Avengers: Zero to Infinity

Chapter 1

The symphony of the morning birds fluttered across the city of New York. An uncountable number of cars had been rushing to their destination, creating such a traffic. People were in total panic, knowing that they were going to be late to their work. The sound of doors closing and open as people enter and exit began creating a chorus throughout the colossal city. People were waiting outside of buildings, waiting for ziggurat to be open. Most of them were complaining about how time was flying by so slowly. Other people were still in their beds, unbothered by the various noises outside.

In the midst of all of this was a man, lying down on his bed with a quilt sheltering most of his body and a soft pillow under his head. His ponderous eyelids fluttered open, but was blinded by the arriving light from the ceiling. He shut his eyes again, irritated by the aggravating brightness. Even when the darkness had masked his eyesight, he still felt the bothersome glow beaming on top of him. A part of him really wanted to close his eyes again, not waking up until he absolutely had to. Sleeping felt like heaven to him right now.

He felt like the sound of the birds and the cars outside the sanctum were all illusions. He felt like they were figments of his own imagination that'd soon fade if he refused to think about it any longer. He felt like a muscular force was making him frozen to the bed. It's as if he had something on his eyes that would always force them to close, even if he wanted them to open. It was itchy, prickly, and tingling. Were these the eye boogers that always stay in a person's eyes?

Wait, wait, no! He's not supposed to stay in bed right now!! He's going to be late for what's going to happen later on, either today or the next days. Shrugging off his sleepiness, the man broke through the perdu ribbon of material keeping him strapped to the bed and sat up. He closed his eyes as he rubbed them to get rid of the eye boogers, and after doing so, he opened them again. He kept on forcing his eyes open, but his eyelids always tried to force him into closing him. He closed his eyes tightly again, and then he opened them widely.

Stephen Strange looked around the room that he just slept in; his room. What time was it? He looked at the clock that he had hung on the wall, noticing that it was only 6:30 AM. He woke up too early, he realized. Still in his half-asleep state, he turned his head around to look at the window. Turns out the birds and the cars weren't hallucinations after all. Maybe his sleepiness made him think differently than he normally does, or was it because of the time loops? Wait, there was one thing missing...

"Where are you? Come here."

Strange's cape came running to him from the closet as soon as he called it out. There was something the cape knew that he didn't, and he needed to know something right away. When it arrived to the side of Strange's bed, the cape looked unusually nervous, as if Strange was going to do something to it.

The doctor shook his head to prove it wrong. After all, all he wanted was to ask his cape a question. And a very important question at that. A question that cannot be avoided even if someone wanted to.

"What day is it?" He asked, clutching the pile of cloth under him. "What year? What month? What week?!"

The cape looked like it was getting nervous, rubbing it's two hands (fabric?) together as if taken aback by Strange's sudden question. It looked like it was trying to say something, but Strange couldn't understand what his cape was trying to say. As long as it refused to communicate with him, there was no way he could receive a reply.

Then, the cape began speaking to Strange in a way no one else could understand. This was something that could only happen between the both of them.

"W-What?" Strange couldn't believe what he just heard. "Two weeks before the infinity war? I only have that much time left before Thanos comes in the picture?!"