Steel Rebirth: My Rise to Vengeance and Godhood in America

Death was a heavy sensation. Not pain. Not violence. Just a severed stillness—as if being dragged into a bottomless abyss: no color, no sound, not even a sense of self. But just before his consciousness plunged fully into darkness, Josen Mark saw the sneer on the other man’s lips. It was Caesar Lambert—once a partner, now an enemy. He stood on a marble balcony with a glass of champagne, the golden lights of Manhattan’s Upper East Side twinkling behind him in the night. His gaze was calm as he watched the out-of-control Maybach crash toward the guardrail, as if everything had been arranged in advance. The car flipped three times on the bridge, erupting into flames. His life, too, turned to ashes in that instant. ---------------------------------- “Wake up! Sergeant! Wake the hell up!” A violent jolt, the choking scent of smoke, and a thunderous roar like an explosion snapped Josen Mark’s mind awake. He opened his eyes and found himself lying facedown on scorched earth. Around him were the sounds of gunfire and explosions, the stench of charred flesh and gasoline hanging thick in the air. “s**t, he's alive! I thought he was gone!” A white soldier, face smeared with blood and mud, grabbed his shoulder and dragged him into a half-collapsed trench. Josen Mark gasped for breath. He looked down at his hands—covered in calluses and scars, the knuckles thick and strong. No longer the hands of a financial elite accustomed to tapping Bloomberg terminals and swirling wine glasses. He saw the name tag on his chest: “Sgt. Jack Miller.” Was this… him? He glanced at a wrecked U.S. armored vehicle nearby. The mangled body of a soldier lay half-exposed. A lightning flash of realization struck him. —He had been reborn. Transmigrated to a battlefield over a decade ago, into the body of an American special forces soldier. And one who had just died. Josen Mark’s mind roared back to life like a storm. He assessed the situation rapidly: a high-intensity combat zone—likely Afghanistan or Syria. Outdated equipment, brutal conditions, the unit retreating. He, once a titan of finance, was now reborn in the body of a killing machine. “What’s your status, Sergeant?” came a voice from his comms. He pressed the earpiece. His voice was raspy but steady. “Alpha-3 reporting. I’m alive. Resuming tactical command.” There was a pause on the other end, then an outburst: “Holy s**t! Jack’s alive! Alpha-3, hold your position—we’re sending evac drones!” Josen Mark rose to his feet, gripping a rifle. Wind and dust stabbed at his eyes as the blood-red sunset pulled him from the smoke. His boots crunched over spent shell casings. His muscles tensed with the instinct of a special forces operator, and in his mind, memories surged back like a tidal wave: He remembered operating complex derivatives and high-frequency trading algorithms. He remembered laundering money, cornering microcap stocks, orchestrating pump-and-dumps. He remembered the venomous eyes of his enemy at that dinner party. He remembered exactly how his life had been dismantled, piece by piece. “This time, I won’t lose again.” He murmured, his gaze as steady as stone. ---------------------------------- The next day. U.S. Forward Operating Base – Eagle-17 The night wind battered the tents with sandstorms. Soldiers played cards inside. From a distant radio came the familiar tune of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”—broadcast from the camp’s internal station. Josen Mark sat in a corner, wrapped in a military blanket. He had just returned from the medical tent. The doctor had said his recovery was “beyond human limits.” No one knew—it was because he didn’t belong here. The tent flap blew open. A woman stepped inside. “Sergeant Miller?” Mark looked up to see a young military medic—mixed Asian descent, pale-skinned, sharp gold-rimmed glasses. Cool professionalism radiated from her. Yet her figure was far from ordinary. An S-shaped silhouette, accentuated by a uniquely tailored uniform, revealed a body of stunning curves. But to her, a low-ranking grunt like Mark was beneath notice. She only had eyes for high-ranking officers—those who commanded the battlefield and influenced outcomes. Only with them could she escape the frontlines and be reassigned to logistics, far from the smoke, dust, blood, and sweat of men. She despised this life, yet endured it mechanically—resuscitating the wounded while longing for a powerful officer’s favor. “You’ve passed all psychological evaluations. You’ll be sent back to the States tomorrow for advanced training,” she said coldly. “Back to the States?” He chuckled. “Sounds perfect.” “You... seem different,” she frowned, confusion flickering in her eyes. “You used to be aggressive, always fighting. Now you’re... calm. Even a little... scary.” “The battlefield clears your mind.” He locked eyes with her. For the first time, she felt a soldier’s gaze pierce her soul, igniting a primal fear. She looked away, pretending to study the medical files and instruments. She knew how frontline soldiers, isolated for so long, could become like beasts in their carnal desire. Right now, she felt like a helpless rabbit before a predator—vulnerable, imagining he might rip away her uniform and unleash rage and lust born of death. She dared not provoke him further. Silence fell. The wind howled. A distant explosion shook the ground. She whispered, “You know... you should’ve died from your wounds.” “Maybe I already did.” He stood tall and walked out of the tent, leaving the medic frozen and speechless. In the distant night sky, a Black Hawk helicopter slowly descended. ---------------------------------- Washington, five days later. A lone figure stepped out of Reagan National Airport. He wore a simple gray T-shirt and black tactical pants. Broad-chested, cold-eyed—he carried the discipline of a soldier and the command presence of a top-tier elite. No one knew that this man, soon to head into America’s Rust Belt, was once a name feared in the New York financial world. Now, he was back to rewrite his fate in a different form. Returning to the home tied to his new identity, he found it exactly as he left it—except now coated in dust. His wife had long remarried and moved on. Just as he was about to rest after tidying up, he heard shouting and crashing from across the street. The instinct of a soldier kicked in. He went to check it out. Inside the house across the road, a drunk man was abusing his wife and daughter. Furniture lay broken. The woman’s lip was bleeding. A little girl with braided hair sobbed on the floor, clutching a teddy bear. The man raised his fist again. Mark kicked the door open and stepped in, hand forming the shape of a gun on his chest. “Hey! I suggest you stop what you’re doing!” To be continued…