Jay sighed while his shoulders sagged with exhaustion that went bone-deep. "Don't worry about it, Eric. I've..."

  The communication cut off mid-sentence as if something catastrophic happening on the other end that simply erased the connection.

  For one heartbeat, the Helicarrier deck was completely still, everyone frozen in that terrible moment of anticipation where you know something awful is about to happen but can't yet see it.

  Then the entire northern horizon ignited like someone had set the sky on fire.

  The explosion erupted from deep in the Atlantic Ocean as a pillar of light and heat that climbed toward the heavens. The blast cloud formed a mushroom shape that dwarfed anything Earth had seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, expanding outward in concentric rings that turned water to steam and air to plasma. The Helicarrier rocked violently from the shockwave despite being miles away, throwing people to the deck while alarms shrieked warnings about radiation spikes and structural damage. The sky itself seemed to split with energy discharge that painted everything in shades of orange and white.

  "No," Steve breathed while his face drained of all color, hands gripping the railing hard enough to bend metal. "Please tell me that's not..."

  "A nuclear detonation," Hill finished while her voice came out hollow and her tablet went crazy with radiation readings and seismic data. "That's multiple megatons at minimum. That Cabal's submarine Xavier had flagged? That was at the epicenter."

  Jay's expression remained carefully neutral, but something flickered behind his eyes. "Tch."

  Domino caught that look. "Jay, what are you hiding? That face says you know something we don't, and I really need you to share with the rest of us right now."

  Jay scratched his cheek while his gaze wouldn't quite meet hers. "Well, I knew Sinister's playbook inside and out from studying his research. It was only a matter of time before he tried to get his hands on Nathan or Franklin's genetic material for cloning experiments." His voice dropped and became quieter. "So when I delivered both of them, when I had access to their DNA during the birth process, I installed a genetic failsafe. Very simple code and very easy to hide. If anyone ever cloned them and tried to activate the clone, the genome would destabilize catastrophically."

  He gestured at the mushroom cloud still rising on the horizon. "But I didn't account for those idiots combining both kids' genetic material into a single organism. Nathan's omega-level telekinetic potential plus Franklin's reality-warping capabilities, all compressed into one body with my failsafe triggering in both genetic sequences simultaneously."

  Silence fell across the deck like a physical weight, broken only by the distant rumble of the explosion's aftermath rolling across the ocean.

  When he turned, he saw the rest of them staring at him wide-eyed as if saying 'Really?'

  Jay's face tightened. "What? They're both babies I helped bring into this world. Franklin's my godson, for God's sake." His voice rose with each word. "Sinister's been cloning mutants for decades, creating armies of disposable soldiers, experimenting on children like they're lab rats. What was I supposed to do, just hope he wouldn't try? Just trust that someone who's murdered thousands wouldn't go after two of the most powerful mutants ever born?"

  "You could have told someone," Steve said quietly while his blue eyes carried the weight of moral certainty that had guided him through seven decades. "Could have done literally anything other than turning children into walking time bombs."

  Before the argument could escalate further, Domino gasped and stumbled.

  Her eyes pulsed black like ink spreading through the white sclera. At the same moment, the Death Stone in her hand ignited with violet radiance that cast dancing shadows across the deck, and her consciousness was yanked sideways into the space between life and death again.

  The vision hit her, overwhelming her senses with information.

  She stood at the edge between the physical and spiritual worlds, in that liminal space where the dead lingered when they couldn't move on. It was a gray wasteland that stretched infinitely in all directions, filled with translucent figures that wandered aimlessly or stood frozen in their moment of death. They rotted slowly without Lady Death's guidance, trapped in an existence that was neither life nor true death.

  Didi's warning made perfect sense now. But that horror, as profound as it was, wasn't what made Domino's heart clench.

  A child's cry cut through the gray wasteland, terrified and so utterly lost that it physically hurt to hear.

  Domino's gaze snapped toward the sound, and she saw him: a little boy who appeared no older than five years with blue eyes that seemed to glow against his pale skin and brown hair that fell across his forehead in soft waves. He was crying with the desperate, hiccupping sobs of someone too young to understand what was happening to them, small hands reaching out toward nothing and seeking comfort that wasn't coming.

  The boy stood alone in that wasteland of the dead, so impossibly small and vulnerable, and when his gaze found Domino across the distance between worlds, relief flickered across his tear-stained face as if he'd finally found something familiar in the endless gray horror.

  His hands moved towards her, then he crawled while crying, but before Domino could reach him, her vision went white as she was yanked back to the physical plane, gasping for air like she'd been drowning.

  "Dom!" Jay's hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her while his eyes scanned her face with concern. "What happened? Is it the Death Stone?" He reached for the artifact, trying to pull it from her grip, but his fingers passed through it like it was made of smoke rather than matter, and the stone remained firmly in her palm no matter how hard he tried.

  Before Jay could spiral into further questions, Domino grabbed his arm with her free hand.

  She squeezed his arm harder, her grip probably painful but she couldn't make herself let go. "Jay, we need to go to the Cabal's submarine. Right now. There's a child there somehow, at the epicenter, and if we don't get to him soon..."

  Jay's expression shifted from confusion to immediate understanding. "The clone? But that doesn't make sense, if my failsafe triggered, there shouldn't be anything left, the cellular structure should have completely..."

  "Jay." Her voice cut through his spiral. "Do you trust me?"

  Jay nodded without skipping a beat. "Together?" He extended his hand.

  "Together." Domino took it without hesitation, lacing her fingers through his.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Blue light exploded around them as the Power Broker and his partner vanished from the Helicarrier deck in a flash.

  Epicenter of the Explosion

  They materialized in the sky above the epicenter, and the heat hit them like a physical wall even through Domino's protective barrier.

  A translucent sphere woven from countless crimson strings surrounded them, each thread pulsing with quantum manipulation that bent reality itself to create a pocket of survivable conditions. The sphere shimmered like a soap bubble, refracting light from the nuclear fire into rainbow patterns. Inside, the air remained breathable and cool despite the inferno raging just beyond the barrier, and the roar of burning ocean and superheated air was muffled to a dull thunder.

  Below them, the ocean boiled as water turned to steam in massive columns that rose toward the sky. What remained of the submarine's wreckage was scattered across a mile-wide radius, twisted metal glowing cherry-red from residual heat. Radiation warnings would have been screaming if anyone had instruments to measure them.

  And in the exact center of the devastation, suspended in the heart of the nuclear fire, they saw him.

  The child, no more than five years old in appearance, floated in a sphere of his own, an unconscious protective bubble generated by powers he probably didn't know he possessed. His blue eyes were squeezed shut against pain, his small mouth open in a scream that continued even though his voice had long since given out. Brown hair that might have been soft under different circumstances was plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood, and his skin showed radiation burns that peeled away in layers.

  Domino sensed it even before Jay did, felt it through the Death Stone's connection to the spiritual plane: the child's soul was half-detached, one foot in the world of the living and one in the gray wasteland of the dead. His body fought desperately to survive on pure instinct while his consciousness drifted, lost and confused, caught in the terrible space between existence and oblivion.

  "He's trapped between worlds," Domino said while her face went pale. "His body's here but part of him is stuck in the spiritual plane. That's why he's suffering like this; he can't fully exist in either state."

  "Then we need to bring him back completely," Jay said in near panic. "Can you bring him up here?"

  Domino nodded as her hands moved in patterns that made reality ripple. Crimson strings reached down toward the child, with invisible hands as gentle as she could make them.

  The protective bubble around the boy didn't resist, recognizing on some instinctive level that these weren't threats, and the child rose through the nuclear fire toward them.

  As he drew closer, the true extent of the damage became clear.

  The boy's skin was burned badly in places, angry red and black mixing in patterns that would scar if left untreated. His small chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid breaths. His hands, so small they could barely wrap around an adult's finger, were clenched into fists so tight the nails had drawn blood from his palms, and they trembled with pain or fear or both.

  The scream finally stopped as his unconscious body was pulled into their protective sphere, replaced by quiet whimpering that somehow sounded worse.

  Jay's heart nearly broke as his hands moved immediately, green light of his Healing Aura spreading from his palms to cover the child's broken body. The light was warm and gentle, carrying the promise of repair and restoration, but as it touched the burns and began to work, Jay's expression shifted from determination to confusion.

  "It's not working properly," he said while his hands trembled against the child's chest. "The healing is starting, I can feel the cellular regeneration beginning, but it's like there's nothing there to anchor to. The body's healing but the person inside is... he's not fully present. It's as if a part of him is missing."

  Domino understood immediately, remembered the vision of the child's soul trapped in the gray wasteland, and she knew what had to be done.

  "Step back, Jay." Her voice carried authority that came from certainty rather than confidence. "The child's body is here, but his soul is stuck halfway in the spiritual plane."

  She looked at the Death Stone still pulsing in her hand, felt its weight both physical and metaphysical.

  "I need to bring his soul back to his body," Domino said quietly. "The Death Stone can reach into that space between worlds and guide him home."

  "You will," Jay said with absolute conviction. "I trust you, Dom. I trusted you with 41,000 lives, and you brought them all back. I trust you with this child's life too."

  Domino nodded, took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her racing heart, and pressed the Death Stone directly to the child's forehead.

  The effect was immediate and profound.

  The Death Stone flared with dark violet radiance so intense it hurt to look at directly, and black veins spread from the point of contact across the child's skin like ink through water. But unlike corruption, these veins pulsed with gentle purpose, mapping the child's nervous system and following it down to the quantum level where matter and energy and consciousness became indistinguishable.

  Domino's eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, then even those flooded with black as her consciousness followed the Death Stone's power into the spiritual plane.

  She stood once more in the gray wasteland, but this time she had purpose and direction. The child was there, right where she'd seen him before, still crying with those terrible, broken sobs.

  "Hey there, sweetheart," Domino's voice echoed across the gray space, and the child's head snapped toward her with desperate hope. "I know you're scared. I know this place is awful and confusing. But I'm going to help you, okay? I'm going to take you home."

  The boy reached for her with small, trembling hands, and Domino took them gently. His skin was cold in this place, but his grip was surprisingly strong, the desperation of someone drowning finally finding something solid to hold onto.

  "I want my mommy," the child whispered while fresh tears tracked down his translucent cheeks. "I want to go home. I don't like it here. The gray people scare me."

  "I know, baby. I know." Domino's voice was gentle despite her mercenary training. "But you're going to be okay now. There are people who are going to make sure you're safe. You just have to trust me and hold on tight, alright?"

  The child nodded while his grip tightened on her hands, and Domino pulled.

  The Death Stone's power flowed through her like a river made of midnight, gentle but inexorable, and the child's soul came with her as she reversed the trajectory that had pulled him into this terrible place. They moved through layers of reality that shouldn't exist, through spaces between heartbeats and thoughts, through the fundamental boundary that separated living from dead.

  And then they were back, and the child gasped as his soul slammed into his body with force that made his small frame arch.

  The black veins pulsed once more, twice, and then faded as the Death Stone's work completed. The burns on his skin began to heal properly now that there was someone inside the flesh to guide the regeneration, Jay's Healing Aura finally finding purchase. Charred tissue sloughed away and was replaced by healthy pink skin, damaged lungs cleared and expanded with full breaths, and trembling hands slowly unclenched as pain faded.

  The transformation took minutes that felt like hours, each second stretching as they watched new life replace death, as a child who'd been suffering found peace in unconsciousness that was actually restful rather than the gray horror of soul-separation.

  Finally, the boy went quiet in sleep, his small chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of someone exhausted but alive and whole. His face, which had been twisted with agony, now looked peaceful.

  "He's going to be okay," Jay said quietly while relief flooded his voice. "He's alive and whole and.... he's going to be okay."

  Domino's free hand moved to his hair, running through it in a gesture that was both comforting and grounding. "We need to get him out of here, get him somewhere safe where we can figure out who he is and what comes next." Her voice softened. "He deserves that much."

  Jay nodded while he carefully scooped the sleeping boy into his arms, cradling him with surprising gentleness. "Together?"

  "Always together."

  Blue light began to build around them, reality warping preparing to fold space and carry them back.

  But before the teleportation completed, Domino's hand moved almost on instinct, and her fingers flicked outward toward the boiling ocean below.

  Four specks of black light fell from her palm like seeds being planted, each one carrying a fragment of the Death Stone's power. They disappeared into the churning water without fanfare, sinking toward the ocean floor where the Cabal's submarine had been scattered.

  The light from Jay's teleportation flared bright enough to blind, and then the epicenter of the explosion was empty except for nuclear fire and four small lights sinking into dark water, carrying lost souls home to rest.

  And somewhere in the quantum foam between dimensions, in a space that existed in the margins of reality, Didi watched through eyes that saw across infinite worlds.

  She smiled, and the expression carried profound sadness alongside pride.

  "Good luck, sweetie," she whispered to the girl who'd just accepted a burden no mortal should have to carry. "You're going to need it."