Motorcycling through a remote area
of the Chilean desert, Steve Rogers comes upon a penguin. He doesn’t know how
it got there but he can’t leave it so he takes the bird with him….
Three days earlier, Steve was in
the audience at the mysterious Front Door Cabaret, a safe house for those who
are outcasts and outsiders. Then he was summoned backstage to meet with Lyra,
Life Incarnate. On the way, he met Raul Dumont, the spike-studded spike thrower
who wanted to meet him. Steve asked about his FOXP2 tattoo; Raul told him it
was the gene that enabled speech, which suddenly appeared among mankind,
allowing for communication among a few who were labeled mutants but it also
enabled them to outsmart those without it and becomes the dominant species. Steve
is then ushered into a tiny room…which opens onto a large garden where Lyra
awaits Captain America. She gives him a list of the four people she wants Cap
to find: one is in Chile, one in London, and two together whom she can’t
detect. She explains that her brother, Death Incarnate, is limited in what he
can do: he can’t interfere directly with people’s lifespans but he can nudge
them toward death. She also explain that he could destroy everyone in the Pale
City because they hadn’t created protections against him….
So he arrives in a remote,
deserted village in Chile, looking for Carlos Alvarez Garcia, and “part of him
will be wearing a hat.” Cap approaches a seated man wearing a hat and Carlos
steps out from a doorway nearby; Cap sees that the seated man is a body made
out of shed skin, like a lizard, with a hat on top. Carlos explains he can shed
skin, secrete toxins, regenerate body pasts, and even control his dead skin, as
the figure stands up and walks. He was nicknamed Skinz. He warns Cap that mercenaries
have been waiting to see who arrived from Lyra to meet him for him and they are
now on their way….
When the mercs invade the village,
the shed skin figure goes out to meet them, firing two machine guns; Cap takes advantage
of the distraction to attack from another side as does Carlos, who loses a hand
but quickly regrows it. Meanwhile, at the Front Door, the Goth-looking Delilah
Squared sings a song about normalcy and acceptance, ending with an explosion
that destroys the cabaret—which turns out to be an illusion that ends the show….
The invaders defeated, Cap asks
Carlos how they were able to escape his (Cap’s) notice but he doesn’t know. Carlos
joins Cap on a motorcycle of his own. He and Steve arrive at the coast to await
a ship. Carlos tells Cap that his mutation first manifested at four years old,
when he shot poison to kill an attacking dog…which poison also killed his
mother when she picked him up. When Carlos goes for coffee, Steve tells the
penguin he knows it’s something in a harmless form sent to spy on him. The boat
leaves with Steve and Carlos; the penguin jumps into the ocean, transforms into
a shark and follows….