Strange shoots a curious look downward to where his feet sit beneath his desk, mouth half-shaping the baffled words what’s wrong with my shoes?, but he averts that flippancy at the last moment. It’s not important. There’s enough of the professional in him that he veers right to the more pressing matter at hand, swerving past the insults.

“I know a bit about willpower, Barrow, and that’s what you’re going to have to display right now. You are on day three. It’s going to be shit. We both knew, from the get-go, that it was going to be shit. This is not new information.”