“Stagg! Get your wrinkled ass down here!”
Metamorpho’s voice boomed through the Stagg Industries factory that he knew Simon Stagg, his one-time father-in-law, was at today. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and if that didn’t make a man angry enough, it made the things which were already making him angry even worse. Keeping Sapphire from him. Poisoning his own son against him. It was high time he and the old man had it out, once and for all.
“Vulgar as ever, I see, Mason,” Stagg said, stepping into view. Around him, various vats of chemicals bubbled and stewed. He paused to pick a piece of lint off his collar. “What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me where my son is! You can tell me where Sapphire is! You can wipe that smug grin off your damned face!”
Stagg shook his head. “Honestly, Mason. An attitude like that, is it any wonder I sought to protect my daughter from your influence? You may have fooled her with sweet words, but I’ve always known you for what you are. And your son? Didn’t your freak genes do enough to him?”
Rex Mason growled, forming his hand into a hammer as he approached Stagg. “My influence? All the crooked schemes you’ve pulled over the years, all the times you’ve flat out tried to kill me, and you’re talking about my influence? You’re not keeping me from them, Stagg. If the world’s going down the drain, I’m gonna stand with my family.”
He suddenly felt his body weaken and he sunk to his knees, gritting his teeth against the pain. “What the hell…?”
“I got him, Mister Stagg! I got him!” It was the grunting voice of Java the caveman. Metamorpho forced his eyes open and watched Stagg’s anthropoid bodyguard move into view, carrying the Orb of Ra. His one true weakness.
“Playing dirty again, Stagg?” Rex growled. He was weak, but he tried to force himself to stand. “Even that’s… not gonna save you today…”
A hairy first slammed into his jaw. “Shut up, Mason! You don’t talk that way to Mister Stagg!
“As always, Mason,” Stagg went on, “you fail to see that I hold all the cards. You’ve never been able to outsmart me. Your type never has.”
Stagg shook his head again. “As for your son, the truth of it is, Mason, I don’t know. He’s fallen in with those so-called costumed do-gooders. Meddlers, the lot of them. He won’t tell me more. I don’t know where I went wrong. He takes after you more than he’d care to admit. So you see, Mason? You were wasting your time from the beginning.”
Rex growled and forced himself to fight the pain, reached out and grabbed Java. With a roar, he threw the caveman against one of the vat’s. A spider-web of cracks began to form, leaking green liquid. At the same time, Stagg called out, “Mason! Don’t!”
“You fool!” Stagg gasped. “Don’t you realize what you’re done?!”
Metamorpho growled. “Aw, am I gonna dirty up your precious factory, Stagg?”
Even Java was backing away from the chemicals now, and Metamorpho wouldn’t have thought he was smart enough for that. “What the hell were you cooking up here, Stagg?” he demanded.
Stagg had moved to a control console, trying to restore order to the factory, but the vat was already cracking too much for that. And the only way out had already been cut off by the creeping chemicals, which were bubbling and eating away at everything they touched.
Stagg’s eyes widened and Mason could swear he could see the old man’s heart pounding in his chest. “Stagg!” he shouted, in-between trying to spray down the chemicals. “What did you do?!”
Stagg clutched at his chest. He spoke a single word. “Chemo.”
“WHAT?!” Mason roared. “You were trying to put that walking freakshow back together?!”
“Do you have any idea what people would pay for a weapon like that, Mason?”
“You’re sick, Stagg! Sick!”
The pool of chemicals, Chemo, surged up like a wave. Metamorpho looked back at Stagg and Java. “I should just leave you two here. But then somebody’s still have to clean up the mess you made.”
He charged forward into Chemo, shifting his molecular structure as he did so.
This had better work… he thought. He’d fought Chemo before, knew the creature’s weaknesses. But had Stagg changed it?
Guess I won’t be getting to see you after all, Joey, Sapphire. See you the next time I come back to life…The second his altered structure hit the wall of chemicals, it was consumed by them, flowing throughout the entire mixture. The wall of Chemo surged backwards for a second then seemed to scream, breaking apart into more harmless components.
Stagg straightened his collar. “Get someone to clear up this mess,” he growled to Java. “But first get me someone to doctor the security footage. …And find my grandson.”
