Phase Three: MARVEL's Doctor Strange

by Alex Irvine

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © 2017 MARVEL.

  Excerpt from Phase One: Marvel’s Thor copyright © 2015 MARVEL

  Cover illustration by Danny Haas

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at lb-kids.com

  marvelkids.com

  First Edition: June 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-27159-2 (hardcover); 978-0-316-31415-2 (ebook)

  E3-20170426-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE

  An Excerpt of PHASE ONE: MARVEL’S THOR

  PROLOGUE

  The sorcerer Kaecilius and a select group of his Zealots entered the dark interior of the library of Kamar-Taj through a portal he had created. He had not been in that room since leaving the magical order years before… and he never expected to return again. After tonight, he would have no need of it. There was no greater collection of magical knowledge in the world. Kaecilius had read many of the books before. He was, at last, ready to read one that had been long denied him.

  The librarian and other sorcerers present saw the group enter with purpose, and immediately recognized Kaecilius. They started to cast spells for their defense, but he was too quick—and far too powerful. His acolytes had Space Shards, blades created by magical force that could cut any physical substance. Kaecilius wielded those, as well as crackling whips of energy unfurled from the sling rings all the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj wore. He bound their leader, tying his wrists and holding him while his Zealots disposed of the others. It was all over quickly. The acolytes fought bravely, but were doomed by Kaecilius’s superior power.

  Then he walked across the chamber, passing a projection of planet Earth turning slowly, the lights of its cities sparkling in the near darkness.

  Kaecilius strode confidently to The Ancient One’s own shelf, where The Book of Cagliostro, one of the mightiest texts of Earth’s mystical orders, waited for him. It contained magical spells and rituals collected over thousands of years. Kaecilius knew some of them already and had no interest in some of the others—but one ritual in the book had obsessed him since he had first learned of it early in his study with The Ancient One. One of Kaecilius’s strengths was his careful patience—he knew well the dangers of attempting the ritual too soon… but now he was ready. He paged through the book and found the ritual. Its words rang in his mind and he could feel the power within them, even though he dared not speak them here. For a moment he contemplated taking the entire book, but he liked the idea of leaving it incomplete. Everyone who ever touched it after this moment would see the mark he had left. Kaecilius tore out the pages he needed and dropped the book on the floor.

  “Master Kaecilius.” He knew that voice. “That ritual will bring you only sorrow.”

  He turned to see a slight figure entering the sanctum. She wore a yellow hooded robe that hid her face, but he did not have to see her to know her presence. Kaecilius gestured and a portal opened. He and his Zealots ran through it and out onto a London street. They strode along the sidewalk, doubting that their pursuer would provoke a battle in the center of the city.

  They were wrong. In front of them a barrier appeared, like a shattered mirror reflecting a thousand images of themselves. The Mirror Dimension. They could not pass the barrier, nor leave this place without fighting their way free of her. When they turned, Kaecilius saw the figure walking calmly toward them.

  “Hypocrite!” he screamed. She wanted all power for herself. She wanted to keep her students ignorant and make them her servants—but Kaecilius was done serving. Now he was ready to be the master.

  He and the Zealots brought forth their energy whips, but the hooded figure raised her arms and made a sweeping gesture. The entire street, and the buildings on either side, tilted over until the facades of the buildings were below Kaecilius’s feet. The sinister group fell and regained their balance, scrambling to face her, but she was not done yet. With another gesture she turned the window frames and cornices on the buildings into churning gears. Some of the Zealots were caught and swept into them. Kaecilius dodged the gears, staying on solid ground. The rest of the Zealots attacked. They thought by getting close to her they could overcome her superior magical powers, but they underestimated her. With a twitch of her fingers she made a magical fan appear in one hand, a half circle made of arcane energy. She deflected their attacks and threw the fan, striking down the Zealots before they could surround her. Even those who got close found that she was more than they could handle. She fought with both mystic power and martial arts. The Zealots could barely touch her.

  Kaecilius himself had no desire to fight her at that moment. He had the pages from the book. She gestured again and wrenched the entire streetscape another ninety degrees over. Now Kaecilius and the Zealots were hanging on to the upside-down building that a moment ago had been the ground beneath their feet.

  He pointed down and opened a portal. The Zealots’ attack had bought him enough time. When the portal was open, the few remaining Zealots jumped and dropped off the building, falling into it before the churning windows could grind them away. Kaecilius clutched the pages of the book and jumped himself, diving headfirst through the portal and out of the Mirror Dimension.

  It flickered and disappeared as soon as he had passed.

  The warrior watched for a moment, holding her spell in case Kaecilius planned a surprise return. When that did not happen, she released the spell. The buildings and street groaned and rotated back to their natural positions as she phased herself from the Mirror Dimension back into the everyday world. She stepped off the facade and onto the sidewalk as the windows locked themselves back into place. In moments everything was normal again. People, cars, and bicycles once again flooded the street. As she walked away, she flipped her hood back. Her shaven head and yellow robe attracted a few glances, but this was London. No one looked at her for too long.

  Kaecilius had made his move. The Ancient One had expected it for a long time, and now that it had happened, she had to make sure he never had a chance to use those pages.

  CHAPTER 1

  Doctor Stephen Strange was having a typical day, tapping h
is foot to a funk soundtrack as he performed a delicate repair on a patient with a highly unusual heart problem. Every surgery he did took place in the hospital’s main operating theater so medical students could watch him work. He was the best in the world at what he did. He knew everything there was to know about the human body, and he had the rock-steady hands and the nerve to try surgeries that ordinary doctors thought were impossible.

  He also liked to play musical trivia while he worked.

  One of his head nurse Billy’s jobs was to keep a playlist going and challenge Strange’s musical knowledge. Strange was never wrong. Never.

  “Challenge round, Billy,” he said. Usually, Billy played him a mix of old rock and funk music. During the challenge rounds he was allowed to go to other kinds of music.

  Billy tapped the SKIP button on the operating-room console. Smooth jazz filled the air. “Oh, come on, Billy,” Strange said. “You’ve got to be messing with me.”

  “No, Doctor.” Billy sounded so smug that Strange took a little extra pleasure in hitting him with an immediate answer.

  “1977,” he declared after rattling off the name of an obscure album. “Honestly, Billy, you said this one would be hard.”

  “Ha!” Billy said. “It’s 1978.”

  “No, Billy, while the song may have charted in 1978, the album was released in December 1977.”

  “No, no. Wikipedia says the—”

  “Check again.” This, Strange thought, was the difference between him and ordinary people. They knew a little and thought they knew a lot. He knew a lot, period.

  “Where do you store all this useless information?” asked his surgical partner, Doctor Bruner.

  “Useless? The man charted a top ten hit with a flugelhorn.” Strange was certain that had only happened once. “Status, Billy?” he prompted.

  Billy sighed. “1977.”

  “Oh please. I hate you,” Doctor Bruner grumbled.

  “Whoa! Feels so good, doesn’t it?” Strange chuckled at his own joke, then glanced up as he saw someone at the door. It was Doctor Christine Palmer, Strange’s colleague—and his ex-girlfriend.

  “Oh,” Bruner said when she saw Christine. “I’ve got this, Stephen. You’ve done your bit. Go ahead, we’ll close up.”

  Out in the hall, Christine handed him a tablet with images of a patient’s very badly damaged brain. “What is that?” he asked.

  “GSW,” she said, using the doctors’ shorthand for a gunshot wound.

  He swiped through the images. “It’s amazing you kept him alive. Apneic, further brain stem testing after reflex test… I think I found the problem, Doctor Palmer. You left a bullet in his head.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly. “It’s impinging on the medulla. I needed a specialist. Nic diagnosed brain death. Something about that doesn’t feel right to me.”

  Strange looked more closely at the image. Something about the bullet… Ah. He knew what had happened, and knew they would have to act fast to stop Nic West from doing something stupid. “We have to run.”

  They caught up to Nic West wheeling the patient into another operating room. “Doctor West!” Christine called. “What are you doing? Hey!”

  “Organ harvesting,” West answered. “He’s a donor.”

  “Slow down. I did not agree to that.”

  “I don’t need you to,” he said, starting to get irritated. “We’ve already called brain death.”

  “Prematurely,” Strange cut in. “We need to get him prepped for a suboccipital craniotomy.”

  West shook his head. “I’m not going to let you operate on a dead man.”

  Strange held up the image that had caught his attention. “What do you see?”

  “A bullet?”

  “A perfect bullet.” Most bullets were squashed out of shape when they punched into a human body. This one wasn’t. That was the clue that Strange had latched on to. “It’s been hardened,” he explained. “You harden a bullet by alloying lead with antimony. A toxic metal. And as it leaks directly into the cerebral spinal fluid…”

  West understood. “Rapid onset central nervous system shutdown.”

  Christine turned the gurney around. “We need to go.”

  “The patient’s not dead, but he’s dying. Do you still want to harvest his organs?” Strange couldn’t resist the little jab at Doctor West.

  “I’ll assist you,” West offered.

  “No, Doctor Palmer will assist me. Thank you.” They left West there and got to the operating room as fast as they could. There wasn’t much time. Strange used a tiny blade to open the smallest possible path to the bullet. When he was done, he handed it to Christine.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Now they had to retract the bullet. The patient’s brain was still bleeding. “Image guidance, stat,” she called.

  Normally, a surgeon would use a tiny robotic arm to extract a bullet from such a delicate part of the body, but Strange knew they didn’t have the minutes they would have to wait. “We do not have time for that.”

  “You can’t do it by hand,” Christine objected.

  “I can and I will.”

  “This isn’t the time for showing off, Strange,” Doctor West said. He had caught up and was observing from the far end of the operating room.

  “How about ten minutes ago, when you called the wrong time of death?” Strange shot back. He never took his eyes off what he was doing. “Cranial nerves intact,” he noted. If—when—he got the bullet out, the patient would recover.

  A nurse rolled the image guidance screen up to the operating table, even though Strange wasn’t using it. On it everyone could see the surgical pliers reaching slowly toward the bullet.

  Strange noticed a tiny flash of reflected light out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t afford the slightest distraction. “Doctor West, cover your watch.”

  West did. Everyone in the operating room held their breaths as Strange pushed the pliers deeper into the patient’s brain, avoiding the most critical nerves and blood vessels. His hands were steady and perfect, as always. He found the bullet, feeling the touch of it through the pliers in his fingertips. Slowly and evenly, he drew it out. It gleamed in the surgical lamps, and he dropped it into a pan.

  After that, closing the patient up was child’s play. He left that to Doctor West. Then he delivered the good news to the patient’s family, and even accepted a hug. “You know,” Christine said as they walked toward the break room, “you didn’t have to humiliate him in front of everyone.”

  “I didn’t have to save his patient, either,” Strange pointed out. “But, you know, sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

  “Nic is a great doctor.”

  Not as great as I am, Strange thought with more than a little characteristic bemusement. “You came to me.”

  “Yeah, well, I needed a second opinion.”

  “You had a second opinion. What you needed was a competent one.”

  “Well, all the more reason why you should be my neurosurgeon on call.” Christine was the head surgeon in the emergency room. “You could make such a difference.”

  “I can’t work in your butcher shop,” Strange said. Over her objection, he went on. “Look, I’m using trans-sectioned spinal cords to stimulate neurogenesis in the central nervous system. My work is at least going to save thousands for years to come. In the ER, I get to save one drunk idiot with a gun.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. In the ER, you’re only saving lives. There’s no fame, there’s no interviews… Well, I guess I’ll have to stick with Nic.”

  “Oh, wait a minute. You’re not… you guys aren’t…”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I thought that was implicit in my disgust.”

  “Explicit, actually. And no, I have a very strict rule against dating colleagues.”

  “Oh, really?” He was living proof that she hadn’t always had that rule.

  “I call it the Strange Policy.” She had set him up.

  Ouc
h, Strange thought. But he didn’t let her know she had gotten to him. “Oh, good! I’m glad something is named after me. You know, I invented a laminectomy procedure, and yet, somehow, no one seems to want to call it the Strange technique.”

  “We invented that technique,” she corrected him.

  “Well, regardless, I’m very flattered by your policy.” He missed her. It was hard to admit, but it was true. “Look,” he said. “I’m talking tonight at a Neurological Society dinner. Come with me.”

  “Another speaking engagement?” Christine rolled her eyes. “So romantic.”

  “You used to love going to those things with me. We had fun together.”

  “No.” She laughed. “You had fun. They weren’t about us; they were about you.”

  “Not only about me.”

  “Stephen,” she said, and now she was still smiling but sad at the same time. “Everything is about you.” She started to walk away.

  “Maybe we can hyphenate,” he called after her. “Strange-Palmer technique.”

  “Palmer-Strange,” she called back. Then she was gone.

  He took his time getting ready for the Neurological Society dinner, and when he left his loft—a full floor in Lower Manhattan—Strange knew he was looking good. He gunned his car out into the evening traffic, loving the way it felt. He was almost as good a driver as he was a surgeon, and he drove as if he were on a racetrack. He was outside the city on a winding two-lane road when Billy called in. He always had Billy on the lookout for interesting cases.

  “Billy! What have you got for me?”

  “I’ve got a thirty-five-year-old Air Force colonel. Crushed his lower spine in some kind of experimental armor. Mid-thoracic vertebral fracture.”

  “Well, I could help, but so can fifty other people. Find me something worth my time.” Strange didn’t waste his talent on patients any ordinary neurosurgeon could fix.

  “I have a sixty-eight-year-old female with an advanced brain stem glioma.”

  That was a death sentence no matter who the surgeon was. “Yeah, you want me to screw up my perfect record? Definitely not.”