NOW THAT we had him in control, the first thing I did was pull off his mask to see his face.

Lady Thunder squinted at him. "I don't recognize him. Do you?"

"No," I said as I studied the pimply-faced pre-teen boy underneath, "but we'll soon fix that."

I took a picture of him and scanned it into my computer. Within a few seconds of running it through some reverse-image searches, I found a match on Facebook.

I pointed. "Zephaniah Brooks, a twelve-year old student at Copernicus."

She poked me in the back. "You were right."

I nodded as I scrolled through photos showing him giving the middle finger, posing for class pictures, and a handful of him glowering next to a woman. "I assume this to be his mother. No photos of a father or other family members."

I admit to being somewhat disappointed. I suppose I had hoped to discover he was the mayor's son or a famous actor, not a random child.

I moved on by removing the power core, which would leave his armor useless. In its place, I plugged a new generator that I had connected to my console. It allowed me control over his exoskeleton as well as the power that ran through it.

I also took off one of the metal gloves, leaving his right hand exposed. I pointed at it. "Brutus, when I give the word, you bite that."

Brutus growled and nodded.

Once the generator was in place, I went to my console and winked at her. "I think it's time for Sleeping Beauty to awaken."

I pushed a button.

Kid Maximum woke up screaming as I sent fifty thousand volts through his body. I left the current on for a few seconds before letting go.

He gasped, whipping his head around. "Wh-What is this? Where am I?"

Lady Thunder stood in front of him, arms folded, and scowling with her most menacing expression as I gave him a toothy grin.

"Welcome to our humble lair, Kid Maximum," I said. "Or should I say 'Zephaniah?"

He jerked his head back before bending his head to let him reach his face, patting it, and narrowing his eyes. "Fine. You know who I am. Won't help you. And I prefer Zeph. So what's this all about? You wanna get your asses turned inside out by the Captain? Because that's what's gonna fucking happen."

Lady Thunder raised an eyebrow. "Brave kid."

"Or stupid," I added.

Kid Maximum snorted. "I'm not scared o' you dickheads. Captain Maximum and I have fought way worse villains than you two nobodies, and always come out on top. My advice is to let me go now before he gets here. He might even go easy on you and leave you with one of your tits intact, lady. You, Mister Mastermind, are gonna get the full court press."

I sighed while I reached down to pick up the power core I had removed from his exoskeleton. "You seem to be quite confident he will rescue you."

"Abso-fucking-lutely."

I pried open the power core to hold up a small metal disk. "Is that because of the tracking device in your exoskeleton?"

He paused a moment, staring at the disk, and his eyes widening. "No."

"Good. Because I've been cloning its signal through my robots to make it appear that it's far away from here."

"What?"

"Oh, it's a simple matter. I suspected you would have a tracking device on you so I copied the signal onto five of my robots who also had dummies posing as you, all flying in different directions from the school. I estimate it would take about an hour for him to find all five of my decoys. Twenty minutes if he has help from the other four members of the Saviors. Meanwhile, my van shielded the real tracker and I disabled the tracking signal permanently when I pulled the power core. Captain Maximum and his team will chase the decoys for a while before he realizes the mistake, and he'll have no way of finding the real signal. So I believe we will be here for some time."

Lady Thunder smirked. "My man's wicked smart."

Kid Maximum's eyes had become as big as saucers during my description. "Y-You don't know shit. He's got other ways of finding me. And he'll be here any second."

I tossed the tracking disk at Brutus who ate it in one bite. "I think not. I think we'll be here for quite some time. Longer if you don't tell me what I want to know."

"I told you, I don't know shit."

I pushed the button on the console.

He went rigid and grunted as more electricity surged through him.

When I let go, he went limp and gasped in pain.

I gave him the smile again. "There's only one thing I want to know, but since we have some time, let's have a good chat. Tell me about yourself, my good man. How did you end up with Captain Maximum?"

He winced while shaking his head. "By f-fucking your Momma."

I nodded at Brutus.

My dog lunged forward to chomp down on one of Kid Maximum's hands. The boy screamed as he bit down tighter.

I pointed. "Give me another line like that, and I'll have him bite off your fingers and swallow them."

"Okay, okay," he squealed. "Call him off!"

I flicked a hand, and Brutus let go, leaving the boy's hand bloody but intact.

I clapped my hands. "Come, come, boy. I'm not asking you for any of the good stuff yet. Just tell us about yourself. For instance, I noticed you didn't have pictures of your father on Facebook. Is he out of the picture?"

Kid Maximum grunted before he snarled, "Captain M-Maximum is my Dad."

Lady Thunder gasped and I felt a bit of a shock as well.

But the boy continued, "More of a Dad than the piece o' shit who shot jizz in my Mom and then bailed. Captain Maximum, he takes care of me. He's made me into a man."

I raised an eyebrow at Lady Thunder who shook her head. "See, now that's more like it. So your father abandoned you. I sympathize. I lost my parents at a young age."

Kid Maximum spat blood on the floor. "What, is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you? Make me think we're like brothers or something? I don't give a fuck about you except to know which ball you want me to rip off first when I get loose."

I sighed. I had hoped to make a connection with the child, but he had a surly attitude that I had not expected. "Fine, just tell us about Captain Maximum. What is his real name? Where did he get his powers?"

Kid Maximum chuckled. "Sorry, I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that the Captain and I do have a weakness for the ladies. And we're gonna take turns on your Amazon bitch until she's bleeding out of every hole. Then we'll shove a lead pipe so far up her ass it'll come out--"

Lady Thunder punched him in the jaw so hard that his chair toppled over, and slammed him on his back. He lay there, unconscious.

She shook her hand. "Sorry. I lost it with that one."

"That's all right. I don't blame you." I pushed the button on the console again.

He screamed his way back to life.

Lady Thunder straightened his chair up again, leaving him gasping and sweating.

I bent over to glare in his face. "I did promise you what would happen if you didn't watch your tongue. Brutus?"

Brutus lunged forward again, chomped down on the boy's hand, and pulled. Kid Maximum screamed as my dog left him with four fingers instead of five.

"Now," I said as Kid Maximum grunted in pain. "Let's try that again. We'll take a step back. Tell us how you met Captain Maximum."

I reached for the button again.

Kid Maximum held up his hands, even with his arms still pinned down to the chair. "Okay, okay, just stop. Just stop. Look, it's like this, okay? I was out in the woods a few years ago. I have this game where I would catch birds and rip their feathers off."

"Ugh," Lady Thunder said while wrinkling her nose.

"Fuck you," Kid Maximum snapped. "Anyway, Captain Maximum comes outta nowhere. This wasn't long after he showed up in St. Newton, right, and I thought he was fucking badass. At first, I thought he was gonna be mad about the birds, but he said he liked my attitude. He said it showed I was willing to do what needed to be done, and I didn't care who got hurt. He said he needed somebody by his side, and wanted to know if I would be his sidekick. He said he would make me powerful and famous, and together we'd change the world. So, of course, I said, fuck yeah. He got me the power suit and I became Kid Maximum. It's awesome, too. I get to beat shitheads like you into the ground. He kills them when nobody's looking, you know. We really get off on dusting those scumbags. Just like he's gonna kill you."

I just glared at him, knowing he wanted me to be afraid.

He sniffled. "And I also get to kick people's asses if they mess with me in real life. One kid pushed me down in front of the whole class one time. I came back to school as Kid Maximum, told everybody I needed to take him for an important mission, and took him back to the woods to stomp his legs into jelly. It was awesome. And I get a lot o' tail."

Lady Thunder rolled her eyes. "Spare me. You don't even look like you've got your pubes yet."

His red eyes narrowed. "Shows how much you know, motherfucker. I get ass on the daily. All I gotta do is show up in my costume in front of any girl in school and her panties drop. And if they don't give it to me, I can just take it. Take a whiff. This suit still smells like pussy."

"Fascinating," I growled. "But you skipped over the most important part. What is Captain Maximum's real identity? How did he get his powers?"

Kid Maximum glared at me. "I didn't skip over nothin', cunt. You're just asking the wrong questions."

I slammed my fist on the button again. I let him quiver in the chair, gurgling, for several seconds before letting go. He went limp and drooled in his seat.

"I grow tired of your games, boy." I took slow steps towards him. "You will give me what I want. If electric shocks don't loosen your tongue, you have nine more fingers and ten more toes."

Brutus growled with blood still dripping from his muzzle.

Kid Maximum shrank back in his chair. "I-I'm tellin' you, man. You're asking the wrong questions."

"Then give me the right answers."

"You don't get it! There is no real identity. Captain Maximum is who he is, twenty-four seven. And he didn't get his powers. He was born with 'em."

I looked at Lady Thunder who widened her eyes as I said, "Now we're getting somewhere. So who was he before he became Captain Maximum?"

Kid Maximum shook his head. "Again, you don't get it. He's always been Captain Maximum. There was no before."

"You're talking in riddles, boy. He wasn't born a superhero, was he?"

He grinned. "Yeah, he was."

"I'm trying to imagine a baby wearing his uniform but all right, if he's always been Captain Maximum then why haven't we seen him before the last few years?"

"He was busy. He had to get ready to become Captain Maximum."

I felt like I was getting nowhere, so when I looked at Lady Thunder and she rolled her eyes, I pressed on. "All right, he was born with his powers and always had them. Where did he get the exoskeleton for you?"

"He made it."

That made me take a step back. "He made it? The suit is very sophisticated. I wasn't aware that Captain Maximum was an engineer."

Kid Maximum giggled. "There's a lot you don't know about him."

"So does that mean he's an engineer? He's a genius technician like me?"

He shook his head. "Nah, man. He's not. He just knows how to build stuff like the suit."

I felt like I had to keep going. I asked the question I needed more than ever. "What is Captain Maximum's weakness?"

His drooling mouth pricked up in a smile again. "I already told you. Pretty ladies."

I reached for the button.

"I'm telling you the truth, man!" He shivered. "I'm serious. He likes pussy more than me, dude. If he doesn't have time to go to the clubs, he just brings a hooker back to the crib."

I clenched a fist. "That's not a weakness I can use, boy. I need to know his physical weakness, how to defeat him."

"I can't give you his weakness because I don't know, dude. I've never seen anybody beat him."

"Then you're useless to me." I nodded at Brutus who stepped forward.

Kid Maximum cringed. "Wait, wait! I can tell you where he is. Maybe you can find out for yourself. He's at the Maxidome. It's an underground fortress below St. Newton. That's where he is right now."

This felt promising. In his private lair, I might be able to find out the captain's secret with his guard down. I went to my computer and clicked the mouse to throw a map of St. Newton onto the screen.

"Where?" I asked.

Kid Maximum jerked his head at the screen. "It's underwater, under the Aristotle Bay Bridge."

Lady Thunder snapped her fingers. "That's why he left the school to protect it. It wasn't the statue after all."

Kid Maximum shook his head. "No, it was the statue. He fucking loves that thing. But yeah, the Maxidome is under the bridge, below the statue. About a mile deep. Good luck getting to it."

Lady Thunder snorted. "Well, how do you get to it?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. He always puts on a blindfold and earplugs when he brings me in and out. And he doesn't even bring me there that often. It's all his, buddy. And I don't know how he gets into it so that's all I got. I swear on my whore of a Momma."

I grunted. "No matter. I can find my own way in."

Lady Thunder clenched her fists. "You better be telling the truth, kid."

Kid Maximum shook his head. "Hey, I love the captain, but I'm not gonna lose my fingers over him."

I turned to my computer and clicked to highlight the robot I had left at the bridge to blow up in case the Captain attacked. It still waited there, hidden and buried underground. I sent it a new command, to continue burrowing its way deeper into the Earth.

The robot sent back sonar readings as it continued to drill the soil using its lasers, and light pulsed across the screen until I pointed at it.

"There," I whispered.

The screen showed a large empty space with a circular roof, definitely a manmade structure.

Kid Maximum muttered, "That's it, all right. That's the Maxidome."

I leaned over to a microphone. "Stop, robot."

The robot stopped drilling its way deeper, only a few feet away from the edge of the underground bunker.

Lady Thunder held out her hands. "What're you waiting for? You gonna bust in and kill him?"

"No, I still don't know his weakness. And I won't lose any more of my robots until I do. I want to spy on him." I went back to the microphone. "Bring your sensors two-point-three feet closer, up against the ceiling of the dome."

The robot's head telescoped until it touched the concrete encasing the dome.

"Drill a hole, about one centimeter in diameter."

The robot fired its laser again, and its camera showed the surface smoking until a light opened up. The camera eased up to the hole until I could see into it.

I supposed I expected the Maxidome to look like some sort of bunker with weapons, extra suits, and exotic vehicles. You know, like a superhero's headquarters. Instead, it looked like a luxury apartment. Antique furniture and fine art could be seen everywhere. Stone floors and antique rugs decorated the floor, and carved wood covered the walls.

"Wow," Lady Thunder breathed. "This is nice! How can he afford all this?"

Kid Maximum just smiled. "He's saved a lot of rich people who have donated handsomely. And he doesn't mind grabbing something if you can't afford. Who's gonna tell him no?"

Classical music played in the Maxidome, and I picked up voices and the sounds of laughter, and turned the robot's camera. It followed rows of wine bottles to a corner where Captain Maximum sat on a plush couch with Italian leather. He held a wine glass in one hand, and had his other arm around a woman sitting next to him.

The woman was beautiful but had on too much makeup, a miniskirt, and a tank top that showed a ton of cleavage.

"I'm guessing that's one of those hookers he mentioned," I murmured.

Lady Thunder nodded. "I guess so. Can you make it louder?"

I punched buttons and the robot zoomed in while the voices of the Captain and the woman grew.

"Wow," the woman breathed, "you really mean it? You're from another planet?"

That made me lean back. "What?"

Captain Maximum chuckled. "Absolutely. It's about five light years away from Earth."

The woman giggled like a schoolgirl. "That's so awesome! You're not shittin' me, are you?"

"No, not at all. My planet's name is Ite'quba in my language, which means Heavenly World in English."

"You mean there's really aliens out there?"

"Yes. There are many worlds that support life."

She giggled again while clapping her hands. "I knew it! My horoscope said I would mean someone from somewhere far away. I can't believe it! Tell me all about your planet, please."

Captain Maximum took a sip of his wine. "Well, it's not a happy place. It used to be lush and beautiful but now it's under the control of a terrible ruler named Ikodoru who has enslaved almost the whole population. He wants to spread his dictatorship, and there's a small group of freedom fighters who want to overthrow him. I was sent to Earth so I could find help. When I arrived, I discovered my superior strength and durability made me rare among your people, so I took on the persona of Captain Maximum like others of your so-called 'superheroes.'"

"See?" Kid Maximum called out. "I told you he was born with his powers."

"Shut up," I snapped.

Lady Thunder rolled her eyes. "You don't think he's telling the truth, do you? That he's really from another planet?"

I didn't know what to say at first. Some people had thought Captain Maximum was an alien, but I had always dismissed those ideas as nonsense. Why would Earth's first contact with an alien species be as a superhero? And a superhero who looked completely human as well?

I just shook my head and turned up the sound. "I don't know. I don't suppose you know the truth, Kid Maximum?"

The boy laughed. "You have no idea what you're dealing with, asshole."

I smiled. "I'm about to find out. I'm running another scan."

As I worked, the face of the hooker fell. "Oh, that's so noble, to help people like that. But are you the only one from your planet here?"

"Yes." Captain Maximum set the glass down, and stood up. "I'm alone."

"Aw, you must be so lonely."

The captain sighed a little too hard, making me think it was for her benefit. "Yes, I do get lonely sometimes. That's why I bring beautiful and intelligent women here to keep me company. Like I brought Alexandria here. You can help me get over the pain of losing her."

She broke into a huge smile. "Oh, yes, I can help you. Did she know your secret?"

"No." Captain Maximum took a deep breath. "I never told her."

"Wow, I'm so honored you're sharing it with me. But why are you telling me? I mean, we just met?"

Captain Maximum chuckled as he turned to face her. "It's just a little amusement. It's hard to keep my secret so I like to tell it to someone I know will never share it."

The hooker stood up. "Oh, I promise I won't tell anyone."

He reached out to touch her chin with his fingers. "I know you won't. But you don't need to promise. I'll make sure of it."

Captain Maximum's chest split open with a loud tearing sound, and his skin seemed to peel away from it. Like a lizard shedding its skin, the captain's upper torso fell away to reveal a black mass of tentacles. The prostitute shrank back as the tentacles that made up his torso burst open with a loud roar, latched onto her, and pulled her into a mouth ringed with fangs.