The Question Special #1 (of 3)

[/i]
Special #1 (of 2): “The Hub”
Written by House Of Mystery
Cover by Craig Cermak
Alternate Cover by Ramon Villalobos
Edited by David Charlton[/center]




There was less fanfare than he had expected when he returned to Hub City. Sure, he wasn’t expecting a ticker-tape parade, but he had expected… A pat on the back? A pint bought for him by an old friend or colleague at O’Finney’s? He had been gone from the Hub going on two years ago now. He’d transferred for two reasons, one, because the pressure of being an honest cop in a crooked world was enough to drive a man insane and two, because of what happened to his wife. He had risen up the ranks in Las Vegas, and with the void created by the death of Commissioner Gleason, he was quite surprised by the phone call from the mayor. She, Her-Honor-the-Mayor, needed a straight man to be at the top of the pile.

He didn’t want to accept (He remembered the decade he spent in the Hub; every crooked cop around him making his life hard because he wasn’t rotten inside like a piece of dead fruit). His wife asked him not to (She had had a bad experience in the Hub. It was the catalyst for him leaving. They didn’t talk about it. Neither one of them especially wanted to. It brought back bad memories). His son didn’t know why his parents were fighting (Something they hadn’t done for two years). But he felt somehow that he needed this. Needed this closure on a black part of his life.

He packed up his life in Las Vegas, kissed his wife goodbye (she said to him, ‘I don’t know if I can go back there’, and so he agreed that she should stay with their son in Vegas, with her family. Until he settled in, at least.) and hopped on a FeroAir flight back to the Hub.

He didn’t get a ticker-tape parade. He didn’t get a pat on the back. He didn’t even get a pint bought for him by an old friend.

A placard read his name among the dozens of people waiting for their loved ones and friends to disembark. The bearer of the placard was not known to him. But he had been told he would be collected at the airport, so he put aside any paranoid notions and nodded at the man as he approached.

‘Double.’

“You him?” inquired the man, his words dipped in a stiff Hub accent.

Jonathan Mitchell Double nodded, and put out his hand. “Yeah. And you are?”

“Reynolds. The Mayor told me I had to come down here and pick you up.” He grunted, and motioned for Double to follow him. “I’m her bodyguard. She trusts me to get you to her.”

Double arched an eyebrow, confused yet curious. Had things remained the same as they were when he left? He thought that after the formation of the Justice League, and the weeks they spent in the Hub expunging the Intergang taint, that the city would return to some semblance of normality. But is normality for Hub City chaos? If so, then he would have quite a job on his hands.

The limo was parked in front of the airport, a cruiser in front, a cruiser behind. A crowd had begun to form. Not a big crowd, but the lingering kind of mass interest that forms from some little event taking place. Men and women stopped in their tracks, and looked at Double as he looked at them. He nodded and smiled, they snarled and scowled and then carried on.

Nope, Double thought, as he climbed into the back of the limousine, nothing’s changed.




He reapplied his face, just as he had to do every morning since his accident, going on nearly ten years ago now. He cringed as he applied the fake flesh. It wasn’t ten years. It was less than that, but the repetition made it feel like he had been doing this since he was born. He rebuilt bone structure with make up, built up layers of muscle and flesh with paste, and then applied the final touch, the final face.

(Whispers fill his head. It’s all he hears, in the silence. He’s never able to sleep at night with the whispering going on, nattering and clawing at his ears: “Listen to me, listen to me,” not shutting up for one minute. White noise blares, the voices intermingle, and he goes on. On and on, his head a mess of wires and insulation, growing and pulsating, on and on.)

He looked at the mirror, his eyes bloodshot and red. His pupils were pin-pricks. His fists clenched. Blood raced through his extremities. He looked fake. He looked like a lie. He stood up awkwardly, his head buzzing with a numb feeling, stumbled back, grabbed his chair and flung it at the mirror, shards of glass and wood flying every which way. He screamed. He screamed and he screamed, till his throat was hoarse and red inside.

(This was not how it was supposed to be. He was a scientist. He was one of the great and the good and he helped create something that was so… So… (The whispers refuse to falter, in the silence) So important? Is that the word? Important? He made a mistake. A bad deal. He was made this for it. This mess of humanity.)

He looked down at the shards as they lay scattered across the ground. His reflection was still there. Nothing had changed. He threw the chair down, his moment of rage passing, and felt glass crack and crush underfoot as he stepped out of the room.

(Things were coming together. The void was slowly being filled with dirt and corruption. Intergang was gone, Steel Hand gone, his enforcers dead, and the protector of the Hub was missing, had been for almost two years now. He wasn’t expected back. He wasn’t real in the first place, just a whisper among the whispers, an urban legend.)

“Taken from me.” He whispered, grabbing his black trench-coat and pulling it on over his black suit, his black shirt, his black tie. “So I take yours.” He picked up his black fedora from the hat-stand, and placed it firmly on his black hair. “Numb.”

His flesh was bandaged, his hands covered in thick white bandages. He pulled on his gloves, and opened the door that lead into the basement, which in turn lead to the sewer system beneath the city.

His special guest was where he left had him, in the cold, in the damp, on the bed.

“You. Nothing and no one to save you now.”

The man lay motionless on the bed, emaciated, a rough beard over his face, obscuring his features, and as the Answer stroked his cheek, he looked up at him lazily, his eyes lost in the fog.

“He isn’t here to be your knight.”

He walked over to his workshop side, and took a syringe, and a small ampoule of brown liquid. He jabbed the needle through the thin plastic skin that separated air from chemical, and pulled it into the syringe. His guest’s head lolled about, the man barely able to hold a coherent thought. The Answer walked over to him, pushed his head to the side, and jabbed the needle into his exposed neck. He groaned, pained, and then drifted off once more into the thickening fog.

“You won’t be alone for much longer now, Wesley.”




She paced the study, waiting for him to arrive. She had known him back when he was a detective, and she knew that he was one of the rare clean cops in Hub City. She couldn’t trust anyone else in the city she supposedly ran. She was elected to this position, but could barely make a difference! What had she done? Really, what had she done? In the wake of the Justice League vs. America incident, she had been elected to office. She’d been here a few months now. Her platform was one of trust, one of integration. Idealism. She was an eternal optimist, and it had gotten her nowhere. She needed action.

There was a knock at the door to study, and she called out to whoever was outside. “Come on in.”

The doors opened slowly, and Reynolds came through, followed by the man she had promoted to Commissioner. She smiled, “Thank you, Reynolds, that’ll be all.”

He bowed awkwardly, and then nodded at Double, who returned the gesture. When the doors were closed, Double looked around uneasily. “Mayor Fermin.”

Myra Fermin was Hub-born and -bred. She was from the upper west side, the relatively affluent section of the city. Lower west, upper east, lower east… That’s where the scum festered. She was tall and regal, long brown hair ending just below the small of her back. She was relatively relaxed, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers. “Jonathan Double. It’s a pleasure to see you again.” He approached her, and put out his hand, which she took smiling. “So, you’ve been back in the Hub for what, an hour; what are your thoughts?”

Double blew out a breath. “The city is a mess, your honour. I mean, I’m going to be realistic here, this will be an uphill battle. And as soon as we reach the top… Well, the clouds are going to part and there, lo and behold, will be more hill.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be negative.”

“You’re not being negative, Mr Double, you’re being realistic, like you said. I know all these things. I know that Intergang is slowly clawing its way back into the city. We’ve got a number of suspected serial killers loose in the city, each one carving a percentage of the population away every year. And then there’s this rumour about a figure traipsing about the city, this freak show calling himself the ‘Answer’. We’re a dirty little city, Mr Double, I know it all. But I need someone I trust to help me clean it up.”

“First, ma’am, call me Johnny. Mr Double, pardon the cliché, is my dad. Secondly, I think we’re lucky in one regard. The fact we have serial killers, as opposed to mass-murdering ‘Dress-Ups’, I think, is going to play in our favour. Serial killers are serial killers. They’re sick animals that need to be put down. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for rehabilitation, but some people need to be put out of their--- and our--- misery. Serial killers I can deal with. ‘Dress-Ups’ are insane. They run about in their underwear. They get committed to mental institutions, and somehow, they escape. We all know about the Arkham Effect. The fact is these people go into these places, and they come out worse every time. Hub doesn’t have that problem. Maybe that’s because we don’t have a vigilante exacerbating our problems. I mean, if we had a guy in town dressed as a bat, I’m sure that the serial killers would escalate and match his behaviour.”

“You’ve thought about this,” mused Fermin. “We used to have our very own urban legend, do you remember? He was operating during your career here, I believe?”

“The Question” nodded Double. “I remember him.”

“And all he had to contend with was Intergang. Steel Hand…” Myra picked up a dossier from her desk, and handed it to Double. “My husband didn’t believe in the Question, Johnny, but I wish… I wish the Question had been around when Wesley vanished. Hmm.” She seemed lost in thought, and then clicked back into business mode. “Here’s everything you need to get up to date with the Hub. Hub Central is down on--”

“Cowan District. I know. Don’t worry about me, ma’am, let’s just take this one day at a time. Change isn’t going to come quickly, but this is day one. From here on… We can only try…”




This is the first day of the rest of my life. This is a new journal. The pages are crisp and smooth underneath my pen. I’ve spent the past months travelling. Used to be, when an event in my life was so big and so traumatising, I would leave. I would leave and head out on the open road, and that’s what I did, and have done, for nigh on a year now. A year. Time goes pretty quickly on the road. I’ve been all over, spent most of the time in the East, meeting with old friends, and old friends of even older friends.

I’ve had enough of living vicariously through others. Now is the time to take life each day as it comes. To honour the fallen, those who lost their lives when they took part in mine. I was in the Himalayas for a few months. I met a man there. He put everything into focus. He made it so… Well. He gave me answers. You can spend your life obsessed with finding something, and he told me that what I was looking for was right before my eyes.

I wish Tot could have met Richard Dragon. I’m sure they would have got along ‘swimmingly’, as the dear departed Rodor used to say. I will return to Nanda Parbat one day, one day soon I hope. But Richard told me, and I don’t know why I trust him so, but I do, I trust him with my life, and I’ve not known him for long (though he once said to me, early one morning, when we were sparring, ‘Here, on the edge of forever, everything that is opaque becomes transparent. We all know each other, because we share a higher knowledge, and there are those who know it, and there are those who are ignorant.’ He then proceeded to beat twenty nine different shades of pain into me. Ouch.) that I should face my fear. And the last fear I have, after a fear of dying, which I’ve faced like pro, is the fear of the Hub.

And so here I am. Travelling back… Home. This should be interesting.[/i]



The plane rattled as it hit a thermal. The chassis shuddered and then continued to whistle along high in the sky. He looked at the page, looked at the first page, so crisp and new, and smiled.

Day one.

All change.

“Nice little journal you’ve got there.”

He sighed. “Boston.” He turned to the man sitting next to him, and shook his head. “I was wondering when you were going to weigh in.” He closed the book, and placed it in his coat pocket. “I like to write down my thoughts. If they’re there, in front of me, they feel real. Like they matter more than just random tangents floating about in my head.”

“Deep.”

He looked the man in the eye, and half-hissed his question. “Why are you here?”

“You were in Nanda Parbat for four months. I was busy running around with a friend of mine on a lower plain of existence and we didn’t get to talk. It’s been a while since I had a chat with a superhero.”

He shook his head. “I’m no superhero. And you know that. Come on, why are you here?”

“Alright, alright, I had a sorta message for you. From Rama Kushna.”

This piqued his interest. “Richard said it wasn’t the right time for me to talk to Rama Kushna. That I would know when it was because in my soul, in my gut, I’d feel it. What did she say, Boston?”

“Firstly, chum, Rama Kushna is neither he nor she. Rama Kushna is everything. Rama Kushna is not a God, nor is Rama Kushna a seer of events yet to be. Rama Kushna is the living voice of all that is and is not. Wow, you spend enough time with the monks, and it just rolls of the tongue like rhetoric.”

He gathered himself. He centred his thoughts, took a deep breathe, and asked again. “What did Rama Kushna say, Boston?”

“There is a place growing in the world, in the rotting husk of civilisation, that is all that Nanda Parbat isn’t, my friend. Something is growing inside a dead place, like maggots feeding upon dead flesh.”

“Where?”

“You know where, amigo, because you’re going there. Hub City is so-named because it was the place where travellers went when they were lost and needed to get their bearings. The Hub is the hub of everything, of all civilisation, perfectly placed so that standing in the middle of the city, the whole sky is visible to you. Or was visible. Now with all the pollution being pumped out you’re lucky if you can see the sky at all. Blood splatters the horizon like an open wound and it bleeds out by nightfall only to reopen by morning. Its lost its way. Back before the taint of industry, the Hub was pure. But the rot set in. Now the crossroads is broken, and something, someone is taking advantage of that fact.”

“What can I do?”

“What can one man do? He can act. He can be the catalyst for change. Hub City needs you, Charles Szasz. It needs to be cleansed. It needs you to help it find the answer. In more ways than one.”

“Well,” started Charles Szasz, as he leant back in his chair. “I hope I get my ticker tape parade for this.”




Boston’s words had burned into the forefront of his mind. He knew, obviously, that Hub City was corrupt, but corrupt on a theological level? Corrupt to the rotting stinking core of the city? This concept was new to him. Could a place be intrinsically corrupt? Could a place be so intrinsically evil that it affected all those who passed over it, all those that lived upon it?

Nanda Parbat was beautiful when the sun rose. He remembered the way the light played against the snow outside the city walls. The way the ice and the mountains made everything seem so much brighter. Hub City was ugly. At least with Gotham there was the architecture. Gothic. He liked that. He liked the past intertwining with the present.

Charles Szasz sighed as he hailed a cab. The sun was rising over the city, and as the shadows of the night crept away and the airport began to see the first travellers out of the city, and welcomed travellers just in, he knew that he could very well be in Hell.

He climbed into the yellow cab that pulled up in front of him. The driver was big and burly, brown jacket covering a stained white shirt, green cap clashing with everything else he could possibly wear. “Where you headed, mate?”

“Steppes.” Charles Szasz leaned back. He tapped his suitcase, old and battered, and pushed his long red hair out of his eyes. He’d need a haircut. He rubbed his jaw. And a shave. He knew a place down by Barrytown, an old school barber shop, a place where he used to be a regular.

“You new in town?” the man’s voice was deep and brusque, and Charles looked up at him. He had resigned himself to some quiet time before getting to the Steppes, but apparently (he looked over to the man’s license on the rear view mirror) Ray George had other ideas. And two first names.

“Not new. I used to live here. Just got back in.”

“Why’d you want to come back? Why would ya’ come back? I mean, I’m Hub-born and -bred, an’ I’m just sticking around on principle, heh, but I wouldn’t want to put anyone else through this place, y’know?”

“I’ve been travelling. World tour kind of deal. Back now. Got business I left unfinished. I intend to finish it.”

“Unfinished business, eh? In’er’esin’.” Ray fell silent, and looked at Charles through the rear view mirror. He expected Charles to continue talking, but the red haired man had leaned back, allowed his long hair to hide his features. “In’er’esin’.”

Charles had unfinished business, for sure. He’d left Hub in a hurry way back when. Rodor was dead. His life was gone, dead and buried. He didn’t have anybody but himself now. He thought about that for a moment. Let the idea linger in his memory. He could start a new life, couldn’t he? He had no ties to Hub City? He wouldn’t need to…

…

…

No. He was here for a reason. He tapped his suitcase again, old and leather bound, and thought odd thoughts. Richard had helped him for a reason. He’d travelled to Nanda Parbat for a reason. And now Nanda Parbat had sent its messenger to him for a reason.

Hub City was decayed and rotting. And apparently no one but him could clean it up.




“Breathe out…”

The city whispered to him, as he stood atop the Steppes. The Steppes was the tallest building in the Hub, consisting of apartments on the uppermost floors, (two of which were owned by him, one under his own name, the other under a pseudonym), and assorted offices and other rooms down below. From up here, from whichever way you looked, you could see the entire city. The cold air whistled past him, joining with the whispers, and he smiled. He felt alive.

“…So I can breathe you in.”

As he closed his eyes and looked up to the sky, he knew that he had done the right thing coming back here. He would rediscover his city. He would relearn every nook and cranny. You could see the West Side, the dilapidated streets and burnt out husks of buildings; you could see the East and North, the good sides of town filled with bloated corporate corruption and the elite and uppercrust; and nearing the city limits, Mayor Fermin’s mansion was within view, and Charles noted this.

The Hub was a changed place.

He knew that there was a new Commisioner, someone he knew from the good old days. He missed the information. He missed the constant ebb and flow of knowledge that he threw himself into. He loved the ideas and concepts that would never link together in a thousand years, but if you found just one more piece of the puzzle…

The Ditko Lounge, a place he burned down years ago, had been rebuilt, and in the shadow of the World Broadcasting Company building, all classic architecture and long windows, he remembered from his old life.

He had to get to work. He had to know his home again. He ran his gloved hands through his hair, slicking it back, and then fiddled with the switch on his belt. “It’s time.”

Binary gas sprayed out, enveloping him, twisting around him like a lover, and his attire changed. What was once brown, his suit jacket and trousers, his trenchcoat and hat, turning deep blue. Even as this transformation was occurring, he took a ball of what appeared to be flesh-coloured putty from the hidden compartment of his belt, and it unravelled in his hand, becoming a mask. He applied it to his face, and then, only one thing remained for him to do: he took his fedora, sitting beside him on the ledge, and placed it on his head. The still swirling binary gas changed its colour, too. His red hair was now black. He was a different man.

“Home.”

The Question felt the Hub welcome him back with open arms.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…”




The Agent started his day like any other. He had to replace the night shift, so he went to get coffee first, then drove all the way down to the complex, clocked in, and went to see how their guest was doing. It was going on two years now, he guessed, that they faked this man’s death. Special DEO operation, get this man out, because Intergang wanted him dead. He was welcomed with the usual smiles, the usual pats on the back as he gave the night shift their coffees, and the usual wave from the house-guest.

“What’re you doing, Professor?”

“Proof reading.”

The Agent leaned in to see what he was proof reading. It was the same manuscript he had been working on for those two years. Some collection of essays written under a pseudonym. Apparently, Director Sullivan was going to let him see it published. She didn’t like keeping him here under protective custody, but if Intergang caught wind of his survival, he’d be hunted by their super-killer-squads, and he wouldn’t last the night.

“How’s that going?”

“Good, thank you.”

The Agent nodded, and then took a sip from his coffee. “I brought you your tea. I know how you like your green tea.”

Professor Aristotle Rodor looked up and smiled as he accepted the cup. “Ah, I thank you, Agent Clifford. Very kind of you indeed.”