Triple-Ex
Triple-Ex traces its poisoned lineage directly to the dark heart of American metahuman policy: the Extra Schools—state-run facilities established during the 1950s under the guise of education, safety, and integration. In reality, these institutions were little more than containment zones where young Specials were monitored, manipulated, and in some cases, harvested.
Behind closed doors, U.S. intelligence agencies—particularly those operating through the CIA’s Black Division—ran a clandestine program codenamed Project Excess. Its objective was simple but monstrous: extract, refine, and replicate the biological source of metahuman abilities in order to artificially induce powers in baseline humans. It was the holy grail of black science. And they believed the answers lay in blood.
Over the next two decades, thousands of samples were taken from detained Extras—some willingly, most not. Blood draws became weekly rituals. Students were subjected to invasive tests, gene-stripping therapies, and, in the darkest corners of the program, outright vivisection. Many never left the schools. Those that did were changed forever.
By the mid-1960s, early prototypes of a serum—then dubbed Excess-3—were tested on expendable assets: prisoners, institutionalized patients, and untraceable operatives. The results were unstable but undeniable. For minutes at a time, test subjects could fly, turn invisible, or tear steel in half. Then their hearts would rupture, or their bones would mutate into tumors. A success rate of 8% was considered progress.
Project Excess was officially shut down in 1978 following a series of high-profile whistleblower leaks, including one harrowing exposé published in the fringe magazine Other Light. The public ignored it. The intelligence community did not. Records were erased. Witnesses vanished. But the formula—refined, toxic, and tempting—was never destroyed.
In the early 1980s, fragments of Project Excess resurfaced in the biotech underworld. Rogue labs and blacksite chemists reverse-engineered the mutagenic compounds using stolen data, smuggled samples, and leftover blacksite materials. The result was Triple-Ex—a street-ready version of the nightmare drug, now wrapped in pop-art packaging and sold as a party enhancer.
From sleazy LA clubs to Eastern European mutation dens, Triple-Ex became the backbone of a new kind of thrill-seeking subculture—one that traded safety for sensation, and identity for power. Each dose was a spin of the genetic roulette wheel, a ticket to transcendence or self-destruction.
And all of it began in classrooms where children bled for science.
Behind closed doors, U.S. intelligence agencies—particularly those operating through the CIA’s Black Division—ran a clandestine program codenamed Project Excess. Its objective was simple but monstrous: extract, refine, and replicate the biological source of metahuman abilities in order to artificially induce powers in baseline humans. It was the holy grail of black science. And they believed the answers lay in blood.
Over the next two decades, thousands of samples were taken from detained Extras—some willingly, most not. Blood draws became weekly rituals. Students were subjected to invasive tests, gene-stripping therapies, and, in the darkest corners of the program, outright vivisection. Many never left the schools. Those that did were changed forever.
By the mid-1960s, early prototypes of a serum—then dubbed Excess-3—were tested on expendable assets: prisoners, institutionalized patients, and untraceable operatives. The results were unstable but undeniable. For minutes at a time, test subjects could fly, turn invisible, or tear steel in half. Then their hearts would rupture, or their bones would mutate into tumors. A success rate of 8% was considered progress.
Project Excess was officially shut down in 1978 following a series of high-profile whistleblower leaks, including one harrowing exposé published in the fringe magazine Other Light. The public ignored it. The intelligence community did not. Records were erased. Witnesses vanished. But the formula—refined, toxic, and tempting—was never destroyed.
In the early 1980s, fragments of Project Excess resurfaced in the biotech underworld. Rogue labs and blacksite chemists reverse-engineered the mutagenic compounds using stolen data, smuggled samples, and leftover blacksite materials. The result was Triple-Ex—a street-ready version of the nightmare drug, now wrapped in pop-art packaging and sold as a party enhancer.
From sleazy LA clubs to Eastern European mutation dens, Triple-Ex became the backbone of a new kind of thrill-seeking subculture—one that traded safety for sensation, and identity for power. Each dose was a spin of the genetic roulette wheel, a ticket to transcendence or self-destruction.
And all of it began in classrooms where children bled for science.
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