Phase Three: MARVEL's Doctor Strange

by Alex Irvine

  “No,” Strange agreed. “And I don’t want to know.”

  “You’re a coward,” Mordo said stiffly, beginning to lose his temper.

  “Because I’m not a killer?”

  “These Zealots will snuff us all out, and you can’t muster the strength to snuff them out first?”

  “What do you think I just did?” Strange shouted.

  “You saved your own life!” Mordo shouted back. “And then whined about it like a wounded dog.”

  “When you would have done it so easily?”

  “You have no idea. The things I’ve done… and the answer is yes. Without hesitation.”

  “Even if there’s another way?”

  “There is no other way.”

  “You lack imagination.”

  “No, Stephen,” Mordo said scornfully. “You lack a spine.”

  Sword or no sword, Strange was ready to take a swing at Mordo, then and there… but was interrupted when they both heard the rumble and surge of a portal opening from near the Sanctum’s front door. “They’re back,” Mordo said, and ran to the balcony overlooking the foyer.

  Kaecilius and his Zealots were there, with a pulsing sphere of magical power glowing in the air nearby. “We have to end this. Now!” Mordo growled. He vaulted over the railing and dropped to the floor below.

  Strange swung over the railing, too, but hung in the air, with the Cloak of Levitation holding him in place. Mordo was tangled with both Zealots while Kaecilius began performing a ritual that Strange assumed would destroy the New York Sanctum.

  The Zealots had Mordo in their grasp. “Strange!” he yelled. “Get down here and fight!”

  Strange was going to fight. But he had a better plan than just charging headlong into a battle. He was going to change the battlefield. He spread his arms and cast a spell he had learned from watching The Ancient One.

  Kaecilius brought both arms down, just as he had inside the London Sanctum—was it only an hour ago? But instead of an explosion that destroyed the Sanctum and crippled the shield protecting Earth from the Dark Dimension, Kaecilius’s blast petered out and disappeared. He looked up in surprise as Strange drifted slowly down the staircase. “The Mirror Dimension,” Strange said. “You can’t affect the real world in here. Who’s laughing now?”

  He had expected Kaecilius to be angry, or maybe even afraid. Instead, the corrupted Master looked right back at Strange with a little smile and said, “I am.”

  Reality began to shift around them all, matter folding itself into new patterns. Kaecilius would turn the Sanctum into a death trap if Strange and Mordo didn’t get out. Strange flew down the stairs and caught Kaecilius in the middle of casting the spell. He ripped Kaecilius’s sling ring off and got out the door as Mordo fought his way free of the Zealots. Out on the Mirror Dimension version of Bleecker Street, Strange turned to Mordo. “I’ve got his sling ring,” he said. “I mean, they can’t escape, right?”

  Through the folding facade of the New York Sanctum, Kaecilius and his Zealots strode out into the street. Mordo slapped him on the arm. “Run!”

  They ran down Bleecker Street to Sixth Avenue, where Strange froze. The roads meeting at the intersection shifted, flipping upside down and inside out. He turned and saw streets and blocks of buildings splitting into mirror images of themselves. Cars drove by upside down above him, or appeared out of empty space to roar past him.

  “Their connection to the Dark Dimension makes them more powerful in the Mirror Dimension,” Mordo said. “They can’t affect the real world, but they can still kill us. This wasn’t clever. This was suicide!”

  Kaecilius and the pair of Zealots were headed for them down the middle of the street. Strange and Mordo ran in the other direction as Strange opened a portal. If they could get out and trap Kaecilius in the Mirror Dimension, they would have time to figure out what to do next.

  But before they got to their escape portal, Kaecilius tipped that entire part of New York City up on its side. Strange and Mordo skidded across the tilting street toward the skyscraper on the other side. They hit the side of a bus. Inside, an old man was laughing over a book, completely unaware of their presence.

  They got to their feet and leaped up the side of the nearest tall building. Strange had the Cloak of Levitation, and Mordo the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr. Behind them, Kaecilius was closing in… but Strange had opened another portal on the side of the building. They were getting close.

  Kaecilius jumped into the air, and when he landed again, the impact sent an amazing wave of energy rolling up the building. When the wave struck the portal, it, too, dissipated, leaving Strange and Mordo to turn and face their enemies. But Kaecilius wasn’t done. He curved both arms inward, and the skyscraper upon which they all stood curled itself over toward the street. Strange and Mordo fell off it, and as they fell, the street below them slid apart into sections. They plummeted through the gap into another layer of the folded New York Kaecilius had created, landing on the side of another building. Around them they saw the entire city, separated as if it were made of puzzle pieces and Kaecilius had flung them apart.

  “This was a mistake,” Strange admitted. Mordo gave him an incredulous look.

  Then the building underneath them heaved and flung them into the air again. While they fell, the city came together and broke apart again. Mordo deflected off a fire escape and Strange lost track of him. He found himself in a maze of iron steps and railings, trying to stay ahead of the pursuing Kaecilius. The Zealots also kept pace, running on the sides and bottom of other pieces of the city as they interlocked around Strange.

  In the confusion, Strange lost track of Kaecilius, too—and a moment later Dormammu’s servant ran up from the bottom of the same steel catwalk Strange was following. He punched Strange hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. As Strange fell, Kaecilius slid his palms against each other, creating a Space Shard. Strange was down and gasping. He wouldn’t be able to dodge the fatal thrust.

  CHAPTER 11

  As Strange tried to get his breath back, the part of the platform where he lay separated from Kaecilius and slid away. Kaecilius’s Space Shard struck sparks from the steel at his feet. Strange rolled over and started to get up. Around him, the chaotic jumble of buildings and fire escapes and streets re-formed into a circular barrier. A solid floor built itself out of parts of the city, with a powerful sigil fit into its surface.

  On the other side of the enclosed space, The Ancient One stood, in a yellow robe she wore when she knew battle was at hand. She spread her fingers and the magical fans she used to fight blazed to life in both hands. As Strange got up, he saw Mordo at his side, staring in shock at The Ancient One. When he looked at her again, he understood why.

  Her forehead blazed with the rune of Dormammu, just like the ones that glowed on the foreheads of Kaecilius and the two Zealots who stepped out onto the floor.

  “It’s true,” Mordo said, his voice full of shock and hurt. “She does draw power from the Dark Dimension.”

  The Ancient One looked at him for a long moment, her expression betraying nothing. Then she turned her gaze on her renegade former student. “Kaecilius,” she said.

  They circled each other on the outer edge of the floor, with pieces of the New York cityscape swirling around them. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope. On one of the rotating pieces glowed the portal The Ancient One had used to find them in the Mirror Dimension. Strange and Mordo watched but did not intervene. This was a final reckoning between the Sorcerer Supreme and a Master who had betrayed her.

  “I came to you, broken, lost, bleeding,” Kaecilius said. “I trusted you to be my teacher, and you fed me lies.”

  “I tried to protect you,” she answered.

  “From the truth?”

  “From yourself.”

  He smirked. “I have a new teacher now.”

  “Dormammu deceives you. You have no idea of what he truly is,” she said sadly. The mark of Dormammu was gone from her forehead now. “His eternal l
ife is not paradise, but torment.”

  “Liar!” Kaecilius snarled—and flanked by his Zealots, he charged.

  The Ancient One moved with speed and power belying both her small frame and her great age. She dropped both Zealots as soon as they got within arm’s reach and then beat back Kaecilius’s charge with powerful strikes of her fans. The Zealots got to their feet again. She anticipated the first move, knocking down one Zealot again with a crackling blow of a fan and then pivoting to meet the other’s lunge. He froze with The Ancient One’s fan laid against the side of his throat. She could have killed him then, but she did not—and this act of mercy cost her dearly.

  Kaecilius stepped up and thrust his Space Shard through the Zealot’s body and into The Ancient One. She recoiled and staggered. Mordo cried out in shock. Kaecilius withdrew the Space Shard and the Zealot fell to the floor. The Ancient One was looking him in the eye when Kaecilius kicked her away. Her body flew through the air and through the portal she had created.

  Strange and Mordo rushed for the portal, diving through it just as it closed. The portal deposited them high in the air over New York City. Below, The Ancient One’s body was falling. She crashed through a glass awning and onto the sidewalk as pedestrians screamed and ran from the broken glass. Strange and Mordo reached the ground a moment later. Strange crouched over her body, then looked up. Once again, he knew where they could turn.

  A few minutes later, they were pushing a gurney through the emergency room where Strange had just nearly died. “Christine!” he shouted.

  He saw her tilt her head back and close her eyes. “Are you kidding me?” she said to no one in particular. Then she turned and saw The Ancient One on the gurney, bloodied and still. “Oh my god,” she said, and ran to meet them.

  “It’s not fibrillation,” Strange said as they headed for the operating room. “She has a stunned myocardium.” That was the tissue of the heart muscle that kept the organ pumping.

  She fell into stride next to the gurney. “It’s neurogenic?”

  “Yes.” That was the closest Strange could get. He wasn’t sure what the medical terminology would be for a heart stopped by a blade made of energy from the Dark Dimension.

  When they got The Ancient One into surgery, they also found she had serious head injuries from the fall. Strange scrubbed in and got as far as picking up a scalpel before he realized he couldn’t help.

  At least… not as a doctor.

  “Nic,” he said. Nic West looked over at him, and Strange held up the scalpel. He still didn’t have the steadiness to operate, and Christine had been right when she said Nic was a good surgeon. “We need to relieve the pressure on her brain.”

  “She’s still dropping,” a nurse warned. The heart monitor’s alarm sounded. “We’re losing her!”

  “You need to increase her oxygen!” Strange said.

  Christine hurried to the operating table. “I need a crash cart!”

  The nurse kept calling out the patient’s status. “Her pupils are dilated! No reflexes! I’m not reading any brain activity.”

  Strange knew what was happening. If The Ancient One’s body was dying…

  He projected his astral form out of his body, and naturally, there her astral form was, floating out of the room. Strange chased her. “What are you doing? You’re dying!”

  She didn’t answer, but she did stop when she got to a wall of windows on the other side of the nurses’ station. From there she could look out over the city. “You have to return to your body now,” Strange urged her. “You don’t have time.”

  “Time is relative. Your body hasn’t even hit the floor yet.” Strange looked out where she was looking. A helicopter hung frozen in air. Snowflakes were suspended just outside the window. Time had stopped, or at least slowed so much he couldn’t see it passing. A lightning crack opened in the sky, its brilliant radiance spilling through the darkness. “I’ve spent so many years peering through time, looking at this exact moment. But I can’t see past it. I’ve prevented countless terrible futures. And after each one, there’s always another. And they all lead here, but never further.”

  “You think this is where you die,” Strange said. That would be the obvious downside of being able to see the future.

  “Do you wonder what I see in your future?” she asked.

  “No.” The Ancient One smiled at him and Strange realized that once again, she was seeing through him. “Yes.”

  “I never saw your future,” she said, once again confounding his expectations. “Only its possibilities. You have such a capacity for goodness. You always excelled, but not because you crave success, but because of your fear of failure.”

  “It’s what made me a great doctor.” The crack in the sky disappeared. In the outside world, it was there and gone in a fraction of a second; here in the astral realm, he could track it disappearing in slow motion.

  “It’s precisely what kept you from greatness,” she said. “Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.”

  “Which is?”

  “It’s not about you.” She paused, waiting for him to speak. But Strange had at last learned from her when it was better to listen. “When you first came to me, you asked me how I was able to heal Jonathan Pangborn. I didn’t. He channels dimensional energy directly into his own body.”

  “He uses magic to walk.”

  “Constantly. He had a choice, to return to his own life or to serve something greater than himself.”

  Strange remembered Pangborn saying he wasn’t ready for some of what he had learned. Now he understood what that meant… and what it could mean for him. “So, I could have my hands back again? My old life?”

  “You could. And the world would be all the lesser for it.” So that is the choice, Strange thought. My old life back, or protect Earth from Dormammu. “I’ve hated drawing power from the Dark Dimension,” The Ancient One went on. “But as you well know, sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good.”

  “Mordo won’t see it that way.”

  “Mordo’s soul is rigid and unmovable, forged by the fires of his youth. He needs your flexibility, just as you need his strength. Only together do you stand a chance of stopping Dormammu.”

  She was right. Strange knew it. But he was also afraid. “I’m not ready.”

  Another lightning bolt crept across the sky. “No one ever is,” The Ancient One said. “We don’t get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered, your time is short. You’d think after all this time I’d be ready. But look at me, stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so I can watch the snow.”

  He felt her hand let his go, and when he looked over to see why, Strange was alone. The Ancient One’s spirit had vanished.

  She was gone. The sky was whole again.

  CHAPTER 12

  Back in the real world, Strange stood at the sink for a long time, letting the warm water run over his hands as he thought about The Ancient One and what he was going to do next. Christine came up next to him, and for a moment they stood there washing their hands, not needing to talk, as they had before and after countless surgeries.

  Only now everything was different. Strange hadn’t operated. He couldn’t. And now The Ancient One was gone, and Christine had seen things she couldn’t have been ready for.

  He reached out and took her hand. “Are you okay?” she asked. Strange looked over at her. He didn’t know if he was okay. He didn’t know if he would ever be okay again. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Christine said.

  “I know. But I have to go right now. You said that losing my hands didn’t have to be the end, that it could be a beginning.”

  “Yeah. Because there are other ways to save lives.” She remembered.

  Strange cradled her face in his hands. He had missed so much, been so wrapped up in his ego and his reputation… “A harder way.”

  “A weirder way,” she s
aid.

  A voice over the hospital intercom interrupted them. “Doctor Palmer, the ER, please. Doctor Palmer, the ER.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Strange said with tears in his eyes. But it was useless. She kissed him and turned away. She had obligations, after all. She had responsibilities.

  So did he.

  After she was gone, he took another moment at the scrub sink to get himself together. Then he put on the Cloak of Levitation again and drew its collar up. The points of the collar rubbed at the tears on his cheeks, like it was trying to clean him up. He shrugged it away. “Stop.”

  But at least that got his mind off Christine a bit.

  Good cloak.

  Kaecilius and two Zealots stepped through a portal a few blocks from the Hong Kong Sanctum. Wong knew they were coming. He had gathered the Masters and acolytes protecting the Sanctum. “Choose your weapon wisely,” he said. For himself he selected the Wand of Watoomb. “No one steps foot in this Sanctum. No one.”

  Wong strode out of the Sanctum to meet Kaecilius. It was a warm night in Hong Kong, as most of them were. The street was crowded. Workmen putting up scaffolding, families eating at noodle shops, mopeds and cars zooming to their destinations. Kaecilius and the Zealots emerged from the crowd. Wong greeted him. “Kaecilius.”

  Kaecilius stopped a little distance away. “You’re on the wrong side of history, Wong.”

  Wong dropped into a fighting stance, Wand of Watoomb at the ready. Kaecilius and the Zealots drew Space Shards out of thin air. The battle for the future of Earth was about to begin.

  Strange stepped through a portal from the hospital, arriving in Kamar-Taj, and knowing he had to have a long talk with Mordo before he could confront Kaecilius once and for all. Was he ready?

  He would have to be.

  Mordo stood alone in the darkness, with wreckage from the earlier explosion all around him. Strange didn’t have anything to say that could lighten the mood. “She’s dead,” he said.