Yes

You wouldn't have believed that Tami could sound less than lively and playful until she answers her phone.

"Oh God, John , I feel completely hammered," she croaks, "I'm so weak, it hurts to breathe, and I think I have a fever."

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be! It's not your fault," she replies, as you silently wish she was right. "I probably just picked up the same thing Loni and Linda did. Maybe I shouldn't have overexerted myself last night," she continues, managing a chuckle.

You chuckle along uneasily, fearing that her speculation is more right than she knows.

"I'll call tomorrow morning if I feel any better. And take care of yourself. You really don't want to catch this."

In fact, you feel fine. A little tired, perhaps, but if anything more alert and upbeat than you usually feel in the morning. You arrive at the office slightly early, and after a brief conference with Scruffy return to work cleaning out the storerooms. Just before lunch, though, returning from a trip to the dumpster, you notice a number of people, including a couple of distraught-looking women, gathered around the reception desk.

"What did I miss?"

"It's Dr. Fanshaw, the CEO of Biogenetech," says the morning receptionist, grimly. "He's dead. I just saw on the local news site. It says he was found in his home by his housekeeper this morning. Shot."

You've never so much as seen the guy, but it's still a bit creepy to be even this close to a sudden ****. Particularly after seeing the light in his office last night.

"Was it... do they know who..."

"It says the housekeeper saw him when she left yesterday evening, and there are signs of a break-in," offers one of the IT guys in the group.

"He probably surprised a burglar," decrees Dr. McKenzie in her flinty voice, as she approaches the group. As all eyes turn to her, she continues. "Dr. Fanshaw has... had an extensive art collection, including coins, antique jewelry, and other items highly appealing to thieves." She gives the last word a particularly disdainful emphasis, and you have a distressing sense that she might have directed a sidelong glance at you while speaking it.

McKenzie surveys the group as she speaks, her classically beautiful but generally cold features at this moment displaying something resembling real sympathy. "We are, of course, all distraught at this news. Those of you who feel you need to, particularly you, Dana," she says to the teary-eyed woman you recognize as Fanshaw's secretary, "should take the rest of the day off. The rest of you..." her steely gaze definitely turns to you this time, "should please take care not to interfere with those continuing to work on urgent business."

The group disperses, but you linger for a moment to watch McKenzie stride down the hall on long legs more appropriate to a dancer than a scientist. You continue to picture her as you continue on your way, wondering if even the AXE in your car could loosen her up, and whether another experiment might be in order. Or perhaps Dana, Fanshaw's demurely attractive, auburn-haired, 30-something secretary might be distracted from her grief... Or one of the other women who got a brief whiff of you in the lunchroom yesterday... perhaps today..

By the time you pass the vacant Documentation office, you've daydreamed yourself into an erection, and start to feel kind of creepy again -- You recognize your energy this morning as having had a little horniness fueling it. In spite of all the mind-blowing sex in the past 24 hours, here you are scheming how to get even more, and never mind how sick your partners may end up. You're getting a better sense of how that AXE spray may have failed trials, and wondering just how addictive the stuff might be...