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The lights of Lower Manhattan glittered on the wet window, rain snaking down steadily as one rivulet after another carved its course. Stephen cradled a cup of tea in his palms as the thunder roared like a living thing, rattling the frame. The tea was hot and fresh, and his fingers welcomed the burn the same way he embraced anything that hurt these days. His eyes tracked the water’s path mindlessly, unseeing, as the raindrops branched off and diverged into infinite chaos.
Wong had long gone to bed, but with the memory of Christine still weighing heavily on his mind Stephen knew he’d find no sleep tonight, not now that the dreams had come back in full force. Stephen supposed that was to be expected, but there was a time when he’d known exactly how they would go. The scream of rubber, the crunch of fiberglass, the rush of animal panic exploding in his chest as the situation rapidly escalated out of his control.
The dreams had morphed entirely as of late, taken on a strange virulence. Instead, it was Christine in the kitchen, hair haloed in the early morning light. Instead, it was Christine’s hand gently shaking him awake in the on-call room, her voice shaping the syllables of his name in the dark.
These dreams—these dreams ached in an entirely different way. Stephen woke from them bitterly, alone in his bed with the knife-wrench of longing lodged deep in his heart.
So, no. There would be no sleep for him tonight.
Stephen ran a hand through his hair, combing it out of his eyes, and sighed. There was something more to this, something beyond a simple death anniversary. It was like an ant crawling through his subconscious, an itch in his mind.
“What am I missing?” he murmured to himself.
There was something—there was no better way to say it—something off with the very fabric of reality. Stephen had a tangible awareness of it, this snag in a place where it shouldn’t be. He conceded there remained a puzzle to be solved, but he had little idea of how many pieces he held or how many were left to gather.
“There’s something,” Stephen said, rubbing at his temples and feeling the pressure build. “Something just isn’t adding up.”
He tried to breathe, to settle himself, but no sooner did Stephen draw in a deep breath than did the throb behind his eyes swoop down, seizing him by the throat. It swelled into a sharper, more physical pain, the hungry prick of claws digging into the soft meat of his flesh. Stephen cried out. His cup hit the ground with a small clink, the tea sloshing out over the heirloom rug, and he stood, hand at his throat.
The visions came to him in clotted waves, thick and fragmented. A spiral of books, some orbiting like a galaxy, others hanging in chains. Shadows and candles. The glow of a red circle of power on the floor. Two blindingly intense beams of light, one orange, the other blue, bending into a single, shimmering white as they fused inside him. The fingers of his hand undulating, writhing with an unnatural, serpentine grace.
And through it all, a terrible, insatiable thirst.
Then, as quickly as it had come, it ended. Stephen panted for breath, heart skittering in his chest and skin swathed in cold, nauseous sweat. He forced his eyes open and looked around. The storm still lashed the window. The Eye of Agamotto rested patiently on the side table where Stephen had left it—he slipped it over his head once more, grounded by its heavy weight. His tea cup, now empty, lay overturned near one of the table legs.
Stephen took a cautious, halting step and wrinkled his nose as his foot squished unpleasantly into the remains of his tea. Damn. The rug was a sixteenth-century Anatolian; Wong was going to kill him.
With everything as it should be, Stephen took one last shuddering breath and looked down at his hands. To his relief, they seemed normal. A little clammy, but otherwise the same. He flexed his fingers and then steepled them together, resting them under his nose. The dreams of Christine were far away now, a flicker in the back of his mind—the restlessness that had been building within him all week suddenly had a focus.
There was work to be done. Someone or something was coming for him.
Stephen passed the rest of the night in the sanctum’s library. When dawn broke, he was no closer to an answer than when he’d started and had nothing to show for his efforts save a splitting headache and the barbs of dread that had hooked themselves deep into his gut, dark and needle-sharp.
—
It should’ve been like looking into a mirror, Stephen thought. A carnival mirror maybe, warped and twisted, but a mirror nonetheless. Stephen had expected a familiar flutter of recognition; instead, there was only the cold brush of a blade glancing off his insides.
This version was no double.
His complexion was sallow. Deep bruises sat in the hollows under his eyes as if all his orbital fat had been sucked away. There was an overall gauntness to this Strange Supreme, Stephen noted. His face was sharper, more angular. Skeletal.
“What happened to you?”
Strange Supreme stalked back and forth with a predator’s liquid grace. He carried himself with effortless strength, as if he could at any moment turn and swallow Stephen whole. As if he desired nothing more than to walk his jaw over Stephen like a snake. Supreme’s skin rippled from within, like he was home to an ocean of unknowable, deadly creatures, and it was that thought which pushed the first sweat from Stephen’s pores.
“I spent centuries, sacrificed everything for Christine,” Supreme was saying. His eyes were wild; there was a yawning glint to them. A deep, cavernous hunger. It sucked the heat from Stephen’s bones and lifted the hair on his arms.
“And now can you save her?” Stephen challenged, forcing some bravado.
“No, Stephen.” Supreme took him by the arm, his mouth breaking open in a feral grin. “We can.”
The world unraveled. It twisted back together into a familiar scene, a place he had been many times and would return to—the night of the accident. Stephen was trapped for a moment as if pinned through the thorax, but he pushed past the numbness in his extremities and followed Supreme warily.
Broken glass crunched underfoot. The night was colder than Stephen remembered and he glanced to where the car rested and shivered, pulling his cloak tighter round his arms. The metal fence was misshapen. It groaned audibly, distorted under the car’s weight. Nearby, a tree lay uprooted, its gnarled roots reaching towards the dark sky.
“Our powers are diluted, split between us,” Supreme said. “But once we become whole again, we can save her.”
Time turned to syrup. Stephen’s heart rate slowed, beating sluggishly against the prickling sensation in his chest. He locked his knees. “We can’t,” he said.
It was no use. Supreme continued to rant, and nothing Stephen said had any effect. Clearly, the man had left reason behind long ago. Centuries, if he was to be believed. Stephen took a fortifying breath and fought the urge to crumple to the ground. The sheer power that radiated off of Supreme was unlike anything Stephen had ever felt before. It was dark. Unfathomable. Fevered with forbidden knowledge.
The fight began in earnest, but it didn’t take long for Stephen to realize the truth. This wasn’t a fight he could win.
He could lose, though. He’d resolved to do as much when fighting Dormammu, hadn’t he? And this was the same splinter of fear, the same sword of endless suffering dangling above him. Stephen recoiled as Supreme blasted another attack directly into his face. The last of his protection spell peeled away, yet Stephen’s panic did not intensify. Instead, a strange calm settled over him. He may have been out of options, but there was grace in surrender.
Stephen was no stranger to no-win situations after all.
With a surge of power, Stephen cast an illusion, feinting to the right, and readied his fingers to open the Eye of Agamotto and begin the time loop. For a moment it seemed as though Supreme had taken the bait. But Stephen should have known—this was a version of himself that had had endless years of study and practice. Supreme was too quick. Too clever. And so Stephen found his arms wrenched backwards and bound before he’d even shaped the first sigil.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” Supreme spat. One arm circled Stephen’s abdomen, and Stephen flinched as the other found his throat. Supreme’s lips brushed the side of Stephen’s ear, tongue flicking out like a snake’s as he whispered something cold, terrible, and true. “You forget I was there with Dormammu too. I know everything about you.”
Stephen gasped, squeezing his eyes shut. He shook his head back and forth, in denial, to dislodge Supreme—Stephen no longer knew. Supreme’s laugh was a low, malevolent thing; the vibration of it carried from where they touched, sternum to backbone, thoracic wall to thoracic wall. Stephen’s head spun as his mind filled with a churning dark. It was as if he were standing outside in the dead of night, a blizzard thrashing down on him, filling his eyes and ears with ice. Nothing remained of his mind and senses. There was only the endless sound of wind and the chill of his gut turning solid as it froze over.
There was a sudden tremor from the arm around Stephen’s middle. It rippled in a wholly inhuman way and then moved, parting Stephen’s robes and winding down the front of his pants. Stephen choked on his next breath. His eyes flew open as it touched his skin. It was cold, slick with a substance he couldn’t name. He looked down, and terror erupted within him.
Supreme’s arm was an arm no more. In its place was a monstrous appendage, viscous and purple, lined with two rows of suckers.
Stephen’s feet scrabbled against the floor for purchase. His hands clawed at Supreme’s other arm, still wrapped around his neck, as he gave into blind, animal instinct. Supreme chuckled—even his voice had now morphed into something else, something deep and otherworldly, overlaid with the husk of a thousand dissonant tones. Stephen’s heartbeat hammered in his ears. He kicked at Supreme’s instep and dropped his body weight down, trying to throw him, but it was no use. Supreme’s hold on Stephen was inescapable.
“What was it you said to me?” Supreme said lightly. “Oh, right. You need to let go.”
The grip on Stephen’s throat undulated. Stephen trembled in horror as Supreme’s arm moved away, yet he was unable to tear his gaze away from the transformation before him. The slim, tapered fingers on Supreme’s hand melded together. His arm grew purple, almost as if engorged with blood, and then it divided with a boneless grace. An oily slime oozed out, covering the two tentacles—there was no better word—with a thick, sticky film. A whip of nausea roiled in Stephen’s stomach as a line of suckers appeared, every one a small bud that unfurled and spread wide like a grotesque bloom of flowers.
Three tentacles coiled tightly around Stephen now, holding him at throat, thorax, and groin.
His vision swam with dark spots. The sensation of being pinned resurfaced with a vengeance. More than ever Stephen felt as though he were a tiny, lowly creature trapped in an entomologist’s display case. Supreme’s hunger and power were infinite, but that wasn’t all. As unrecognizable as Supreme may have seemed, Stephen couldn’t deny their duality. Supreme was right: he knew Stephen because he was Stephen. They were one in the same way that light was dark, that night was day, and it was incalculably intimate.
Even facing Dormammu had not left Stephen so vulnerable and unguarded.
The appendage at his throat curled and Stephen thrashed, finally finding his voice. “Stop it!”
Supreme laughed again, sharp and steely. It rang against Stephen’s skull like the blades of countless knives, and he flinched.
“Now, now, Stephen. There’s no need to be coy,” Supreme said. The tentacle in Stephen’s pants burrowed down, investigating, and Stephen froze as it wound itself around his balls. “We both know you enjoy the pain.”
The pressure increased. All the air in Stephen’s lungs flew out in a rush. A deep hurt grew in the low of his groin and then climbed up, radiating into his abdomen. Stephen sucked in a breath through his teeth and groaned. The bruising ache continued to climb as the tentacle wrapped around his throat and the one in his pants both squeezed harder. Black spots danced in his vision. Stephen thrashed in Supreme’s grip, struggling for breath, but it only sharpened the pain. He tried to scream, but there was no room for it, his chest was on fire and the darkness was expanding fast, closing in—
The tentacles relaxed just in time for Stephen to cry out in agony. Or so he’d intended, but the sound that escaped was far from it. It was a moan, and not a moan he’d planned to make. A hot wash of shame rolled over Stephen as Supreme’s lips curled into a smirk against his neck.
“That’s right. Don’t fight it.”
Supreme opened his mouth, raking his teeth down Stephen’s neck, and Stephen shuddered. The tentacles tightened again. Stephen sucked in a quick breath as the vice around his throat returned. The ache hollowed him out faster this time, yet despite the pain Stephen’s cock hardened. His stomach curdled, but the embarrassment did little to squash his growing arousal.
“Please,” Stephen choked out.
“Please, what? Please stop? Continue?” Supreme chuckled as another tentacle twisted down into Stephen’s robes, the wet tip of it coming to rest against Stephen’s asshole. “You don’t even know yourself, do you?”
Stephen struggled anew, small sounds leaking from his mouth. He couldn’t tell whether they were of hurt or pleasure. It no longer seemed to matter.
He gasped wetly as Supreme’s unholy appendage breached his hole with ease. It shouldn’t have felt right. It shouldn’t have filled an emptiness within him, one that Stephen had ignored for so long he’d forgotten it existed. But it did.
Supreme reached deeper inside him, and stars exploded in front of Stephen’s eyes. He shouted as a heavy throb of pain ripped through his balls as Supreme released them, but it quickly turned to a moan as the tentacle curled around his cock, jerking him off in time with Supreme’s thrusts. Stephen was dizzy with how good it was. The precipice rushed up before him, head spinning as Supreme continued to choke him. He cut off and allowed Stephen air with maddening erraticism, never falling into a pattern, and Stephen came in his pants with a muffled sob.
“There now,” Supreme purred. “Doesn’t it feel good to be complete?”
He did not stop in the wake of Stephen’s orgasm. If anything, Supreme now fucked him all the harder, the tentacle inside Stephen burrowing deeper and deeper until Stephen was sure he would be split open, cleaved down to his very core. The coil around his cock tightened, and Stephen writhed again as the pleasure once more turned to pain.
“Stop,” Stephen begged, once he could find the breath for it. “Stop, it hurts!”
But Supreme did not. He set his teeth over Stephen’s neck and raked them down. It was like a scalpel, like fangs tearing into him and parting his flesh, and Stephen cried out weakly. He shivered as Supreme played with his cock and ass, helpless to stop him, until the hurt slowly morphed back into desire. Stephen pushed back into Supreme’s thrusts, panting wantonly. His eyes were hot with tears.
“That’s it. You’re ready for it, aren’t you now.” There was no inflection in Supreme’s voice. He knew what the answer would be.
Stephen knew it too. He nodded frantically, trembling in Supreme’s grip. His lungs burned, fire blazing outward from his crown to the tips of his toes, and surrendered to the inevitable. Everything went white as Stephen came one more time, reality shattering on every side as he ceased to be.
He was no longer his own being. He was now part of something more.
—
Time passed in stillness.
Stephen couldn’t think of time in days here; there was no such thing. It was nothing but the fractals around them, their frozen soap bubble suspended mid-apocalypse, the silent screams echoing into the void. The pocket dimension was unmoving and quiet, and that bit of cosmic humor was a comfort. It was directly antipodal to the turbulence that raged inside of Strange Supreme.
Often, Stephen worked in tandem with the monstrous neighbors who shared his prison. Together they drew their claws and fangs through Supreme’s mind, raking again and again until he screamed in agony. Other times, Stephen invented his own tortures. He created elaborate visions for Supreme, fanciful what-ifs that featured Christine in a thousand different ways. Dreams where she never died, where she forgave him, where Supreme awoke to find all his choices had been nothing more than an illusion conjured by an enemy. Stephen layered them one on top of another until Supreme lost sight of what was real. Until he begged for death.
Sometimes, Stephen granted him that in dreams too.
Ultimately though, Supreme would always wake to the wretched existence they shared. And in those moments of clarity, Stephen would help Supreme remember a bitter truth: he knew Supreme. He knew him because he was him. They were two sides of the same coin, and while neither might be able to win? Well. They both knew how to lose.
And Stephen could lose for as long as it took.