Chapter 10: A New Era Beckons
The late 1930s were a world holding its breath. The Great Depression had left deep, ragged scars across the globe, and now, a new, more terrifying fever was taking hold. In Europe, the jackboots of the Third Reich echoed in the streets of Vienna and Prague. In Asia, the Empire of Japan carved a bloody path through China. The fragile peace forged in the aftermath of the Great War was fracturing, and the world was sliding inexorably toward a second, more terrible global conflict.
For the vast majority of humanity, this was a time of deep anxiety and looming dread. For Arthur Sterling, it was the overture to his grand symphony.
At thirty-nine years of age, Arthur was a figure of immense power and absolute mystery. Thanks to the Ascendant Formula, he possessed the face and physique of a man in his late twenties, a state of biological stasis that he explained to his inner circle as the result of an "advanced regimen of cellular therapies" developed at his institute. His empire was a global colossus, so deeply embedded in the world's economy that its tendrils reached into every government and every major industry. He had won the game of wealth and power so completely that it no longer held any interest for him. He was now engaged in a far greater pursuit.
His days were spent in the silent, hyper-advanced halls of the Prometheus Campus, a place that was less a research institute and more the capital of his shadow empire. Here, his augmented mind operated on a plane of existence that was simply unimaginable to anyone else. He could simultaneously design the schematics for a revolutionary jet engine, track the subtle fluctuations of the global commodities market in his head, process real-time intelligence reports from three continents, and compose a complex piece of music, all without conscious effort. The world had become a torrent of data, and he was the god-like processor at its center.
One crisp autumn afternoon in 1938, he met with an aging Silas Blackwood in the institute's rooftop garden. The old wolf was now frail, his body failing him, but his mind and eyes were as sharp as ever. He looked at Arthur, who stood gazing out over the Hudson Valley, the very picture of timeless vitality.
"You've done it, boy," Silas rasped, huddled under a thick wool blanket. "I've seen empires rise and fall. I've seen Robber Barons and Presidents. They were all just children playing with blocks compared to this." He gestured weakly at the sprawling campus around them. "You didn't just win the game. You burned the old board and built a new one that only you know how to play."
He coughed, a dry, rattling sound. "This coming war… I see your hand in it. Everywhere. Your companies supply the Reich with the raw chromium they need for their panzers, through a dozen shell companies in Sweden. At the same time, you're building the very factories in America that will be used to turn those panzers to scrap. You're not picking a side, are you?"
"Sides are for soldiers and politicians, Silas," Arthur replied, his voice calm and distant. "I am interested in the outcome. The war will accelerate technological development by fifty years. It will cement the United States as the world's preeminent power, creating a stable, predictable global order for me to operate in. It will exhaust the old colonial empires, leaving a power vacuum in Asia and Africa that I will be perfectly positioned to fill. The war is not the event. It is the crucible that will forge the world I require."
Silas stared at him, a look of ultimate, final understanding dawning on his face. He had thought their game was about power and money. He finally realized that for Arthur, it had always been about something more, something he couldn't even name. "My God," Silas whispered. "You truly are the Devil."
Arthur turned to him, a flicker of something almost like affection in his inhumanly sharp eyes. "The Devil is merely a fallen angel, Silas. My ambitions are far grander than that."
This was the last time they would speak. Silas Blackwood passed away peacefully in his sleep a week later, leaving his entire remaining fortune and his network of secrets to the only man he ever considered his superior. The old era was truly over.
Arthur's focus was now entirely on the coming conflict, not as a participant, but as its master strategist. His war room was the sanctum sanctorum of the Prometheus Campus, dominated by a vast, holographic map of the globe, a technology he had invented for his own use. Here, he orchestrated his grand design. While the world saw a coming clash of ideologies, Arthur saw a controlled demolition.
He played all sides. Sterling-owned tankers, registered under Panamanian flags, discreetly supplied high-octane fuel to Franco's nationalists in Spain, a testing ground for the new German Luftwaffe. Sterling-controlled mines in South America sold tungsten to Japanese corporations, essential for their armor-piercing shells. Simultaneously, his public-facing companies in America and Britain were accepting massive government contracts to build aircraft, ships, and the nascent technology of radar. He was creating the war's supply and demand, profiting from every bullet fired, from every life lost, all to shape the post-war world to his exact specifications.
But his true preparations ran deeper. He knew this war would not be fought only by conventional armies. The real prizes were the unseen players, the secret factions that would define the Age of Marvels. To this end, he created his own private intelligence agency, an organization with limitless funding and a global reach, accountable only to him. He named it Chronos.
Chronos was staffed with the best and most ruthless agents money could buy: former MI6 operatives, disillusioned Abwehr officers, grizzled veterans of the Russian civil war. Their first and most critical mission was to infiltrate the rising power structure of the Third Reich. Arthur didn't care about Hitler's political ambitions. He cared about the faction that was growing like a cancer within the Nazi party: HYDRA.
He knew from his MCU knowledge that HYDRA was far more than a science division. They were a cult of nihilistic world domination, and their leader, Johann Schmidt, was a man whose ambition was almost as great as his own. More importantly, Schmidt was hunting for an object of immense power: the Tesseract.
"Your mission is not to engage or disrupt," Arthur briefed the director of Chronos, a cold-eyed former French spy known only as 'Le Spectre'. "It is to observe. I want to know everything about Schmidt's research. I want every scientist on his team profiled. I want every archaeological dig he funds monitored. If he finds anything—an artifact, a formula, a new energy source—I want that data before Berlin does. We will let HYDRA do the heavy lifting of discovery. We will simply reap the rewards of their work."
At the same time, Chronos agents were tasked with monitoring the Allied response. He had operatives keeping a close watch on the burgeoning American war effort, specifically on figures like Colonel Chester Phillips, a man Arthur knew would soon head the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). Most of all, he was interested in a quiet, brilliant German scientist who had recently fled to America: Dr. Abraham Erskine. Arthur wanted to know everything about Erskine's work on his "Super-Soldier" project. He wanted to compare Erskine's flawed but potent formula to his own perfected Ascendant Formula. He would let the Allies develop their champion, their symbol. It was a variable he would need to control later.
The final piece of his preparation was a meeting with his most trusted confidant.
He stood alone in the absolute silence of the Forge, the laboratory where he had been reborn. Before him, a shimmering, three-dimensional holographic display filled the air, projected from a hidden device in the ceiling. It was the Great Sage, given a visual form.
"Report," Arthur commanded. "Display the critical path. The timeline for the next century."
The star-field in the hologram coalesced into a gleaming, multi-branched timeline, a river of light flowing into the future. Key moments glowed with a brighter intensity.
«Critical Path: The Chronos Imperative. Phase Two: The Age of Marvels.»
A series of images and data points appeared, floating in the air before him.
* 1943-1945: The Tesseract. Objective: Allow HYDRA to unearth the artifact. Allow the SSR to capture it. Acquire the Tesseract during post-war chaos and transport to a secure Prometheus facility for analysis and weaponization.
* 1950s: Vibranium. Objective: Infiltrate the isolated nation of Wakanda. Covertly acquire a significant supply of Vibranium for research into energy, materials science, and armament.
* 1960s: The Pym Particle. Objective: Monitor the work of Dr. Henry 'Hank' Pym. Acquire the formula for the Pym Particle, classifying it as a top-tier strategic asset for infiltration and logistics.
* 1970s-1990s: The New Generation. Objective: Continue observation of key individuals: Howard Stark and the birth of his son, Tony. The latent potential of Bruce Banner. The early careers of Nick Fury and Alexander Pierce within S.H.I.E.L.D.
* 2011: The Asgardian Contact. Objective: First contact with a major cosmic power. Analyze Asgardian biology, technology, and the nature of the Bifrost. Assess Thor Odinson as a potential asset or threat.
The timeline stretched on, marking the appearance of the other Infinity Stones—the Aether, the Orb, the Mind Stone within Loki's Scepter. It culminated in a final, ominous data point, represented by a single, massive celestial body.
* TERMINAL OBJECTIVE: THANOS. Threat Analysis: Level-Omega cosmic entity. Seeker of the Infinity Stones. High-probability existential threat to all strategic objectives. Must be neutralized or superseded.
Arthur looked at the grand, sweeping arc of history laid out before him, a future that only he could see. The past thirty years of his life—the amassing of wealth, the building of his empire, his own physical transformation—had all been mere prologue. A gathering of tools. A setting of the board.
Now, the first move of the true game was upon him. The world was about to plunge into a war that would give birth to heroes and monsters, a war that would unleash powers beyond the comprehension of mortal men.
He reached out and with his finger, traced the glowing line leading from the present day to the acquisition of the Tesseract. He felt the hum of the Ascendant Formula in his blood, a quiet symphony of limitless potential. He was no longer just a man with knowledge of the future. He was a demigod, augmented by science, backed by an empire of shadows, and armed with a perfect roadmap to power.
The age of heroes and villains was dawning. They would believe they were the masters of their own destiny, fighting for good or for evil. They would be wrong. They were simply new, more powerful pieces on his board. And he, Arthur Sterling, would be the unseen hand that moved them all. His ambition was boundless, stretching beyond the confines of Earth, beyond the thrones of gods, into the silent, waiting infinity of the cosmos itself. The new era was beckoning. And he was ready to answer its call.