[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/190801/51a9a6704cfba23a4183aaf44eaef444.png[/img][/center][sub][hr][/sub][indent][sub][COLOR=slateblue][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Hub City, Illinois[/I] - [I]United States[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=slateblue][b]Issue #1:[/b][/COLOR] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5kmCgVhADY][I]Who Are You?[/I][/url][/right][/sup][/indent][sub][hr][/sub][indent][sub][COLOR=slateblue][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I]None[/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=slateblue][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [I]N/A[/I][/right][/SUP][/indent] I woke up unable to recall my own name. The room was cold and damp, with no decorations to speak of. A small window behind me, a ray of pale moonlight seeping through the glass and onto the brick walls. The only exit was a door dead ahead. I tried to push myself up but found my hands tied behind my back with rope, my legs also tied up, and I was unable to move too much without chafing my wrists and ankles. How long had I been here, passed out and tied up? I needed to think... What can I remember? [center]-----[/center] [i]It was raining, the sky above me the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. An informant of mine, an old drunkard named Roscoe, had provided me with a tip. He said that there were shady things going on at this address, something a man of my talents would be able to bust no problem. The address led to an old shack, tucked cozily into a back alley in The Wedge. I waited outside, pressed up against the wall of the shack and peeking in through the window at a group of men playing poker. [b]"Yo Johnny, you got any sixes?"[/b] one man asked, looking intently at another man, Johnny. [b]"Go fish,"[/b] Johnny replied, and the other man grumbled and pulled another card from the deck. Well never mind, then. They were playing Go Fish. I suppose poker would have been too stereotypical. I watched on as they played, getting bored and cold and wet. The seconds ticked by into minutes, then an hour. Part of me thought that Roscoe was pulling my leg sending me here. So far it seemed I was just spying on a group of thugs having game night. Hell, maybe the old wineo was going senile, misheard something. I wouldn't put it beneath him. It was two hours into my stakeout that it finally started to show promise. The men started making small talk while playing, having stayed silent most of the time, and one of them asked the question I was waiting to hear. [b]"Ain't boss gonna be coming tonight?"[/b] [b]"Yeah, he's on his way. Got in a bit of a jam, had to clean up a mess. Should be here soon."[/b] Interesting... Maybe this is what Roscoe was talking about.[/i] [center]-----[/center] A stakeout. One that somehow ended with me bound up in some empty room. But who would want to keep me alive? If they had such a problem with me, it would have been much easier to shoot me in the head when they had me beat. There had to be something I was missing... What was I missing? ... Try as I might, no sudden spark of memory ran through my mind. Shit. Must've gotten a pretty sharp crack on the head for my mind to be so scattered like this. It felt like my brain was a hamster on a running wheel, constantly working but ultimately ending up nowhere at all. This was pointless. I'd have time enough for piecing my circumstances together once I got out of here. Needed to be able to at least stand up. My hands were tied behind my back. Grunting, I used my hands to lift myself up a bit, enough to get them under my thighs. After a moment, I managed it, and from there it was as easy as... Pulling my legs through my bound up hands... Damn, too tired to even come up with a witty metaphor. Need to keep going. With my hands now in front of me, I flopped over onto my front and pushed myself up. I stood for a moment, struggling to keep my balance with my feet bound so closely together, but after laying my hands against the wall I was steady again. The window I had noticed earlier was just within reach; I couldn't slip through it, it was too small and cold steel bars prevented anyone from slipping in, but I could use it to my advantage in another way. Clasping my hands together, I raised them up high and slammed them across the window pane. There was a small crack, and a smear of blood from a cut I had just gotten. Another smack, more cracks, bigger smear. Third smack, the window shattered, and my hands were freely bleeding. Slowly, I retrieved a sizeable shard, and slipped it between my hands to saw at the ropes. I pondered on just how stupid this was, sticking a jagged and sharp piece of glass in between my wrists, but my desire to get my Goddamn hands free overpowered any fear I had... Bingo. I let the ropes fall from my wrists, then flopped onto my behind to undo the ropes on my feet. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... I sawed through the rope without much of a problem. I stood up and dropped the shard onto the ground, the blood stained glass shattering upon impact with the cold concrete floor. I rubbed at my wrists a bit to relieve the chafing, then reached up to rub the exhaustion out of my eyes... My hands met flesh where my eyes should be. I glided my hands down to my mouth. Nothing there either. Did they... Take my face? No no, that was too crazy. That sort of stuff couldn't happen. I had to have been wearing a mask of some sort. Something to hide my identity. But from who? That, I suppose, was the question I should be asking. I walked over to the door leading out of the room, finding it locked. Of course, it couldn't be simple. I placed a finger against the door itself; wooden, rotting from years of water damage, nearly caving to the pressure if you pushed hard enough. I backed up a few paces, then slammed my shoulder into the door and heard a loud crack. I backed up and did it again once, twice, three times, and knocked the door clean off the hinges. I landed on the cold hard ground with a grunt of pain, rolling off the door and looking up. I was in a long hallway, barely lit by a dim yellow, almost green lightbulb above me. The walls looked like they would have been white once upon a time, but were now yellow and marred with water stains, a sign of how decrepit this place was. I needed to get out of here... ... And I couldn't have thought that at a worse time, as I heard shouting from behind another doorway not far from me. I looked around the hall, trying to find an exit; there were three other doors aside from the one I heard the shouting from and the one I had come out of. One of the doors, probably leading out of here, was at the very end of the hallway past the room full of thugs. If I was in better condition, I might've been able to make it, but no. Right now I needed to hide. Acting quickly, I pushed myself off the ground and scrambled into one of the other rooms, closing the door behind me. As I caught my breath, I looked around the room, half expecting it to be full of other criminals. But as luck would have it, it seemed to be devoid of other people; from the looks of it I had wound up in a bathroom, stalls and urinals lining the walls. After making sure I was alone, checking all the stalls, I rushed back to the door and pressed an ear against it, listening for any sign that they were approaching. A door opening... Footsteps, from the sounds of it about seven men... Then, shouting. [b]"Shit, Question got out! Look around, he can't have gone far!"[/b] Question, huh? Must have been an alias of mine. Wonder how I got it? Wait, no. I shook my head, now wasn't the time for this. It didn't matter. All that mattered right now was figuring a way out of here... [indent][indent][color=slateblue][b]To Be Continued...[/b][/color][/indent][/indent]