Lisa gave a tiny, slow shake of her head. "I have... to speak," she gasped. "You are... acting like a machine again, giant."Jonah looked down. He felt a sharp sting of guilt. "I am trying to save us," Jonah defended himself softly."You want... to hit it," Lisa whispered. She coughed, and a tiny drop of blood appeared on her pale lips. Elena quickly wiped it away with a clean cloth. "You want to hit it because hitting is... easy. Waiting is hard."Jonah knew she was right. Punching a monster was simple. Standing still and watching the world end was torture."Kevin is right," Lisa breathed. Her dark eyes looked deeply into Jonah’s brown eyes. "You cannot punch a hole in the universe. If you use your new power... if you turn on the pain machine... you will feed it.""Feed it?" Jonah asked, confused."The black core eats emptiness," Lisa explained. Every word cost her a lot of energy. She had to pause to catch her breath. "It eats fear. It eats broken connections. If you use your pain..

"What are you doing?" Elena asked, looking up at him with wide, scared eyes."I am going to fix the problem without hitting the core," Jonah said.He walked back to the center of the room. He stood ten feet away from the massive black sphere.He looked up at the high, stone ceiling of the cavern.Directly above the black sphere, the ceiling was made of thick, heavy gray rocks. Some of the rocks were loose from the earlier earthquake.Jonah raised his empty rifle."Dad, what is your plan?" Kevin asked nervously."If we smash a glass of poison, it spills," Jonah said, repeating Kevin’s analogy. "So, we are not going to smash the glass. We are going to bury the glass. We are going to bury it so deep under millions of tons of solid rock that the signal can never escape. We are going to put the lid on the box."Kevin’s eye went completely wide. "You want to collapse the ceiling? You want to drop the mountain on top of it?""Yes," Jonah said."But Dad!" Kevin cried out. "If you drop the cei

Jonah felt like a walking sun. The power was intoxicating. It was a massive, dangerous drug rushing through his veins. But this time, he did not let the power control him. He controlled it. He kept his mind focused on his love for his family. He used his human heart to steer the machine.Jonah raised his giant, glowing right fist. He charged forward. His heavy boots slammed against the invisible floor. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. He ran directly toward the massive black sphere.The black core sensed the danger. It sensed the massive amount of energy running toward it. The core reacted.It did not shoot a laser. It did not send monsters. The core attacked the environment itself. The black sphere destabilized violently.BZZZZZT!A massive wave of sick purple light shot out of the core. Suddenly, the world turned completely upside down.Jonah was running forward, but his next step did not hit the invisible floor. The gravity shifted completely.WHOOSH!Jonah fell upward. "AGH!" Jonah yelled in

The climb up to the surface was long and hard. Jonah walked up the massive stone stairs. His heavy boots hit the rocks with a dull, tired sound. Thud. Thud. Thud.His massive right arm was wrapped around Kevin. He was helping his son walk. Kevin leaned heavily against his father. Kevin’s broken ribs hurt with every single step, but he did not complain.Behind them, Elena and Marcus helped Lisa. Lisa was awake, but she was incredibly weak. Her face was the color of pale milk. She dragged her feet. Elena held her right arm, and Marcus held her left arm.They walked out of the deep, dark hole in the earth. They stepped out into the open world.For the first time in many days, they saw the real sky.The dark yellow fog of the Dead Zone was completely gone. The thick, sick clouds had vanished. The terrible giant bone spine was just a pile of broken white dust in the valley below.The sky above them was still filled with gray ash, but the sun was trying to shine through. A thin, pale whit

There was no hiding from it. You could not build a wall high enough to stop the air from turning yellow. You could not build a bunker deep enough to stop the ground from turning into meat.If they did not find a way to stop it, every single plant, animal, and human being on planet Earth would be digested, melted down, and turned into a corrupted monster in less than a month.Jonah stared at the concrete floor. He felt a massive, crushing wave of guilt. He had caused this. He had thrown the punch. He had cracked the core.In his effort to save his son, he had doomed the entire human race."I broke the world," Jonah whispered. His broad shoulders slumped forward. The giant wolf suddenly looked very small.Kevin stood up quickly. He walked over to his father. He grabbed Jonah’s thick arm."You did not break the world, Dad," Kevin said fiercely. "Colonel Rask broke it when he fed his fear to the virus. The virus was already building the black core. If you did not crack it, the core would