Metabolic Overload
An engineered condition created by Alchemists as a technology for war zones and destructive assassinations, metabolic overload is a process that uses stored fat tissue to fuel incredible increases to a body's strength and speed for a short duration. It was developed to make short-lived burning berserkers who can take out important targets before burning up, destroying evidence while sending a message.
A subject is fed a steady diet of calorie dense foods, mainly sugars and fats. The more fat in the body, the stronger they will become and the longer they can burn. When the time comes to unleash one of these assassins, they are fed a boiled egg laced with the chemical cocktail and a catalyst. Quickly digested, the egg acts almost as a timed fuse leading to the reaction of chemical to fat. Subjects are unloaded at the target destination and left to fall into an explosive rage.
Transmission & Vectors
Metabolic overload is triggered by food that is contaminated or laced with the patented chemical. The food must be low or no fat, otherwise the chemicals will rect before they can be consumed.
Symptoms
As fat tissue burns, the energy is shunted to muscles, exponentially increasing strength and speed. It simultaneously lowers fine motor control, leading to each movement being powerful and unrefined. Brain tissue is also affected, quickly leading to a subject losing critical thinking, followed by loss of any thinking. Soon, only reactions and lashing out in pain are all that is left.
The reaction of the chemicals and cells is highly exothermic, and the heat radiating from a subject can cause fires as it burns away the body of the subject.
Treatment
There is no treatment for metabolic overload. The chemicals react quickly upon contact with lipids, whether located in a body or not.
Prognosis
By design, the process of overloading is destructive to the subject as well as the targets. Excess heat and muscle strain cook the body and render limbs effectively immobile after the chemical has run its course. No cases of survival have been documented.
Epidemiology
While the alchemists who sell the chemicals protect the secrets of its make to maintain their patents, there are sometimes cases of metabolic overload happening seemingly spontaneously within the cities. Runoff and dumping from the research plants wash the chemicals into the waterways, where it can accumulate in the aquatic life. In most cases of accidental metabolic overload, the suspected cause has been afflicted fish from the polluted waters. Some suspect that certain fires were not caused by arson, but unlucky citizens who ate the wrong seafood.
Type
Chemical Compound
Origin
Engineered
Cycle
Short-term
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