"That's not safe," Shad said. "It's as safe as I'm going to get."

"Listen," Shad said. "I can make you disappear. I can get you new ID, a place to live, whatever it takes…"

"And I put my new money in a trust fund, right? And then someone in the trust department gets jumped, and-"

"It doesn't have to be New York."

"There are more jumpers all the time, right? It's a mutant wild card-like what that carrier spread a few years ago, only slower. In another few years there won't be anyplace safe. The only way to keep safe is to keep on their good side."

A melancholy warning bell tolled slowly in Shad's heart. "I told you once," Shad said. "I told you bad things would start to happen. You didn't listen then."

"What about my missing years? How do I get them back?" Her voice was a wail.

"Think of the years you've got left. Make those the important ones."

"Shit! Shit!" She turned away and beat a pillow with her fist.

He reached for her, tried to stroke her shoulders and back. "You're ahead of the game. You've got lots of options."

"I was young!"

She clutched a pillow to her. Tears spilled from her eyes, and Shad's nerves twisted. "You were a joker," he said. "You're not anymore."

"I want to be safe."

"There isn't anyplace safe. The Rox least of all."

A vision of cool green fields passed before his mind. Shad held her till she stopped trembling. Then she jumped up and went to the bathroom to find some tissues. A few minutes later, she was back, red-faced and red-eyed, and began to pick up her clothing.

"I should think about getting out of here," she said. "I can hide you."

She frowned, considered, shook her head. Stepped into her underpants. "I want to be free," she said. "Free to make up my mind without any pressure."

"Don't hurt people, Shelley."

A little muscle in her cheek jumped. She gave him a resentful look. "The worst that'll happen to them is to end up in Lisa Traeger's body. You seem to think that's a good place to be."

"'That's not exactly what I said."

Shad watched her dress and felt hope trickling out of him. He reached for his own clothes.

Leave her alone. Let her make up her own mind. He couldn't tell her what to do-he'd made too many wrong decisions himself to tell anyone else how to behave-but he knew that decisions had consequences, that karma worked on that level if no other, that nothing good could come out of any of this.

But he couldn't really think of any way to make it better any other way, either. What had happened to Shelley was like what happened to people in prison. You got fucked up. It didn't matter if you were in for an unpaid traffic fine and were the best prisoner in the world, because prison fucked you over anyway. What you learned there was only good for survival in prison, and what you learned was only how to manipulate people and keep everyone at a certain distance and play the game to get what you want and not care about anyone else. And you couldn't help it, because that was what you had to do to survive the slams. And when those reflexes carried over to the outside, bad things would happen.

He buttoned his shirt, looked up at her. "Don't tell them about me."

Her look was scornful. "What, kind of person do you think I am?"

"I'm here to tell you I'm not going to hurt you, okay? I know you're not the enemy."

"Violet wasn't the enemy. She went off the roof anyway."

"I didn't push her."

"That doesn't mean it wasn't your fault."

Shad didn't have an answer for that one. "741-PINE," he said. "Leave messages. I'll get them eventually, and I want to know you're okay. But I don't live by the phone. You can't trust it in an emergency." He looked at her hopelessly. "If someone pushes you off a roof, I can't help."

Her look was slitted, hidden. Like someone gazing out from behind a hundred years of hard time. She sighed, reached out, touched him. Became Shelley for a little while. "I won't shop you," she said. "You helped. I'd still be a joker if it wasn't for you."

He put his arms around her and held her close. Her life had turned nightmare, and she wanted it all back, the youth and beauty and trust fund. Maybe she'd get it.

What she would never get back was that miraculous innocence, the racing exuberant joy.

And they both knew it.

Two days later, Shad was ready. He had the jumpers scoped out, knew their movements, knew that things were as ready as they'd ever be. Shelley hadn't called him, but every day that went by was another day in which she could decide to rejoin the jumpers, and he wanted to make his move in the interim.

The only delay had been caused by the building's alarm systems. The warehouse had new state-of-the-art alarms, but the building had first got electricity a century ago, and the junction box in the alley out back was a spaghetti maze of hundreds of different-colored dusty old wires. It had taken Shad nineteen hours of work, crouched twelve feet off the ground as he worked with his meter and alligator clips, before he had the proper wires isolated. He was lucky it hadn't taken weeks. All he had to do, come the proper moment, was bypass the alarms with current from a six-volt battery, and then it would be time to rock and roll.

He decided to move early the next morning, when any guards would be tired and maybe asleep. He went to his apartment off Gramercy Park and watched the news and played Cannonball Adderley's Savoy Sessions and tried to sleep.

At four in the morning, he got up, went to the wardrobe, and unlocked it. He got out a heavy belt and a bunch of gear and laid them out on the carpet. Then looked at the clothing, all the identities lined up on the rack awaiting his habitation. His eyes drifted to the Black Shadow costume: the navy-blue jumpsuit, the black cloak, the domino mask.

The costume sang to him of readiness, and he felt his soul answer.

There was a chalk drawing on the wall next to the junction box. It showed only the junction box blown up to enormous size, its mass of wires rendered in bright, almost surrealistic detail, with a giant pair of hands working with alligator clips and a voltage meter.

Shad found his nerves keening again, his head gymballing madly as he looked for the street artist, but he knew she was long gone.

The cloak floated about him as he crouched on the wall next to the junction box and attached his homemade bypass box to the alarm system. He took a cellular phone from his belt, dialed 911, and told the police that there were jumpers holed up with their loot in the warehouse and that they had captives in there. He finished by saying that he'd heard shots fired and that they'd better cordon off the neighborhood and get a team ready to send in.

"Give me your name, sir," the operator insisted. "Black Shadow."

Why the hell not?

Shad hung the phone on his belt and walked up the wall of the warehouse. Night spilled from his cloak, raced through the sky. He sucked photons until the darkness billowed out ten yards in all directions, until his nerves sang with pleasure. He picked the lock on the roof access and went down a fluted nineteenth-century cast-iron staircase. Torn, graffitiscarred wallboard revealed crumbling red brick and slabs of unreclaimed asbestos.

Below, on the upper floor of the warehouse, were the tiger cages.

It looked like a brainwashing academy out of The Manchurian Candidate. Solid prefabricated metal-walled cells had been built and riveted together, each with a single steel door and a slot though which food could be passed. The cells were open on top and screened with metal mesh. Catwalks lay atop the mesh so that sentries could march along them and peer down at the inmates. Each cell was equipped with a cot, a mattress, a washbasin, a pitcher of water, and a slop pail. February cold filled the place; the prisoners were wrapped in blankets and secondhand winter clothing. Spotlights juryrigged to the graceful brick arches of the roof kept the prisoners in perpetual daylight. Cameras peered down from above. There was a stairway and a pair of empty freightelevator shafts that led to the floor below.