"Who are you?"

"The warehouse is full of loot," Shad said. "Gold bars, paintings, drugs, and a whole lot of guns. There are some kidnap victims I've let go-"

"We've picked up some." A flat declaration. "Some are wounded."

Captain Ellis nodded, raised her walkie-talkie, spoke a few words.

"I've subdued the kidnappers and bagged them for you. Some are jumpers, so be careful."

Ellis nodded again.

"They've been jumping the rich," Shad continued. "The city comptroller, Nelson Dixon, other people with access to cash. There are files in there that should give you a lot of names."

She looked at him with unforgiving jade eyes. "You never answered my first question. Who the fuck are you?" Shad's smile broadened, and he couldn't resist a low, calculated laugh. "Call me Black Shadow," he said.

She stroked her chin and nodded.

He laughed again, exultant. This was, all of it, what he was born for. He looked at her, the laughter still rolling from his throat. "Somebody else got jumped," he said. "Somebody important."

Her eyes were most unfriendly. "Who?"

What should have happened was that he spoke the name of Tachyon, ate every particle of light for about ten yards around, gunned the Triumph, and disappeared like the Lone Ranger into the night, trailing triumphant laughter. What happened instead: The world suddenly spun in his head, and then he was looking up into a starless New York opalescent night, and he could feel his own limbs twitch and spasm as if they were not his own. Shelley looked down at him with a sneer on her face. She was wearing a lot of mascara and the wrongcolored eye shadow. Her breath was warm and smelled of gin.

"Asshole," she said. "Son of a bitch. I should blow your brains out." Brandishing a chrome-plated. 38 revolver. Shots banged off hard brick walls. Shad could hear shouts and screams. Shelley grabbed him by the collar, jerked him left and right. He couldn't seem to make his body do what it wanted. Roof asphalt and pebbles grated on his back.

It wasn't Lisa Traeger doing this to him but the old Shelley, the young girl he'd first met. He recognized the bridge of freckles across her nose.

"Hear that?" Shelley said. "That's Diego in your body, and he's kicking police ass." She laughed. "Cops are gonna come looking for you."

He had been jumped. The thought pierced Shad's mind like an icicle. He gasped for breath and tried to rise, arms and legs thrashing.

Shelley laughed contemptuously and shoved Shad back onto the roof. Police shotguns boomed out. "Relax," she said. "You'll be back in your body real soon, and you won't like it."

Shad's mind whirled. He had just worked out who he was, and now he wasn't himself anymore.

The hell he wasn't.

I am Black Shadow, he thought. There had to be a way to make this body work for him. He lay back on the cold roof and concentrated on making one finger move. It seemed to do as he commanded.

Okay. A start.

I am Black Shadow, he thought.

Shelley went to the roof parapet and looked down. "Diego, shit!" she said. "Get outta there! Jump! You've made your point."

She wore a white evening dress, a fur wrap, and an incongruous pair of battered red sneakers. Her hair was longer and punked up with mousse. She and her friend had probably just come back from a night of club-crawling and seen the police setting up their barricades. You needed a twenty-one-year-old body to get into the kind of clubs where jumpers probably wanted to hang out. Shelley had provided one. Maybe that's all they really wanted her for and the trust fund was just a bonus.

Shad tried to move his left foot, was successful, and managed to move the left leg a few inches. More or less as he intended. Then he tried the right leg.

I'm Black Shadow. Black Shadow. The words becoming a mantra.

More guns fired. Shelley paced back and forth at the parapet, muttering. Shad wondered if the police were winning. "Yeah! Yeah!" Shelley chanted. "Run for it!"

A storm of fire erupted. Shelley leaned out over the parapet, apparently following someone escaping around the corner, and then she sighed. "Good." She came back to stand by Shad's side and looked down at him. "You're gonna get yours, asshole."

Black Shadow. Black Shadow. I'm Black Shadow.

He looked at the woman next to him. And you're not Shelley.

Shad moved. His coordination wasn't very good, so he chose a move that could be done without any real precision. His kenpo teacher called it sticks of Satin. He dropped his right leg against the front of Shelley's ankles, then slammed his left leg against the back of her knees. His accuracy was none too great, but the leverage was still good enough to pitch Shelley forward, landing hard on hands and knees.

Shad lunged upward and grabbed her gun arm by the sleeve, then dragged her toward him. He clubbed one fist and tried to bring it down on the back of her neck, but his accuracy was wretched, and he hit the back of the head instead. He kept hitting. Shelley struggled, almost got free, but Shad lurched atop her and bore her down to the asphalt.

"I'm Black Shadow," he said. "Black Shadow." His arms wrapped Shelley's head, right forearm folding across her jaw, left cupping the back of the head.

"No," Shelley begged. "Don't." Shad's heart twisted. "Black shadow!" he screamed, and snapped Shelley's neck.

He pulled the. 38 from twitching fingers and staggered to his feet. The sky whirled around him. He tottered to the parapet and looked down.

The Triumph was on fire. Angela Ellis was on the pavement, moving feebly as police figures crouched over her shouting into their radios. Other officers lay sprawled across the pavement, some in pools of blood.

They'd blame Black Shadow for it, he realized. How could they do anything else?

There was a noise on the fire escape, and Shad spun to face the sound. Dizziness almost brought him sagging to his knees. Black Shadow rose from the darkness. He looked at Shad and the sprawled figure of the lifeless jumper.

The cloaked silhouette approached. He was carrying a police M-16. "Man. I thought I was cornered there for a second. I musta jumped twelve times before I ended up back in this body." He dropped the rifle and grinned. "Turns out this guy can walk up walls. Lucky for me." His look turned puzzled. "Why are you in my body?" Thinking Shad must be his friend. He looked from one to the other again, then alarm entered his eyes. "What are="

Shad lurched toward him, swinging up the pistol on the end of his right arm. "I want my body back, motherfucker." Black Shadow looked uncertain. Then he smiled. "Maybe," he said. "If you drop that gun."

"Bullshit." The gun swayed. Shad grabbed it with both hands.

Black Shadow's eyes narrowed inside the mask. "Maybe I can cross that distance before you pull the trigger."

"Just try it, motherfucker. I know I ain't faster than a speeding bullet, and neither are you."

The jumper hesitated. Apparently he didn't know that he could hide himself in darkness or freeze Shad solid, because he didn't try it. Maybe he hadn't been alive to read Aces magazine in 1976.

Shad blinked sweat from his eyes. The gun jittered in his hands.

"You don't seem too coordinated, asshole," said Black Shadow. "Why don't you put the gun down?"

"I want my body back," Shad said, "and if I don't get it, I'm gonna hurt you."

Black Shadow looked at him. "How you gonna do that?" He grinned insolently. "I'm in your body. You aren't gonna hurt this body, are you? Look at yourself. You're fifteen years old. I'm a grown-up."

Bang.

Black Shadow's eyes widened as the bullet whipped over his head. "Shit!" he said. "Will you put that thing down?" Shad blinked eyes dazzled by the muzzle flash, a problem his regular body didn't have. "If you give me my body back," Shad said, "you can have this body. This body has a gun, motherfucker. Maybe you can kill me with it before I snap your fucking neck."