"O Hara!"

Migeul O'Hara looked up to see who it was who called his name. There were guard and such after the numerous attacks on him in the past so getting in was not easy, but he was nothing if not prepared. He knew the voice, but it had been a long time since he had heard it and he gasped.

"Doom!" he said, the breath dying in his throat.

"Breathe," Von Doom commanded, looking at him. "For a leader among men, you're not giving a very good impression."

"You surprised me, Victor," he said, regaining his composure, a little chagrined at being lectured on leading. "And I never asked to be a leader."

"Which is why you will be the greatest of all," Doom said and Miguel noticed he no longer wore his mask, and that his real face was exposed to the air. Perhaps this wasn't the man he had known, had fought with and against.

"What can I do for you?" he asked. "It's not every day that the Sorcerer Supreme enters my office." Doom gave a thin smile.

"I suspected you were up to date on my return."

"It helps to keep a finger on the pulse if you're a leader among men," Miguel replied.

"Of course," Doom nodded and sat down. "I need access to Level 27." Miguel's eyes went wide.

"Level 27," he said. "You know about Level 27? Of course you do. Why not just enter?"

"I could, but I believe this is more expedient," Doom said. "Level 27 is the most top secret project Alchemax ever undertook, as I remember."

"That's the truth," said Miguel. "Time travel..."

"Based on my designs," said Doom. "I need to get to the time platform."

"It doesn't work," said Miguel. "They were never able to make it work."

"That is because they are not Doom," Victor said. "There is a battle coming, O'Hara. A battle that could mean the end of everything we have fought and died for."

"What's going on?" asked Miguel.

"One man has the answer," Doom replied. "And he is currently outside the timestream."

"And you're going to use the time machine to find out what he knows." Doom nodded and Miguel thought for a moment. "Let's go down to Level 27."

"Doom is coming," Gahur said, as Kulan Gath watched and waited.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, he is."

"Are you that unconcerned?" demanded Gahur.

"Yes," said Gath. "I think it's time we showed Doom the truth of who he really is. The Harbinger comes and we will delay Doom enough in order for him to be of no use."

"Indeed?" Doom called, appearing in a flash of light on a time platform. Gahur looked onwards in horror as the Sorcerer Supreme stepped off the platform. "Kang's former citadel."

"Yes," said Gath, gesturing to his partner. "Sneaky of you, Victor. Using the time platform to join us after the moment we saw you go down to Level 27."

"I knew you were watching and I also knew you would be preparing," said Doom. "You have never been that smart, Kulan Gath, and now it will cost you..."

"Really," said Gath and he cast a spell of his own, and Doom countered with one of his own.

"You are no match for me, Kulan Gath," sneered Doom.

"Perhaps," said Gath, "but you are no match for the technology of this place." Ghaur pressed something and Doom was held in place. "Kang certainly wasn't and this was his home."

"Kang was fool," said Doom as he struggled against the energy fields that prevented him from moving.

"As you have been, Victor," said Gath. "You remember Margaretta?" Doom's eyes narrowed thinking to the geneticist that had engineered Eric Czerny to think he was Doom. He had loved her, and she had loved him but their love was almost a battle, a game of one-upmanship, and Doom did not play games. Their conflicted feelings created a wedge between them and had resulted in so much damage.

"Yes," said Doom. "My past is not in question."

"Yes it is," said Gath. "It has been up for debate for some time. You outlived the Age of Heroes, and were then being manipulated by the Shadows."

"I know the Shadows. I hunted them, fought them..."

"Died at their hand," said Gath. "You believe you know the story. Now learn the truth - the Shadow Lords were here. You led your forces in to battle against us."

"You," whispered Doom. "You were the ones who were using me."

"The Phalanx were coming," said Gath. "You were the only one who could hope to stop them and so we set things in motion, plaguing you from beyond the veil and forcing you to leave Latveria to find us."

"I lost," said Doom. "I attacked you in Purgatory and I lost."

"Yes," said Gath. "Admittedly it was close, and much of Purgatory was destroyed in the effort but Kang was called the conqueror for a reason and your forces were defeated, crushed and destroyed in our place. However we knew how dangerous you could be and we tortured you to see what you had done to ensure the protection of humanity against the Phalanx. Yet you would not break. Even using the Space Phantoms as images of people you knew, people who would help you we could not get you to give up the information we demanded. We could not break you, and your old frail body died."

"Impossible," said Doom, yet he remembered dying, yet he was young and alive. "I have been thought dead before and returning younger and restored was never part of my return. Life can be restored, but time has ever been something we cannot beat."

"Not really," said Ghaur. "Life was easily restored to you, yes and time can be manipulated, but to an extent you have not yet discovered for we simply turned back time. It was something Kang found was possible after the Destiny War with the Time Keepers. When they turned time forward and accelerated his change from Kang to Immortus, it figured that he could use the devices in reverse as well."

"The Destiny War," mused Doom. He had eventually learnt of that from the Avengers files when he had been in the final battle with Reed Richards. "Interesting."

"Yes," said Gath. "The Destiny War was aptly named as it gave rise to greater destinies. The process was not without cost, and it ravaged your mind. Your core personality was in tact, but your memories, your past was damaged. We spent a long time trying to put you back together again but we underestimated your resourcefulness and you escaped, fleeing to 2099 with fragmented memories and a younger body, but your intellect still in tact."

"So that is why I remember being old..."

"Yes," said Ghaur, "but you were already ahead of the game, even before the battle."

"Czerny," said Doom with a small sense of satisfaction.

"You created someone to take over for you should you not return, much as you did with Kristoff decades before, and Margaretta altered him to be as much Doom as you yourself were." Gath smiled. "We are not so dissimilar, Doom, in what lengths we will go to in what we believe."

"Once, perhaps," Doom admitted. "But time's have changed."

"Yes," said Ghaur, "however your return was not what we had planned and a new plan was required. Using Space Phantoms we managed to convince Margaretta that she was one of the Shadow Lords. It was quite easy to present a false you to her and in your... relationship, she killed you and replaced you with Eric Czerny."

"The problem with doing that was the images on the screens would have changed and you would have seen yourself torturing Czerny," said Gath, "however it worked in our favour to further confuse you as to who you truly were."

"So, I was indeed outmanoeuvred." Doom spoke softly. "But the older version of myself

"Was a Space Phantom," said Gath. "The stakes were higher than you knew and time was running out. The Harbinger's time was coming and so were the Phalanx. It was time to restore you, as you were not exactly the man you had been and that was the Doom we required."

"Of course, you weren't told everything," said Ghaur. "That would have been too easy, and you did everything that was required of you, Von Doom. Now the Harbinger will come, the Sons of Set will rise and this world will fall as have all the others before it."

"You have me at a disadvantage," said Doom, looking behind them.

"Yes," said Kulan Gath. "We do..." Then he saw Doom smiling. "What is this?"

"A back up plan," said a voice and Gath turned to find his face covered in webbing and Ghaur simply looked onwards as they were joined by the hero Spider-Man.

"Welcome, O'Hara," said Doom. "If you please?" Miguel smiled behind his mask and he threw the staff he held, which turned in to the hammer Mjolnir and smashed the console, freeing Doom from his bonds and the hammer returned to the man who held it. Ghaur ran from the room.

"He's mine," said Spider-Man and shot off after him, leaving Doom and Kulan Gath alone in the room.

"Now," said Doom, "where were we?"

"You'll not stop the coming of the Harbinger," Gath said and the two sorcerers threw spell after spell at each other, however there was one thing that differentiated the two of them. Kulan Gath was fighting for Set the Serpent God, and Doom was fighting for revenge. He had been used, manipulated as if he were a chess piece in a game.

"You made a serious mistake," said the Sorcerer Supreme, watching, waiting and getting the measure of his enemy. "I am Doom - and Doom does not play games!" Gath screamed as Doom and it hit him square and he looked down at his feet. Slowly they began to turn to wood. "You will live forever as a tree, Kulan Gath, and you will be aware of what is going on around you as I destroy your plans."

"The Harbinger..." Gath started but could not continue as the transformation completed.

"Is next," said Doom and he looked at the time platform that had brought O'Hara there. He had told him if he was not back in ten minutes to come after him, knowing full well he would not be back before then. He still manipulated people, he mused, even though he believed he had changed, but one task remained and he altered the controls. Ghaur would not escape his fate. Doom smiled and O'Hara returned, the High Priest of the Deviants slung over his shoulder.

"Where's the other one?"

"Contemplating existence," said Doom. "Put him on the platform." Miguel nodded and then Doom sent the machine away.

"Where did you send him?"

"Limbo," said Doom. "In due course he will become a Space Phantom, forever altered by the timelessness of the place."

"Won't he come back?" asked Miguel. "The time platform..."

"Will no longer work," said Doom. "I ensured it would disintegrate after it's second journey."

"I assume you did the same with this one," said Miguel and Doom nodded. "Fair enough. Time travel's too dangerous."

"Exactly," said Doom, looking at the tree. "Some things should never be used by amateurs." Then they stepped on to the platform and went home to prepare for the coming battle.

Guiseppe Balsamo, Cagliostro, sat in the domicile of the Watcher, using the vast technologies that he did not fully understand to watch and review the world below and he could see things happening, things he had tried to prevent and he wondered if he was indeed too late to do anything. He was being watched by the Moon Knight and Doom's consort as well, but he had been watched before and he knew he had done nothing to earn their trust.

He had been the one who had allowed the Phalanx to come to Earth and they had almost succeeded in wiping out the planet, making in an outpost for the Technarch and they would have been able to defeat the Harbinger and perhaps even the Sons themselves, by making them part of the techno-organic collective. It had been a perfect plan, but it had been thwarted by those who did not know the full picture and now they needed another means.

The Darkhold had to be their somewhere and he had started looking in the old New York, in the ruins of the home of Doctor Strange but he had found nothing and now he was broadening the search, but it was a large planet and there was very little time left.

"I can't do it," he muttered. "Doom asks the impossible."

"He's very good at that," said Xina, "but he only asks of you what he would do himself. After the call from Dust in Xavier City, he knew he had to find Kulan Gath and remove him."

"I wonder if he succeeded," asked Sarah. "I don't know much about this Kulan Gath, but I get the sensation of fear when his name is mentioned."

"That would be Khonshu," said Cagliostro. "Gath works for Set, his old adversary. It also explains why the Moon God restored his Knight after all these decades."

"It would serve you better to keep looking," said Xina. "Doom doesn't like disappointment."

"So I understand," said Cagliostro, and continued the search. "Damn humanity," he said after a moment. "They have no use for books anymore!"

"Then maybe you're looking in the wrong place," said Xina. "Maybe in cyberspace."

"I don't know this cyberspace," said Cagliostro.

"Then you'll need a guide," she said. "Come with me."

"Where are we going?" Cagilostro asked, unsure of what was being requested here.

"My offices have a link to cyberspace. It was badly damaged when the Phalanx came, but there are still places we can go, people we can see."

"The Ghostworks," said Sarah and Xina nodded.

"We're going to find the Ghost Rider."