Icarus is a drug that's been around for a year, quickly becoming the dominant party drug of choice in the north-eastern US. About six months ago, hospitalisations due to the drug suddenly rose 300%, and fatalities nearly 1000%. One of the admissions was a college student named Jimmy Chan was admitted to MGH in Boston. He was burning up with fever. Doctors thought he would die. Instead: he began literally burning up, bursting into flame and destroying his room and apparently himself.

A week later, a man answering to Chan's description walked into a Citizen's Bank branch in Quincy, melted the vault with his bare hands, and made off with $25,000.

Laboratory analysis of Icarus indicates that it has been chemically engineered to trigger latent metahuman abilities (albeit at the horrific cost that more than half of those it triggered would die in the process)

Today: there are nearly one hundred confirmed or suspected Icarus-related metahumans. Despite the dangers and the attempts to shut down trade in the drug, it remains very popular as the "superhuman drug".