Chapter 197 Akai Wuwu

Day 12 of the Highway Survival Game!

"You've captured Akai Tsutomu?"

Just as Shuichi Akai was caught in a dilemma, a voice suddenly rang in his ears like a thunderclap, making his heart skip a beat. If it weren't for the habit he developed while infiltrating the organization, he would definitely have looked at the owner of the voice right now—Vermouth.

Vermouth asked this question suddenly because, after thinking it over, she realized that this was the only possible reason why Gin and Bourbon knew about the Silver Bullet.

After the Miyano couple joined the organization, with the BOSS providing unlimited research funding and resources, they completed the initial version of the silver bullet in just a few months. However, they were not satisfied with the drug's effects.

Because that wasn't the effect the couple wanted, they didn't give the drug the name they had previously given their ideal drug—Silver Bullet—but instead gave it a number-like name—APTX4869!

APTX means excision, and 4869, if you add a decimal point, is 1.69 greater than the silver element number 47 of the silver bullet, according to other researchers who assisted the couple in their research at the time.

The couple believed that the drug's efficacy was 1.69 times stronger than they expected, which caused the side effects. They felt it wasn't the drug they had dreamed of creating. They speculated that once they found and removed the component causing the drug's inaccurate efficacy, they would be able to produce the drug with the desired effect.

The initial version of the silver bullet was considered by them to be some other drug, so they decided to temporarily call it APTX4869. As for the BOSS, the dreamlike ideal drug they wanted to create was just a naive and laughable fantasy.

The name "Silver Bullet" is a mockery of the organization's existence. The effects of APTX4869 are what he truly wants, and he desires APTX4869 without side effects.

It wasn't the dreamlike, ideal medicine that the Miyano couple wanted to create—like a silver bullet that could purify demons, or like holy water that, after consumption, could eliminate the effects of artificial pseudo-cellular aging toxins without harming human health.

To kill all malignant cells in the human body, purify the body, and prevent the user from developing cancer for life, they need to analyze what happens when the human body begins to age.

The toxins that cause the body's cells to age naturally are secreted by the body's own cells and must be controlled through drug production. This can also be understood as using artificial pseudo-cellular aging toxins to re-edit the human genome.

This drug kills all cells in the human body that may become cancerous in the future, leaving only healthy and positive cells. It is a dream drug that uses medication to edit the human body's genes.

This is why they created that forbidden drug that uses suicidal cytotoxins to freeze the human body in time, potentially granting immortality. The Miyano couple's differing philosophies from the organization's boss led to the organization calling the initial version of the Silver Bullet APTX4869.

Actually, the research on this drug wasn't particularly secret within the organization at first. Piske, who introduced the Miyano couple to the organization's research institute, was an older member of the organization's economic management team who provided substantial funding for the drug's research.

Those who belong to the same big capital circle as the BOSS, those who benefit from the organization's unscrupulous research into medical technologies that are far superior to those on the surface of society, and those who need the organization's black gloves to help them solve some big problems, all know this.

.

After all, in order to find sponsors willing to fund their taboo research, the Miyano couple actively recommended their research project to the Japanese medical research community, asking what the consequences would be if successful.

It's no secret that they later joined the Karasuma Medical Research Institute. Although the organization's boss had faked his death for over 20 years, he left other members of the Karasuma family to continue managing the Karasuma family's businesses, while he himself remained hidden behind the scenes.

Thus, apart from the old members of the organization who work for the BOSS and know that the BOSS has never died, those who are not members of the organization are all powerful and influential collaborators in the real world.

They vaguely knew that the Karasuma Zaibatsu was related to the organization, and believed that the organization's boss at the time was the Karasuma Zaibatsu's manager. The Karasuma family had never hidden their arrogant and domineering behavior and their dirty tricks.

Therefore, it was not surprising that Karasuma Research Institute dared to recruit the famous Japanese mad scientist couple, the Miyano couple, to conduct that taboo research. In fact, many people expressed their anticipation for the results of this research.

The real secret is that only a few people knew that the drug had been initially completed: the organization's boss, Rum, and himself. Most of the other people who knew about it died in the APTX4869 finished product experiments.

There was one guy who turned out to be an FBI undercover agent. He had gathered enough information to bring down the organization and even found out the identity of the boss. If it weren't for his partner applying for an arrest warrant for the organization's members to the First Supreme Court of the United States.

Due to mismanagement by court staff, the application materials, which should have been highly confidential and accessible only to high-ranking U.S. law and political leaders, were inadvertently seen by a spy planted there by the organization.

Perhaps the organization disappeared 20 years ago. Of course, the FBI undercover agent's partner was naturally silenced by the organization on the very day that he was killed. He himself was one of the people carrying out the mission, thus reducing the number of people who knew the truth by two more.

The last person in the know was Tsutomu Akai, a man who could be described as a terrifying existence. The organization was so cautious and meticulous that they cleaned up both crime scenes in the Koji Haneda case 17 years ago, leaving no fingerprints behind.

If Rum hadn't made a mistake, leaving violent marks on Koji Haneda and allowing him to guess the identity of the organization's BOSS and leave behind a coded message about the BOSS's identity, it would have been an absolutely uninvestigable case.

However, not long after Akai Tsutomu arrived in the United States, he not only uncovered various suspicious points, but also, because he was the brother-in-law of the Miyano couple, he had some understanding of their research and knew about their relationship with the Karasuma Research Institute.

After reviewing the autopsy reports of Amanda and Koji Haneda, it was discovered that their symptoms of death had many similarities to the death records of mice used in the Miyano couple's experiments.

The fact that they deduced they were likely the product of that research, or a similar one, might explain why it wasn't a secret that the Miyano couple joined the Karasuma Research Institute.

Not long after realizing that the two people had likely died from APTX4869, Tsutomu Akai deduced the BOSS's identity from the cipher, which then led to him blinding the organization's second-in-command Rum's eye, which was like a recording camera, and destroying the research institute specifically used for the production and research of APTX4869...

.

In short, due to differences in stance, ideology, and other aspects, even those in the know about the organization, and even Sherry, the daughter of the Miyano couple who inherited that research, all referred to the first version of the Silver Bullet as APTX4869.

Only Tsutomu Akai, out of respect for his wife's sister and her husband's ideals, referred to APTX4869 as the "silver bullet," their ideal research result. Meanwhile, Rum, within the organization, claimed that Akai had long been killed by the organization in retaliation to maintain his own prestige.

The organization was not certain about Akai Tsutomu's fate. If they were certain, they wouldn't have waited until three years ago to have someone disguise themselves as Akai Tsutomu and go to Britain to test the waters and see how British intelligence agencies would react to Akai Tsutomu's appearance, so as to confirm his fate.

Just now, Gin and Bourbon kept referring to Sherry's research as "Silver Bullet." Sherry's research after returning to Japan from the United States only involved APTX4869, and the BOSS is currently in a state where he cannot take care of himself.

Given his personality, he desperately wanted everyone to know his current physical condition. In addition, for some reason, he was particularly averse to letting Gin, who was very loyal to him, know about his current state. Therefore, he kept the information about APTX4869 under the strictest control.

There's no way he would tell Gin on his own initiative, especially since Bourbon is Rum's intelligence agent. Given the level of trust the Boss currently has in Rum, there's no way he would proactively tell Rum's subordinate about APTX4869.

Even before today, she always believed that Gin and Bourbon still did not know the true effects of APTX4869 and only used it as a poison.

So when she suddenly heard that they knew about it and didn't even try to hide it from her, she realized that the only way she could know was that they had captured Akai Tsutomu and learned the name "Silver Bullet" from him, as well as some other important information.

It was so important that even if the BOSS knew they were in the know, he wouldn't pursue them or eliminate them as a threat. That's why she suddenly asked that question.

Her sudden words startled Gin and Bourbon, both of whom were elites of the organization, possessing adaptability and reasoning abilities that surpassed most Japanese criminal police officers.

With just one sentence from Vermouth, their reasoning abilities almost immediately led them to deduce numerous possibilities: Akai Tsutomu did not die at the hands of the organization as claimed, and the organization was unaware of his fate.

Vermouth had never mentioned Akai Tsutomu to them before, but she suddenly brought it up just now. Before she said this, the two of them were discussing the pros and cons of killing Sherry immediately or interrogating her first.

Vermouth knew about all the other topics about Sherry in these conversations, but she never asked about capturing Akai Tsutomu before. The only thing she mentioned was the Silver Bullet.

So, is Akai Tsutomu also connected to the Silver Bullet? As for Akai Tsutomu, they all know that he intervened in the Haneda Koji case 17 years ago, became aware of the organization's existence, and was subsequently silenced by the organization.