Blaise jolted awake with a gasp, writhing on the bed. There was a terrible tightness in his chest, like someone had his heart clutched in their fist.

He dug his fingers into the mattress beneath him, taking deep, labored breaths. The last thing he could recall was the searing pain of a knife into his shoulder, but the pain he felt at that moment was so much worse.

"3,000 volts... five hits to the chest... Well," a voice muttered from somewhere in the dark room, followed by the scratching of a pencil on paper, "at least this one didn't stay dead."

"He's the only one who's made it this far," a deeper voice replied. Blaise tried to focus on where they were coming from, but the pain that flooded his body demanded his full attention. "Let him rest before we move on."

"Very well."

Blaise tried to will away the pain that consumed him. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds that surrounded him. One person was to his right, scribbling away—Blaise could hear the sound of pencil on paper, while someone to his left was rummaging through drawers and cabinets. Blaise opened his eyes when the person to his left stopped beside the examination table that he was strapped down to.

In the darkness, all Blair could see was the man's eyes, glowing orange in the darkness, as if they were lit from inside his body. He didn't say anything to Blaise, who jolted in surprise when something cold and damp touched his bare forearm. He struggled against the leather straps that held him, but the pain in his chest drained his energy.

The man's eyes never changed, even when Blaise cried out as a needle pierced his skin.

"Stop making such a fuss," the voice to his right said, still writing away on his notepad. "It's Draíocht—liquefied healing magic—for the pain. We don't have much, so enjoy it while it lasts."

Blaise's body became numb almost immediately. The tightness in his chest dissipated, and he nearly sobbed with relief. He didn't know how long it'd been since he had been brought to their facility, and he couldn't recall even one day since he was taken that he wasn't in excruciating pain. Why were these men so cruel and unfeeling?

"Please," he begged, barely louder than a whisper. His voice was hoarse, and his lips dry. His Oorlogan accent and slurred, tired words made it difficult for him to speak clearly. "P-please... I... I don' wanna be here no more... Lemme go."

"Why in the world would we do that?"

Blaise winced as the room was flooded with bright light. He had spent so long in the dark that it made his eyes ache. As he adjusted to the brightness, his gaze fell on the man to his right. He finally stopped writing and stuck his pencil behind his ear. Blaise would have loved to slap the grin off his face as he looked over him with judgmental blue eyes.

"You're about to make history. You'll be in books all over the world—a medical miracle. Wouldn't you like that, instead of being some nobody, wasting your life away, working in the same orphanage you grew up in?"

"The hell you talkin' 'bout?" Blaise shifted uncomfortably and closed his eyes against the bright lights.

He remembered when they had taken him, but how long ago had it been? Masked men invaded the orphanage in the night, seizing every boy over the age of sixteen. Blaise, being the eldest at twenty, tried to save them.

He remembered their cries, the boys he'd grown up with. He watched them die, one by one. A small sob escaped Blaise's lips and he fought back tears. Out of all ten of them, he was the only one left.

"I jus' wanna go home."

"I'm afraid that's not possible. We've come too far here." The man with the notepad stood, smoothing the front of his white coat with his hands. He handed his clipboard to his partner, then went to work to undo the restraints that held Blaise. "If we let you leave now, all of our failures will have been for nothing. That's not what you want, is it? For all of those boys to have died in vain?"

As he removed the last strap, Blaise let out a cry of rage as he shot up, grabbing the man by the throat. His sudden, violent movements caused the examination table to topple over, knocking the two men to the floor. Blaise rolled on top of him, his chest full of rage, but he was seized from behind by the man's partner before he could even get one hit in.

"Get off!" Blaise thrashed and twisted and kicked, trying to break free, with no success. He wanted both of them to die for all the pain they had caused and all the lives they had taken.

"I see you respond quite well to the Draíocht—you've gotten most of your strength back already." The doctor used the edge of a counter to pull himself to his feet, rubbing his throat where Blaise's hand had been. His cold gaze fell on Blaise before he addressed his partner. "Take him to the Operating Room. It's time."

"Are you sure he's ready?" the man questioned, struggling to keep Blaise from breaking free.

"If he has enough energy to try to kill me, he has enough to finish what we started."

"No! Lemme go!" Blaise continued to twist and kick and try to pull his arms loose. As they dragged him into another room across the hall, his voice echoed through the empty corridors, where there was no one else to hear his cries for help.

When the two men finally managed to haul him up onto the operating table and strap him down, Blaise just lay there, exhausted and gasping to catch his breath. His muscles tensed when the doctor placed a firm hand on his shoulder—Blaise couldn't stand to be touched by these people.

"Why bother fighting? Don't you want your life to be worth something?"

"Just shut up," Blaise demanded through clenched teeth. It didn't matter what they said—Blaise didn't care. He had a family. He had friends. Nothing? No, he had everything at Cadmus Orphanage. That was his home. "I wanna go home."

"And you will," the doctor said, turning away, "when we're through."

Glancing down at a dark scar on his arm, Blaise tried to recall how many times they had cut him and stitched him up, over and over, trying to push his body to its limits. The only relief that had ever come was when he passed out from the pain.

"Bring in the mage," the doctor told his partner, covering his face with a medical mask. He placed a metal tray of tools on the table beside the operating table, and Blaise felt his stomach drop.

"A mage?" he questioned, dreading some new form of torture. He could handle the knives, even if just barely, but magic was dangerous and unpredictable. There was no physical defense against unseen attacks.

"Since our last experiment caused your body to fail," the man explained, sitting on a stool beside Blaise, "we decided that healing magic would be the best option to ensure your survival. Draíocht is the preferred method, but we've run too low. Magic directly from a mage's hands is the next best thing."

"I'd rather jus' die."

"Oh, stop." The doctor chuckled. He examined the tray of tools in front of him, and Blaise had to look away. He didn't want to get any ideas in his own head about what was going to happen—he was better off not knowing. "Don't be so dramatic. You must realize by now that we need you alive."

"You don't give a damn 'bout me, whether I live or die. You kidnapped us, and you killed my brothers."

"Your brothers?" The doctor tilted his head to the side with a thoughtful look in his eyes. "Oh, you mean the other orphans! Yes, well... we are on a bit of a schedule, you see. If I took the time to get to know each test subject on a personal level, this would take years. You're not the first group of subjects—your group is Experiment Number Seven. Well, I suppose it's just your name now, being the only survivor."

"You're disgustin'." Blaise shifted a bit grimacing in pain as the leather restraints dug into his wrists. "We ain't just numbers in your stupid notebook. They was people with feelins'—I ain't just a body for you to destroy."

"We're not destroying you. We've been experimenting, testing your limits, and trying to find the best candidate for our procedure."

"What procedure?"

Before he could answer, they were interrupted by the man's partner returning, a cloaked figure following behind him. Thin, delicate hands clutched a large spellbook against her chest, and her bright purple eyes gave off their own light, just like the other man.

"What the hell are you people?" Blaise questioned, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

"Doctor Mason and Saloma are living here in secret," the doctor explained. "They were born in Draconia."

Blaise's eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

"Dragons? I thought Agni had 'em all wiped out."

"Not all of us," Mason replied, running a hand through his brown hair, "but the Enforcers are still trying to seek us out. Our eyes usually give us away, so we can't travel freely. The Enforcers have spells that can force us into our Draconian forms too. That's why you're here."

"Me? What the hell do I got to with any of it? I ain't no Dragon."

"Not yet," he said with a grin.

"What?" Blaise's heart fluttered with panic, his breath coming out in small, raspy huffs, and he began to struggle against his restraints again. "Not yet? What's that s'posed to mean? Lemme go!"

"I'm afraid you have no choice in the matter," the doctor said, picking up a small, sharp knife from his tray of tools. "Begin the ritual."

The Draconian mage started to chant softly, laying her spellbook out on the counter. On the floor, a magic circle appeared around Blaise, glowing bright orange with strange symbols he'd never seen before, and the doctor pushed his stool away, standing over Blaise with the knife in his hand.

"Stop!" Blaise's heart felt like it might beat right out of his chest, his anxiety intensifying as the doctor came closer. "Get away from me!"

"You're not going to want to watch this," Mason said, securing a blindfold over Blaise's eyes. Then, he gripped Blaise tightly by the shoulders, holding him down firmly on the operating table.

Blaise started to protest, but he was cut off by his own pained screaming.

First, it felt like the claw of an angry cat on his chest, but it got worse as the blade went deeper and dragged down his body, all the way from the base of his throat down to his bellybutton. Blaise writhed and shrieked, his tears soaking the cloth that covered his eyes. He could feel his own hot blood running down the sides of his body. He wanted to beg them to stop. He tried to speak, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was more screaming.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" the doctor asked, and Blaise could hear the clinking of metal, and the mage was still chanting quietly in the corner of the room.

Blaise's entire body shook, his chest shuddering with his quick, labored breaths. It was like his entire body was engulfed in flames, and he wondered how much more he would have to endure before they finally killed him.

"Saloma, come help me before he bleeds out."

A small gasped escaped Blaise's lips as a cool finger touched his chest, tracing down his both in the same path as the fiery pain in his skin. As the mage whispered more words he couldn't understand, a cool numbness flooded through him... sweet relief from the pain.

"Please," he begged when he finally found his own voice. He was terribly nauseated, but resisted the urge to vomit all over himself. "Please, stop..."

"It's too late for that," the doctor said. Blaise could hear him shuffling around, and he felt a strange pressure on his torso, but he had no idea what was going on around him. Another wave of nausea hit him, and he gagged and coughed. What were they doing to him?

He wished he had been weaker. That way, he could have died with the others. He'd thought that he was doing something good, being strong for their sake, but this was too much. He'd been fighting for his life since the day they were stolen away, and trying to stay alive was the worst mistake he'd ever made.

"You're doing better than I expected." The man sounded terrible pleased with himself. It disgusted Blaise to think that he was getting some kind of sick satisfaction out of everything he'd done. "We're already almost halfway finished."

A sharp, hot pain in Blaise's stomach finally pushed him over the edge. He sat up quickly, as far as his restraints and Mason's grip would allow, and he vomited over the side of the operating table. It burned his insides like flames, and he sobbed uncontrollably.

He just wanted to go home, back to before he lost his parents... He wanted to go back to a time when he was small enough to have no worries. His mother would hold him in her arms, singing lullabies to take his fears away.

Blaise flinched at the sensation of small, cool hands on his face. Saloma, the mage who had been chanting the whole time, hushed him and held him tightly. It was strangely comforting, and Blaise couldn't stop crying against her shoulder. He wanted to die, and no amount of healing magic could fix that.

"Don't you think he's had enough, Aaron?" she asked. "Can't you see what you're doing to him?"

"Don't get righteous with me, Saloma," the doctor's voice boomed. "We can't stop now—if anyone finds out what we're doing, you'll both be Cleansed, and I'll be executed for crimes against the king for harboring you."

"I know that! But isn't there any way to make this easier on him?"

"You know how difficult it is to get a hold of Draíocht. It's too expensive, and regulation has become too strict. The last thing we need is Agni's soldiers snooping around here. So, unless your own magic can do more for him, step aside. We don't have time for this. The longer you protest, the closer he will be to death."

Saloma sighed, and she helped Mason lay Blaise back down on the operating table. Blaise didn't fight them—he didn't have the strength left, even if he wanted to. He could just barely feel Saloma's cool hand on his forehead, and she began a new chant. He hoped it was a chant of death for him.

Even with all of her healing magic being pumped into his body, it didn't do much to ease Blaise's pain. The room was soon filled with the deafening sound of his screaming again when Aaron's blade pierced his chest. Blaise could hear every movement as he sawed through bone, and his body began to feel cold and heavy.

"Come on, kid," Mason said sharply, slapping Blaise's face. "Aaron, he's losing too much blood. We have to stop."

"I can't work on his heart if it's pumping too much blood anyway. He'll be fine."

"You're going to kill him! If he dies, this whole procedure will have been for nothing, and we'll lose our only chance at getting Zane back. Is that what you want?"

"Nobody is going to die!"

As the two men argued, Blaise could feel everything slipping away. Their voices faded, overwhelmed with a sound like rushing water. It reminded him of when he lived in Oorlog with his parents. They had a small house by the beach, and the sounds of the waves lulled him to sleep every night. He imagined he was back there, and let out a long sigh as every sound and sensation faded into blissful nothingness.