Not a dream

The dream slowly began to fade away as he felt his consciousness rising above the fog of sleep. His eyes opened.

'A dream… No, it wasn't. Those were memories of Aimi's conversation with her best friend, Chiho. The last time I saw Aimi's memories was when I daydreamed. It could have been that I simply thought about why she was here. So, if I concentrate enough, I can extract more memories from my hosts?' That was plausible. After all he was able to speed up his arm metamorphosis by concentration. After training, there was a permanent reduction in morphing duration. The parasite had to learn his body, now he had to learn its'.

Hikaru wasn't given a time of when the school meeting would begin in the announcement. The school only had one meeting room that club members or the student council can use. There wasn't a booking for its use that he could see on the meeting room schedule he brought up on his desktop.

Generally, only one club or group could use it. Unless two parties needed to discuss business. Since the parasites probably infected people at random, it was likely that more than two "parties" would be invited. This needed to be approved by the Principal. Of course, the obvious solution was that the principal had to be infected or already was before the meeting.

He decided to attend the school meeting for a couple of reasons, but he wasn't left much of a choice. He needed to collect information. The second reason was that there could be consequences if he didn't come.

He believed that the parasite who transmitted the message was probably a wave controller. As the name implies someone who could control the waves. In this case, perhaps a type of wave that can communicate long distances like a radio wave. However, he wasn't sure how radio waves would work with an organic body.

'Perhaps it's psychic in nature. Like brainwaves?'

Hikaru's inquisitive mind was suffering from a major cliff hanger. There's been too many questions and he needed the answers.

Since the wave controller was able to transmit a message to him, he can't rule out the possibility that they can track his location.

The wave controller had said the officer of Midori-ku ward, it implies that there's only one high rank in the ward and is the only immediate threat he had to worry about. He didn't know how many there were in other places. However, if the spread of parasites were even and random, then there should be more officers in places with high density populations in proportion to here.

Midori-ku ward has a total area of 25.42 and an estimated population of 176,038 as of 2010. The human population greatly outnumber parasites but most of them are civilians while all or most of the parasites are combatants. Should the parasites reproduce and continue undetected, Earth can be taken over. The question is how many of the parasites are there? How many humans can one parasite handle? Can they reproduce or are they manufactured?

'Forget the officers, how do I compare to one-foot soldier?'

Without data, Hikaru is left in the fear of the unknown. Every one of his analyses have reached a stump. He couldn't wait for the meeting to begin.

***

Hikaru's mind was occupied in all his classes. He wasn't afraid of falling behind because he was far ahead of his studies. He had been practising the morphing of his arm under the sleeves in class. His non-dominant arm was a bit slower but with practice it caught on.

The meeting room today was booked this morning, on the bulletin it had a title of "Secret Surprise School Presentation" or "TriSP". All invited members to gather afterschool.

The title sounds like a special surprise party for the whole school. Hikaru's never heard of a project on this scale but it was a good cover. This way, any student or staff who's been invited can come without rousing suspicion. If anything, it sounds awesome to everyone else.

The meeting room was close to the teacher's faculty room on the ground floor. Hikaru started walking down the stairs from his class. He saw some blank eyed students walk into the meeting room far down the corridor.

He wondered if they could do a better job at acting human. However, Hikaru was just being picky. There was no way anyone would think that a classmate of theirs had been taken over by parasites just because they acted different.

A figure came out from the locker bay and upon seeing Hikaru, it ran down the corridor towards him. It was a girl that he recognised. Chiho.

He stopped walking when he was certain she was looking for him. He remembered the dream he had. Had she come to ask where Aimi was since she couldn't be contacted on her phone? Last night, her phone had gone off in his drawer during the six hours of his training. The battery was low. He absorbed it to see if the phone would stay intact and work inside him, but he never got another call. He wasn't sure if devices couldn't work inside or the battery died or Chiho never called again.

Aimi's memory of her friend started to overlap with his vision. She had light brown hair just reaching her shoulders and wore a tan-coloured headband, complementing her brown hair and revealing her big forehead. She looked like a tom-boy. The size of the forehead made her look stubborn, further accentuating her tom-boyish looks.

Chiho stopped a couple meters away from him and looked at him strangely. She seemed paranoid. Her eyebrows creased. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Not a word spoken.

Hikaru stood there patiently. He had a kind smile and stared into her eyes and face, extracting facial cues to infer her train of thought. Hikaru figured with high probability about what she wanted to say. He became bored and was just waiting for her to spit it out.

"Hikaru-san…"

"Yes?"

"Do you know where Aimi is?"

It was as he thought.

"Aimi Harue?"

"Yes."

"Sorry, your name is?"

"Please, just call me Chiho." She said impatiently.

"Sure. Chiho, I met with Aimi-san yesterday, but I don't know where she is now."

Chiho's eyebrows pulled together in question.

"What happened yesterday? What do you mean you don't know where she is!"