If I stop, I'm dead. If I stop, I'm dead. If I stop, I'm dead...

The words were a mantra, forcing the slender, middle-aged man to bowl over waiting passengers at the Fairfax Port Authority. His legs churned awkwardly - it had been a long time since he had exerted himself this much. Aside from the occasional pick-up basketball game, the man did not do much running. He almost felt sorry for the men and women he was pushing aside as he sought shelter in the crowded terminal, but his primary concern was survival. At first he hoped that he could hide in plain sight, as if he was just another tourist arriving or departing by rail or bus. Unfortunately, his panicked run made him that much easier to spot in the crowd.

If it was any consolation, though unbeknownst to him, his pursuer was not an indiscriminate murderer. A killer, yes. Someone to whom death and violence were commonplace occurrences, most certainly. But he was not the type that would simply open fire on a crowd for the sake of expediency. He was a professional bounty hunter, and there was nothing to be gained by unleashing senseless mayhem. The hunter lived by a certain code - if he was not such a cold-hearted bastard, it would have almost been admirable. But it was simple, it earned him respect, and it made him very wealthy. It always made his employers happy to know that casualties and property damage were kept to a bare minimum, and it eased his own conscience knowing that innocent bystanders need not fear for their life.

Unless they did something stupid like help the target. Then they got what was coming to them.

The mercenary closed the gap to seventy yards when his prey scampered down a short flight of stairs to the subway system that connected Fairfax to several cities along the Eastern seaboard. Ignorant of that fact, the hunter cautiously descended into the concrete maze that seemed overrun by a morning populace that took the train to work everyday. His sharp eyes scanned the platform in both directions, then he shifted his focus to the other stairways before settling on the trains themselves. He towered over the increasingly frightened crowd, and he reached inside a satchel he wore over his left shoulder. Withdrawing a device that, at first glance, resembled a large compass, he seemed to wave it around the subterranean corridors. After a few seconds, he scowled, and trudged back toward the sun.

The man he came so close to catching never looked back as the subway train rocketed down the rails to nearby Augusta. What was the point? If the killer was still in pursuit, there was no sense ruining the last few seconds of his life. He knew that the hunter would be back, able to find him wherever he went, based on their initial contact twenty minutes earlier. His only hope was finding someone - or more accurately, something - that would ward off his pursuer. And there were still hundreds of miles between him and the only object he knew that was up to the task.

If the United States of America was a human being, how would you allocate its essence, its parts? Perhaps the brain was located in Washington, though some would undoubtedly argue that that was the last place you would find intelligence. Maybe Silicon Valley, then... its heart? New York City. Or Metropolis, perhaps. The soul? Chicago would be a good candidate, Opal another. Its strength was surely derived from hard-working cities like Detroit, Gotham, or Philadelphia. America's backbone could be geologically interpreted as the Rocky Mountain range, its lifeblood flowing through the mighty Mississippi. Characterizing the face of the country was a more difficult task - though on the surface its beauty could be seen in places like Beverly Hills and Miami, those cities were probably not most representative of its true self. Best, then, to describe its physical attractiveness as a trait you could see in every state, if you really looked for it.

Hub City was located somewhere in its colon.

Just about everything about Hub City was rotten. For years, it was run by ignorant, self-serving mayors, one after another, and equally uninspired and unethical councilors. The unions were corrupt. The police department was a sad joke, "led" by men who were every bit as dangerous as the criminals they sought to apprehend, and that was on a good day of the week. Gangs and organized crime treated the city like a playground, and made almost no effort to hide their activities. And for the most part, the citizens of Hub accepted it, putting their collective head down in a futile attempt to ignore it; God forbid they draw attention to themselves. On a bad day, they lived in a heightened state of anxiety; on a good day, they were sullenly apathetic.

However, there was a brief time in Hub City's recent past when the urban blight was momentarily confronted by someone who refused to accept the status quo. He was a man who bore many names: Charles Victor Szasz, Vic Sage... and the Question. Whether he wore the blank mask or not, Sage was driven to expose and eliminate the corruption that suffocated the city like a toxic cloud. Possessing a Zen will and a keenly analytical mind, the Question tried to make his home a better place, most often employing the combat techniques perfected by Richard Dragon, one of the world's most skilled martial artists. Though he usually tangled with men with lesser physical skills than his own, the Question did encounter a handful of similarly costumed vigilantes, men like Green Arrow and Batman.

But for the most part, he fought alone; maybe it was the city's fault. Maybe it was so vile, so far gone, that even the most stout-hearted hero took one look at it and figured it wasn't worth the time or risk. Probably.

It eventually took its toll on the Question. Prodded by subconscious visions, he left, seeking a happier and more peaceful existence. He was convinced that Hub City would be his downfall. His travels led him to South America, where he realized that everything he stood against was still all around him. So he went back, eager to help his allies - Richard Dragon, Chief of Police Izzy O'Toole, and Mayor Myra Connelly - push back against the myriad forces that constantly had Hub teetering on economic and civil collapse.

And he did... for a while. But his heart wasn't in it - during his absence, Connelly fell in love with another man. Sage was crushed. He could not bring himself to hate the woman who meant nearly everything to him, but at the same time, he couldn't stay. Hub City was too small, and their mission, as it were, brought them together too many times for their deep friendship to remain intact.

So he left. Again.

And no one knew where the hell he vanished to this time.

Where the hell is he?

Detective Shawn Stevens looked at his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, his anger steadily rising due to his partner's absence. Thanks to an informant's tip, he had been staking out a house in the northeast corner of the city for close to an hour by himself. The shack in question was located about a hundred feet from his parked car, whose bluish-black finish made it practically invisible in this poorly-lit section of the city. If it was not vandals shooting at the streetlamps to insure their anonymity, chances were it was a rolling blackout that caused the seemingly perpetual darkness. Quite the dilemma - why bother sending out someone from the power company to replace the shattered bulbs when you weren't going to provide constant electricity?

Stevens shifted his weight in the seat and frowned. He was one of the more honest cops on the force - far from perfect, and he'd admit it - but he had morals. A month past thirty-three, he had deep blue eyes and dark hair, and a cynical expression that rarely left his face. When he arrived in Hub eight years earlier, the job, and the locale, promptly battered the optimism from him. When he graduated from the academy, Stevens' dream assignment was Opal City, whose artistic and architectural merits were admired from coast to coast. It also didn't hurt matters that the quaint town was monitored by a plethora of costumed metahumans, and patrolled by a police force that was led by one of the most famous families of its kind, the O'Dares. He would have fit in perfectly.

Unfortunately, comparing Opal to Hub was a morbidly ridiculous exercise in futility. Hub made Bludhaven seem like Disneyland.

The younger Stevens got tired of walking his beat and watching the same thing happen everyday. If they got rid of one lowlife, two more moved in. The old chief of police couldn't give a rat's ass about proactively enforcing the law. More than half the squad was any of the following: lazy, scared, stupid, negligent, or guilty by association. He eventually realized that he would have to change some of his ways, make amendments to his personal code of honor, if he too was going to survive in this hellhole and even do something unimaginable like be good at his work. If it meant skimming a druglord's take to pay informants, fine. If it meant beating the shit out of an abusive husband to insure the wife's safety for one more night, great. Hub made the rookie cop harder, but it also made him more determined to get the hell off the street and into plainclothes - if anything, it made him a slightly less conspicuous target.

He heard a rap on the passenger side window, and he pointed his Beretta 8000 pistol toward the sound. The man outside the door shot him a smirk that implied he was more annoyed than frightened by the appearance of the gun aimed at him. Stevens exhaled a deep breath, placed the Beretta back on his lap, and opened the door.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Stevens hissed.

The wiry redhead that sat beside him shrugged. "Gathering intel."

"Yeah? Must be real top-secret stuff, considering you didn't tell me anything about it."

"Calm down. I'm here now, aren't I?"

"Is this something I should know about, or what?"

Kelly Robinson shrugged his shoulders. He was a year older than Stevens, and while he was a tad more greasy than his partner, to put it in inelegant terms, he was also a dedicated member of the HCPD. Robinson was born in the Hub, hardened in a way that Stevens never could be, and equally reliant on his fists and his innate charm to get out of harm's way. They were promoted to the ranks of detective on the same day, but they weren't put together until the brash talker got into a brawl with his first partner, an older cop that was involved in a prostitution racket. They formed a natural bond that wasn't quite brotherly yet, but they were good friends, they trusted each other completely, and they watched each other's backs - and in Hub City, that was pretty much all you could ask for.

When he looked at his partner, Robinson could feel his cheeks redden. "I was at the clinic, okay? I had... I needed to get something checked out."

Stevens gave him a quizzical look. "'Checked out?' What do you mean?"

"Never mind. Are we ready to roll -"

"Christ. They have creams you can buy over the counter for that, you know."

"Shut-."

"I'm gonna have to get the car detailed now, thanks," Stevens mused.

Neither man spoke in the dark for close to thirty seconds, then Robinson broke the silence. "How many guys are in there?"

"I counted four going in," replied Stevens. "Could be more waiting inside. No one's left, though."

The redhead frowned. "Awesome. Could be a dozen then."

"Could be."

"Fuck."

Another twenty seconds of still air, then Robinson took another long look at the dilapidated house. "You still wanna do this?"

Stevens raised a disapproving eyebrow. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

The detectives did not have to try especially hard to stay out of the light. The street was dark, and the black clothing they wore helped them blend into the shadow-laden neighbor like a pair of wraiths. Though the gap separating the police car and the dealer's base of operations was less than forty yards, they moved as quickly as was safely possible, vigilant for a lookout. If they were spotted first, the element of surprise was lost; they may as well just walk in the front door with targets painted on their faces.

The fact was, Stevens and Robinson would have loved backup, but the department wasn't exactly overflowing with volunteers eager to pursue an after-hours operation. Besides, there were only so many cops they would have trusted not to shoot them in the back. Both men knew that there were probably more moles inside the HCPD than there were undercover officers on the streets.

Robinson slunk around to the back of the house while Stevens knelt down underneath a window in the front, keeping his back to the outside wall. When Kelly was in position, he whispered into the microphone clipped to the collar of his shirt. "Count it down."

Shawn Stevens nodded reflexively and exhaled a deep breath. "Three, two, go."

He threw his 200 pounds at the door with a powerful shoulder tackle, assuming - praying, in fact - that the peeling paint and rusted hinges meant that the rest of the door was in similarly poor condition. Luckily for him, it was. He burst through like a linebacker, regaining his balance by grabbing the side of a tattered couch that took up half of the living room. His pistol was held at arm's length in front of him, sweeping the entirety of the house like a weathervane in a windstorm. Robinson lucked out by simply opening his door; he pulled on the unlocked handle and tip-toed to the open area that Stevens oversaw.

The four young men that he saw earlier were all there, and their glassy-eyed stares of incomprehension made it quite clear that they were customers, not suppliers. None of them tried to escape, or fight back, or even curse at the detective - they merely stared at him with vacant eyes. As Stevens ordered them to the floor, he could not help but wonder what type of drug they ingested before his arrival.

He yelled, "Clear!" to his partner, who swooped into the main room with his gun drawn and a relieved expression on his face. Neither detective was particularly averse to firing his weapon in the line of duty, but like most cops, they preferred not to. Besides, the budget being what it was, there was no guarantee that their bullets would be replaced in a timely manner...

"Nice work," Robinson offered as he patted down the disoriented quartet, looking for guns, identification, and anything else that might keep them off the streets for at least 24 hours.

"Nothing to it, and I'm not being modest, either." Stevens accepted the driver's licenses his friend handed to him and stuck them in the front pocket of his jeans. "They're too doped up to fight back - a tank could have crashed through the front door and they wouldn't've noticed it."

"I’m not complaining." He reached underneath his Kevlar vest for a bundle of zipties, but before the sinewy police officer could begin binding the wrists of his semi-lucid prey, he was slammed forward by a single shotgun blast. Stevens' ears rang as he rolled behind the couch, and he fired two rounds in the general vicinity of where he thought the shot came from before peeking above a loose cushion. His guess was accurate, but his aim was off - the shooter sprinted out the back door, unidentifiable by Stevens or the prone Robinson.

For about a second, he considered chasing the unknown shooter, but he wasn't about to abandon his friend - alive or dead. He sprang over the furniture and gently rolled Robinson over, so that he was lying on his back. His nose was bleeding heavily, due to the fact that he had no chance to brace himself before hitting the floor face-first. But he was still alive, albeit dazed, and in a lot of pain. Rolling his eyes in relief, Stevens attributed his partner's survival - thus far, he reminded himself - to the fact that he wasn't wearing a standard issue HCPD bulletproof vest. They were both too smart for that. Every summer, they bought the most advanced pieces of body armor they could find... which in Hub meant going to the black market. The two dealt with the same seller, each party perfectly aware of what side of the street they worked. Stevens and Robinson gave their man a week's worth of selective blindness, to do what he needed to do in their town; in return, they paid wholesale plus 25 percent for equipment that had saved their lives at least a dozen times. If Detective Robinson had been wearing what the city was giving out, the shotgun round would have gone right through him.

After calling for an ambulance, Stevens maneuvered his friend onto his side to keep the blood from flowing back into his throat, and slipped a pillow under his neck. "How you feeling?"

"Put it to you this way," Robinson muttered slowly through clenched teeth, "I've forgotten all about that rash on my balls."

"If anyone asks, I'll tell them it must have been caused by shrapnel."

The redhead winced. "Appreciate it. Seriously…I feel like someone worked my kidneys over with a crowbar. My back is fuckin' killing me… nose is broken, too, isn't it?"

"Safe bet," Stevens nodded. "Why don't you pinch off that geyser and I'll find you a towel or something."

"Alright. I'll just, you know… hold the fort here."

Stevens gave him a reassuring pat on the back before quickly tying up the insensate quartet. He searched the house for a cloth to staunch the blood loss, while at the same time trying to figure out where the fifth man had been hiding a few minutes earlier. It was a quick and professional search, but one that revealed nothing - the shooter could have been in three other rooms, but he hadn't left anything behind, and he must have been hiding when they swept in- but why? For that matter, there were no guns, no drugs, no cash... no anything that usually went into the type of drug transaction the two detectives thought they would be breaking up.

He was the last man to leave. His partner was in an ambulance, the strung-out suspects were in a police wagon, an unsuccessful cop killer was on the street, and Stevens was troubled by all of it.

The next morning, Stevens met with Izzy O'Toole. The top dog of Hub City's police force, O'Toole was, up until a few years ago, the worst cop in its employ. And despite the competition for the spot, it wasn't even close. He manufactured evidence, skimmed cash and contraband whenever and however he saw fit, coerced witnesses into changing their stories, and assaulted the guilty and the innocent without discrimination. Until one day, he just stopped. It was as if the city pushed him too far - that, and the Question's crusade seemed to motivate him to be a slightly better person. Eventually, his newfound zeal for the job was rewarded, and he was promoted to Chief of Police. Some saw it as a favor, to shut him up, at least aware on a surface level that if O'Toole felt like telling some stories, a lot of names were going to be named.

But that was not the case. A grateful Mayor Connelly simply saw to it that O'Toole finally received his due.

After running through the events of the previous night, Stevens admitted, "I can't make sense of it. It's like, Kelly nearly gets it last night and for what? To catch a bunch of meth-heads? Christ, for all we know, they were high before they got there."

"You sure you're not leavin' anything out?" O'Toole asked. He knew that Stevens was one of his good ones, but his own unscrupulous past made him skeptical of nearly everything anyone said or did for him now.

The emotionally-drained detective didn't take the implication personally, but when he responded, he had an edge to his voice. "Not a word. Maybe if me and Kel weren't there by ourselves, we'd have caught the guy... hell, for all I know we were set up. But no one knew..."

"Why don't you stay inside today, do some paperwork... let it rattle around in your brain for a while," his boss suggested in a not-so-suggestive manner. "Sounds like a dead end to me, but you're smarter than I am. Besides, aside from your partner gettin' shot, we don't have much of a case here. No possession, no distribution, just a bunch of stoners that don't even remember last night."

"You're kidding me."

"Nope. All of 'em. And I can't get any of 'em to crack - it's like they all got goddamn amnesia." O'Toole shrugged. "Worst part is, none of 'em’s smart enough to make this shit up and I don’t want to believe it... but they're all on point. They all say they remember drivin' to that house, but nothin' after that."

Stevens just shook his head in disgust, so O'Toole continued. "Go do some desk work this morning, then go visit Robinson. Say hi for all the boys."

He left the chief's office feeling even more frustrated, and hating Hub City even more.

Nonetheless, Shawn Stevens did as Izzy O'Toole asked. Though the paperwork didn't serve to kickstart his subconscious mind on the botched drug bust, it settled his nerves and forced him to behave like a man who employed logic and deductive reasoning, rather than an angry gun-toting sub-humanoid. And Hub certainly did not lack for their share of the latter.

He also visited Robinson, who jokingly told his partner to cancel the wake. When Stevens reminded his friend that he was of Scottish descent, not Irish, the detective born and bred in Hub City replied, "Whatever. Like any of my friends need an excuse to get pissed anyways." His nasal tone was modified by the thick bandage covering his fractured nose, and he was forced to endure several more jokes from Stevens about that, and the black rings around the bottom of his eyes. Of course, the unspoken truth was that they were very grateful that Robinson was alive - the deafening blast from that shotgun still rang in Stevens' memory.

An hour later, Stevens left the hospital and went to his apartment. He fell into his recliner with a beer in one hand and rubbed his temple with his free hand. Drunk sounds pretty good right now, he mused silently.

Before he could finish the first bottle, however, the telephone rang. He slowly pulled himself out of the comfortable grip of his faux-leather chair, and, not recognizing the number on the call display, let it ring itself into oblivion. The scenario played out three more times until he glumly accepted that the caller was not giving up. "What the hell do you want?" he barked into the cordless phone.

"Nick, it's me," answered the nervous voice on the other end. The tired detective was shocked to hear his given first name. When he applied to the police academy in Boston, Nicholas Shawn Stevens decided to start using his middle name instead; he did not want to be known as "Officer Nick Stevens". He thought it sounded too cliché, like a made-up cop name. But he hadn't been called Nick since he left Fairfax, and that was a long, long time ago...

"Who is this?" Stevens practically whispered the question.

"Just meet me outside. I'm using a pay phone a block south of you, and I don't think it's safe for me to be out here much longer."

Probably not - you're in Hub, he thought. "Do I know you?"

"Nick. It's me - Robby Reed. For God's sake, hurry -"

The line went dead.

Stevens sprinted down the two flights of stairs. By the time he got outside his apartment building, he could see - he could tell - that the man racing toward him was Reed. Complicating the situation was the imposing figure in flight behind him, hovering about fifteen feet off the pavement. The sun was setting on his back, making it difficult to make out any of his features, but Stevens could tell that the guy was big. Strangely enough, that was what registered with him first - not the fact that Reed's enemy was in flight, but that he was massive. Well over six feet tall, maybe even seven, and broader than an offensive lineman across the shoulders. He had long, muscular arms that his short cowl occasionally billowed across, and a compact lower body that didn't seem to quite fit with the rest of him. That said, Stevens was quite sure that he wouldn't walk into a dark alley with him.

Then he noticed that the behemoth had blue skin, and some sort of handgun that did not look like anything he had ever seen or read about in his life.

Robby Reed nearly collapsed, exhaustion and relief overwhelming his limbs as he cowered behind Stevens, who had his Beretta at the ready. He pointed it above him and at the strange-looking target, knowing that he couldn't miss the giant if he tried, although his target didn't seem too worried about it. He gently descended to the ground and nodded in the direction of Reed; when his feet touched down, a mechanical orb, about the size of a baseball, was deployed from a hard case attached to his back and levitated over his left shoulder. When the hunter spoke, undecipherable noises came from his mouth, and the orb translated the words for him - for a second, Stevens felt like he was watching a bad kung-fu movie with dubbed-in dialogue. It took him a second to comprehend what was going on.

"Step aside, human. I want the dial."

Author’s Notes

My first DC fanfic work. When I asked Dale if there were any titles or characters around here that I had no risk of interfering with, he threw out a few wacky choices. The one we ultimately settled on was Dial H for Hero. I hope that this first issue is noticeably different than any of the preceding series that inspired my story - for lack of a better term, I’m trying to minimize the corniness. I’d appreciate any feedback or insight you fine readers - he said ambitiously - might have.