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“Does he understand the urgency of the situation?”

“I made that very clear when I was there yesterday He’s as inal list of the drug’s components, it’s virtually impossible to re-create”

Locsin picked up the white pill and twirled it between his fingers like a worry bead

“Why is this so hard to duplicate?”

Tagaan slurped his coffee and shrugged “I don’t understand the chemistry Ocaredient and he can’t produce a replace to make cocaine without coca leaves or heroin without opium poppies”

“What about a synthetic substitute?”

“If that was even possible, he said it would take years of research to create”

Locsin’s uncontrollable rage that eed on an ever more frequent basis threatened to bubble to the surface, and it took all his will to suppress it

“We don’t have years,” he growled, popping the tablet in hisit doith the coffee He kneould take severalto take effect, but a rush of invincibility surged through hiency supply of pills into the waistband of his pants, which hy he’d still been able to take his daily dose while in police custody

When several of his le, they had stumbled upon a cache of twenty thousand pills The tablets had been stored in a secret underground bunker built by the Japanese in theWorld War II, but the basethe American assault The entire supply of pills had been vacuum-sealed and stored in a steel drum with no papers to explain the contents A code name was stenciled on the drum: Typhoon

There were ’s purpose Was it a narcotic? A sti their kamikaze pilots with crystal meth Or perhaps it was a poison for their soldiers to co An antidote? An antibiotic? There was no way to tell

Locsin could have sent the pills for analysis to a scientist sy He used a overnment prisoners take the pill

It didn’t take long to observe the effects on the obese bureaucrat, an Interior Ministry functionary named Stanley Alonzo Every day, Alonzo’s physical transforer, and each tirew rapidly and he shed fat as if he were exercising ten hours day Torturing him for information becaly oblivious to the pain being inflicted Bruises healed in hours instead of days Then when the drug ithheld, Alonzo’s ain beca doses were restored, and within another week, his metamorphosis was so total and dependent on Typhoon that Locsin thought he could be effectively controlled and becoent for their side Alonzo was sent back to his post to spy for the insurgency

In his research, Locsin discovered that steroids had been developed by the Gerrowth syndromes The scientists even received the 1939 Nobel Prize for their work Then, during the war, anabolic steroids were used to helpbefore they were distributed to athletes in the Soviet Union and East Germany so they could dominate the Olympics

But Typhoon didpossible with anabolic steroids The Japanese had apparently developed a drug that enabled the user to tolerate an inhuman level of pain, rapidly healed wounds norrievous injuries within days instead of weeks or months Typhoon was like steroids on steroids Users weren’t invincible—broken bones and bullet holes didn’t mend themselves in seconds like they did for superheroes in enerationless than a headshot or a knife to the heart would be lethal All the user needed was time and food to fuel the repair process