Chapter 13: Reconstructed Warriors
Upon hearing this, Alexia stood up, saved the partially completed file, and walked to Samuel Young's left side. She crossed her arms in front of her and thought for a moment before saying:
"Boss, my team and I are about to complete our research. In six months at most, the first batch of Reconstructed Warriors will be ready for trials. Once they pass the tests, they can be officially deployed. There's no need to..."
"Don't worry," Samuel interrupted, raising his hand to ease her concerns. "I won't cut off your research funding. Remember, the Reconstructed Warrior project was my idea in the first place."
Samuel's tone deepened as he continued, "You might have overlooked the key point I mentioned earlier. I want super soldiers that can be mass-produced, created using my genes and those of these two children.
The soldiers I envision will be ten, even a hundred times stronger than the Reconstructed Warriors."
"Stronger by a hundred times or more than the Reconstructed Warriors..." Alexia mused.
When Alexia first joined the core team at Atlas, she began working on the Super Soldier project, also known as the Reconstructed Warrior (Universal Soldier) project, following Samuel's directives.
Despite initially not thinking highly of Atlas, known globally for its top-tier pharmaceutical industry, Alexia was swayed by the enticing salary Atlas offered and decided to give it a shot.
After passing a series of tests and successfully entering the core team, she learned that their boss was an "immortal" and discovered the truth about Compound Five, which completely changed her worldview.
Alexia, already disdainful of Vought's freaks and aware of the true nature of most "superheroes," gladly took on the task of undermining Vought.
Samuel then explained to her and a group of bioengineering and chemistry experts how to support high-concentration agents and "revive" soldiers who had been dead for no more than three hours.
By combining genetic modifications and reprogramming the brain, these soldiers would feel no pain or compassion, and only absolute obedience to orders. With the use of cloning technology, severely damaged limbs and torsos could be replaced like parts.
Only complete dismemberment, total body pulverization, or severe head damage could incapacitate these soldiers.
The critical element of this plan was the "high-concentration agent," which could "revive" the dead bodies. Without this agent, everything would remain theoretical.
Their boss, being an immortal with strong self-healing abilities, provided blood samples that helped them attempt to refine the agent.
From 1988 to 1993, Alexia transitioned from a 16-year-old graduate to the youngest department head at Atlas. On August 30, 1990, her team successfully extracted a "serum" that could revive bodies dead for less than five hours.
However, the revived bodies only retained some physiological functions, with 60-90% of the brain still dead, and the serum couldn't be used on living humans. Injecting it into a healthy adult caused an extreme immune response, resulting in edema, necrosis, and death.
Atlas, or rather Samuel, did not oppose human experimentation. To ensure the feasibility of the Super Soldier project and continuously enhance Atlas' military strength, live human testing was necessary, though Samuel would not resort to madness.
Many large pharmaceutical companies secretly captured homeless people and undocumented immigrants for testing. In contrast, Atlas used "Disposable Human Experimental Materials (DHEM)," sourced from confirmed criminals like serial killers and rapists sentenced to prison.
As a top-tier company in the Midwest USA, Atlas smoothly "traded" large numbers of such scum from prisons in states like Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada for experimentation.
Once the serum was successfully extracted, Alexia led her team to further work on brain reprogramming. By December 21, 1992, the Reconstructed Warrior project had a complete procedure:
1. Freeze corpses dead for no more than five hours in liquid nitrogen.
2. Inject the serum.
3. Stimulate the thyroid and pituitary glands to accelerate repair and regeneration until "revival."
4. Perform brain surgery on the revived bodies, implant chips and devices developed by the research department, and attempt to link them to the brain.
So far, the bioengineering department had successfully revived two bodies. These bodies had impressive resistance, capable of withstanding multiple close-range 7.62x51mm shots without armor and retaining some mobility.
However, brain programming still needed improvement, as these bodies could only follow simple commands and were not yet true "Reconstructed Warriors."
Alexia admired Samuel for proposing and guiding the Reconstructed Warrior project and considered joining Atlas one of her best decisions.
Even though she knew Samuel wouldn't halt the Reconstructed Warrior project for other reasons, Alexia couldn't help but worry, having invested so much time and effort into it.
Still, Alexia believed that mass-producing super soldiers had a long way to go. Currently, creating a Reconstructed Warrior required not only significant funds but also the personal involvement of Alexia and her team in the surgery.
Including subsequent adjustments, it took at least a month to turn a corpse into a true elite warrior immune to pain and fear.
However, the adjustment process was still incomplete.
At this moment, the office fell into a brief silence.
Sensing Alexia's concerns, Samuel, watching the sleeping Saint Gillies and Robert, said, "To mass-produce super soldiers based on me and these two, we need to use the Gene-Seed gland."
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