey, claws are sharp, she suddenly realized. Can I claw my way out? Cecilia reached out and scratched one of the bars in front of her. When she pulled her claw back she saw a deep scratch mark left in the metal.

Yes! Cecilia smiled and started clawing the bar furiously. I'm not gonna do what they want! They can't make me! They can never make me! It seemed to be going well, until-

"H-hey! Doctor Chrysalis!" one of the grownups shouted out as she ran to the cage Cecilia was held in. Doctor Chrysalis rushed over, followed closely by the other grownups of the lab.

"What-" Doctor Chrysalis started to ask, until he saw the deep gouge marks left in the bar. "I'm calling the admiral. Stay with her until I get back," he told the other grownups. Doctor Chrysalis pulled out a comlink and spoke quietly into it as he walked away. Cecilia simply stared up at the others, unable to do anything else except wait now that she'd be caught.

It wasn't a very long wait. After a short while Doctor Chrysalis returned with a tall man. He wore the same black uniform as the others, but unlike the scientists he did not wear a white lab coat over his uniform. On the shoulders of his uniform was a white star with six thin spikes. Cecilia recognized him as the man that had lurked in the back the other day when she first woke up in the Genetic Infusion Laboratory. The man glanced down at the bar before turning to Doctor Chrysalis.

"We need to discuss this. Meet me in the small overlook conference room at twenty one hundred hours," he told Doctor Chrysalis.

"Yes, Admiral," Doctor Chrysalis bowed his head slightly and opened the cage door. Cecilia felt a sudden pulse of fear and backed away, pulling her lips back into a snarl to reveal her sharp teeth and fangs, growling as she did so; she had no idea she could growl like that before that moment.

The admiral reached in regardless and dragged Cecilia out of the cage and the lab. Cecilia dug in her heels and uselessly tried to pull away, but the admiral wouldn't let go.

"I wouldn't make things worse if I were you," he coldly told Cecilia as he pulled her into a new room. This room was small and only had a low, rectangular table inside. The admiral dragged Cecilia onto the table and put a bracelet on Cecilia's left wrist, held her arm down above her head, and pressed a button, locking it in place. He repeated this with her other wrist and both ankles until she lay restrained on the table.

"N-no…!" Cecilia squirmed and tried to move, but she was held firmly in place.

"Don't waste your time, those electromagnets are too powerful to move once they're on," the admiral said. He cracked his knuckles and stood over Cecilia, who shook in terror as she eyed him. "We tried to be nice with the cage, but you blew it with your pointless little escape attempt. It looks like this is the only thing that'll make you listen."

The admiral slapped Cecilia across the face, which caused her to instantly burst into tears again. He struck her a second time in the opposite direction.

"By the way, don't bother to attempt to escape ever again. You're millions of miles away from your home world now. Forget about your family and your old life; they've already forgotten all about you. You don't even remember it anyways," the admiral smirked coldly and raised his hand again.

The admiral stood at the large windows that spanned the length of the wall. The view was spectacular, overlooking the tropical jungle of a world uninhabited by native intelligent life, or anyone besides his operation. A gorgeous sunset painted the sky brilliant colors and added golden hues to the canopy, and rich purple shadows beneath.

At exactly twenty two hundred hours the door slid open behind the admiral and Doctor Chrysalis quietly stepped into the conference room. The admiral turned and sat down at the chair at the head of the conference while Doctor Chrysalis sat at the chair closest to the admiral. Both men sat in silence for several moments.

"Doctor Chrysalis, I was told young children were easily compliant and would guarantee success in this part of the plan. And yet our prototype specimen not only refused to comply with your data gathering, she nearly clawed a durasteel bar in two in the span of, what three minutes?"

"Less than two, Admiral Cantorin, which shows excellent promise from her. She's already surpassed all projected expectations of strength increase. When she grows up-"

"She will be completely useless without full compliance, Chrysalis. We need to find the cause of this defiance and address it for future specimens. Is it from the DNA samples we fused with her native DNA? Or is in her lineage, the native DNA itself?"

"Sir, such an answer can't be gotten from a single specimen. I would need a wide variety of children to fuse with the same sample before I could come to any conclusion about obedience and defiance."

"Absolutely not, I refuse to fund such a thing! We're already having enough trouble with the rest of our specimens, with their constant fighting and psychotic episodes. We can't even sedate the damn things for longer than a few days at a time. And you want to potentially repeat the same mess because it's the only way for you to be sure?"

"It's the scientific method, sir."

"Forget about the scientific method, we need a workaround. Everything will fail if we only have fifth generation mongrels to rely on."

"There's still more than enough time to break her. Our timetable always operated on a scale of at least one decade, not mere months or even just several years," Doctor Chrysalis rubbed the patch on his left hand as he spoke. His tongue subconsciously touched his unusually pointed canines before continuing. "Plenty of time to work things out and move on from this single prototype to fully operational units, Admiral Cantorin."

"Until then I want a hold on the project. We can continue training HD0001, teaching her how to use her newly enhanced body, how to use blasters and sessions in the flight sim when she's old enough. But you cannot create any more until she learns to take orders."

"Fair enough, sir," Doctor Chrysalis bowed his head.

"You are dismissed, Doctor Chrysalis. Doctor Hydra will be in soon to deliver the latest development with his specimens."

"Give my regards to Doctor Hydra," Doctor Chrysalis told the admiral. After the door slid closed behind him Admiral Cantorin turned back to the nearly dark view out the window as the last of the orange tint gave way to the dark of night.

The next morning Cecilia was brought back to the Genetic Infusion Lab. She was compliant enough for a few days, before disobeying again, and being punished once more. And the cycle continued over and over again, months and years blended together, and the passage of time was lost to Cecilia.