I jolt out of bed. I had the weirdest dream last night. Ari was an arms dealer and she turned into an ant and fought three rats. And then the rats picked me up and- Wait! This isn't the apartment. I look around and find myself in a white and blue room, there is a light on the ceiling lighting the room efficiently . I'm laying on a small bed with green sheets, next to me is a desk covered in spent bandages and other basic medical supplies and a IV carrier with a bag going into me. I see why they're spent when I look down to see my chest, my shirt is off and my torso is heavily bandaged. I try to sit up and immediately regret it as I fall back in pain and shout a bit in agony. The door of the room opens almost immediately, revealing a brown haired man with a concerned look.
"You're awake! Good, I was getting worried the shock from transformation might have put you in a coma, and I'm tired of changing your IV's." He says.
"Where am I? Who are you? Where's Ari?"
"Ok, one thing at a time. One, you're at Hive's bunker. Two, my name is Kensuke Kusakabe. Three, Ari is down the hall, her injuries were easily treatable, nothing major was too damaged."
"Can you help me up please? I need to see if she's ok." I ask.
"Ok what are you? Her boyfriend? Hate to break it to you she's already taken." He asked sarcastically.
"No, I'm just a roommate who owes her my life."
"Well after last night I think that makes two of you."
He carefully removes the IV needle from my arm and helps me out of bed, it hurts like hell but I'm able to stand. He opens the door into a large hallway, there are many identical doors all equally spaced apart, they are all numbered, the one we exited from being 129.
"The hell is this place?" I ask.
"This was an emergency bunker made by Nozama Pharmacy in case of an Amazons outbreak event, pretty much abandoned it and scrubbed it from maps, so we took it." Kensuke answered.
I nodded, even though I still don't know what an Amazon is or what Nozama has to do with it. We make a right and enter what seems to be a sitting area, there are dozens of people doing various things, playing video games, watching tv, there's even a ping pong table. On one of the couches I see Ari, she has a cast on her right arm and is heavily bandaged.
"Ari!" I shout.
"Banto! Thank god! Are you ok?" She asks, running over to us.
"I'm fine, but what the hell is going on? Why were you selling bullets? What did you transform into? Why did I turn into one?" I ask rapidly.
"He doesn't know?" Ask Kensuke.
"Ok Banto, let me start from the beginning. What you and I turned into is called an Amazon, a human with a special cell type inside them developed by Nozama pharmacy, these "Amazon cells" make us stronger and give us the animalistic forms you saw, but also crave protein, if we don't eat enough protein, we can go on a mindless rampage, and some Amazons resorted to eating other humans." She explains.
"Wait, how did the cell end up in you?" I ask.
"Me and everybody else here volunteered for the program five years ago with the promise of a hefty cash reward, five years later we started to change, some were taken by hunger, eating humans, from that there is no return, you will continue to crave human meat until you die. But we have never eaten anybody, instead eating other protein, why else do you think I have the chickens back home?" She asked.
"I always thought you just wanted cheap eggs." I say.
"Well a little over a year ago a bunch of Amazons started dying, it turns out Nozama was using the registry from the experiments to hunt us down, so a bunch of us got together and formed the Hive. We later caught wind that Nozama was going to release an Amazon killer into the rain to kill us all off, this was operation Tailoc." She says
"Tailoc? Wait! That's the thing they were talking about on TV! They said it was a pesticide that some people had a bad allergic reaction to, so those people were all Amazons?"
"Yeah, we lost a lot of good people trying to save as many as we could, shortly after Tailoc and a few days before I met you a few of our members launched an attack on Nozama, they broke in and uploaded a virus that destroyed most of the Amazon registry, but they didn't make it out alive. With their sacrifice, we were able to live in less fear of being found, Nozama didn't know who we were, and as long as we kept a low profile we could keep it that way. Unfortunately some people didn't have their names erased from the registry, so we house them here, it's big enough to hold three hundred people, and could survive a nuclear warhead."
"So wait, everybody here is an Amazon? But wait, what about me? I never overly craved protein, and yet I transformed yesterday?" I ask.
"I have a theory," someone says, it's the driver from yesterday, "Nozama did some more unethical Amazon experiments behind closed doors, and Ari told me that you have amnesia and came to her in a medical patient's uniform, maybe Nozama experimented on you and in some way you lost your memory." He says.
"That could make sense, Harumi." Responds Ari.
The driver looks at me. "Oh! Where are my manners? My name's Harumi Saishi, thanks for the save last night." He says.
"No problem. But if I just stayed home Ari probably wouldn't have gotten so hurt." I say looking down.
"Banto, if you hadn't come then Geshuri would have just taken Harumi captive, me and him would have most likely died, you saved both of us." Says Ari.
"Thanks Ari, so what happens now?" I ask.
Harumi steps forward, "Well, now that you are an Amazon, and a strong one at that, we need your help. Last night we were selling anti Amazon bullets to another gang called the Menagerie, we thought they had a truce with us, but now it looks like they want us dead. We need to be on high alert, and not all of us here are combat capable, but with your performance last night I think that with some training you could be invaluable to the Hive, so kid, what do you say? Will you help us." He asked.
I look down for a second at my hands, they are still scratched up from last night, I admit, it felt good, just wailing on those rats, I felt so angry towards them, but if I could control that power, maybe I could do some good, help some more people.
"Yeah, I'll help you." I say
"Great, take a load off for the day, your training starts tomorrow."
AN: Woo! That was a hell of an infodump, sorry about that, I promise the next chapter will have a bit more action, it might take a while though, I'm terrible at writing fight scenes. Remember to review, see you next time!