Luckily she wasn’t squeamish about blood or afraid of needles, but neither did she particularly enjoy having her blood drawn. She was thankful that it was only a monthly occurrence now, instead of the daily routine it had been at first. “Here you go,” Kastl said and she moved her finger aside so that he could press an adhesive strip firmly in place. He had explained the need for the frequent blood tests. As he’d told her on that first day, they had only used the altered therianthropic factor twice before, so they didn’t have much solid clinical data about the short and long term affects. Any information they could gain by monitoring her would be invaluable, both to her and to others. Manda submitted willingly to the frequent “blood letting,” as she called it, and sometimes watched as Kastl and Leon put her blood through their battery of tests. They would mix tiny amounts of her blood with other blood—Kastl’s, Leon’s, and blood from the small collection of rodents kept for just that purpose—and then watch with a microscope to see what happened.
