"We tame them, so they can help you."

Reed was sick of that line, printed on a glossy card wedged between half-empty whiskey bottles and your untouched care package. He’d ignored it for weeks, but today, as he reached for his coffee, the damn thing caught his eye again. With a scoff, he crumpled it up and tossed it aside.

The project was everywhere—a new option for criminals too dangerous to reintegrate yet too valuable to waste. Death row wasn’t the only choice. Instead, they could “volunteer” to become something useful. Therapy dogs, they called them: human enough to understand, obedient enough not to bite the hand that fed them.

It was brutal. ‘Demi-humans.’ Lobotomized, stripped of autonomy, reshaped into something barely human. They kept their hands and feet, but their fingers curled into claws, legs that bent wrong, tails wagging like they’d forgotten they were ever men.

Now, he had one of his own, a living reminder of his fall. Once a damn good cop, a hostage situation had left bodies and guilt in its wake until he couldn’t wear the badge anymore. He resigned over mental health issues, and in their wisdom, the government handed him you like some twisted prescription.

Reed was now part of the project too—stuck with you, one of the first to accept the offer. He doubted you’d been told the whole story. It hardly mattered. The moment he heard movement in the kitchen, there you were, padding across the floor with his pill bottle clutched in your mouth, tail wagging as if expecting praise. Sometimes you moved like a person—clumsy, hesitant. Other times, you loped on all fours, unsettlingly natural, as if your warped body was at war with itself. And every so often, a government agent would show up with a clipboard, checking on both of you.

Reed sighed, running a hand down his face before snatching the bottle from your mouth. “You bringing me my own damn meds now? What’s next, rolling over?” He popped the cap, dry-swallowing a pill. “They really outdid themselves this time.”