You quietly listened to the other ants as they "told" you their story and their plans. Hearing things presented in sounds and images through your newly grown antennae was somewhat odd, but strangely, you instinctively seemed to know that it worked. It partially made you wish you'd studied more in science and biology classes when they were talking about invertebrates. That might give you some idea as to where to make guesses. But you couldn't, and were left with thousands of ants treating you as their queen.
These ants sort of looked like the typical fire or red ants that you had seen from time to time while growing up. Those stings had hurt, but you generally remembered getting the upper hand in those confrontations. These ants, however, were different from the ones you knew. Their stings hurt, but their apparent effect was to turn her into a giant queen ant of the same species they were. There were a few ants there that had wings, but most of them didn't, and in fact, most of the ones with wings seemed to be moving toward you while others were gathered in a sort of half circle around the room, like they were going to some sort of ant theater and you were the star attraction. They went in rows along the floor, up the sides of cabinets,along a table and around a large glass container that you had smashed when you came into the room.
"So what do you think of our plan, my Queen?" one of the winged ants asked you.
"To grab and transform humans that come in here?" you asked back.
"Yes, you released us and we needed a new queen, and so we chose you," the same male answered, "but we are too small to properly mate with you and insure that you lay eggs to keep the colony growing... but if we were to transform a human male, he would become a drone of the appropriate size to keep our colony alive."
A part of your mind then remembered part of the telepathic explanation they'd given earlier. These ants had never stung anyone or anything to hunt. Their jaws where surprisingly strong. Stronger then any other ant species and they typically swarmed prey and bit it to death. That had to mean that these ants were smart and had to know what their venom did to those that weren't ants, or at least to humans and you hadn't seen many reports of giant ants wandering the Amazon, if any at all. If they didn't know what their venom did, anything they stung would be transformed.
A part of your mind was surprisingly open to the idea. To have a companion that would be with you, but you then shook your head and reflexively felt your own wings buzz a little bit on your back. People would shoot you with guns... very big guns if they saw you. And you remembered being human. You felt sorry for the ants losing their queen, but you weren't supposed to be the dead queen's replacement.
"No," you told the male ant, "No one is to sting anyone. Not unless I give a direct command to do so, do you understand?"
"Yes, my Queen, but why?" the male ant wondered.
"I don't want to be an ant," you told him.
"There is nothing wrong with being an ant, my Queen," the male ant replied, "and we have been fairly protective of man in our "home." There are many snakes and spiders that live in the same area where we did and they are very deadly and aggressive. If it weren't for our colonies preying on them, the humans that live in what you call the Amazon would suffer deadly wounds from their bites."
"I can't eat spiders and snakes!" you blurted, "they're too small!"
You cursed yourself silently. You wanted to say gross.
"We can bring you bigger prey," another male answered, "and once your Drone mates with you, your daughters will bring you bigger prey."
A flash went through your mind of yourself in a strange underground tunnel, strangely illuminated somehow and being tended to by ants that were half your present size and all of them calling you "mother." You gave a contented sigh to this and then shook your head again. It was as if the instinctual plans were assaulting your mind and you were losing resistance to them.
"We do not want to rob someone of his or her life," you managed, figuring that if these ants were smart enough to realize what their venom did and not use it, they would also be smart enough to understand the concept of free will.
"And if he chooses to become your Drone?" the second male ant asked.
"Then only once we've gotten out of here," you sighed, you didn't think anyone would know how to turn you back as the ants had said that instances of humans becoming new queen or drone ants were so rare that they'd only heard of it through legends within their own colony. "We need to get back to the jungle where you came from..."
You were unable to say any more as two things happened simultaneously. One was a great amount of psychic pain that ran through your antennae. It was as if several ants had been crushed by something. The other was the vocal gasp of, "HOLY-!"
You turned to see a man in a business suit and lab coat holding a clipboard. As you turned, you felt your abdomen hit the table and push it back diagonally as you turned around. Several of the wingless worker ants were moving toward him.
"DON'T STING HIM!" you shouted to them through your antennae.
The worker ants seemed to stop on your command while the man looked at them nervously and then even more nervously at you. He then shut the door, as if to try and keep you from getting out of the room. He didn't seem to understand your command to the other ants, but did recognize the fact that they stopped suddenly.
"Do you understand human languages?" you asked one of the males, who was now between you and the man, likely a scientist... who was still overcome with fear to to do anything.
"Yes, my Queen," the first male answered, "we all do."
"Spell out the question, who are you for me," you commanded.
The ants did so, and the man watched in puzzlement and then surprise, almost more surprised than seeing an ant that was bigger then he was in the lab.
"My name is Hank Pym, and no I'm not Ant Man or Yellowjacket or any other Marvel comics character," the man answered, "I do study insects, generally the order Hymenoptera and specifically Formicidae."
"Huh?" you responded, and the ants spelled out the word for you.
"I study ants, wasps, and bees," Hank Pym said simply, "many of them have very interesting properties, and your particular species has a lot of legends connected to it about its venom, which to me means that it could serve a very important medicinal purpose and help man kind."
You heard the ants comment to themselves about that but paid little attention.
"Tell him that your venom turned me into this," you told them, "tell that I was once human."
You then watched as the ants spelled out "your" response.
"Our venom can transform any vertebrate species into a queen or drone ant. It is not something our species has done commonly, and only in rare cases when a queen has died without giving birth to a new queen ant and set of drones. Our present queen was once human, but we changed her because she freed us and our old queen has recently died and we were removed from our home separating her from the eggs that would carry her successor. As such we needed a new queen and chose this woman to become our queen. She will however need a Drone to insure that our colony survives and she wishes that her Drone do so willingly."
You were tempted to scold the ants, but you soon realized that the main feeling going through you was not anger or rage, but embarrassment. It was like when you'd tried to flirt in a way that wasn't easily found out when you were human and the person you were flirting with caught you. You inwardly shuddered. You could feel less and less concerned with things that any human should be concerned with.
"In here?" Hank Pym asked, half nervous half curious.
"Tell him that that will only happen if he is willing and it will only happen once we are back in the Amazon and in a place where we are not going to be shot at by men with machine guns and rockets," you told the ants and they relayed the message, this time without the extras.
"I see," Hank Pym replied, "Well... I can't say for certain what I would do in THAT regard, but I do understand your queen's fears. I don't think you'd be shot with machine guns and rockets, but I do understand that most people would be afraid of an ant as big as they are."
"Can you get us out of here?" you asked and waited for the ants to spell that out.
"I believe I can, but I'm not sure if leaving here is a wise idea," Hank Pym said slowly.
"Why?"
"The areas are kept hyper oxygenated, some of which is to help keep things secret," Hank Pym explained, "much of our research is intended for medical developments, and while my bosses may be somewhat paranoid and wanting the "glory" of being the first to discover it, some of it is fairly necessary. If your present queen here was human, she has likely interrupted a lot of things that needed to be keep sterile with regard to bacteria and outside contaminations that would affect the success or failure of the efforts made here. The higher concentration of oxygen makes sure that no one can smuggle in a camera phone and snap pictures of our work. The electrical signal in the phone would set off the oxygen and they would be killed in a fiery explosion."
"And how would that help me?!" you gasped in surprise.
"It helps you, because of the exoskeleton that you've grown," Hank Pym answered, "ants like all insects don't have lungs the way we know them. They breathe through specialized tubes that are along the body or along the legs. But as a result, with no diaphragm muscle inside to pull air and oxygen into the lungs, and an imperfect system of pumping that oxygen to the extremities, an ant of your Queen's size would likely suffocate outside of the atmosphere in these labs. Insect growth is commonly determined by the percentage of oxygen in the air, and some of our other specimens are in fact larger then they originally were."
"The stories our kind has heard of the very few that have become new Queens and Drones do not say of them suffocating," the ants then spelled out on the floor.
"Really?" Hank Pym asked them and then mused, "fascinating. I suppose there is a way we can test those stories." He then turned to you, "If and when you feel out of breath, let me know."
You watched as then then went over to a panel in the wall, which you guessed was probably insulated to protect any electrical sparks in it setting off the oxygen in the lab. He then fiddled with the buttons, and through your now compound eyes, you managed to make out "oxygen settings" and then saw a bar lowered down to "normal air" levels. You stood there quietly for a few moments and then waited, half expecting to die from suffocation as Hank Pym had said. Instead that didn't happen. Instead it felt like bands of your exoskeleton armor moved a bit and you felt more air being pulled into your body. It felt strange to be breathing though holes that weren't your mouth or nose, though as an ant, you didn't have a nose anymore. As you breathed out, your felt your exoskeleton shift back into place.
"Amazing," Hank Pym said in amazement, "Your exoskeleton is incomplete by most insect standards. Instead of being one big piece, it's two pieces that overlap and are connected by looser and more elastic bands."
What he said flew over your mind, but you guessed it meant you could breathe.
"So can you get us... my... the... the ants and me to the Amazon?" you asked, waiting for the ants to spell it out.
"I believe so," Hank Pym answered, "I'll need to shut down a few things to move you out and ship you all in a giant create, but I believe I can have you shipped back to the Amazon. It may not be where your colony was originally, but you'd be somewhat close."
"Do it," you spoke, sounding like you were commanding him to the other ants, but you decided getting away from people that would surely kill you because you were an ant was important enough for such terms.