It was all over the news, running almost 24 hours a day.
News about number of those infected with the mermaid virus, how different governments were reacting to the virus, stories of celebrities turning and course stories about those people who actively went looking to become a mermaid or merman.
Most of the time, the people who admitted to wanting to be infected with the mermaid virus where seen as crazy people needed to be locked up to protect themselves from hurting themselves.
While it was true some people where crazy, others had very personal reasons to want to be transformed.
Some where transgender, mostly women who had been born male and wanted to become a woman even if it was a mermaid. However even trans man wanted to risk the small chance to become a merman even if the chance of becoming a merman when born a human woman was very low. They wanted to risk it.
Others because they had no real hope, there had been multiple confirm reports that when a person was transformed major sickness where cured. All forms of STDs, a mermaid body was immune to, even a person in the end game of Aids could be totally cured. Same went for cancer and every other kind of life ending sickness. Even old age wasn’t immune to the change as people sometimes reverted years or decades when changed. Some would rather be alive as a mermaid/merman then die a human in the hospital bed.
Others felt the world of humans was going to end and wanted to get it over with. Still others had nothing to loss and felt a life in the sea was better then a life on the street or working a dead-end job or running away from abusive family members or partners.
Others had loved ones who had been infected and wanted to join them, being without your wife, husband, child or lover as a human wasn’t worth living.
Others just wanted to leave humanity behind and liked the idea of being a sexy mermaid or merman and didn’t really think about what they would be leaving behind.
So over the internet and in chat rooms, meetings where set up where people who wanted to be transformed would go to meet with a mermaid or merman to be transformed.
Since no one really knew for sure how the virus spread, it wasn’t for certain that a person would be transformed. Some people had sex with merpeople and still didn’t come down with the virus, while others only had to touch them to get infected. For most however, a few hours with a merperson were more than enough to get infected and start the process of transformation.
And so it was, that a meeting to be infected was set up in a cove just a few miles away from a major city.