The Question Special #2 (of 3)

[David]

The Question
Special #2 (of 3): "The Hub"
Written by Charles HoM
Cover by Ramon Villalobos
Edited by David Charlton

I.

“Fffffffff.”

On the floor of the deserted warehouse, he lay on his back and twitched. The noise that escaped his throat was of a man gagging on his own blood. His limbs--- arms covered in purple track marks, legs bruised and scabbed--- contorted at inhuman angles at his sides, joints groaning and fluttering as the seizure hit him hard.

“Fffffggggghh.”

The others swarmed about in the darkness. The others being just like him, though not drowning in their own fluids. They were the Omegas. They brought about the end in their own subtle and violent way. Intimate Armageddon. They kept to the dark because it was there they could best see the lights.

“Ggggghhhh… Hepp… Help me…”

There was no helping him. He was beyond saving. This is what Angelspit did to you. You couldn’t live with Angelspit. You couldn’t. It was impossible. Many had tried. Many had ended up where he was right now. You had to have the drug. Constantly. You had to inject it straight into your veins and you had to hope you had enough. But each time, each hit, you had to take more. Your body would adapt, you would need to fight your body.

Do you know how hard it is to fight your own body?

“E-Eloi Eloi… Lama s-s-sabachthani?”

You eventually lose.

A woman, no older than twenty (though her skin was thin and her eyes pale) dressed in sweat drenched clothes, emerged from the outer ring of darkness, her hand shaking. “Take. Take the body. You know what to do. Quick.” She ran her hands, the knuckles covered in dry blood not her own, through her limp blonde hair. “Quickly. While he’s warm. Warm.”

“Ffffffhhht.” The man on the floor continued to moan. “Nuuuhhhhahhhhhh…”

“He’s… He’s still alive…”

“All the better. Drain him. Drain. Him. We need… It.”

“Children.” The Omegas, lurching forward like a pack of wolves aware of prey, turned toward the man who entered their warehouse home, their teeth bared and their fists clenched. “Don’t be afraid, I’m here to help.” He tipped his fedora to them.

“Who. Who are you?”

“I’m the Answer. To all your woes.”

II.

The Question was finally at home. Traversing the alleys and the ratways of Hub City was second nature to him. He had run through them all at one time or another, and even though it had been many years since he’d been down here, in the underbelly, his sense of direction was sharper than ever. The Steppes, and its sister building, the Dajjali, were built by Wayne Enterprises, and as such, certain… Entrances and exits were included in the final design that weren’t on the blueprints. In the basement of the Steppes there was a panel that led down into a section of sewers, and from there, you could reach any part of the city. Charles smiled. He had this all figured out. Now, it was simply the act of finding trouble to--

That sound. Like… meat falling to the floor. Fist on flesh. He cracked his knuckles, and pressed forward into the shadows. Not in his city.

III.

"We're going to need more cell space..." John Double had spent the last three hours going through Hub Central, scribbling notes to himself in his old pad, and getting the gist of the state of affairs his force was in. He knew not to expect things to be perfect, but down here, in the basement, where they brought the suspects and felons, was hellish.

He looked over to the duty sergeant, who merely shrugged. "Don't ask me, sir. We don’t normally have this many people on the inside at once. I've called up to the Nest, and they're going to take some overflow, but the four precincts are nearing capacity."

"Alright Ed." Ed Simmons had been duty sergeant since Double himself worked here first time round. Every year, on his birthday, they'd toast to his continual longevity, because, to be honest, he'd been on the force longer than most, and he'd survived. Which was a tough order in Hub City these days. "I'll call Warden Clarke. Get acquainted."

"Hey, Double--" He turned at his name, and a globule of spit and mucus landed squarely on his lapel. "--Welcome home!"

He looked into the cell, where six men were sitting (one, curiously, stroking the winding tattoo that lead from his finger tips (barbed wire) and cut a gash toward his ear (and more barbed wire), never blinking; another touching himself where he really shouldn't have (in public); a third, rocking backwards and forwards; a fourth, in full business suit, cursing his road rage; a fifth, ex-con, three tears tattooed beneath his eye; and the sixth, pacing), and where one man was leaning against the bars grinning F, C and K emblazoned upon his grills, a tooth apparently missing. "Oh. This is too good to be true." He grinned, and shook his head. "Jimmy the SNITCH! Glad to see you again! You doing well? You still living off the Hub City Police Department's generous donations?"

The man's eyes widened. He went pale. "Wh..."

"Don't think I forgot about you, Jim! You helped me take down Stuka that one time, Steel Hand's right... hand..." He chuckled. "Oh, God, I hear Intergang were fuming over that." He looked at his watch. "God, I've got to go. Don't worry though, the check’s in the mail..." He fired off his finger at the man, and winked, before heading up toward the offices upstairs.

The man, as white as a sheet, turned back to the inside of his cell, to be met by six very dirty looks. "G-Guys?"

Double reached the head of the stairs when he bumped into someone. He put his hands, and smiled. "Whoa there, partner."

The woman looked up, and smiled sheepishly. "Commissioner Double? Oh, man, not how I wanted to make your acquaintance." She clutched her shoulder, blood staining her white shirt. "Ow."

"What happened to you, Detective...?"

"Detective Thewlis, sir, I got stabbed. Stopped the bleeding but had to drop off the bastard who did it. He's down in the cells now, I was just on my way out to go to the hospital. If you'll allow it, of course...?"

Double laughed at her comment. "Of course. Who stabbed you, if you don't mind me holding you up?"

"Some scuzzy pimp. I got his number though..." She opened up her right hand, revealing a silver U. "Fell right out of his mouth when I popped him one."

"Before or after he stabbed you?"

Thewlis grinned, and dropped the U in the garbage as she headed toward the door. "After, of course."

Double laughed, and walked across the floor to his office, closed the door behind him, and slumped in his chair. He was expecting things to be bad, and yet, here at where the rot should be deepest… Nothing. Yes, the cells were overcrowded, but they had it under control. He’d have to keep a close eye on things, for sure. If he couldn’t tell who was dirty and who was clean, then Mayor Fermin’s whole experiment would be a failure. He would be a failure.

“Commish,” Double looked up from his desk. “I got those files you wanted. Got them myself.”

His entire life, John had resisted promotion unless he needed it. He accepted promotion to get the hell out of the Hub first time round. He’d risen up the ranks to a respectable position in Vegas, and then when he’d received the call from Mayor Fermin offering him this position… Well. He couldn’t say no. Especially considering the relationship problems he was having with his wife. He wouldn’t call himself a coward, but right now, he felt like one. What else was he? At least he was doing something productive with his cowardice. Running out of one frying pan, and into a full-fledged fire. He could focus all this rage on doing something right, at least. “Thanks.”

“Anything else I can do you for?” Deputy Commissioner Meyer Visser. Double had inherited him with the job. Or, as Visser saw it, he had inherited Double with his continuity of life in Hub City. Double struggled to get a bead on him. This man, by all rights, should hate Double’s guts. And if the rot was set as deep as it had been, then Visser was more than likely in the pockets of God knows how many.

“I need the name of every man, woman and child on the payroll.” Double smiled. “I need to get myself acquainted with the force before I meet them.” He laughed, and Visser
smiled, rolling his eyes as he did so.

“Alright Commish.”

“Call me John.”

“No,” replied Visser. “Thanks.”

The door closed behind him, and John took a sip from his glass of water. The office was bare, apart from his jacket on the back of his chair, and the assorted papers he’d scattered across his desk and his laptop was sitting beside his foot. The file that Meyer had brought him was one that he himself had filed back when he was a Detective in the Hub. Filed under ‘Domestic Disturbances// 1967// File: A3’ to ensure that no one would find it, relying on the simple fact that the department ran entirely on computer now, and that the paper media they had was in storage beneath the precinct.. He flicked it open, and cringed. This was his Intergang file. It held profiles on every single face affiliated with the ‘company’ for the past thirty years. His old partner, Oscar Bullman, had worked this private project before him, and before he died, drowning in his own blood after an as yet unidentified assailant slit his throat, he was able to hand this file to him. His life’s work. It was this file, along with the executive order of Myra Fermin, that brought the Justice League into the city. He flicked through the pieces of paper, and then his eye brow arched upwards independent of the rest of his face. He flicked back, to the start, and then through again till the end. “What is…” A page was missing. The most important page of all: Steel Hand. The work he had done on Steel Hand was gone.

“Sonofabitch!”

IV.

Myra Fermin couldn’t sleep. Hadn’t been able to sleep properly for days now. She missed Wesley, even though she knew that she shouldn’t. He cheated. He gambled. He called her the worst things, and if he hadn’t vanished when he did, she actually might have thought him capable of hitting her. So she was alone now. Adrift and at peace. Except, not at all. She tossed and she turned, the sweltering heat of the Hub permeating into her room. Her sheets felt paper thin, and clinged to her bare flesh like a second skin. She threw the sheets off herself and jerked upwards. She wasn’t going to get any sleep like this. There was a noise outside her door, and she pulled on her dressing gown. “Hello?”

The door swung open, and Reynold’s silhouette towered over her. He swayed to the right slightly, as if caught on a breeze. “Hhh.”

“What is it Reynolds?”

“Rrrrun.” Suddenly, blood sprayed on her white dressing gown as he gagged and groaned, clutching at his red raw throat. He fell forward, hitting the floor face first with a sickening crunch, a stream of liquid dribbling out toward her feet. Behind where he had been standing, a man dressed in trenchcoat and fedora opened up his arms, holding a long, silver blade that glinted in the visible moonlight from the outside.

“You?!”

“No,” replied the man, as he stepped forward drifting over the corpse of her bodyguard. “I had a face. He stole it from me with fire. You’re asking the wrong question.” He took another deliberate step forward, and his mask came into view. “To get the answer, you’re going to have to think outside the box.” The face was like porcelain. Emotionless. Empty. And the eyes deep black pits of nothingness that bore a hole into her. He struck her with the back of his hand, sending her flying to the floor.

She looked up at him, black creeping in around the edges of her vision. He crouched down, and tipped his head back a bit, getting a good luck at her. “I know all about you.”

He struck her again, and she fell into unconsciousness.

“This will be a masterpiece.”

V.

a.

Pimps are not human beings. Pimps replicate human behaviour and human body structure but they are not human beings. The fact that they replicate human behaviour means that they scream when their replicated human body structure is introduced to blunt force trauma. The Question’s foot darted from the shadows and met one of these fake people’s knees, and the noise it made on impact sounded as if it was a real mess of bone, flesh and muscle. The two women the pimp had been beating with his belt looked up in astonishment at the man who had come to their rescue. The pimp was twitching on the ground, his foot nearly touching his face, his knee bent outwards when it should have been in. He whined and screamed and no one paid attention to him.

“I’m going to make these streets safe again,” the Question said, as he took a step toward the women. “But if I’m to make the streets safe again, you need to stay off them.” He took two cards from his pocket, and handed them to the girls. “Phone this number. Get out of the Hub.” He turned away from them, and crouched down before the pimp. “I can’t help you if you don’t help yourselves.”

b.

“Easy pickings!” He pointed the gun at the faces of the elderly couple that were cowering in the corner of the room. “You shouldn’t open the door to sssstrangers!” He grinned. He was high, of course, twitching like nobody’s business, looking for some quick cash for a quick score. He heard the Angelspit high was better than anything, but to get that sort of action, you needed a whole lot more money than he had on him. Once you paid the big up-front, the second dose is way cheaper, but the dealers know if you’re on Angelspit or not. It was weird, he thought, his drug-addled mind sparking and buzzing, but he didn’t like to argue with them. Angelspit was the next big thing. Or the current big thing, depending on how you---

“Don’t you move!” His hands were shaking.

A knock came at the door, and he spun around, but held it together long enough to not blow a hole through the door. He turned back to the couple. “Stayyy there.” He pressed a hand against the door, feeling its tense, wooden heartbeat, the way that vibrations ran up through the seam of the wood and dribbled out at the hinges. He rested his head just above his hand, and his eye covered the door, and as he took a breath, delved into the peep hole. “Huh?”

A man without a face stared back at him. Which was weird, because he didn’t have any eyes and said: “I see you.”

The door flew into him, and the faceless man stepped through. He slammed his foot into the drug addict’s wrist, and the pistol jerked free as the man’s fingers flexed involuntarily. The gun skidded across the floor toward the elderly couple. The faceless man crouched down. “You don’t get your cheap high from murder.” He dug his gloved fingers into the man’s wrist, adding injury to injury. “I wish I had patience for you, but I simply don’t.” He slammed his fist into the man’s face, and blood swept across the drug addict’s mind as he passed out, the heartbeat throb of blood leaving his body pounding in his ears.

The Question turned to the elderly couple. “Call the police.” He looked at the gun, as the elderly husband glanced down at it. “You think that’s really an option? That there is an easy way out. And if you use it on him I’ll be back for you. Don’t let me see you again.”

c.

“What you don’t understand is… Is that I worship you. I do. I worship your body. Your soul. But to worship you, in all your glory, I need to see it. My brothers and I… Don’t get the wrong idea, we’re only brothers in… Ideals… We… See the beauty within you. But to free you so you can see that beauty too… There’s a certain amount of sacrifice on your part. I only wish… That when my time is near… That my brothers deliver me from this cage of flesh and bone… And let me see my own beauty.”

He dipped the knife in front of his victim’s face, strapped down, gasping for air, naked to this maniac’s desire. The gag prevented him from screaming, but the fear was palpable.

He struggled to get free, but his captor placed the knife upon his gagged lips, and shook his head. "No. The only escape here is the one I am about to give you. Be thankful for that. For the freedom."

The skylight above them, showering down moonlight, suddenly shattered, and joining the moonlight in a crescendo of glistening edges and angles, were hundreds of shards of glass. The man looked up, the captive closed his eyes, and then with an almighty explosion of pain, the man fell, two feet colliding with his face hard. The captive opened his eyes, and looked around frantically. Suddenly, a man without a face jerked upwards, and brushed himself down.

"Sorry about that. Long night."

He kicked the man whilst he was down, and took his knife. Within moments, the captive was free. "The police are on their way. And am I. You might want to find some trousers." The Question paused for a moment, and then kicked the man on the floor again, before crouching down and undoing the unconscious man's belt, and pulling off his black trousers. "Here. Call the police. If he makes a sound, kick him in the head. I’ve got to run…”

d.

The Question caught his breath, and picked tiny bits of glass out from the soles of his shoes. His first night home, and he'd already been a whirlwind of justice upon the denizens of the Hub. He leaned against the edge of the building, the cool night air filling him. This would be only one night in a legion of nights, if he was really planning on sticking around and cleaning the Hub up. And he was. Now, more than ever, he was prepared for the crusade. He smiled, a modern day Knight Templar.

He pulled himself up, looked out across the city, and nearly fell over backwards as a massive explosion erupted before him. He hit the ground hard, clutching at the cold concrete roof. Two buildings across, he remembered from the spark of light before the explosion. If it was directed at him, his attacker's aim was lousy, and if the guy (or gal, he remembered, in this equal opportunity-filled world) was using high explosives, then his aim must have been doubly bad. No, this was something else, and as he was only two buildings away... He darted down the stairwell, leaping whole staircases as he headed for the ground floor.

VI.

"Commish! Commish!" John Double was already shoulder holstering his two pistols (one under each arm pit, and a third strapped to his ankle) and pulling on his coat when a young desk sergeant burst through his door. "We've got a major explosion in the middle of the city!"

"Alright, I want the Fire Chief yesterday. This could be a terrorist attack." He took a breath, and everything slowed down. He couldn't get overwhelmed, and in this world, a bombed building? Sadly, it was nothing. "Send six units down there to coordinate with the brigade. If we need anyone else down there, we'll send them."

"Yeah, yeah," the man repeated, trying to calm down. "Damn, we do not get this in Hub."

"Really?" replied Double, as he moved past him. "Because I get a really creepy feeling that this is just the start."

"Are you serious?"

Double just looked at the sergeant. "Change your shorts and--" There was a commotion behind him. He looked around as a uniform came rushing upstairs. "They got Ed! Dragged him into the cells, got his keys and now they're--" The man fell forward as his chest exploded with red, and collided hard with the desk in front of him. There was the sound of rushing behind him, and Double grit his teeth.

"Everyone, get armed and get ready!"

"This is a lockdown, pigs!" The room was plunged into darkness and shots began to erupt all around. Double dove forward, toward a desk, and the Sergeant who had been standing terrified in the doorway was riddled with bullets and fell down hard.

Double took his guns from his holsters and took a breath. Now was probably a time to get overwhelmed. "... But screw that." He charged, guns blazing, and with him leading the troops, the HCPD followed suit, stemming the tide of released prisoners from the cells below with bullets.

VII.

"This shall be," he whispered, grinning, "my Grand Guignol. My masterpiece of death. And it's all being executed for one reason."

Wesly Fermin, duct-taped and lying on the floor, looked up with a glazed look in his eyes. "Whhhhuhhhhwhy?"

The Answer crouched down, and stroked his fingers gently down his mask. "Sometimes I have trouble forming a coherent thought. I've come to accept that. But it doesn't mean I like it. You know why I have this problem in my head? No? It's because I was so horrendously damaged when I first met the Question, all those years ago. When I'm lucid I can't think of anything other than seeing him dead. Suffering. I have a friend, you see, who tells me things. He tells me that the Question is home again. That he's back in the city tonight and my one mission in life is to break him. Perpetuate the machine that runs underneath the city. The rotten, decaying cogs that make this city as dirty and corrupt as it is."

"Youuu... You're insane."

The Answer stood up, suddenly. "I know. Isn't it grand?" He laughed again, a hearty bellow to echo out across the city. In the distance, a building burned, a smoldering inferno that choked the life out of the sky above. Smoke clutched at the clouds, and he could hear the sirens from all around. "My drug addled children will be at the hospitals soon. Sacrificing the lives of anyone they meet in the name of their new unholy spiritual leader. The police will be crippled simply because the criminal element has become so self-sufficient and self-sustaining that if you strike down one, twenty will rise in his place and I... Will destroy three more buildings in the name of me and burn my signature across this city."

"Then?" Wesley had become lucid enough now to form a word without slurring the syllables, and the Answer smiled beneath his mask, though Wesley couldn't see this, and if he did, he couldn't tell it was a smile.

"Then I'll go downstairs, cut open your wife and bleed her like a stuck pig. Or maybe I'll throw her off this building. Either way, you'll be too lost in yourself to complain." The Answer took a syringe from his inside pocket, and then took a small vial of liquid from another. "Heroin. How very unexciting." He then took a small pipette of redness from another pocket. "This, on the other hand..." He jabbed the syringe in the heroin, sucked it up, and then stabbed the pipette, only taking a tiny dose upwards. "... Will make you sin, Wesley."

"Whu-what is that?"

He drove the syringe into Wesley's jugular, and plunged it into his bloodstream. The Answer leaned in close, and replied in a deep, taunting tone. "Angelspit."

VIII.

Double ducked down again, and reloaded. How many of these bastards were there? The police were pretty well dug in, in the trenches of their workplace, but they needed back up. This must be connected to the bombing over at... "Sonofabitch..." He looked over to Visser, who had somehow found a shotgun, and was reloading. "Where was the bomb?"

Visser squinted. "There's a bomb? Where?"

"No! NO!" Double stood up, and fired a few volleys into the hordes of criminals. "Damn, there’s going to be a lot of paper work on this one... No, I mean, earlier, the bomb, downtown, where was it? Sergeant Corpse over there didn't say..."

"He didn't say? Jesus..." Visser stood, and grinned, cocking and firing his weapon. "EAT THAT, YOU BASTARDS!" He slipped back down. "City Hall, Commish. They blew up City Hall."

"Then this is orchestrated. They're taking out centers of authority. We've got to get to the Mayor, Meyer!"

"The bastards are thinning, Commish. Let's clean up here and then move out, how about that?"

Double pointed his gun squarely at Visser, who sharply breathed in, his fingers fumbling with an empty shotgun and a handful of cartridges. He pulled the trigger, and a corpse fell on Meyer. "Watch your back, Visser. Let's rout these scumbags, and then you and me are headed to the Mayor's house."

"Always wanted to visit there," replied Visser, as he pushed the dead man off of his shoulder.

IX.

The Question stood, the chaos around him deafening. The screams of pain and fear filled his ears, and nothing he could do blocked it out. "Not again," he whispered to himself, "Not again."

He took a step forward, and the world erupted to his left. He covered his head, held tightly to his fedora, as another plume of fire and smoke reached upwards toward the sky. "Oh... God." The death-toll now, had to be in the hundreds. Had to be. In front of him, City Hall, was a smoldering ruin. A mockery of what it used to stand for. To his left, fire and chaos. He slowly turned to his right, and crossed his fingers. "Not you--" Smoke blocked out the sky above, another explosion, to the right of Charlie Szasz rocking the entire city. "Bastards," whispered the Question. He didn't turn back, as he headed to his car, and from there, he would head to the one place he could think to go.

North was burning. East too. West joined its brother in fiery defiance. He pulled a map out of the dashboard, and marked City Hall in big black marker. Then he marked his estimation of the east explosion. Then the west. As another explosion tore across the city, flames licking upwards, people dying, he made another mark. And then he crossed them together.

Things clicked into place.

Urban legends and rumors he had heard on the edge of the night. His opposite. His antithesis. Who else, but the Answer? He lent back in his seat and took a deep breath. “Now,” he started, “is not the time to get overwhelmed.” He had never before had an archenemy. He’d had one bad day in Hub, and it had hurt him so badly that he had to leave, but an archenemy? His grip tightened around the steering wheel, and he looked up, and if his eyes were visible, steely determination would be plain. "Alright, you sonofabitch, you told me where you are. Now let's meet."

TO BE CONTINUED!

[David]

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