Blade Technology Industries had made another splashy headline.
Drex Valen had developed a highly effective cure for AIDS.
And not just an ordinary targeted treatnt, either. This drug worked even against inherited forms of HIV. For millions of patients across the world, it was nothing short of a lifeline.
HIV infection could sit quietly in the body for years, sotis a decade or longer, before it developed into full-blown AIDS. By then, the immune system was often already wrecked. Opportunistic infections followed, one after another. Shingles. Oral fungal infections. Tuberculosis. Intestinal infections, pneumonia, encephalitis, malignant tumors, chronic wasting. The body simply burned itself out.
For many people, the tragedy had started long before they even knew they were infected.
So had taken precautions and still gotten it through blood transfusions. Because the incubation period was so long and so difficult to detect, they only found out years later. Those people were among the unluckiest of all.
According to World Health Organization statistics released in November 2009, the number of HIV-infected people worldwide had reached an estimated 33.4 million by the end of 2008. That included 31.3 million adults, 15.7 million won, and 2.1 million children under fifteen.
But those were only the known and projected figures. The actual number of people still carrying the virus in silence was likely far higher.
Blade Technology Industries selected a group of AIDS patients at random and treated them for free. In less than half a month, every one of them had recovered. Their immune systems and bodies, damaged by the disease, were then restored completely by the follow-up Extremis treatnt.
The doctors were stunned.
None of them could understand how the company's miracle drug worked.
The World Health Organization sent an invitation and also requested inspection to confirm whether the treatnt t proper standards. Drex Valen refused.
He also made it clear that the cure would not be subjected to any regulation at all.
That was partly to prevent the United States from dragging it off to so pharmaceutical factory in India for testing, and partly to stop anyone else from copying it. Though, realistically, neither of the two viruses involved was sothing most people could get their hands on anyway.
The ordinary vampire virus could kill every other virus in the body, but it ca with hidden dangers. Blade's version of the vampire virus had been reduced to just ten percent assimilation influence, and by adding a small amount of Extremis, it could be controlled.
Continuously bleeding Blade dry for samples was not ideal, so Drex had already begun researching how to culture Blade's vampire virus himself and strip its assimilation effect down even further.
anwhile, the world's confird AIDS patients went into a frenzy.
So did the people who suspected they might already be infected and had been living in dread.
Most of them were rich, and the reason for that was obvious enough.
Even though Blade Technology Industries set the price extrely high, demand still far outstripped supply.
The appearance of the AIDS cure pushed Blade Technology Industries even higher into the heavens. It had solved a problem the entire world had failed to crack since the disease was first discovered decades earlier. Drex Valen was no longer just a genius.
He was a human treasure.
Blade Technology Industries' influence spread across the globe, and Drex moved on to the next phase of his plans. Satellites. Space stations. Expansion into orbit itself.
When Uld returned from China, Drex imdiately sent him to Wakanda.
He wanted more vibranium.
As for the heart-shaped herb, Drex had no interest in it. It was not so magical super-soldier material. It was rely a hallucinogenic and toxic plant that brought people before the Black Panther God. If soone outside the Wakandan royal family took it, the god would simply crush them.
Only the royal family could pass the trial and be reshaped into the super soldier known as the Black Panther.
Drex also had no interest in Wakanda's own vibranium-based technology. He was confident he could do better. Besides, vibranium was so versatile, so absurdly close to a universal material, and they were using it for clothes and spears. That was practically criminal waste.
Uld felt like he was about to be buried under work.
So he handed the company side of things over to Natalie and took a private jet to Wakanda.
Wakanda's current king, and current Black Panther, T'Chaka, was surprised that outsiders had co to their supposedly "backward" land. Uld stepped off the plane and imdiately felt the sa thing.
Wakanda looked backward.
It also looked ridiculously fortunate.
A natural vibranium mine. Just sitting there.
That kind of luck was obscene.
Uld had already learned from his boss that vibranium was worth ten thousand dollars per gram, and even then it was not exactly easy to buy. On the black market, it was openly circulating, but the price had been driven above fifty thousand dollars per gram. These Wakandan natives were richer than oil tycoons in the Middle East.
T'Chaka removed the royal robe he had been wearing, a garnt woven with vibranium fibers and worth several hundred million dollars, and replaced it with a ragged native outfit that barely covered his lower body.
"Greetings, King of Wakanda," Uld said politely.
"What king?" T'Chaka replied with a look that suggested he thought Uld was joking. "I'm only the tribal chief."
Uld did not find it strange at all that a tribal leader from a backward society could speak English. He imdiately explained his purpose for coming.
T'Chaka was even more surprised after hearing it.
He had thought the visitors were going to be Aricans coming back to scavenge more vibranium. After all, Wakanda had sold so of it long ago in order to raise money so the young people in the tribe could go to university in the United States and later return to help develop the holand. That also ant their computers used the sa binary systems as the outside world. And with vibranium's special properties, Wakanda's technological progress had outpaced the rest of humanity by a ridiculous margin. They already had their own spaceships and satellites, and they were still humiliating the entire planet with them.
But instead of so greedy Aricans, the person asking for vibranium was Drex Valen himself, the man now hailed as a human treasure, the Einstein, Tesla, Joule, and Planck of the century.
Even T'Chaka understood the aning of that.
Vibranium was the foundation of Wakanda itself, so of course he was unwilling to give it away. T'Chaka was not T'Challa yet. His mindset was not open enough for that. He only cared about keeping Wakanda alive and intact.
So he politely refused.
The vibranium that had already been sold, he said, was all that existed. If Uld did not trust that answer, Wakanda would allow a search.
Back when the Aricans had co to dig around, they had not found anything either. They had no idea the shallow vibranium deposits had already been harvested by Wakanda, while the deeper veins were buried too far down to be exposed easily.
The entire nation of Wakanda was actually built on top of a massive vibranium teor.
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