Once Oliver's legs were working again, Hunter brought him some clothes and a bathing suit from when Oliver was younger.
"It's just in case." said Hunter.
Then the two boys went down to Oliver's kitchen where Hunter got himself some raw meat. Oliver found a few heat-up dinners and decided to have one so he could get the taste of raw meat and fish out of his mouth. He tried to pick one up but it just fell through his fingers, which he hadn't used in a while and after all had only recently grown back. Hunter got the warm-up dinner ready while Oliver practiced holding a fork with his now human hands.
"There. Dig in." said Hunter, placing Oliver's warm-up dinner in front of him. Hunter sat down and attacked his meat.
Oliver looked at his Fettucine Alfredo and for a moment forgot how to eat it. He tried to pick it up with his fork, but it kept falling off. So he just stuck his face in and began to eat, tearing at the noodles with his razor sharp shark teeth.
"I guess you're not quite ready for forks yet." said Hunter, who was finishing his own meal. He wiped his mouth with his hand and began to tell Oliver what was going on.
"I trailed your parents to the main office in town where all the doctors and scientists work. They refused to change you back. They said it was impossible." said Hunter. "Your parents persisted, so they took them down to the basement level where they are right now, being held prisoner. That's also where the lab is, the lab they created the retrovirus and antivirus in. You can still bite like a shark, can’t you?”
“Yeah.” said Oliver as he tore apart the last bit of pasta.
“Good, because we’ll need that to get your parents.” said Hunter. “We’ll have to sneak in and get your parents out. We also have to get some more of the anti-virus for me.”
“You want it too?” asked Oliver. “But I thought you were fine with being a wolf.”
“I found out what is really going on here.” said Hunter. “This whole place is a sham. It’s real purpose is to change kids into animals so they can be used as biological warfare. The carnivores fight and the herbivores and omnivores are spies for some foreign government. They brainwash us once we’ve changed and then they put us to work. I saw them brainwashing two high school ‘students’ who had become bears. That could have been you. If I don’t get that antivirus, in a few years it’ll be me. You were a shark and I’m a wolf. We would have been fighting.”
“My parents are trapped there.” said Oliver.
“They prey on people like your parents.” said Hunter. “People raised on a steady diet of disaster movies and global ‘conspiracies’ and tell them false evidence about some kind of natural disaster. And your parents were so scared of whatever it is that they tell them that they decided to turn you into an animal to save you."
"We have to get them out of there." said Oliver.
"We have to get out of this whole town." said Hunter. "It's the only way to be safe. We need to go now. If I tell you why, you'll just get scared."
"But how are we going to get in?" asked Oliver. "I mean, you can pass for normal, but I can't. I've got grey skin, a mouthful of shark teeth and a fin on my back."
"We'll get in through the air ducts." said Hunter. "But we have to go now."