What are my "viral" humans harvesting from from my uninfected humans?
The following scenario takes place on Earth, sometime in the next few decades. An unethical biotech company has developed a deadly bioweapon that uses humans as a vector, almost like a suicide bomber strapping a bomb to their chest. A rogue state decides to hire the biotech firm, and use this bioweapon to strike at their enemies, who they can't match up to when it comes to numbers and raw firepower.
Unfortunately, the biotech firm wasn't nearly as good at developing this new bioweapon that they thought they were. Instead of killing a specific target, the bioweapon spreads further than it was supposed to, infecting hundreds upon hundreds of people. Strangely, the bioweapon does not end up killing its victims but it does leave them with some strange physical attributes:
- Poor eyesight
- Aversion to sunlight - active during the night only
- Higher susceptibility to autoimmune diseases
- Physical disfiguration - blackened lips, reddened eyes and prominent veins
- Shortened lifespans - most of the engineered humans have a life expectancy of about 1-2 years after the gene manipulation process
- If they don't die after this time period, they slowly go insane, losing control of their higher cognitive functions and becoming more aggressive, violent and feral
- Surprisingly, they are not sterile and can still reproduce (not exactly unwanted, I suppose)
Given the above factors, and assuming that the "virals" want to keep on surviving and trying to improve their now horrific quality of life - what would they be harvesting from regular, uninfected humans? Let's assume that there are educated biologists and doctors within the ranks of the virals. What can we, as "pure" humans, have that they can use in order to deal with some of their physical issues?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/159050. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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