Scorpio

THIRTY ONE - Trouble

Pain.

All he could feel was pain - a blinding, blazing, mind-numbing pain that seemed to be screaming from every nerve in his body. He could vaguely still feel the chains around his wrists digging into bone, his arms pulled at opposite angles, and the slow grate of a pulley tearing said limbs from his body.

It was only his stubborn will - that, and the knowledge giving up would mean certain chaos for the rest of the world - that kept Dr. Strange from releasing the spell on the Eye of Agamotto.

What a morbid way to die, he mused.

Occasionally, a blurry figure would enter the blurred line of his blood-spotted vision, checking in on the necklace around his throat, screaming as it burned their fingers. A while back, he would have done anything to not hurt another being, yet now, watching the aliens suffer, the former surgeon felt a tinge of morbid satisfaction.

I must be going mad.

He could hear bones popping, his shoulders cracking, and if he could he would scream, but his throat had gone hoarse hours ago. How long had he been here? He had seen the alien obelisks advancing on New York, and hit rewind on the face of time - then there had been a flash of light, and he found himself here, with a couple of aliens chattering excitedly and gesturing to the necklace around his neck.

And the torture had ensued.

Dr. Strange struggled again, wishing for sleep or unconsciousness or even death because anything was better than this perpetual pain - but of course, unconsciousness was out of the question, for the aliens had hooked him up to some sort of adrenaline tube that kept his senses hyper-aware and maddeningly sensitive.

He couldn't do this much longer.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, the ex-surgeon bowed his head, wondering if he willed it hard enough, he could make-believe the very welcome possibility of his death.

In the final moments of his open, bloodshot eyes, he thought he saw an angel swing down from the barracks and walk towards him.

*******

Sif crouched among rows of alien guns, ducking her head every time an ominous reflection flitted across the chrome-coloured walls. She hardly dared to breathe.

The Asgardian warrior had been just finishing up her investigation on Knowhere when Heimdall had contacted her. The all-seeing gatekeeper had told her about the decimation of Asgard, and a day later Thanos' henchmen arrived to bomb the black market capital before she could escape. She had only been spared as the Mad Titan's Black Order was looking for accomplices of Heimdall, and they had thrown her into a grimy, primitive cell. She broke out within minutes.

The agonized screams of some poor soul a few doors away had caught her attention on her way out, and Sif had decided to delay her escape to see if she could offer any help. She had only planned to stay no more than a moment, but as soon as she stole into the room she found she recognized the man.

More accurately, she recognized the brass pendant hanging from his neck.

Sif readjusted the hood around her head. According to her calculations, an alien guard entered the room every twenty minutes to check up on the bloodied Sorcerer Supreme with the partially-dislocated arms, if only to brave a tap on his cursed necklace or attach a new bag of clear liquid to the tube protruding from his back. It was some sort of drug; a stimulant, probably - the master magician shook uncontrollably for a minute every time a new bag was administered, his limbs contorting painfully and his fingertips sparking. But each time it happened, the sparks seemed a little less than before, and his will to fight became more and more sluggish.