(it hurts and they're everywhere and they're wet red hot spastic lungs seeping salt and oil and steam slick short fur shunting bloating liquid sacs pumping red salt iron rust-smelling bubbling slime out of the clustered holes in their face and sucking it back into themselves twitching darting snaking nerves under skin salt wet fat meat meat meat hate hate hate)

She's three, and men in blindfolds and body armor escort her through sterile hallways, and they put her in a room, and they put it in the room.

and it sees her and it

closes its mouth, slowly

she's small and she's scared and she's trembling and she's brave

It's big, and it's scared too.

It walks toward her, slowly, heavy footfalls.

It prods her, gently, with its long bony snout.

She falls on her butt and giggles.

It -

 - it chuffs.

("What the fuck???"

"Better than it could've gone."

"What it's a fucking dog now?"

"It's almost sweet."

"Fuck is wrong with you?  And what am I supposed to put down, test failed sorry it made a fucking friend?")

It lets out a long, low, deep rumble, and settles down for a nap.

("What the fuck")

The men in blindfolds and body armor come in to take her away, and she cries -

 - and it bellows -

 - and they open fire -

 - and the emergency acid hoses start up -

 - and some of the acid splashes her -

 - and the man who threw the switch screams and melts into a puddle -

 - and it hurtshurtshurtshurts -

 - and she is dragged away and she cries.

She's five when the Foundation comes under new management.

New management assigns her a child psychiatrist.  She doesn't talk, and doesn't talk, and doesn't talk.  New management assigns her a new child psychiatrist, and she doesn't talk.  New management assigns her a third child psychiatrist, a personable woman who talks to her through a webcam so she can see a face not covered in a blindfold, and she doesn't talk, and she doesn't talk -

 - and she does talk -

- about the day they let her meet the giant doggy, and then they came in and started shooting it, and it squished them and turned them into goo that went everywhere, and they kept hurting it -

(Doctor Charlotte Eschenheimer is incandescently angry.  She will at a later date express her incandescent anger to certain appropriate parties.)