The so-called hero drugs had first seen the light in the seventies—an unforeseen side effect of an attempt to create the perfect diet pill. Corners had been cut, and safety trials skipped, so the pill hit the market as a dietary supplement instead of a strictly controlled drug.
None were shocked that there were side effects, but the nature of those effects was a different story.
Many people died, but in some, the metabolic changes resulted in weird and wondrous transformations. The rumors became reality when a woman who could light fires with her mind demonstrated her talents on live television. The active compound was analyzed, purified, and modified until you had a drug strong enough to kill most people.
But the few survivors became far more than they had been.
The drug was banned, of course, declared an illegal narcotic in 1976. How many people could consider injecting something that had a roughly 95 percent chance of killing you or turn your life into a living hell??
The answer was, surprisingly many.
They were the dreamers and the desperate, the thrill-seekers, the greedy, and the people believing in their superhuman destiny. Prices went through the roof.
The industry went underground, and when it resurfaced, it was in the reclaimed ruins of the West. The world had to relearn what it meant to be human; it had to adjust to masked heroes and villains battling it out in colorful costumes with bombastic names. At first, the masks had been a way to preserve anonymity; the bank robber's mask turned into the villain's horned helmet. Soon, the masks had begun to represent something else. A new life. A new destiny.
It was a new America, and it deserved new heroes.
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