Who else but the beautiful Ashley?

Sarah's mind immediately flittered to Joslynn, but she rejected the idea. There was an obvious person, someone who was likely already open to the idea: Ashley. Even better, she was often seen with Sarah and Tera and wouldn't rouse too much suspicion. 'And there're these feelings I seem to still have for her…'

"Ashley," she announced.

"Yeah, she is the obvious choice, isn't she? Do you think she'd like it if I grew a cock?" Tera added excitedly.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Ashley's a lesbian, Tera. Let's worry about getting her infected before we start asking her to take a cock, okay?"

"Okay," Tera nodded.

'She seems to be in control, but it's hard to say. After that time with Ashley, she's been pretty much all about sex. I wonder if I have the same changes and just don't notice?'

Sarah sat at her desk and drummed her fingers on the glass surface. _'_Tera was very easy to convince because she was almost there already. Ashley is… Ashley. She won't just agree to become my Beta. How can I turn this to my advantage? Pheromones? Could I actually modify myself to emit pheromones that affect humans?'

She opened the OmniCorp database and scanned for projects on human pheromones. 'Damn, OmniCorp has been busy, there are over 5000 projects here.' She tried to focus her query on successful results, and found three. _'P_robably just a bad query,' she thought as she looked through them. 'All of these should be useful. This one makes humans sleepy, this one makes them relax, and this one… Wow, this one makes humans horny. That should be useful.'

"I'm going to go chat with Ashley for a few minutes, hold down the fort and look busy."

"I can't come with?"

"No, but I promise I won't have any fun without you," Sarah smiled.

She walked down the hallway toward Ashley's lab. Two assistants huddled in the corner, whispering quietly to each other.

'When did things get so bleak around here?'

The door to Ashley's lab slid open, and she crossed the small space to where Ashley was slumped over in her chair.

"You look dead," Sarah grinned.

"We're losing, Sarah. The infection is spreading faster than OmniCorp can track. I'll probably never seen France again!"

Sarah sat on the desk next to her. "That's really what's bothering you?"

Ashley threw up her hands, "I don't know!" She slumped back down, "Seriously Sarah, you're taking the end of the world in stride."

"I guess I am, huh? Maybe it's because genetically the Infected are human to me. Maybe they're the next iteration of humans, Punctuated Equilibrium."

Ashley sighed, "Biology ruined you."

Sarah opened her mouth to say more, but her phone suddenly chirped with a message.