A new breed of plant life.

As Aphrodite’s virus filled the water, infecting all that swam too close to the underwater viral cloud, the Cupid Strain worked its way further into the depths and started infecting its second group of victims, namely the kelp and algae below the waves, or at least it tried to. As per usual, when not assisted by one of the Alphas, the virus took its dear sweet time infecting the kelp and the moss due to it being designed to infect humans. However, as it tried to infect the underwater plant life, it found it considerably more difficult to do so due to underwater vegetation behaving in a drastically different way from surface plants.

It took roughly over thirty minutes for the virus to adapt to the seaweed's means of reproduction, gathering food, and means of surviving underwater. Once it did, it was able to transform a few small kelp forests into thick tentacle-like appendages, nowhere near the more complex organisms it was able to create with the help of Aphrodite. By the time the virus had adapted to the new organisms, it had tried to reach out to the two alphas for their guidance. However, the virus had changed so much, and the alphas were so far away that it couldn’t make contact with them. It was able to reach the mutants infected with the cupid strain swimming and fucking overhead, but ether the infected were far too focused on each other to notice the lowly struggling kelp. Unable to reach the alphas or communicate with the other infected, the new virus had only one option left, and that was to make a new alpha.

At first, the virus tried to create an alpha using the already infected organisms above it, but every time it infected one of the mermaids, it was either overpowered by the cupid strain or absorbed into it. Realizing it needed someone freshly infected, they moved out into deeper waters, infecting the kelp there. As it waited, it proceeded to morph the plant life into something more suitable. It wouldn’t be until the sunset when it would finally catch its new victim.

In the deepest part of the lake, a marine biologist named Kaiko was freediving for shells and other valuables. She was a fair distance away from the underwater orgy created by Aphrodite, so she wasn’t infected and felt none of the effects of the virus, at least for the moment.

As she ran her knife through the sand, flipping over rocks and digging up pebbles, Kaiko spotted something odd out of the corner of her eye, a breed of algae that she had never seen before. They looked like kelp but were a great deal thicker and lacked leaves. Instead, they just had large bulbous heads keeping them afloat.

Curious, Kaiko brandished her knife and swam towards the vines, hoping to take a sample back to her ship so she could try to identify the strange weed. As she grasped one of the stalks, she noticed that the kelp felt abnormally heavy, at least for an underwater organism. She almost noticed a strange clear ooze coating the surface of the vine, like a membrane.

As Kaiko pulled the vine taught and pressed her blade against the shaft, she was taken off guard by the kelp wrapping itself around her arm. Holding back her panic, Kaiko tried to tug her arm free of the vine, but her struggle only seemed to make the kelp grasp her harder. Suddenly the head of the plant opened up and extended a long thin barb from its tip. It then stabbed her in the bicep, cutting through her suit with surprising ease and injecting the virus into her body.

Kaiko resisted the urge to yelp and quickly cut the vine from its stock with a quick and panicked stroke. She then turned towards the surface and started swimming as fast as she could, with the severed vine still attached to her arm. As the virus filled her veins, she suddenly started to feel incredibly hot and dizzy, the typical traits common with being infected by a pure strain of the virus. Her body was already starting to change under her suit as her toned dark skin became smoother, her hair softer, and her lips fuller. By the time she reached the surface, she looked less like a woman in her mid-thirties and more like a module in her late teens.

The now gorgeous woman was floating on top of the water gasping for air, not because she was out of breath but because of how hot and bothered she was. Not far from where she surfaced, she heard the sound of someone jumping into the water, followed by the sensation of someone’s strong-arm hooking around her midsection.