Dreams and a Life Gone Wrong

"Ah!!!!"

Stephen Strange woke on the cold, dark floor, its surface reflective enough to show his silhouette. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt clinging tightly to his back.

Terror covered his face as he gasped continuously, his pupils dilating and contracting in shock. After swallowing hard to ease his tension and fright—

Stephen Strange wiped his forehead and face, his hand coming away sticky with sweat.

'CRACK—'

Lightning tore down from the storm clouds blanketing the city, bleaching the world a ghastly white and illuminating the lingering shock and horror on Stephen Strange's face.

Stephen Strange turned to glance through the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, rain still poured down in sheets, and occasional bolts of lightning bleached the world white, as though proving this was no ordinary night.

For Stephen Strange, it truly was no ordinary night.

He had just driven away the last person who cared about him with his uncontrolled emotions. Then he had fallen asleep on the cold floor and dreamed a dream so real that it even felt like a vision of his future.

That dream seemed to be his future.

In the dream, Stephen Strange had likewise driven away Christine, the last person who cared about him, because of his uncontrolled emotions.

Then, after scientific medical methods failed to repair his nerve damage, he had clung to information about someone who had once been paralyzed by a broken spine but had suddenly regained the ability to stand for unknown reasons, desperately pursuing his final path of hope.

But something about that dream, which had felt as real as if he had lived through it himself, was very strange. The Medical Rebirth Project had never existed. Though Dr. Helen Cho was still the founder of the Regeneration Cradle, she had not become the nation's Minister of