Chapter 1: Awakening in a New Era
Darkness. Not the gentle, comforting blackness of sleep, but a profound, suffocating void. It was a prison of sensory deprivation, a timeless expanse where thought was the only reality. He existed as a disembodied consciousness, a ghost adrift in an endless, silent ocean. Memories, sharp and cruel, were his only companions. He remembered the crisp chill of conditioned air in his penthouse overlooking Central Park, the satisfying heft of a gold-plated pen, the adrenaline-fueled symphony of the trading floor, and the quiet hum of the gene sequencer in his private lab. He was Alexander Finch, a man who had conquered Wall Street by day and sought to conquer human limitation by night. His life had been a monument to ruthless ambition, a vertical climb with no summit in sight.
Then, he remembered the fire in his chest. Not a metaphorical fire of passion, but a literal, agonizing blaze. A massive coronary event, his physician had called the last one. This one felt final. The world of numbers and genetic codes had dissolved into a searing, white-hot agony, and then… nothing. This nothing. This silent, eternal dark.
Was this death? A sterile, featureless afterlife for a man who had believed in nothing but his own intellect? The thought was an icy dread that even the void could not numb. He had spent a lifetime accumulating power, wealth, and knowledge, only for it to be erased, leaving him as nothing more than a specter of memory.
Then, the void fractured.
A dull, rhythmic pressure began to pulse against his non-existent form. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was a slow, powerful beat, a primal drum that echoed in the marrow of his nascent being. The darkness thinned, giving way to a murky, crimson twilight. He was no longer adrift; he was contained, suspended in a warm, liquid medium. Muffled sounds bled through from an outside world—faint, distorted voices, a low hum of activity.
Panic, an emotion he had long since mastered and weaponized against others, flared within him. He had no body, no control. He was a prisoner in a fleshy, developing cage. The rhythmic pressure intensified, becoming a violent, crushing force. The world contorted, squeezing him through a passage of unimaginable tightness. The muffled sounds grew louder, sharper. The crimson twilight shattered into a blinding, searing whiteness that burned his unaccustomed senses. Cold air, sharp and shocking, replaced the warmth of his confinement.
A guttural cry was ripped from him, a sound he did not consciously make. His new body, a thing of raw instinct, reacted to the trauma of birth. He was… born. The absurdity of it was a bitter pill. Alexander Finch, titan of industry and genetic pioneer, was a wailing, helpless infant.
The first few hours were a chaotic hellscape of sensory overload. Blurred giants moved around him, their voices a cacophony of meaningless sounds. Rough textures scraped against his impossibly sensitive skin. His own limbs were foreign objects, flailing without his consent. The disjuncture between his sharp, 45-year-old mind and the undeveloped lump of flesh he inhabited was a unique and profound form of torture. He tried to think, to analyze, to form a strategy, but his own biology betrayed him. The need to feed, to sleep, to cry, overrode his attempts at rational thought.
It was during a moment of forced, fitful sleep, adrift in a sea of infantile dreams, that a new presence made itself known. It was not a voice, not a thought in the conventional sense. It was a cool, clear stream of pure information flowing directly into his consciousness, as clean and sterile as a line of code.
«Notice. The primary consciousness has stabilized. Commencing analysis of the current situation.»
Alexander's mind, accustomed to being the sole occupant of his own skull, recoiled. Who's there? What are you?
«Answer. I am the Unique Skill, Great Sage. An intrinsic analytical faculty integrated with your soul. My purpose is to process information, perform complex calculations, and provide logical guidance.»
The response was instantaneous, devoid of emotion or personality. It was like having a supercomputer embedded in his psyche. A hallucination? A byproduct of a dying brain?
If you're a skill, then analyze, he commanded, a desperate bid to impose order on the chaos. Where am I? What is this?
The Great Sage responded with chilling efficiency.
«Analysis complete. Current location: New York City, New York, United States of America. Physical vessel is a male infant, approximately seven hours old. You are in a state of rebirth.»
Rebirth. The word hung in his mind, both ludicrous and terrifyingly plausible. It explained the impossible transition from death to this.
The date, Alexander demanded, his thoughts sharp and urgent. Give me the precise date.
«Accessing ambient information from auditory cues… Processing… The current date is October 12, 1910.»
* The number echoed in the vast emptiness of his recent memory. Not 2024. 1910. He had been thrown back over a century in time. The implications crashed down on him with the force of a physical blow. The Gilded Age was ending, the world stood on the precipice of a Great War, and the technological marvels he knew were little more than science fiction.
But his mind, the mind of Alexander Finch, didn't just see a primitive past. It saw a clean slate. An untapped market of unprecedented scale.
Great Sage, he thought, testing the limits of this new ability. Access my memories. Cross-reference them with this timeline. Specifically, search for knowledge pertaining to… superheroes. Project Insight. The Avengers Initiative.
«Processing… Cross-referencing memories from former life with historical data of this new timeline. Confirmed. This world's timeline corresponds to the fictional narrative known in your previous life as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.»
The world tilted on its axis. He wasn't just in the past. He was in the MCU. A universe of gods, monsters, and technologies that defied the laws of physics he knew. A universe where men could fly, where alien armies could descend from the sky, and where a set of six cosmic stones could rewrite reality itself.
A slow, cold smile would have spread across his face if his infant muscles could have obeyed. This wasn't a punishment. This wasn't a sterile afterlife.
This was the ultimate opportunity.
His new parents, he soon learned, were Charles and Eleanor Sterling. He was Arthur Sterling. The name felt solid, respectable. The Sterlings were comfortable, inhabiting a spacious brownstone in a prosperous part of the city. Charles was a man of middling success in banking, sharp and ambitious, but bound by the conventions of his time. Eleanor was a kind, gentle woman, the epitome of early 20th-century high society, her world revolving around her home, her husband, and now, her firstborn son.
They were, in Arthur's cold estimation, perfect tools.
His days fell into a monotonous rhythm of feeding, sleeping, and being fussed over. To his parents and the hired help, he was a baby—a remarkably quiet and observant baby, but a baby nonetheless. Inside, a storm of calculation was raging.
"He just watches everything," Eleanor would whisper to Charles in the evenings, her voice filled with maternal wonder. They would stand over his crib, two well-meaning giants peering down at the vessel that contained a mind far older and more ruthless than their own. "It's his eyes. They look like he's trying to understand what we're saying."
Charles would chuckle. "He's a Sterling, my dear. Of course, he's intelligent. He's just getting an early start."
Arthur, feigning sleep, would be listening, analyzing their speech patterns, their emotional tells, the subtle power dynamics of their relationship. With the Great Sage's help, he was mastering this new world at an astonishing rate.
Great Sage, begin continuous analysis of all auditory input. Isolate financial terminology, market trends, and names of influential figures. Build a predictive model of the regional economy, he commanded one afternoon while his father discussed business with a colleague in the parlor below.
«Acknowledged. Commencing long-term economic analysis. Cross-referencing with future knowledge of major historical events: Panic of 1910-1911, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression.»
The names were a checklist for his future dominance. While other infants were learning to grasp rattles, Arthur Sterling was laying the groundwork for a global empire.
He learned to control his new body with painstaking effort. The Great Sage was invaluable, providing precise bio-feedback that allowed him to bypass months of natural development.
Command: Calibrate motor neuron impulses for voluntary control of the right hand, he thought, focusing his entire being on his tiny, curled fist.
«Executing. Rerouting neural pathways. Suggestion: Focus on the desired outcome, and I will manage the micro-level biological processes.»
Slowly, deliberately, his fingers uncurled. He held his hand open, a small, triumphant gesture that went entirely unnoticed. He was no longer just a passenger. He was beginning to seize the controls.
His interactions with his parents became subtle experiments. He learned that a timely gurgle when his father mentioned a particular stock could draw a laugh, but also plant a seed of association. He learned that focusing his gaze intently on a document in his father's hand would make the man pause, a flicker of bemusement on his face. He was conditioning them, training them to recognize his unusual focus long before they could possibly comprehend its source.
One evening, Eleanor was reading to him. Not a children's book, but a newspaper, her voice a soft drone as she read aloud about President Taft and the ongoing political squabbles. Arthur's attention was elsewhere. He was having the Great Sage map out the known locations of key MCU resources. The Tesseract in Norway, hidden by Odin. Vibranium in Wakanda, a nation hidden from the world. The time and space for these discoveries were decades away, but the seeds of acquisition had to be sown now.
"...and bankers remain skittish," Eleanor read, "with many fearing the aftershocks of the 1907 panic are not yet over. Thorpe & Harding securities fell another three points today amidst rumors of over-leveraging."
The name "Thorpe & Harding" triggered an alert from the Great Sage.
«Notice. Thorpe & Harding is a mid-level investment house. According to historical financial records from your memory, they will be one of the first major firms to declare bankruptcy in the coming Panic of 1910-1911, triggering a wider market collapse.»
Arthur's focus snapped back to the present. His father, Charles, held a significant number of shares in that very firm. He'd overheard him boasting about its "solid fundamentals" just last week. It was a minor family holding, but its loss would be a setback, eroding Charles's confidence and capital. It was a small thing, but Arthur knew that empires were built on the foundation of small, decisive victories.
He couldn't speak. He couldn't write. How could an infant convey a complex financial warning? He had to use the tools at his disposal: the perception of his unnatural intelligence.
As Eleanor finished the sentence, Arthur let out a sharp, distressed cry. Not the usual cry of hunger or discomfort, but a sound of genuine frustration he had to force himself to make. It was jarring.
"Oh, my goodness! Arthur, what is it?" Eleanor scooped him up, patting his back.
He didn't stop. He kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper in her lap, his wails continuing. Charles entered the room, drawn by the commotion.
"What's wrong with the boy?" he asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
"I don't know," Eleanor said, rocking him gently. "He was fine until I read this part of the paper. It's the strangest thing."
Arthur's cries subsided into whimpers, but he kept his gaze locked on the offensive article. He reached out a tiny, clumsy hand, his fingers brushing against the newsprint.
Charles leaned in, his eyes following his son's gaze. He read the paragraph about Thorpe & Harding. He looked at Arthur, whose face was a mask of infant seriousness, his eyes wide and focused. He looked back at the paper.
"It's just the stock report, Eleanor," he said, though a strange look crossed his face. He was a man of logic and reason, but this was his son. His brilliant, unnervingly focused son. "He probably just has gas."
But the seed was planted. Arthur knew it. He had created a link in his father's mind: Thorpe & Harding, and his son's distress. It was an irrational, emotional connection, but human beings, even bankers, were fundamentally irrational.
Over the next few days, he repeated the performance. Any time the firm was mentioned, or when Charles reviewed his portfolio in the evenings, Arthur would become fussy, quieted only when the topic changed. It was a gambit, a psychological manipulation of the highest order.
Finally, one night, he overheard his parents talking after they believed he was asleep.
"I sold the Thorpe & Harding shares today," Charles said, his voice low.
"Oh? I thought you said they were a fine investment," Eleanor replied.
There was a long pause. "I know. It's foolish. Utterly irrational. But... every time I look at that stock certificate, I think of the way Arthur cries. The way he looks at it. It feels... like a bad omen." He let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "Listen to me. Taking financial advice from a baby. Still, it was making me uneasy. I've moved the funds into treasury bonds for now. Safer, at any rate."
In his crib, Arthur was still. Victory. It was a small, insignificant victory in the grand scheme of his ambitions, but it was the first concrete step. He had successfully manipulated an external event using only his limited resources and his father's dawning belief in his prodigious nature. He had protected his family's capital and, more importantly, had proven the concept. He could steer the ship.
Lying there in the dark, the sounds of 1910 New York filtering in through the window—the distant clatter of a horse-drawn carriage, the faint cry of a newsboy—Arthur Sterling felt a sense of calm and purpose he hadn't even possessed as Alexander Finch. His previous life had been about winning a game whose rules were already written.
This life… this life was about rewriting the rules of reality itself.
He had the knowledge. He had the analytical power of the Great Sage. He had over a century to prepare for the arrival of the Infinity Stones, for the rise of HYDRA, for the birth of heroes and the invasion of gods. They were all just variables in a complex equation, and he was the only one with the key. They would see a world of black and white, of good and evil. He would see it as a chessboard, a grand, cosmic game of power waiting for a true player.
He would not be a bystander to the coming age of marvels. He would not be a victim of its chaos or a simple beneficiary of its advancements.
Great Sage, he commanded, his mind alight with cold, burning ambition. Begin formulating a multi-decade plan. Phase one: Absolute financial domination of the pre-superhero era. Phase two: Covert acquisition of advanced scientific knowledge and resources. Phase three: Personal physical and mental augmentation beyond human limits.
«Acknowledged. Formulating long-term strategic imperatives. Title: The Chronos Imperative. Objective: Transcendence of known biological, metaphysical, and cosmic limitations. Probability of success… requires more data. Commencing continuous analysis.»
Arthur Sterling closed his eyes, not in sleep, but in deep, silent concentration. He was a baby in a crib, helpless and small. But in his mind, he was already a king, a god in waiting, and the entire Marvel universe was his for the taking. The age of heroes was on the horizon, but it would unfold in a world shaped by his invisible hand. He would be its master, its manipulator, and ultimately, its successor. The game had begun.