Epilogue: The Question

The fedora was drawn low over her face as she stalked down the alley. She moved carefully, not disturbing the piles of trash, listening to the pump and hiss of the music through the old brick walls. Stopped in front of the door, and removed a slim metal strip, her gloved hands working it in between door and jamb...and carefully pushed the bolt back. For just a moment, if anyone was standing there, they might have seen her face—only to see nothing except a blank expanse of flesh, with no eyes or mouth or nose.

Leaving them with only a question.

The Question slid through the back of the club, the collar of her trenchcoat turned up. The door at the back of the club wasn't far from the stairs that led downstairs. She slipped through the space like a shadow in the night, and when she had disappeared through the dark opening and was slipping down the stairs, no one up above had even seen her. Down in the dark is where she had business.

There had been rumors, in Gotham. Something called "Croatoan." What it was, no one would say...but the Question had found references to it in connection with sex trafficking, sex workers, **** dealing...strange connections. Normal, upstanding middle-class stay-at-home moms that suddenly started selling their bodies online. College girls that ended up dealing designer **** to their fellow students. What had caught her attention was a Metropolis PD cop who suddenly started stripping on the weekends in Gotham...and she had Croatoan tattooed on her stomach. When some of the other women in the club saw it, they went wild...and she had found out that the officer had come to this club before she embarked on her new career. So from Gotham to Metropolis, the Question had come...

Instincts kicked in as she hit the bottom. A flashlight in one hand, her pistol out, safety off, crossed over her wrist to steady it. The Question's eyes ran over the graffiti, the debris. Something about the whole setup felt staged. There were no **** needles, no signs of squatting, no smell of human excrement or used condoms. There was no dust, the graffiti repeated the same patterns, but they weren't any gang-signs or tags she knew...she stepped lightly, every nerve on edge, every sense awake...turned a corner and saw a curtain drawn across the wall.

Holding the pistol steady, the Question used the flashlight to draw the curtain aside...revealing a hole in the brickwork, about waist-height, deep enough to crawl into, and penetrating through six feet of brickwork to another room. A tunnel. Someone had carefully painted the word CROATOAN around it three times...and there were more words, written on the walls of the tunnel, at the wrong angle to see. In that other room, something reflected off her flashlight. Pink metal.

The Question eased her head into the tunnel. There was a slight breeze blowing from the other room...warm air, with a slightly chemical smell, muted by the mask. Her light played on the words on the tunnel...she'd have to crawl all the way in to read the full message, but she could make out: WELCOME TO THE...IF YOU READ THIS...ABOUT TO BECOME...

A shiver ran through the Question. She remembered when someone had asked her that, back when she was just Renee Montoya, ex-Gotham PD cop. Who she would become. Her answer had been to take up this mask, this mantle. To become the Question. Something about this seemed so purposeful...so filled with intent and design...yet there was no-one here...yet it felt like she was in the very jaws of a trap...and the only way out was through.

Carefully, she eased herself into the tunnel. Here flashlight shone on that pink piece of metal...some kind of polished mirror or reflector. She kept her gun steady on it as she crawled forward, not distracting herself with the words scrawled on the tunnel. Time enough to deal with that when...

The pink light burst into being without warning. Instinctively, the Question fired, the pistol too loud in the tight confines of the tunnel. A shot hit the pink reflector and a bulb burst, metal shredding. A clear wall dropped down, and the Question found herself pinned, half in and half out of the tunnel.

Lights flickered at the end of the tunnel, a fine pink mist filled the air...words began to echo down the tunnel, like a recording. The Question struggled to make out the words as she wiggled, trying to either pull herself forward or backwards, lights flashed, but something had broken in the mechanism, and her mask's filters seemed to be keeping that pink mist in the air away from her.

"When was your last period?" The strange, mechanical, pre-recorded voice said.

"Go fuck yourself," The Question snarled. She felt a wet tingle as the pink mist settled on the bare skin of her wrists below her gloves, and the vigilante hoped that the stuff couldn't be absorbed through the skin. Twisting as far as the tight confines of the tunnel allowed, she saw that the wall that had dropped down was some clear material, like thick glass...but she didn't want to try and shoot it, not in this confined space where a ricochet could turn her into chunky salsa. If she couldn't get out of here soon, she was going to have to use her radio to call for help.

"Are you on birth control?" The voice said.

"None of your fucking business!" Renee yelled, sweating beneath her mask...and then she heard footsteps behind her, caught a shadowy glimpse of someone through that clear wall.

"Miss? Are you stuck?" A woman's voice. The Question kicked her feet.

"Yes!" she shouted, as loud as she dared. "Can you pull me out?"

"I'll try! I'll—"

The voice cut off suddenly, as though the woman had noticed something. The Question felt her heart hammer in her breast as the woman's hands began to pull at the legs of her pants. Renee held her legs out straight, hoping to give the woman the leverage she needed, but the grasping hands kept tugging and pulling with strange purpose...and then Renee felt the hands undoing her belt buckle, sliding the pants off of her legs.

Behind the featureless mask, the Question's cheeks burned. Her wrists began to itch where the pink mist had touched them, and the mechanical voice kept asking the same dull questions over and over. She hoped that maybe the woman was pulling her pants off to get enough leverage that Renee could squeeze out...but then she felt the slim hands of the woman pull her panties down.

Kicking backwards, the Question stretched out her arm, trying to pull herself through, away from this potential ****...and screamed as mechanical clamps grabbed her wrists, needles descended from the ceiling and **** themselves into her veins. A bright pink liquid began to ooze into her veins...and Renee felt the heat in her body increase unnaturally. She wondered what this must be like for a normal person...someone without the mask, who didn't shoot the device at the end of the tunnel...trapped here for God knows how long, subject to who knows what kind of **** and conditioning...

Hands pulled the Question's pussy lips apart. Three long, slow licks...and then the head of a bare, unprotected cock rubbed against the Question's cunny. Like the owl with his fucking tootsie pop. Renee struggled, not caring if she tore the veins in her arms, and emptied her gun into the device ahead of her, hoping to hit something vital.

"No!" she yelled as the cock slid forward, and Renee hated herself as she felt her pussy begin to dampen. She was a lesbian, and the penetration was an extra insult on top of injury. Struggling against the metal clamps that held her wrist, she tried to think...even though everything had taken on a pinkish mist, those stupid fucking questions being asked over and over like a broken record...and the cock slid into her, hard and fast and uncaring, holding up her thighs and slamming in until her ass bunched up against the clear glass barrier, again and again.

"No...no...no..." Renee said hoarsely, her head suddenly heavy. She could taste chemicals in her mouth, and her wrists and forearm burned where the pink **** had slid under her clothing. Sweat dripped down her ribs in her suit.

"No...no..."

Behind her, she could hear her ****'s heavy breathing. The cock was bigger than anything she'd ever had, and it stretched the Question's pussy...but it must have been the **** that made her so wet down there, that it was sliding in. The **** that made her shiver, the heat building and building inside of her, the way she only felt when she was making love to her girlfriend.

Kate, Renee thought. Oh damn Kate I'm sorry.

"N-o..." The Question let her head slump, the fedora rolling off. The tingling, itching sensation was all around the rim of the mask. Renee tried to control her breathing. Shallow breaths...maybe once the **** was done, she'd let her go. Then, Renee could put a bullet in her and...but she'd shot all her bullets...

"Are you on birth control?" The voice asked.

"Ye-es," Renee said. The word just came out, unbidden. Her eyes focused on the double-drip of pink goo into her veins.

"If you weren't fertile before," the voice said to her. "You are now."

"Yes," Renee gasped. Her eyes roamed over the inside of the tunnel. She almost laughed as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. The part of the message she hadn't read.

WELCOME TO THE MOTHERING HOLE

IF YOU READ THIS, MAYBE YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A FUCKING MOTHER

The hips pushed forward hard...Renee felt hot wetness inside her pussy, something she had never experienced before but knew what it had to be...and she knew too that her **** wasn't done. Still hard, still ready to go. Inhumanly priapic, the cock never stopped, never ceased pounding her pussy...and the words kept coming, the questions, and as the minutes ticked by into hours, the Question found herself answering...and then her voice grew hoarse as all she could do was whisper...and then pant...and then scream...

"Yes...Yes...YES....YES..."

It was a longer process, but the ending was never really in doubt.