by Lee Bacon
“What do you think will become of her, Stanley?” I asked. “Is she destined grow up to be like her parents? Like the other mutants I battled?”
“I am afraid I was not programmed to answer that question, sir,” replied the robot.
I stared down at Mizzie’s sleeping form. For a brief moment, in the dim light of the vehicle’s interior, she looked like any human baby.
When she awoke a few minutes later, her wails filled the interior of the vehicle.
“I think she’s hungry,” I said to Stanley. “Pull over and I’ll feed her.”
Stanley parked the SUV in the parking lot of an abandoned hardware store. I removed a silver spoon from my utility belt and inspected the labels of each baby food bottle.
“How about we sample some apples and peaches?” I suggested.
“Blurph,” said Mizzie.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Spooning out a little of the squishy food, I held it close to her lips. Mizzie sniffed, then made a face that clearly meant yuck.
“Not a fan of apples and peaches, huh?” I said. “No problem. In that case, let’s try the veggie select.”
I offered a spoonful from the other jar, but the reaction was much the same. She wasn’t interested.
“Here comes the armor-plated, titanium-reinforced hover SUV!” I spiraled the spoon toward Mizzie’s mouth. “Coming in for a landing on the rooftop hovercraft port.”
Pressing her lips together tightly, the baby watched as I waved the spoonful of mush in front of her. I felt my frustration rising. But I wasn’t giving up just yet.
“Perhaps I need to disable your defense settings,” I said. “Let me just enter the security code.”
I poked her chubby gray belly with my finger. Mizzie chuckled. Suddenly, a memory sprang to mind: twelve years earlier, going through this same routine with Sophie when she was a baby.
While Mizzie laughed gleefully, I brought the spoon close to her lips. “That’s better,” I said. “Now open the hatch doors and prepare for the—OUCH!”
Mizzie finally took a bite. But it wasn’t the mush on the spoon she was interested in. It was me. I dropped the spoon as Mizzie chomped down on my arm with her single ultra-sharp tooth. My body armor absorbed most of the bite, but not all.
“Egad, that stings!” I howled in pain. “Release me at once!”
I flapped my arm frantically, but this only seemed to make her clamp down harder.
“She seems to have mistaken you for baby food,” Stanley observed, his pearl-colored eyes glowing with amusement.
“This isn’t funny, Stanley!” I screamed, wildly waving the arm with the mutant attached to it. “Help me before she devours me whole!”
“Certainly, sir.”
The robot reached out and grabbed hold of Mizzie. She giggled as he set her back down on the seat.
“We’ve got to find someone who knows more about this kind of thing.” I rubbed my sore arm. “And I think I know who to call.”
“Who might that be, sir?”
I took another look at the baby. Her eyes sparkled as she laughed.
“Get the Dread Duo on the line,” I said.
As two of the most feared supervillains on earth, the Dread Duo had been my archnemeses throughout much of my career. For years, our interactions had pretty much exclusively involved us trying to kill, debilitate or capture each other. It wasn’t the healthiest relationship.
But all that had changed recently when we’d found ourselves on the same end of a fight against the evil billionaire Phineas Vex. The altercation had ended with Vex buried beneath a mountain of burning rubble, me discovering that my daughter was friends with the Dread Duo’s son and all of us carpooling back to Sheepsdale.
We hadn’t seen each other since. And now, every time I flew off to thwart another evil plot, there was a worried little part of my brain that wondered whether the Dread Duo was involved. Would we return to being enemies, or were we something else entirely now?
Things were a lot easier when all we had to think about was trying to kill each other.
After sharing our ride, we’d exchanged numbers, though none of us had used them.
Until now.
Emily Dread answered on the second ring.
“Uh … hello, Mrs.—er, I mean … Emily,” I stuttered. “This is Captain Justice.”
There was a sudden clank on the other line. It sounded like the phone had just been dropped.
“Captain Justice,” said Emily Dread (also known as the Botanist) a second later. “This is a … surprise. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Except that—well … I have a question.” I cleared my throat. “Would you happen to know what to feed a baby mutant?”
“Huh?”
Perhaps I needed to start from the beginning. With Mizzie cooing and kicking beside me, I described the strange events of the day: the battle with Abominator and his horde of mutants, the baby in the street, the flesh wound I had sustained during mealtime. By the time I was done, Emily Dread’s husband, Dr. Dominick Dread, had joined the conversation on an extension.
“This is exactly why we never use mutants for our schemes,” he said. “Sure, they can be horrifying and bloodthirsty, but there are also downsides.”
“It’s illegal to create humanoid mutants,” Emily Dread began, “but that doesn’t stop villains like Abominator from paying rogue scientists huge sums of money to genetically develop cross-species hybrid mutations.”
“They’re raised under the worst conditions imaginable,” Dominick Dread continued. “Kept in cages, abused, forced to fight for their survival. It’s all done to remove every last trace of their humanity. By the time they’re adults, these poor mutants have become mindless killers.”
I glanced at Mizzie. I couldn’t allow such an awful future to engulf her.
“What can I do to stop that from happening?” I asked.
“Capturing Abominator was a good start,” replied Emily Dread. “He was one of the worst mutant rights violators. He must have many more mutants locked away in his lair. No telling what’ll happen to them now that he’s in prison.”
I squeezed the armrest until it snapped loose in my grip. “Can you tell me where to find his lair?”
The pause on the other end of the line lasted so long that I began to wonder if we’d lost our connection. Finally, Dominick Dread spoke up. “Very well. But you didn’t hear it from us.”
I knew what had to be done. But first, we needed to pick up a quick bite to eat.
Before hanging up, the Dread Duo had recommended a few dishes baby mutants might enjoy. Stanley pulled the SUV into the line of cars at the drive-through of a nearby fast-food restaurant.
I rolled down my window as we pulled up to the oversized menu board and a male voice crackled from a speaker:
“Welcome to JumboBurger. How can I help you?”
“Greetings!” I leaned out the window. “I would like to order a Jumbo Deluxe Burger, but without the pickles, lettuce, ketchup, tomatoes, onions, Jumbo Sauce or bun.”
The speaker crackled for a moment before the voice spoke up. “So you just want … the patty?”
“Precisely!”
“Whatever you say, buddy. Pull around to the window.”
Stanley navigated the SUV around the side of the building and up to a window, where an actual human being was waiting—a teenager, with greasy hair and greasier skin. When he caught sight of me, his eyes grew wide.
“I can’t believe it’s you!” he exclaimed. “I used to have all your stuff! The Captain Justice Pump-Action Water Cannon, the battery-operated Wristband of Justice, the Halloween costume—”
“My patty?” I prompted.
“Whuh?” The employee’s pimply brow furrowed in confusion. “Oh, you mean your order. Yeah, a Jumbo Deluxe Burger—hold everything but the patty?”
“That is correct. I would like to pay with currency.”
I gave the employee a stack of bills. He sta
red at the money as if I’d just handed him Abominator’s Radiation Spear.
“This is like eight hundred bucks,” he said, counting out the bills.
“Is that enough?” I asked.
“Uh … yeah. That should cover it.” The employee handed me my hamburger in a bag, along with nearly all the money I’d given him, plus a few coins.
While Stanley drove, I removed the hamburger patty from the bag and held it out for Mizzie.
“Here comes the heat-seeking hamburger,” I said while twirling the meat in front of her. “It’s locked in on the target and will soon—”
CHOMP!
In one lightning-fast motion, Mizzie lunged and devoured the jumbo patty in a single bite.
Abominator’s lair was several hours away. Stanley switched the SUV into hover mode, and while clouds rolled past the windows, the baby and I napped in the backseat. I jolted awake at the sound of Stanley’s voice.
“We are approaching our destination, sir.”
“Very good,” I mumbled sleepily. Straightening my cape, I glanced out the front window. Up ahead, a mountain rose high into the air. We were headed right for it.
Trees no longer grew at the elevation we were flying. The mountainside was rocky and gray, dotted with patches of snow.
Mizzie let out an anxious cry and covered her eyes as the SUV continued its course.
I reached into a pouch hanging from my utility belt and removed a small device—the same device that had fallen off Abominator that morning. Pointing it out the front window, I pressed the gray button.
All of a sudden, the face of the mountain shifted. A massive section of rocks began to rise like a garage door, revealing an opening.
The SUV soared through the opening in the side of the mountain and came to rest on the floor of Abominator’s secret lair. I climbed out of the backseat, looking across the vast room. One wall was lined with equipment, tools and extra Radiation Spears. A few hover scooters were parked in one corner. A computer terminal jutted out of another.
The Dread Duo had informed me that Abominator was a loner. No family, no henchmen. The only company he kept was with his mutants.
So then where were they?
While Stanley watched over Mizzie, I explored my surroundings. This wasn’t my first time searching an evil lair. Not even close. Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that there are certain clues to look for. Secret latches. Hidden levers. That kind of thing. And sure enough, in the back of a closet, behind a rack of spare uniforms, my fingers fumbled over a switch. Nodding with satisfaction, I pulled the switch, and …
SPLOOSH!
Green liquid poured over the interior of the closet. It must’ve been some kind of extra-strength acid, because the liquid melted Abominator’s uniforms—and the rack holding them—in an instant.
A good thing to keep in mind when searching an evil lair: Not all hidden switches open secret doors. Some of them also trigger booby traps.
Fortunately, I hopped backward just in time to avoid taking a toxic shower.
I went back to my search, checking and rechecking every possibility. But except for a couple more uncovered booby traps (flames spouting from the floor, a superhero-sized spiked flyswatter shooting from the wall), the investigation turned up nothing.
A baby’s burbling caught my attention. Turning around, I saw Mizzie sitting on the floor of the lair with Stanley watching over her.
“She was growing restless, sir,” said my butler. “I thought I would let her wander a little.”
“Very well,” I said. “Just make sure she doesn’t go near the opening.”
“That shouldn’t be a concern. As soon as I let her out of the vehicle, she rushed to this very spot, and she refuses to go anywhere else.”
Stanley’s pearl-colored eyes peered down at Mizzie as she kicked and giggled. She was pointing down at the floor in front of her with both pudgy gray hands, an intense look of concentration on her face.
“If you ask me, sir,” said Stanley, “she seems particularly interested in that part of the floor.”
I approached the two of them with bounding steps, my cape billowing behind me. “Do you think she’s trying to tell us something?”
Stanley’s gaze never shifted. “That may very well be, sir.”
“But she’s just a baby.”
“She is also the only one of us who has ever been here before.”
She did seem oddly focused on one spot of the floor. Taking a closer look, I realized that the tile she was pointing to was a darker shade of gray than the ones around it. The difference was so slight that most people would have walked right past it—just as I’d done at least a dozen times already.
“Blurph,” Mizzie said, pointing at the mismatched tile persistently. “Glooph, bloog.”
“She makes an excellent point!” I observed. Pressing the tile did nothing. Rubbing it had the same result. But when I twisted it, the tile shifted and I heard a click beneath the floor.
By instinct, I grabbed hold of Mizzie and dove sideways, protecting her from any number of booby traps that might befall us. Instead, I heard a rumbling noise, and when I looked up, a section of the wall slid sideways. Behind it was the hidden room I’d been searching for.
“You see that, Stanley?” I boomed with pride. “No villainous secret is safe from Captain Justice’s super-sleuthing!”
“Perhaps the baby deserves some credit as well,” Stanley suggested.
“I believe you’re right.” Admiring the gurgling baby in my arms, I said, “Thank you for your service, Mizzie. I don’t know whether I could’ve done it without you.”
“Glumph!” she said happily.
Putting Mizzie into Stanley’s care, I stood and cautiously entered the room we’d just discovered. But as I stepped inside, I caught my breath. In my many years of confronting supervillains, I’d never seen anything quite so disturbing.
The room was lined with cages. And each cage was crowded with mutants. They resembled the beings I’d fought earlier that day—gray skin, sharp teeth. Except these mutants were younger and far less fearsome. They ranged in age from infant to teenager. Abominator must’ve been keeping them until they were old enough—and fierce enough—to use in his schemes.
They’d been packed into their quarters so tightly that there was barely a place for any of them to sit. The cages were filthy. The smell was unbearable. Bowls that had been left out for food and water were empty.
My stomach twisted at the wretched conditions. Dr. Dread’s words echoed in my mind. It’s all done to remove every last trace of their humanity. If Abominator could abuse mutants enough, then they’d go out and abuse others. That was the objective. And judging by the mutants I’d faced this morning, it worked.
As I surveyed the misery on display, I vowed to make a better life for every being in that room. And I thought I had an idea where to start.
Removing my phone, I dialed Zimmerman’s office (I got a surprisingly good signal, considering I was inside a mountain).
“Hiya, Cap!” my business manager answered. “Didja solve that mutant problem yet?”
“Not quite. But I’m a lot closer to figuring out what needs to be done. And I was thinking—maybe I will take you up on that offer to use your beach house for a little while.”
“Terrific idea! When were you thinking about coming by?”
“Later tonight.”
Zimmerman took a surprised breath. “So soon?”
“You mentioned that it’s isolated, right?” I asked. “And ultra-secure?”
“That’s right.”
“Terrific! Because I plan to bring some guests.”
“Sure thing, Cap! How many?”
I did a quick count of the mutants in their cages. “Thirty-seven.”
Zimmerman wasn’t too thrilled when I gave him the full details of the plan. If you think he seemed unnerved by one baby mutant in his office, you can imagine how upset he was to discover that thirty-seven mutants would be staying
in his brand-new beach house.
But in the end, he agreed. I was his top client, after all. He even authorized a few additions: enough beds for all the mutants, a twenty-foot-tall fence installed around the front of his property and motion sensors on the beach to ensure that our guests could wander outside—but not too far.
Zimmerman arranged for a hover bus big enough to deliver all the captives to his beach house. On the way back, we made a quick stop at the drive-through of JumboBurger for eighty Jumbo Deluxe Burgers—minus the pickles, lettuce, ketchup, tomatoes, onions, Jumbo Sauce and buns.
After a few weeks in the beach house, the mutants’ condition had improved greatly. The looks of misery on their faces had faded; the deep pockets under their eyes had vanished. With enough food to eat, space to move around and days of sunbathing with their feet in the ocean, everyone was looking much healthier and happier.
But they couldn’t stay in the beach house forever. And so a month later, they were all on hand for the official opening of my newest philanthropic endeavor: the Captain Justice Mutant Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.
There was a time when I would’ve done anything to avoid being spotted by the media in the company of mutants (unless I had one of the mutants in a headlock). But a lot can change in a month.
On the day of the opening, I invited dozens of reporters, TV crews and photographers for the press conference. Sophie was even in the audience, looking my way with the kind of smile I rarely see on her face during these kinds of press events. I gave my daughter a wink as I approached the podium. And I wasn’t alone. In my arms was a gray-skinned baby with a tuft of black hair and one very sharp tooth.
“Thank you for coming,” I said into the microphone. “I would like to begin by introducing you to Mizzie.”
GREETINGS, READER!