Chapter 9: Secret Experiments
The early 1930s were a monochrome epoch of dust and despair. The Great Depression had settled over the world like a shroud, choking the life out of nations and leaving a generation adrift in a sea of hopelessness. But within the insulated, gilded world of the Sterling Imperium, it was an age of unparalleled consolidation and power. Arthur Sterling, having masterfully engineered his rise from the ashes of the global economy, was now the undisputed king of capital, a silent emperor ruling over a vast industrial and financial domain.
But the throne had become a bore. The game of finance, once a thrilling challenge, was now utterly predictable. He could move markets with a whisper, ruin a competitor with a single, calculated trade. There was no challenge left in it. His mind, already enhanced by the Chimera Compound and operating at a post-human level of efficiency, required a greater problem to solve. Wealth had been the means to an end, and that end now beckoned with an irresistible gravity.
By 1933, Arthur, now thirty-three years old, had become a ghost to the outside world. He had installed a board of fiercely loyal, ruthlessly efficient regents to manage the day-to-day operations of his empire, with Charles and a wary but compliant Silas Blackwood acting as the ultimate overseers. His own focus had shifted entirely. He retreated from his Manhattan skyscraper to the secluded, fortress-like walls of the Prometheus Campus in the Hudson Valley. He had conquered the world of man. It was time to conquer the limitations of man himself.
His true work, the work that had been his driving passion since his past life as the geneticist Alexander Finch, resumed in earnest. The Chimera Compound had been a success, a masterpiece of biological optimization. It had halted his aging, perfected his health, and sharpened his mind to a razor's edge. It had made him the perfect human.
But "perfect human" was no longer enough. It was a cage, however gilded. His knowledge of the coming decades was a constant reminder of the true power scale of his new universe. He knew of the Asgardians, beings who saw humans as fleeting mayflies. He knew of the Celestials, who seeded life across galaxies. He knew of Thanos, the Mad Titan who would one day seek to rewrite reality with a snap of his fingers. To remain merely human, even a perfect one, was to remain a pawn in a cosmic game, destined to be swept from the board. This, he would not accept.
He sequestered himself in the deepest, most secure bio-lab of the Prometheus Campus, a sterile, automated sanctum that he called 'the Forge.' Here, he began Phase Two of his personal evolution: Project Ascendant.
His starting point was his future knowledge of Dr. Abraham Erskine's Super-Soldier Serum. He had the utmost respect for Erskine's genius, but he also saw the fundamental flaw in his creation. Erskine's serum was a catalyst, an amplifier. It took the subject's innate qualities and magnified them a hundredfold. It made good men great, like Steve Rogers, but it turned flawed men into monsters, like Johann Schmidt. Arthur found this reliance on innate morality to be an unacceptable variable, a sentimental weakness in an otherwise brilliant formula.
"Erskine sought to create a better soldier," Arthur dictated to the Great Sage, his voice echoing in the silent, white-walled lab. "I seek to create a better being. His formula is a moral lottery. Mine will be an engine of controlled, directed evolution. It will not simply amplify what is there; it will provide the tools for constant, limitless growth. It will not make me a great man. It will make me the foundation of a new species, with a population of one."
He began by deconstructing the theory behind Erskine's work, using the Great Sage to model its biochemical pathways. He then began designing his own, superior version: the Ascendant Formula.
Unlike Erskine's serum, which was a one-time transformative event, Arthur's formula was designed as a regenerative, bio-adaptive agent. He incorporated genetic markers extracted from extremophiles—microbes that thrived in the crushing pressures of the deep sea and the boiling heat of volcanic vents. He synthesized proteins that would grant his cells the ability to not just repair, but to actively improve and adapt to stress. It was a serum designed to grant not just strength, but a perpetual state of becoming stronger, faster, and more intelligent.
The Great Sage was his indispensable partner. For two years, it ran millions of complex simulations, modeling every conceivable interaction between the Ascendant Formula and Arthur's unique, Chimera-enhanced physiology. This was the key to avoiding the flaws of other serums. The Sage could predict the precise cellular stresses that had caused Schmidt's horrifying physical degradation and design countermeasures. It created biochemical governors and feedback loops that would ensure the transformation was stable, controlled, and permanent.
"The risk of uncontrolled cell mutation, as seen in the Schmidt outcome, is a failure of integration," Arthur reasoned with the Sage. "The Erskine formula forces a violent, chaotic transformation. The Ascendant Formula will instead provide a new operational matrix for the cells, allowing them to rebuild the body from within, according to a superior blueprint."
The final component was an exotic one. The Sage's analysis had revealed that for the formula to achieve perfect stability, it required a rare, heavy-metal isotope with unique catalytic properties. This isotope was not known to science in the 1930s. But Arthur's geological surveys had flagged a deep, unexploited deposit of it within a Sterling-owned mine in the Belgian Congo. He sent a quiet, coded directive. A small team of his most trusted men, under the guise of a standard geological survey, extracted several kilograms of the strange, faintly glowing ore and had it discreetly shipped to the Prometheus Campus in a lead-lined container. He now had his secret ingredient, a piece of the earth that would help him transcend it.
By the winter of 1935, the Ascendant Formula was ready. A single vial of a viscous, platinum-colored liquid, humming with a barely contained potential energy.
The transformation could not be a simple injection. The process would be too violent, the biological shock too great for an unassisted body to survive. Arthur had spent the last year constructing his crucible: the Chrysalis Chamber. It was a sleek, sarcophagus-like pod of polished chrome and reinforced glass, filled with an oxygen-rich, nutrient-dense gel. It was wired with a thousand sensors and linked directly to the Prometheus Campus's core computational engine, giving the Great Sage direct, real-time control over his vital functions.
He stood before the open pod, stripped bare. For a moment, he regarded his own form—the body of a man in his physical prime, perfected by the Chimera compound. It was a remarkable machine, the peak of human evolution. And he was about to destroy it, to tear it down to its very foundations, in the hope of building something divine in its place.
"Great Sage," he said, his voice steady. "Confirm final projections."
«Analysis complete. The Ascendant procedure carries a 97.4% probability of success. A 2.1% probability of catastrophic biological failure resulting in death. A 0.5% probability of unforeseen, unstable mutation. The risks are acceptable.»
Arthur nodded. He took the vial of the Ascendant Formula and administered it himself, injecting the thick, cool liquid into his carotid artery. Then, he lay back in the Chrysalis Chamber. The nutrient gel, warm as blood, flowed in around him. The reinforced glass lid hissed shut, sealing him in. A series of needles descended, connecting him to life support and a direct neural interface.
His last sensation of the world was the hiss of the chamber pressurizing. Then, the pain began.
It was an agony beyond all description, a fire that ignited in every one of his trillions of cells simultaneously. It felt as if his very atoms were being ripped apart and put back together in a new, impossible configuration. His enhanced mind, capable of processing thought at near light-speed, experienced every microsecond of the ordeal in excruciating, high-definition detail. He felt his bones crack and reform, his muscle fibers tear and reweave themselves into something denser and stronger. It was the pain of birth and death happening at once, over and over again.
His consciousness threatened to shatter. But the Great Sage was there, a pillar of cold, hard logic in the hurricane of agony.
«Alert: Cardiac arrest imminent. Administering controlled electrical stimulation. Alert: Massive histamine response detected. Counteracting with synthesized anti-inflammatory agents. Alert: Neural overload approaching critical levels. Shunting excess bio-electrical energy into the grounding system.»
The Sage was his co-pilot, fighting a storm on a million fronts, managing the crucible, ensuring the fire forged him instead of consuming him. Arthur's own consciousness became a battleground. He let go of his physical form, focusing his entire will on a single point of light in the sea of pain, clinging to his sense of self, his core ambition, refusing to be erased by the agony of his own rebirth.
The process lasted for seventy-two excruciating hours.
When he awoke, it was to a profound silence. The pain was gone. The roaring inferno had been replaced by a deep, resonant hum of immense, effortless power. He felt… calm. He felt whole.
The Chrysalis Chamber hissed open. The gel drained away. Arthur sat up. He looked at his hands, turning them over. They looked the same, yet they were fundamentally different. He felt an intrinsic awareness of every cell, every sinew. He felt the steady, powerful thrum of his own bio-electric field.
He stepped out of the pod onto the cold, steel floor of the Forge. His body felt impossibly light, yet dense with power. He walked to a full-length mirror. His physical form had been refined. He was leaner, yet more defined, his musculature like that of a classical Greek statue—a physique that spoke of perfect power and grace, not brute force. His skin was flawless. But the most significant change was his eyes. They seemed to possess their own internal luminosity, a piercing intensity that saw far more than the visible world.
He felt the Great Sage, now integrated even more deeply into his consciousness.
«Analysis complete. Transformation successful. All biological and cognitive parameters have exceeded projections. Strength, speed, and reflexes are enhanced by an estimated 1200%. Cellular regeneration is near-instantaneous. Cognitive processing speed has increased by an order of magnitude. You are no longer within the classification of Homo sapiens.»
He reached out and picked up a solid lead brick from a nearby workbench, a paperweight that weighed nearly fifty pounds. It felt as light as a child's block. With a casual clench of his fist, he compressed the solid metal into a small, misshapen sphere. He felt no strain.
Later, in the institute's secure gymnasium, he tested his new limits. He ran a hundred meters in under three seconds, a silent, graceful blur. He lifted a custom-forged steel block weighing several tons, the muscles in his back cording with effort but not strain. He found he could perceive frequencies far into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. The world was a richer, more detailed tapestry of information than he had ever imagined.
He understood at once that he had created the most valuable and dangerous secret on the planet. This power, if known, would make him a target for every government, every army, every aspiring tyrant on Earth. It was a power that could not be shared.
With meticulous care, he began the purge. He had the Great Sage erase every byte of research data related to Project Ascendant from the institute's computers, save for a single master file, encrypted with a quantum key that existed only in his enhanced mind. He personally went to the Forge and, using his newfound strength, dismantled the key components of the synthesis equipment and the Chrysalis Chamber, melting them down to slag in a high-temperature plasma furnace. The Ascendant Formula now existed in only one place: his own blood.
That night, Arthur stood in the moonlit gardens of the Prometheus Campus. A cold wind blew, but he did not feel it. He felt the Earth's magnetic field, the faint seismic vibrations from deep within the planet, the cosmic rays from distant, dying stars peppering his skin.
He looked up at the star-dusted sky. For his entire life, even his past one, he had been a man looking up at the heavens, aspiring to them. Now, for the first time, he felt like he was looking at them as a peer. The names that had once been distant, semi-mythical threats from his MCU knowledge—Odin, the Celestials, Thanos—were now something different. They were no longer just future events to be weathered or exploited.
They were rivals. Competitors. Obstacles on his path to true, ultimate transcendence.
A profound, divine sense of purpose settled over him. He was no longer a man playing god. He had taken the first, irreversible step to becoming one. His ambition, once a roaring fire, had cooled into the dense, unstoppable certainty of a collapsing star. The future was coming, with its heroes, its monsters, and its gods. And he would be ready. Not as a manipulator hiding in the shadows, but as a power in his own right, ready to claim his place in the cosmos.