With a swish, a figure draped in a red cloak touched down, peering at the desolate basement. His face fell, letting out a sigh as he muttered to himself.
"I was a step too late, he slipped away again. Is he part hound? His nose is unexpectedly acute."
As he spoke, he noticed a conspicuous trace of ash, a remnant of something having been burned, on the ground. He approached it right away, extending a hand to touch the black ash.
With a bang, the tiny mark suddenly exploded. When the smoke and dust dissipated, a demon -humanoid in the upper body and segmented like an insect below the waist- was perched on the ceiling, baring a gruesome grin at the mage in the room.
The moment the mage's hands lit up, the demon's smile faded. This guy didn't need to draw an Array or chant spells. With twelve golden rings glowing behind him, manipulating the red ribbon with his hands, he shot two punches right off the bat.
Having dispatched the demon with some effort, the man, as quickly as possible, absorbed the demon's internal energy. He drew a long breath, a peculiar gleam in his eyes.
Just as he was stabilizing the rampant energy inside him, the melodious ring of his phone filled the room. He took out the phone from his pocket, held it to his ear, and said, "Hello? I'm quite busy now, I…"
"What? Bruce Wayne? So what…"
From the receiver, Nick's roar erupted.
"Stephen, I couldn't care less whether Bruce Wayne lives or dies, but he can't die in our hospital, do you understand?!!"
"Then why did those doctors treat him?!" Strange roared back: "And why did they bring Bruce to a hospital in another city?!"
Nick sighed heavily over the phone, saying in a low voice, "Listen, Stephen, I assume you can figure out that even if a group of people wanted Bruce Wayne dead, even if we welded shut all our hospital doors with blast-proof locks, he'd still inevitably appear in one of the ICU's. This is because these people assume that no one would care about the second wealthiest man in the world."
"But the fact is, Bruce Wayne can't die, and we can't just throw him out onto the street from the emergency room either."
"Why can't we?"
Nick's sigh grew heavier, he said, "Because now they don't want Bruce Wayne to die. The ones responsible for his current state are the same ones who want him alive. In this, the high society from both Earths seem unusually united. I'm under a lot of pressure. Do you understand?"
Stephen furrowed his brows, switching the phone to his other hand, and said, "What do you want me to do, go back and do the surgery? But I'm on the tail of a dangerous mage who could truly threaten the Earth and the safety of humankind."
"You know, neither angels nor demons can actually threaten mankind," Nick pointed out sharply. "Only humans can destroy themselves. I'm trying to solve this problem in the most effective way possible, and I need your help."
Stephen's gaze fell back on the nearly completely disintegrated black ashes. Eventually, he said into the phone, "I'm on my way. But this is the last time, Nick. I'm no longer a surgeon."
"We've always considered you the best, Stephen."
An indiscernible complex expression crossed Stephen's face. He always found this Nick Fury peculiar. But since he was entrusted with the task, he ultimately arrived at the location of the emergency room Nick texted to him.
What was strange was the fact that though Gotham had more than one Wayne Hospital, Bruce Wayne had ultimately been taken to the NYU Langone Medical Center.
It was too much of a coincidence because this was where the young surgeon Stephen Strange had once worked, and it was his initial platform for fame, a stage recognized both at home and abroad.
Returning here, everything felt different. Stephen, moving invisibly through the corridors, tried his best to avoid looking at the familiar doctors' pictures hanging on the doors of the clinics and research labs. Teachers, classmates, colleagues - all could be summarized as people who were far inferior to him.
Without a doubt, Strange had been the most distinguished leading surgeon here before, once making this top-three ranked hospital in the U.S. very proud. He was a synonym for God's loved one.
From a distance, Strange saw the special agents at the entrance to the preparation room. He revealed himself. The agents clearly had already been anticipating his arrival. He went in to change his clothes, and on the door leading to the operating room, he caught a glimpse of a familiar figure.
Jonah, yes, an utterly untalented and arrogant fool. Back in his time, Jonah was a little doctor that the head nurse would scold. Now he could be involved in such a significant surgery. Indeed, things had really changed.
Stephen was initially just pondering over this and quickly put these feelings of pity and dismay aside. However, when the agents brought him reams of paperwork, not mentioning Bruce Wayne's condition for now, Jonah surprisingly turned out to be the leading surgeon in both consecutive surgeries.
Stephen drew a deep breath, pressing a hand against his temple. In the end, he couldn't resist. He took off his gloves, picked up the phone, dialed a number and addressed Nick on the other end.
"Nick Fury, as I recall, you have a title: King of Special Agents, correct? I hope that longevity serum of yours hasn't fried your brain because if Bruce Wayne is so important, how could you actually allow an idiot who loses two needles on average per surgery to be the leading surgeon twice in a row?"
Nick mumbled something on the other end of the line. Strange didn't hear him clearly, but one sentence was crystal clear — "I'm a special agent, not the Director of the hospital. I can't decide who will perform the surgery, I just want a good outcome."
This was like pouring gasoline on fire. Strange put a hand on his waist, took a deep breath, exhaled, and asked: "Who is the Director?"
"Seems like a guy named Bill Santakton?" Nick's voice came intermittently, as if he was asking others for the answer.
Strange hung up decisively, thinking to himself: perfect, now he has to talk about why he left Langone Medical Center to work at the Elders Council Hospital.
Nothing changed. As he began to prepare, he thought of the individuals who had once tried to undermine him. They had won, and those colleagues who used to sing his praises seemed unperturbed to continue to work under their command.
Anyone with work experience understands that being excellent and outstanding is not the key to securing your place in a rigid, age-old work system.
Especially when you're young but strikingly prominent, some mediocre people think they can pull you into the pit that once swallowed them with common tactics. Even if they know they can't, they're just doing it to mess with you.
Without any background but with ample arrogance, it was inevitable that Strange would pay a heavy price for his hubris. He was madly chasing those who possessed powerful wings that never fell.
The moment he set foot back in this hospital, Strange knew all that talk about achieving inner peace was hogwash.
The biggest change that the magical journey at Kamar-Taj brought him was not tranquility or desirelessness, but rather an inherited impulse to punch douchebags in the face first.
As he pushed open the main doors, his demeanor was composed. He strode determinedly towards the operating room.
When the doors of the operating room opened and everyone turned to look at him, Strange clearly saw the change in their expressions. He thought, "The transcendent experiences that magic brought were like a mirror, making the ugliness of the world even uglier."
Most of the people were surprised when they recognized the familiar brow and eyes exposed between the hat and mask, they froze in place as if facing a ghost.
The only one showing an emotional expression was the head nurse standing at the perimeter of the room, organizing things. The others, like sparrows in the wintertime, flitted their gazes frequently, exchange looks filled with confusion and shock. Despite the brief commotion, most quickly returned to their tasks.
The first and second assistant surgeons looked bewildered, they were new faces that Strange had never seen before. They must be interns who had just arrived. Jonah, an industry insider who had heard about Strange's experiences, was blazing with fury in his eyes.
"What's going on, huh??!! How come there is an irrelevant person in the operating room? Guards, guards! Guars! Someone is interfering with the surgery!! Grab him out right now!!"
Strange smirked and said: "You can't even determine whether or not it's an interstitial anomaly from a biopsy, so who's the irrelevant person here?"
Jonah was clearly taken aback, the short male doctor violently pushed the assistants and nurses in front of him away and confronted Strange: "Stephen Strange, don't think I don't know, you are no longer a surgeon, your hand is broken, you can't do surgery anymore."
"So what? I'm still here, guess how I got past the special agents?"
Jonah's face turned beet red. Of course, he knew what it meant for Strange to appear here - someone had gone to bring in the cavalry.
He had to admit that the first surgery was not entirely successful, or one could say that it didn't work at all, it was just a biopsy.
The issue with Bruce Wayne was the angle of the bullet, which was extremely tricky. Not only did it penetrate the chest, but it also affected the spinal nerves, which was very dangerous.
Moreover, this New Yorker who was unheard of but extremely important, for some reason, had spinal nerves that were completely different from ordinary people: he had a congenital anomaly – five pairs of different spinal nerves.
The experts believed this might be a special neural anomaly they had never seen before, and that it was the most challenging situation they encountered after the first check-up.
Since no one had ever seen such a neural structure, nobody dared to move the bullet lodged deep in that muddle of nerves, causing a dilemma.
If they operate boldly, they might save the life of the wealthiest man, but risk causing paralysis; if they leave it unattended, whether it's S.H.I.E.L.D or many others, they could not sit idly by and watch Bruce Wayne continue to remain unconscious.
So they had to remove the bullet, preserve Bruce Wayne's life, without affecting the incredibly crucial spinal nerves, preserving Bruce Wayne's motor abilities. The second point was especially important to the doctor.
Because, even if you had achieved the best professional outcomes and were ethically indisputable, the world's wealthiest people usually lacked understanding and morality.
Jonah took on the task purely because he was a gambler. He knew that it was a similarly bizarre and difficult surgery that caused Stephen Strange to rise to fame and earn the reputation of "Hand of God".