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Atlas POV | New York City, 10 years later, 2005
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The sun was just beginning to burn its way through the horizon, brushing the steel-and-glass skyline of Manhattan in gold. I blinked slowly against the pale dawn light spilling through the massive windows of my penthouse the kind of view mortals traded dreams for. The kind of life that shouldn't have been possible for someone like me, an 11-year-old boy in truth, despite the body of a man and a mind spanning two lifetimes consisting of four short decades.
I stretched, bones cracking slightly, and let out a long breath. My bare feet padded softly on the heated marble floor as I stepped toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, the entire city laid out below like a living machine humming, glowing, and bustling. I always liked watching it from this height. It made me feel accomplished something I deeply sought in my previous life.
The reflection on the glass caught me before the view did. Tall, broad shoulders, lithe but strong like a swimmer. Lean muscle, forged by the greatest blacksmith with katari fiber. My features were symmetrical too symmetrical for a human. Skin smooth with no visible pores, unnaturally flawless. Hair dark and falling in perfect waves. Eyes… still a shade of neon blue. It had stayed that way since the night I had torn the thoughts out of the Volturi's minds like silk unraveling.
My fingers brushed against my temple, right over that familiar and stronger pressure.
Psychic energy. That reservoir still pulsed inside me like a second heartbeat. It was hugely incomparable to what it was before.
It made me special even among vampires it gave me confidence. Confidence to face the Volturi and take them out.
As for the reason I still hadn't dealt with them was because they were mediator of the supernatural world they were the reason the vampires didn't walk openly and killed whoever they liked.
Before taking them down I need to build something to replace them- a coven of my own.
Thinking about creating a coven I couldn't help but think about the empire I built.
It all started in 1995, I was two years old when I looked eighteen. It was as jarring to me as it would've been to anyone else, except I wasn't anyone else. I was a reincarnated soul from another world.
An experience more surreal than my fast growth. Even more so was that I was in a world that I thought was just fiction. A movie I watched with my sister. A book I thought was cheesy. Now it was a world I live in and I was a half vampire, half human hybrid, something that shouldn't exist or at least that wasn't allowed to exist.
After the Volturi murdered my parents, I escaped. I ran for days until I collapsed under the stormy Phoenix sky. Fate or something else dropped me in front of Renée and Bella. The protagonist of this world.
They hit me with their car and decided to take me in. I unknowingly made a mate bond with Renée which made me stay with them. But I couldn't just peacefully live the rest of my life with them and forget everything.
I decided to build a coven of my own. One strong enough to fight the Volturi. But before that, I want to build a financial empire to fund the eternal life of my future coven mate, my future family. One powerful enough to control the humanity from shadows.
By the time I decided that I was already two but I appeared and functioned like a full-grown adult. I couldn't go to a high school or be tucked away in some attic. I needed a legal identity, a foundation to exist in this world. That was the first challenge.
At first, it was a problem of records. No birth certificate. No social security. Nothing official. But I had a body built to command attention and eyes that could read a lie before it left someone's lips.
I tracked down a notorious identity forger in Hell's Kitchen. Getting close to him wasn't hard with my enhanced hearing, superhuman reflexes, and the ability to smell the rusted metal of the gun he kept beneath his coat. He laughed when I asked for a clean identity package.
So I broke three of his fingers. He stopped laughing after that.
I made a deal with him, I would not kill him and in return, he gave me a birth certificate, social security number, and everything I needed to exist as Atlas Wolfe. A name I decided to use due to my strong desire for a big and loyal family like a wolf's pack.
I also offered the forger a briefcase full of laundered money I "acquired" from one of the drug dens I'd dismantled to keep his mouth shut which I doubt he would after I became known. Greed will make him stupid.
Now as for where I find the money? I hunted.
Let me clarify something: by hunting I didn't mean I murder people to start my empire.
When I said I dismantled a cartel, I meant I used my speed and strength to break bones, and tie them up like Christmas turkeys.
There was this drug lord in the Bronx, Vasquez was his name. He was infamous, ruthless, and sitting on a mountain of untraceable cash. I used the cover of night, tracking the scent of his blood and gunpowder through five city blocks until I found the underground safehouse.
It was over in less than three minutes.
No one died. But every man in that room would walk with limps and scars for life and Vasquez himself? I left him duct-taped to his own couch with a broken jaw and a phone nearby. I dialed 911 for him before I left.
The duffel bags of money? They funded my first round of investments.
With over $15 million in raw, untraceable money, I had a starting point.
I began investing. Carefully.
Apple. Microsoft. Amazon. Google. All in their infancy. Using knowledge from my past life, I bought in before the IPOs, before the booms. Every penny I placed exploded into millions within a year. I reinvested and then again.
It attracted attention from the FBI and other government agencies. Why would it not? I was compounding wealth at a pace that made even Dhamphir's growth seem slow. But of course they didn't find anything. Everything on me was clean. No criminal activity, no artificially manipulating the share market no none. They found nothing and could only move on. It also helped I had made connections and knew who to feed money and feed I did. I created a whole chain system running on my bribe money. Hundreds of millions were dumped into it every year to keep it running.
It was a huge number of money that very few people in the world can manage to liquidate every year. But for me it was no problem.
Money was no problem because the money I made through investing was tremendous so I had enough to use it to increase my influence. But money alone can't give me the desired control and power.
I knew the world was changing and whoever has the best control over technology and information will rule the world.
So in 1996, I registered Wolfe Industries in Delaware as a private holding and innovation firm. Getting a business license was easy for some like my connections.
My first branch? Wolfe Technologies. At its head a member of my coven, my second member.
I designed blueprints from memory. Smartphones. Early touch-screen devices. Lightweight laptops. Solar batteries. Even Siri-like voice assistants. I handed these ideas to my R&D division. Some engineers thought I was insane… until it started working, bringing in billions.
By 1998, WolfeTech released the Aros OS or AOS and the first touchscreen smart device. It made the PalmPilot look like a brick.
WolfeTech skyrocketed.
I bought 10% stakes in Apple and Microsoft just to prevent them from copying what I hadn't publicly released yet.
In the next few years, we launched the first-gen AROS Phone the precursor to what should've been the iPhone. It crushed the market. No present phone could compare with the sheer utility and functionality it provided.
Phones and Os wasn't the only thing my company delved into. We delved into other things like high-tech cars. We made the first viable electric car prototype with software integration that made Tesla's early concepts look dated.
We delve into different technologies that should have taken years to develop, faster engines, better networking systems, quicker internet. We had done it all, you name it we have done it. I even had my company make drones which the US military was very interested in. To acquire the blueprint and copyrights the US government gave us a license to legally work on weaponry.
Expanding in tech and getting a weapon manufacturing license wasn't the only thing I did. I was just as invested in Games and Entertainment too.
In 1999, I launched Wolfe Games.
I gave a team of indie developers the skeletons of games I remembered: Flappy Bird, Candy Crush, Subway Surfers, and other successful games. I even shared early concepts for Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, Witcher, and RDR. The gaming industry wasn't ready, but I was.
We kept things simple, releasing mobile games first to dominate the app market. By the time Nintendo and PlayStation realized what hit them, we were already rolling out our own console in 2002 with hundreds of exclusive games.
Microsoft couldn't even enter the console business.
Then came Wolfe Studios, our entertainment arm.
I hunted talent before they became household names. Directors like Nolan, actors like DiCaprio, and singers like Beyoncé and Adele. We offered freedom, resources, and the promise of a better future.
I also licensed novels from the future- Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and The Hunger Games. I paid ghostwriters to "invent" them before the originals came out. We adapted and released them through our own streaming platform, WolfeVerse, in 2004 before Netflix ever dreamed of it.
We gave a free yearly subscription to every new A-phone user.
I also bought both Marvel and DC's struggling rights and built each a separate successful cinematic universe, I even had them collaborate with each other, launching it in 2003 with a film called Maddening Crisis in Infinite Multiverse.
Creating an Empire and expanding my influence wasn't all I did. I delved into philanthropy too. My mother named me Atlas so I could be strong like my namesake. Strong enough to hold the world.
And how can one be strong if he can't even help people in need? A selfish person can never be strong, he is too scared and insecure to be called strong.
Superman wasn't the symbol strength and hope because he had his powers, no far from it. Many were stronger than him in strength but nothing inspired strength and courage better than him.
Superman was strong because he had a heart of gold and a diamond for morality: tough and unshakable.
Of course, I don't compare myself to Superman. I'm not as selfless as him. I can't sacrifice myself for the world let alone my loved ones.
But I can still help when it doesn't really harm me.
So I poured billions saved from tax into the Wolfe Foundation, focusing on education and healthcare.
I Built over 200 schools in impoverished areas globally by 2004.
I Partnered with doctors to establish free hospitals and clinics in Africa, India, and South America.
I Funded vaccine research, AI-assisted diagnosis machines, and mobile health units.
I provided scholarships to promising youth especially those cast aside by society or were orphans.
I built hundreds of orphanages where thousands of orphans can find homes.
To the world, I was a prodigy, a visionary, a once-in-a-generation mind. My face graced Forbes, TIME, and Wired. I gave TED Talks, led innovation summits, and met presidents and monarchs.
People made lines and waited months to just get the opportunity to talk with me.
But all this was just side missions and now I'm ready for the main mission.
And that was to destroy the Volturi and take over their throne, something fitting for my superior race.
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[An: So there's already 17+ Chapters on my Patr**n. So if you guys want to read more. Go to my Patr*on/41_Claws. There are currently 17 advance unedited chapters on it…]
Ps~Donate Powerstone for extra chapter tomorrow, yesterday I didn't even receive hundred. How about a goal hundred and fifty today. You guys donate 150 stones and I upload an extra chapter tomorrow.
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