Ch. 7

She beat Uncle Strange home. Barely. Once she settled back into her body, she opened a portal to her room. And stepped through just as the door opened. Uncle Strange came through, looking around the room as though expecting a threat.

"Peter called. He said you came to him hysterical over an attack by another version of me. What did you do?"

"Okay, first of all, I'm fine," Morgan said, sitting on the bed. "No wounds. No permanent damage."

Uncle Strange's eyes unfocused as he switched from physical sight to metaphysical sight. His eyes flicked from above her head to her feet.

"Your aura is torn and part of it is missing. What did you do?"

"Oh. Is that what the spell did?" she asked in a soft voice. Her aura was her shield on the astral plane. Why hadn't she noticed the damage to it?

"What spell?" Uncle Strange growled the question from between clenched teeth. Morgan flinched. She had to come clean, but this was not going to go over well.

"Look. I know what I did was stupid and I'll never try it again."

"One last time. What did you do?"

Morgan stared at the floor, furiously rubbing the seam on her jeans. "I portaled to Dark Strange's pocket dimension to let him out, but he wasn't in his right mind and attacked me," she blurted out as fast as she could speak. She glanced up at Uncle Strange's angry face and back at the floor again. She scraped a nail down the seam of her jeans, concentrating on the roughness of the thick fabric under her fingers. "I think he tried to absorb me. That's what he said, anyway."

Uncle Strange closed his eyes and she could almost hear him counting to ten in a bid for patience.

"Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?"

"I have an inkling," she said, staring a hole into the floor.

"How did you get out alive?"

"His cloak helped me. It wrapped his head up to stop the absorption and to distract him long enough for me to get back through the portal."

Uncle Strange reached up to rub his temple with a thumb and two fingers.

"I am tempted to lock you in the mirror dimension. Now I understand why Wong didn't agree with teaching you so young. Magic is not a toy. It's use has dire consequences."

Morgan flinched and glared up at him. "I know that! I already admitted I did something stupid. But it wasn't the magic that was the problem. It was Dark Strange and now I know better. I won't do that again."

"No. You won't. Give me your sling ring."

"What?! But how am I supposed to get to my workroom?"

"You'll have to wait for me to take you there, as before. If I can't trust you to make wise decisions with the sling ring, I can't leave it in your hands."

Morgan glared up at him, but pulled the ring from her pocket. She thrust it into his hand and then shoved past him to leave the room.

"Morgan," Uncle Strange called, but she kept walking. "Morgan!" She ignored him, seething with anger. She had made a mistake. She admitted to the mistake. She wasn't going to make it again. She had learned her lesson, but how could she prove that if Uncle Strange just took her sling ring away? It was like taking a teen's car keys away. They couldn't prove they improved their driving if they weren't allowed to drive.

She made her way down to the front foyer and out the front door. She didn't know where she was going, only that she wanted to leave. She couldn't flee to her workroom anymore and her room in the sanctum was so tiny it felt more like a prison cell than a sanctuary. She needed to breathe. She needed to get away from Uncle Strange.

As soon as she hit the street, she ran. To her surprise, she moved faster and with more ease than she could ever remember. For the first time in her life, running was fun and it eased her anger, letting her channel all that energy into the glide of her muscles and heaving of her lungs, the beat of her heart. The martial arts training was doing more for her than she had realized.

She dodged around people on the sidewalk, sliding through the crowds as she neared Washington Square Park. She would have preferred something wilder, more like home, but she didn't think even her new-found stamina would get her to Central Park. Of course, she could take the subway, but she wanted to avoid people if possible. Here in New York, that wasn't going to happen, but she could find a more isolated area with the right effort.

She slowed to a walk as she crossed into the garden, looking for the least populated spot she could find. Realizing the day and time, she headed for the playground. Most kids were in school at the moment and it might be the emptiest part of the park.

There were a few people there, probably home-schooled kids and their parents or nannies, but she did manage to find an out of the way corner. She sat on the ground, back against the wrought iron fence that enclosed most of the green areas of the park. Pulling her knees to her chest, she set her forehead into her arms and finally let the angry tears loose. She was angry with Uncle Strange for taking her sling ring. She was angry at Peter for calling him, although she'd known he would, but mostly, she was angry at herself for messing up. How could she help Dark Strange, now? Because she still intended to find a way to help him.

She wouldn't just let him loose. No. She had truly learned that lesson, but maybe, if she could find a way to control him when he wasn't in control of himself, like muzzling a dog, she could give him some illusion of freedom. She couldn't imagine spending the rest of her existence in a four hundred square foot space. Solitary confinement was proven to cause lasting psychological damage and prisoners in solitary confinement at least got to interact with wardens. Dark Strange had been a prisoner with zero interaction besides his cloak for who knew how long. Death was better, but she suspected he couldn't die. Anyone else would have starved to death a long time ago. Heck, anyone else would have used up all the air in that pocket dimension and suffocated within days of the collapse. Something kept him alive, if not sane, and he deserved better. Anyone did.

She knew there were spells that could control a person, through mind control, physical control or a combination of both. If she could work that into a piece of her tech, she could make it controllable remotely. Maybe she could use magic to key it directly to her own thoughts so no one else could hack it. But what spells would work? She was still a novice with magic and hadn't had time to study everything. It would help if she could ask Uncle Strange, but she knew he wouldn't approve of what she wanted to do. Without easy access to Friday and her workroom, developing her plans would make what was already a challenging idea near impossible, but she didn't intend to give up. She would just have to do this old school when she couldn't get to her work room.

Putting her mind to the challenge she had decided to take on helped the last of her anger bleed away. Her stomach growled and she realized the pop tarts she ate had been over twelve hours ago. She needed to go home and she needed to apologize to Uncle Strange for storming off like she had. It hadn't felt fair that he took her sling ring, but now that she had calmed down, she could see why he did. She had almost died. If the cloak hadn't stopped him, Dark Strange would have absorbed her and then probably used her portal to come to this dimension and wreck it, too. She hadn't just endangered herself, but the whole world.

Yeah. Maybe she deserved to have her sling ring taken away. She would just have to be more careful and think things through better next time.

The sanctum was empty when she got back home, but she found a note and a watch on a side table when she came through the door.

"The seal is still cracked. I only returned because you were in danger. This watch will give you access to Friday if you need her. Your phone has Ubereats programmed with a credit card if you get hungry. I will return as soon as this seal is dealt with. Stay out of trouble. -Uncle Strange"

Morgan set the note down and picked up the watch. She tapped its face and a holographic beam sprang up, presenting an image of Friday's interface.

"Friday!"

"How can I help you, Miss Stark?"

"Can I access the virtual workbench with this?"

"The functionality is limited, but you can access it, Miss Stark."

"Perfect."

She forgot to eat again as she made her way up to the library and started poring over spellbooks and taking notes.

The seal of Hazzoth resided in an old, defunct sanctum near Wuhan, China. The once-glorious temple had housed the world's Sorcerer Supreme from the Qin dynasty, through the beginning of the Ming dynasty, when the sanctum was moved to Hong Kong. Because the seal could not be moved, a small contingent of Novices were left behind and ordered to maintain the seal. By the time Doctor Stephen Strange was brought on the scene, the seal had been cracked for days. The thing it had sealed in was one of the many entities that Western peoples referred to as Pestilence, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Of course, there wasn't just one Pestilence. They were like roaches. Knock one out and there were five more to take its place, but this one had been unkillable in its time, thus the seal.

Doctor Strange spent weeks searching for the thing to either seal it away again or eradicate it, but it would never stand and fight him, fleeing as soon as he drew near. It eluded him at every turn. With commerce in Wuhan being what it was, and the nature of the disease this entity spread, it had already escaped the city by the time he arrived. The first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported in the hospitals of Wuhan in late December. The world called the disease Covid-28.

Morgan tore the mask from her face as soon as she crossed the threshold of the Sanctum. She hated the thing, but she understood why she had to wear it. Uncle Strange had imbued it with a spell that would actually prevent the SARS coronavirus from permeating the cloth or the gaps around the cloth, in either direction. As long as she wore it correctly, over both her nose and mouth, she could safely leave the Sanctum without fear of getting sick. Unfortunately, he couldn't create enough masks like hers for the world and it infuriated him.

"Damn it! I'm not an infectious disease specialistt!" Uncle Strange slammed a book closed somewhere on the second floor and Morgan heard the soft thump of him falling into a padded chair. She winced. Maybe she should wait until later to ask for a portal to her workroom.

"You're seeking the wrong solution," Wong said, flipping a page in his own book. Morgan hurried up the stairs with the bag of deli sandwiches she had gone to fetch. They were all relieved that their favorite deli survived the initial shut downs caused by the pandemic. Wong only knew how to cook rice dishes and Uncle Strange's cooking skills were non-existent.

"What do you mean I'm seeking the wrong solution? It's a virus. Infectious disease is the study of viruses…among other things."

"I know what infectious disease is," Wong countered. "But there are others that can take care of that. Only you can lock down the horseman. You should be seeking a way to draw it out so you can defeat it."

"Well, yes, but that won't stop the pandemic. The virus is already out."

"Let others find a cure, vaccine or both. You can't do everything! Concentrate on what you can do!"

Morgan reached the top of the stairs to find the two men glaring at each other. Once, it would have made her nervous, but now she realized this was just their version of brain storming. Arguing seemed to challenge both of them to think on different paths.

"I brought food," she said, holding up the plastic bag. Wong glanced away from the staring contest first and his face lit up like he hadn't just been arguing with the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Excellent! Please tell me they had some more of that mustard I like."

"Sorry, Uncle Wong. They're still out. But they weren't out of potato salad for the day this time."

At that statement, Uncle Strange perked up.

"Finally! They've been out every time we went for a week straight."

The two men descended on her and her bag of goodies. She rescued her own sandwich and chips from the bag before they tore into it. Morgan was just glad to see Uncle Strange eating. He had gotten thinner over the months since the pandemic started. She knew he blamed himself for the virus ravaging the entire world. The disease drew its strength from the horseman that set it loose. It mutated at the rate it did because the horseman was still free. Until Uncle Strange could find the horseman and contain it, the virus would continue devastating the world. The virus would never go away, even if the horseman was destroyed, but it would lose some of its virulence and human medicine could pick up the pieces.

Morgan wished she could help, but what could she do that the Sorcerer Supreme couldn't?

"Umm…Uncle Strange?" He looked up from his potato salad, a smudge of sour cream caught in the edge of his goatee. Morgan indicated on her own mouth where the smudge was on his and he wiped it away with a napkin. "Is there any way I could get a portal to my workroom today?"

Uncle Strange glanced at Wong and the other sorcerer shrugged.

"Is your room clean?"

Morgan nodded.

"I don't see why not," said Uncle Strange, standing and sliding his sling ring on. "I don't see our research going anywhere soon and I know you can now conjure anything you need while you're there." He traced a circle in the air and a portal spun open. "Just call when you're done."

"Will do, Uncle Strange. See you later!" Morgan grabbed her food and hurried through the aperture. It spun away into emptiness behind her.

She set her sandwich on her work table and turned to press her hand to a panel set into the wall. Gold mandalas lit up on every wall, anchored by a metal hub with red lights that switched to green.

She had had to be very careful about what she was working on. Uncle Strange thought she had forgotten about Dark Strange, or at least stopped thinking about him. In reality, she had studied wards and learned to integrate them into the security system she designed for her workroom. The wards would warn her as soon as anyone tried to create a portal within these four walls. They would warn her with enough time to hide what she was working on.

With the wards set, she turned her attention to the cabinet at the back of the room. She twisted her fingers into an intricate shape and pushed power into the cabinet. A red symbol flashed on the cabinet's surface, releasing the magical lock.

The front of the cabinet folded outward, turning into a table with a red circle inscribed on its surface. Runes and mystic symbols traced its edges and lines criss-crossed through the center, creating a repeating pattern of alternating stars and pentagrams.

Behind the table, several drawers and a couple of shelves held the culmination of six months of study and engineering. She opened a drawer and pulled out a heavy metal bracelet. It wasn't the streamlined casing her father could have created, but she was proud of it.

With a deft flip of her wrist, she clasped it around her other wrist and pressed a button. The metal whirred to life and climbed her arm, cinching around her flesh until she had a segmented metal vambrace over her forearm that covered her skin from elbow to wrist. She winced as the twin needles inside the metal sleeve pierced her skin at the base of her hand. Some biological interface had been necessary to make the device work. She had gotten used to the sting over months of testing the fit on herself.

She flexed and the segments moved with her, adjusting for the movement of the muscle and tendons under her skin. It wasn't as stiff as her first few attempts. She didn't want the wearer to have his movements hindered by wearing the item, only by the spell work inside. She had worked the design into her own iron armor to facilitate spell casting while wearing it.

Running her finger over a sensor near the elbow made the vambrace retract back into a bracelet. Reaching into the drawer, she pulled out a second bracelet and a matching collar. Time for another round of tests.

Setting the pieces aside, she retrieved a book from the bottom drawer of the cabinet. Uncle Strange still hadn't noticed it missing and she hoped it stayed that way.

Laying it open beside the circle, she gestured up, down and side to side like conducting a symphony. The lines in the circle flared, glowing scarlet. She consulted the book beside her and took a deep breath. She had learned to pronounce Sanskrit, but it wasn't her forte and she couldn't afford to get the intonation wrong.

With deep concentration, she spoke the words from the book and traced the symbols into the circle with glowing golden power. The circle flashed and a thing rose from its center with webbed hands and glowing, slit-pupil eyes. It only stood about four feet tall and the circle would contain it if the test didn't work. It bared rows of wickedly sharp teeth at her and slapped at the edges of the circle as it spoke a deep, angry language.

"I'm only bothering you for a bit and then I'll let you go," she said. "I promise."

Retrieving the bracelets, she reached through the barrier that would allow her to pass, but not her prisoner. She grabbed a webbed hand and slapped the bracelet on, pressing the button as she withdrew. The metal retracted around the thing's spindly wrist so that it fit the smaller arm and the metal worked its way up the pale green flesh as the creature hissed, spit and tore at the vambrace. The metal resisted its attempts to remove it and tightened around the appendage. The creature cried out as the needles sunk under its skin and the arm dropped, rendered useless at her mental command.

Taking advantage of the creature's shock at losing use of its arm, she slapped the other bracelet on its other wrist and a second vambrace cinched into place, dragging the other arm down. The creature glared up at her and hissed with hate-filled eyes. She winced internally, but she had to test this on something. Testing on herself didn't work because she couldn't definitively determine if she was following the commands she sent to the device because the device was forcing her to or because she was thinking it to herself. Otherwise, she would never have done it this way.

While the thing glared at her, she reached through with the collar and snapped it around the grossly elongated neck. The creature jerked back, but with both arms dragging it down as dead weight, it didn't move far. The collar expanded into a gorget that extended down the spine. The creature screeched as needles spiked into its spine and took control of the central nervous system. It dropped to the ground, helpless. She had tried the collar on herself once. It wasn't pleasant, but it was necessary.

The gear wouldn't work on an invertebrate, or anything without standard humanoid limbs, but it didn't need to. She had designed it for a humanoid. She wasn't sure what would happen when he shifted forms, but it seemed like he always at least had a neck and arms.

The creature glared up at her. It could still express itself. It could even speak and curse at her, but it couldn't move against her. Reaching out to the same drawer, she pulled out the last part of the device. Once the design was complete, this would be an implant under her skin, but for the time being, she wrapped the thin wire around the outside of her ear and pressed a button on the small box it was attached to. The wire tightened to conform to the shell of her ear and two needles pierced her skin, anchoring it and accessing the great auricular nerve so she could control the device with thought as well as words. She wouldn't have even attempted something this biological without the help of magic. They might have been able to meld biology and technology like this in Wakanda, but Morgan had to find other ways to achieve her goals.

"Stand up."

Much to the creature's surprise, it stood up. It stared at its traitorous limbs in shock and then transferred that stare to her, the expression morphing into one of intense hate.

"It's just a test. I'm not going to keep you like this." It didn't look like it believed her, even if it could understand her. She honestly hated doing this, but hadn't been able to think of another solution. She felt like she at least needed the basics down before testing it out on Dark Strange.

"Try to attack me." The creature didn't immediately attempt to attack her because she hadn't put intent behind the command. She didn't will him to do as she said. She smiled as he stood there, looking perplexed. She had wanted to make the control a conscious effort so she didn't accidentally boss Dark Strange around by just musing or talking.

Seeing her smile, the creature assumed she was laughing at it and launched itself at her, slamming into the walls of the summoning circle.

"Stop." She put command into her words and intent. The creature stopped, even as its eyes bulged with rage. The muscles of its jaw clenched and a sliver of unease ran through Morgan.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. None of the others were this upset. I don't think they were as smart as you," she said. She reached through the field and brushed fingers over the sensors that pulled the vambraces and collar back into their cases. The creature shed the items and threw them at her when it couldn't break them. She snatched them out of the summoning circle and dismissed the creature with a curt gesture. It vanished with a pop and she shut the circle down. She had intended to summon another, stronger entity, but after the rage that one had displayed, her gut was telling her what she was doing was wrong. She had to stop, but she couldn't risk using the tech on Dark Strange without testing it.

With a sigh, she packed everything away and settled herself in the now-familiar lotus position on the floor. She closed her eyes, breathed deep and pulled away from her body. The act of entering the astral realm and racing through dimensions to her beacon had become as familiar to her as breathing. For six months, she hadn't mentioned Dark Strange to Uncle Strange, but she had visited the broken version of the Sorcerer Supreme almost every night while her body slept.

Today, he floated two feet off the ground, hands at rest on his knees and eyes closed while his eyeballs danced under the lids. She never knew what she might find when she arrived. Sometimes, he was in a self-loathing snit, sometimes just lost to despair. The scariest times, he was…other. Countless times, she had seen him inhuman, pacing or raging within his prison, tentacles writhing and wings arched over his horned head. He would curse her, then tempt her to set him free with promises of power. He would rage and throw himself at the crystalline wall, scrabbling at it in a mad rage. She had seen him howl and tear at his own flesh. He could do so much damage in those episodes and always, a shift to another form would smooth the wounds away like a bad dream.

He had confirmed to her that he couldn't die. He was forever hungry and thirsty, for there was nothing to eat or drink, but his body wouldn't waste away. It remained as it had been when his reality collapsed, in a state of suspended animation. He existed on pure magical power. Any damage he inflicted on himself healed instantly, like an eraser on a whiteboard. Even he didn't know if anything would change if he ever escaped his reality. He had told her time and again that he intended to never find out.

More and more recently, she found him like this: calm, meditating, lucid. She liked him best like this. She could talk to him. He told her stories of when he was a neurosurgeon, described interesting cases he had handled. She told him about her studies and how she had flown through school. She talked about her mom and dad, how her mom's decline had affected her, how she sometimes felt abandoned by her dad even though he had died saving the world. He talked about Christine, how he had loved her and how he had imagined spending his life with her. They talked about sorcery and he taught her things Uncle Strange hadn't gotten around to yet. She learned a lot about the nervous system, which helped her with her project, although she hadn't told him about it. Not yet. He might stop answering her questions if he knew.

As she drew near, his eyes opened and he gave her a small, peaceful smile.

"How is the pandemic going in your reality?" he asked, putting his booted feet on the concrete. Morgan sighed.

"Terrible. No one wants to wear masks and so many businesses are going down because of mandatory shut downs. Everyone is turning it into a political thing and think they know better than the experts. Uncle Strange wants to strangle half the population of New York on any given day, and I can't say I blame him."

"Did you suggest the coercion spell I showed you? For the masses?"

No, but she had worked it into her spell work in the vambraces.

"Only in jest," she said, giving him a stern look. "A coercion spell isn't ethical."

Dark Strange chuckled.

"Everything sorcerers do walks a line of ethics. We manipulate the energy of other beings for our own benefit."

"Even more reason to be strict about our ethics," she insisted, wincing at a pang of guilt. She hadn't, exactly, been holding up that ideal a few minutes ago. Dark Strange frowned and then squeezed his eyes shut. He reached up to knead at his temples and nodded.

"You're right. Of course you're right. Except, aren't the choices these people are making hurting others?"

Morgan sighed. "Yeah. But…I still think a coercion spell is a bad idea. I mean, where do you stop with that? Today, it would be making people wear masks. But tomorrow…it would be easier to decide to use the same spell for something more selfish and justify it as 'for their own good'. Who are we to decide what is for everyone's 'own good'? Coercion spells don't differentiate. They don't allow for outliers you can't anticipate. There are better ways."

Dark Strange opened his eyes again and chuckled. "You sound like the Ancient One. How can you be so wise at your age?"

"I listen to Uncle Strange mutter his way through the same ethical dilemma about ten times a week at home," Morgan said with a laugh. "Believe me, he had thought of coercing the masses long before you suggested it and rejected it as unethical. He revisits the idea every time he reads the news online, but he still rejects it for the same reasons. It is tempting, though."

Dark Strange nodded. "I think it is best that you continue to learn your ethics from the Strange of your reality. Mine are…questionable, even when I'm lucid."

"Well, that makes this awkward," she said and Dark Strange cocked his head to the side inquiringly. "I wanted to ask you for some ideas. I need to test a project I'm working on, but I can't test it on myself. Got any ideas?"

"Why can't you ask the Strange of your reality?"

Morgan rolled her lips between her teeth and looked away. "He doesn't know about it. He might stop me if I told him."

Dark Strange scowled. "What are you doing, Morgan? Your Strange is not unreasonable from what you've told me. If you can't tell him about this project, should you be doing it?"

Morgan crossed her arms and met his eyes. "He's wrong about why he wouldn't approve of this project. It's…it's the right thing to do. I just have to make sure I get it right so nothing goes wrong."

"Tell me about the project."

Morgan took a deep breath. Should she tell him? She had kept it to herself, equal parts worried she would get his hopes up and not be able to deliver or he would disapprove as much as Uncle Strange probably would and refuse to talk to her anymore. Maybe both.

Of course, he would have to consent to putting the thing on. She refused to use it if he would rather remain a prisoner here than wear it, so it would be a moot point if he disapproved enough to refuse to help her.

"It's a restraint system," she said with a sigh. "It's meant to control an excessively powerful being if said being, say, goes into an uncontrollable rage."

"Is this for Bruce Banner?" Dark Strange asked with a confused frown.

"What? No. He's under control. I'm not sure he even turns into the hulk anymore. Not after the infinity stones ruined his arm."

"Clearly there are many events that were meant to take place after the time I ended my reality."

"Clearly." Morgan rolled her eyes. "Does it matter who it's for?"

"It could. The power of the thing you're restraining determines the strength required in the restraints."

Morgan winced.

"Yeah. That makes sense and I'd thought about it, but I can't test it on the intended subject. Not yet." Not until she got her sling ring back, and even then, she hesitated to open even a small portal to Dark Strange's dimension. She still had nightmares about the last time.

"Then find someone you trust that has similar power."

"You make it sound so easy," Morgan grumbled. She couldn't test it on Uncle Strange, for obvious reasons. Same thing for Wong. There was Peter, but he would probably tattle to Uncle Strange about what she was doing. Plus, his powers weren't related to the mystic arts, like Dark Strange's.

If the Ancient One were still alive, she could possibly test it on her, but she might disapprove of what Morgan was doing, too. Maybe Dark Strange was right. Maybe she shouldn't be doing this. But none of them knew Dark Strange. None of them understood his struggles. None of them really understood what it was like to lose someone you loved more than the world, how you would do anything to get them back, even something that flirted with disaster in the darker gray area of ethics.

Sometimes, she felt like Dark Strange was the only person she knew that really understood her.

"Morgan, who is this restraint system for?"

Morgan inhaled, imagining her body, realities away, echoing her astral body to calm the nerves that only existed so far away. If Dark Strange hated the idea, then six months of work would be down the drain. Lifting her head, she met his eyes.

"It's for you," she said and his eyes widened. "You told me you don't dare leave here because of your madness. If…if I could control you, stop you if you lose control of yourself, you could leave here. You could come live with me. You could be around people again."

Dark Strange frowned, but the look was more contemplative than angry. He didn't immediately shoot her down.

"And the Strange from your universe…he doesn't know about this?"

She looked away, pressing her lips together and rolling them between her teeth. "No, he doesn't know. I think he might lock me in my room if he knew."

"So, what makes you think this is a good idea?" Dark Strange asked, his frown deepening into a scowl.

"You don't deserve this," she said, gesturing at the pocket dimension as she met his eyes again. "No one does. I don't care that you destroyed your reality. Death is better than this and you can't even get that." Morgan clenched her fists. "I want to let you out. I want to help you, but I want to do it safely. The system I designed…it would let you make your own choices within a set of parameters and then I could lock down those choices if there's a problem. I keyed it to my DNA, so only I can control it."

Now, pride seeped into her voice. Dark Strange's scowl eased up. He reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. That gesture, both Stranges shared and a small stab of guilt punched her in the gut.

"Who have you tested it on? I'm not sure you really understand the power I control."

Morgan's heart thumped. He wasn't saying no. Even though he knew Uncle Strange wouldn't approve, he was considering it.

"I learned to summon interdimensional beings. I did some testing on them, but the last one hated it. It felt…wrong. I don't think I should do that again."

"You have more wisdom now than I did at almost four times your age." Dark Strange sighed and sat on the ground. His cloak lifted him a foot into the air as though it thought sitting on the concrete was beneath him. "You were right to stop. Anything you might summon that would be powerful enough to compare to me would kill you." He said it without pride or arrogance. It was just a simple fact that he was that powerful.

"I didn't want to use the restraints without testing them. That's why I'm asking you for ideas."

Dark Strange ran his hands through his wild hair, bowing his head. He stared at the ground and then looked up at her.

"I might have an idea."