Stephen turned. Behind them, growing slowly wider, was a door-shaped portal outlined in golden light. A decimated landscape lay beyond it, covered in morning fog, and a low moaning arose that gave him chills, like wolves howling in the distance. Bursting out of the fog, a man ran as fast as he could toward the portal, followed by rotting, moaning zombies. Dr. Strange stood and immediately threw on his Cloak of Levitation, letting the disguise spell fall away. No use in shielding his identity now.
Restaurant patrons began to clamor and scream and move out of the way of the expanding portal. The man leapt through the door, falling and crashing into tables as he did. Some sort of device that looked like an orange palm pilot fell out of his hand when he hit the ground. The battery got knocked out of it and went flying, landing on the floor with a clatter.
"Shit!" the man screamed, scrambling for the battery and doing his best to stuff it back into the device. The portal stayed open. The zombies advanced and Stephen forced himself to do something other than stand around and gawk.
"Everyone, out of the way!" he bellowed to the astonished diners.
He readied a spell, one that would seal the wound opening between their universes, making magical sigils through his hands, which miraculously decided to work correctly just then. He sent the complicated web of energy outward. It hit the portal, but to his amazement, it did absolutely nothing. The portal stayed open with stoic indifference as one zombie just barely reached it, stretching a rotting finger through the door.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
"That won't work, Dr. Strange," said the man on the floor, smacking the device against his hand. Christine was on the floor with him, trying to get him to stand up, but he gasped with pain and sank back to the ground.
"How do you know me?" yelled Strange, readying another protection spell for himself and everyone still standing around and screaming.
The man didn't answer. He held down a button on the device with both thumbs like his life depended on it. The portal glowed a little brighter, like a computer coming back from standby mode, then abruptly shut itself into a sliver of light, cutting off the zombie's arm at the elbow. It plopped to the floor with a squelch, like the rotten slab of meat it was.
The man sat back with a relieved sigh, but Stephen knew the danger wasn't gone yet.
"Why are you still here?" he screamed at the people still in the restaurant staring at the scene and taking videos and pictures, like idiotic cows. "Get the hell out of here! Go!"
At that, they made a stampede for the door, shoving each other to fit through the entrance. He threw a simple spell at the detached arm, which was still twitching, and set the thing on fire. Christine and the man startled and backed away from the flame.
The strange man was older than Stephen thought at first. He had blonde hair peppered with gray, and his mustache was the same. It looked like the guy had just stepped out of the late 70's, with a brown suit and tie and the kind of haircut Stephen's dad might have had back then.
Whoever he was, whatever he wanted, it would have to wait.
Christine was doing what any good doctor would do and checked him out for injuries from the fall.
"Stand back, Christine," said Stephen, and she reluctantly did so.
"Did any of those things touch you or bite you? Did you touch them?" he asked the stranger, kneeling down to look for himself, though not from the kindness of his heart, as Christine had.
"No," said the man. "I don't think so."
"How long were you in that universe?"
"Not long. I realized I was in the wrong place, obviously."
As the stranger spoke, Stephen's eye was drawn to a large red gash on the man's left heel. He pointed at it and said, "Explain that. Now."
"Stephen," said Christine insistently, "He might have a concussion."
"What is that?" he repeated, ignoring her.
"I-I don't know," said the man weakly, rubbing his head.
"You need to remember." He couldn't help but sound threatening. He'd rather fight to the death than let a zombie plague into his universe.
"Stephen?"
Christine held up a mean-looking shard of broken glass with a long streak of blood drying on its edge. He relaxed a little.
"Okay. All right. Christine, you touched him, go wash your hands. Make sure the water as hot as possible."
"But-"
"Go!" He didn't have much patience left. She wouldn't give him the stink eye if she understood the gravity of the situation. After a moment, she stood and went to the washroom, leaving Stephen and the man alone in the restaurant.
"Strip down."
"What?"
"Do it."
The man scoffed at him. "Do you even want to know why I'm here?"
There went the very last shred of his patience. Stephen cast a spell that tore the man's clothes off his body as easy as ripping off a bandage. The man screamed and covered himself, cowering on the floor.
"My clothes!" he yelled as Stephen levitated the man's tan suit into the flames, underwear and all. Muttering, he added, "I am way too old and out of shape to be naked in public."
"Here." Stephen threw his Cloak of Levitation at him, which curled itself around his body under its own power. "I wouldn't be who I am if I took those kind of chances."
Stephen finally helped the man dress his wound with a handful of paper napkins tied around his ankle with a strip of tablecloth. As he did, he said, "You can tell me now."
"Dr. Strange," he said officiously, like a policeman about to rattle off the Miranda rights to a suspect, "My name is Mobius M. Mobius, detective from-I mean, former detective from the Time Variance Authority."
Fantastic. Another bureaucratic agency trying to keep tabs on the multiverse, no doubt.
"Okay … are you here to arrest me for incursions or something? Because you ruined my lunch, and you really don't want to mess with me yourself, unless you're a being of some kind of unfathomable power I've never heard of."
Mobius blinked, working his mouth for a second like he couldn't find the words to say, then continued. "No. I'm here because I have a good friend who is in desperate need of your help."
"I'm sure plenty of people in the multiverse could use my help," he said, tying the tablecloth very tightly around Mobius's ankle to staunch the blood. "I could use my own help, sometimes. Anyone I know?"
Mobius looked away and stammered. "Uh, no. But he's in bad shape. After everything he's done, he deserves help. Trust me."
The way Mobius spoke didn't engender much confidence. He didn't look suspicious, though: his face and manner seemed trustworthy, even friendly. Maybe too friendly. You never knew.
Stephen helped him up and Mobius gingerly put weight back on his bleeding leg.
"Wait here," he said, then joined Christine in the washroom.
He took his place at the sink next to hers and turned on the hot water. It felt just like old times, washing up to prepare for surgery.
He wanted to say something to lighten the mood, or at least reassure her, but he came up empty. Instead, like an idiot, he sang the happy birthday song to time how long he should wash his hands.
Christine took a couple of paper towels and dried her hands. "If you're going to be busy soon, I totally understand. Is the universe going to fall apart again?"
"No," he said emphatically. "Absolutely not. Probably not. Maybe."
"Is that guy okay?"
"He's fine."
"You put that fire out, right?"
"Shit. Shit!"
Stephen rushed out of the bathroom while Christine called out after him.
"You were just going to let the restaurant burn down?"
"No!" he shouted, casting a spell that extinguished the flame with a cloud of smoke. That was his life now, it seemed: putting out one fire, then immediately forgetting about another one.
Stephen took both Christine and Mobius into the Sanctum Sanctorum through a portal he made with his sling ring, not saying anything to either of them. There would be time to ask and answer questions. To Mobius's credit, he seemed more curious than afraid. Strange gave him an old sweatshirt to wear and a pair of jeans, which were too tight and long for Mobius. They all sat quietly in the Sanctum's magical library with warm, yellow sunlight streaming in through the gigantic, round windows. The place smelled like old books, with an undertone of aged fabric and ancient wood made more prominent by the heat of the sun. Stephen magicked up some green tea for all of them, without asking if they wanted any or not.
"Got any coffee?" asked Mobius.
Stephen waved his hand over the teacup, more like a third-rate magician than a sorcerer, and turned his tea into black coffee. He took a sip, looking around at the priceless trove of leather bound magical books.
"The Sanctum in this universe is a lot cozier than in other universes. You got cleaning people, or … ?"
"Let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?"
With a small spell, Stephen repositioned all of them around a huge, round table in the middle of the library. Christine gasped in surprise and almost dropped her tea in her lap, while Mobius looked fairly unfazed.
"You say you're from the Time Variable-"
"Time Variance Authority," Mobius interrupted. "TVA. And that's my former job. I've done it for so long that it just slips out every time I introduce myself."
"Uh-huh."
"Anyway, I've been looking for you through several different universes. Or, rather, I've been trying to find a version of you that will help me."
"How many universes did you visit?"
"A lot," he replied glumly. "I lost count, actually."
"And not one of them wanted to help?"
"No. They were all either busy, or … well, a lot of them are just assholes, I'll be honest, or they never discovered magic. You were dead from the car accident in several of them. A couple were just plain evil. And obviously one of them is a zombie."
Stephen took a sip of his tea, thankful there was only one zombie universe. The fact that Mobius had met so many versions of himself that weren't willing to help definitely concerned him. On the other hand, the man could be lying. That might have been why he seemed a bit reticent about his 'friend'.
"Well, I happen to be between crises at the moment," said Stephen, "but I have a hell of a lot of questions for you, first, Mobius."
They talked well into the late afternoon while Mobius explained all about the TVA, what it did, who it worked for, and who worked for it. Mobius took out his 'tempad' from his sweatshirt pocket and explained in detail all of the things the TVA used it for. Stephen couldn't help but notice a hint of pride in Mobius's voice as he talked about his former line of work, even though the man had recently found out that he'd been enslaved and brainwashed along with everyone else working for the TVA.
"The TVA itself, and everything it makes, is protected from magic," he was explaining, while Christine brought back a package of cookies from the pantry to tide herself over until dinner. "No one could use magic within the TVA, and nothing the TVA uses can be influenced by magic."
Stephen certainly wasn't fond of that idea. If the dude wanted to take him in … on the other hand, there was no reason for Mobius to divulge so much information if he didn't truly want Stephen's help.
Stephen filled up his tea again. "So are the variants just the people who were enslaved there, or are they the people that got pruned and sent to the end of time? I'm still fuzzy on that."
"No, everyone there was a variant," said Mobius. "We all have variants of ourselves in different universes. My job was to hunt them down and make sure they didn't corrupt the sacred timeline."
"Sacred? What the hell was so sacred about it?"
Mobius squinted, looking thoughtfully into his coffee. "I don't know. Maybe it was the most … interesting? Anyway, my friend, the one who needs your help, he was the one who freed all of us from the TVA. He and his partner, who's also technically … well, they became a romantic thing, it's a long story … showed everyone that we were slaves, and we trashed the TVA as a group, as an army, and found a new place to live."
"So, basically, there's no TVA now?"
"'Now' is a relative term, isn't it, Doctor?"
Stephen was amazed that so many people knew so many conflicting things about the multiverse, and that they were all somehow correct. He supposed that in a multiverse that can allow for almost literally anything to happen, then that was inevitable.
Stephen shrugged. "Well, go ahead and take me to him with your ... " he gestured to Mobius's device, which he'd already forgotten the name of.
"I can use the tempad, but I think it's a little more fragile after the battery flew out of it. Doesn't your portal work the same way?"
"No, I can only make portals around this universe. Well, now, anyway." That rule had bent pretty far after he'd made that stupid spell for Peter Parker. The multiverse had been much more fragile than he could have imagined. "Can you get another one somewhere?"
"No. The only batteries were at the TVA, and the TVA is gone."
"You didn't plan that very well."
"Popular uprisings are usually overzealous, spur of the moment type things, aren't they?"
"You would know."
"I would, and they are."
Their exchange held no malice. It was only a very light spar with words, one that made Stephen like Mobius even more. He enjoyed talking to someone who could hold his own in a conversation, who didn't expect an apology.
He stood, then stopped, realizing Christine was still there. She'd sat as silent as a mouse for hours, eating cookies and drinking tea while they were talking.
"I'm so sorry Christine," he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This crap just keeps happening all the time. I can't help it. I'm sorry about our-" he stopped before the word, "date," slipped out.
"I'm not mad," she said, giving him a weak smile. Sure, not mad, just disappointed. "The world is a trillion times more interesting with you around, though."
He went in for a hug, paused, then was surprised when she hugged him anyway. It was a chaste sort of bro-hug, not too close at the waist. He'd live with it. Stephen made her a portal that went right into her living room, scaring the absolute hell out of her cat, who dove for cover under the couch.
"Be safe," she said, before stepping into her house.
With a quick goodbye wave, he closed that portal, then turned to Mobius.
"Ready?"
"There's no place like home," Mobius said with a grin.