Black Shadow hesitated, licking his lips. "Let me think." Bang.

The bullet clipped him in the leg, and he went down with a yell. "Stop that!"

"Give me my body back!"

"Fuck you!"

Bang.

The bullet took Black Shadow in the torso somewhere, and he went down, suddenly limp, hands clutching at the roof. "You're crazy!" he shouted.

And then his eyes narrowed as he looked at Shad. Triumph sang through Shad's veins as he realized what was about to happen. He gave his hand a command to drop his pistol, but suddenly the world was spinning again, and he couldn't be certain if the command was obeyed.

Asphalt hit him in the face. I'm Black Shadow, he thought, and laughter rang through his mind.

He ate every photon he could reach. Heat blazed through him. He rolled across the roof as blind pistol shots snapped out.

The jumper loomed in his awareness, a flaming infrared target that staggered around the roof, blinded by darkness.

Shad's body had been exercising hard, and it was starved for energy. Shad concentrated on the figure and drank in its heat.

The jumper swayed, staggered, collapsed.

Shad gasped for breath and tried to rise to his feet. The wounded leg seemed willing to support him; the bullet had gone through the fleshy part of the thigh. The other bullet had gone through the right shoulder, and Shad could feel bone grating as he tried to move it. Blood was soaking the jumpsuit, coursing warm down Shad's right arm.

The wounds were in shock, and there was no real pain yet, just little crackling twinges of what was to come. He was going to need a doctor real soon. Except that the police had fired a lot of bullets at him, would have no idea whether they'd hit, and would be searching the hospitals for him. The jumpers too, probably.

He'd have to find a doctor he could trust, a junkie or alcoholic or someone who would want his cash and not turn him in. He searched his mind.

Nothing. Shit. He'd settle for a vet.

He could hear police shouting, the pounding of boots on pavement. They'd heard the shots and figured something was up. Time to leave. He squatted over the jumpers and Shelley's body, and ate every bit of heat in them, feasted on photons until the two lay with frost covering their glassy eyeballs. Shad rose and headed off the roof. A tornado of heat swirled in his heart. Blood drizzled on the cold pavement below as he eased himself over the wall.

I'm Black Shadow, he thought.

A glowing green landscape burned in his mind. The night covered him with its velvet mask.

He collapsed two blocks away. He panted for breath, ate photons, tried to gather himself together. He became aware of someone moving cautiously across the street, watching him with dilated cat's eyes.

"Wait!" He called the darkness, staggering toward her trailing a boiling black shroud and a trail of red. She hesitated, then began to retreat. "I need help." He sagged against the wall and slid to the pavement.

Chalktalk turned. Her dilated cat's eyes seemed big as the moon.

A bolt of pain shot up his arm. "I've been shot," he said.

"I need to get out of here." He sagged against a brick wall. Chalktalk stood, undecided, five long yards away. "Can you take me somewhere?" Shad asked. "Someplace where I can… get better? I can't have police involved."

She said nothing.

Shad tried again. "You've been following me, okay? I know that. So you know what I've been up to. I don't know what your reasons were, but-" Pain crackled through his body. He gasped. "Help me now, all right? Like I helped you with Anton."

She walked close to him and knelt, her bulky overcoat obscuring her work as she reached for chalk and began to draw.

Shad shivered. The girl's warmth called him, but he didn't take it. The chalk made little scratching sounds on the pavement. Shad became aware that he was sitting on wetness. "Hurry," he said.

The girl looked up at him. Her famished wide-eyed face was lit from below, as if the pavement were glowing with light. He crawled toward her, and she ducked her head toward him and kissed him, and before he had a chance quite to absorb that, he was suddenly aware that he was falling. Falling into another place.

The phone rang twice. 741-PINE. The answering machine picked up.

A woman's voice spoke for a few seconds. "I've called a dozen times," she said.

There was no one to answer. The little Jokertown room was empty, holding only a narrow bed and a footlocker with an odd assortment of clothing.

"I don't know what to do," the woman said. There was a click. And then there was silence.

The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat

Blaise had torn down the Administration Building around me, replacing it with a gigantic cage of steel. I stared out forlornly through the bars as Blaise and Prime rounded up all the jokers from their houses and the caves below, herding them into a great mass before me. Tachyon-Kelly was there, too, standing beside Blaise and cradling the great mound of her belly. Blaise kissed her savagely, his eyes open and staring at me, not her. Prime applauded the gesture-Latham had taken all the money from the jokers; the bills in an enormous green pile before him.

"Now, Durg," Blaise said, and I heard a rumbling. An enormous bulldozer the size of a house came into view, and instead of grillwork, the front of it was Durg's face. DozerDurg churned the earth of the Rox, driving inexorably toward the jokers, who screamed with rapture-blue lips, cowering and backing away from the mechanical horror until the water of New York Bay lapped at their heels.

"Stop!" I yelled to Blaise from my case. "This is the joker homeland! This isn't your place; this is the Rox!"

Blaise only laughed. Prime smiled coldly, sorting the stacks of bills before him. A cold wind was blowing, a dark wind, and it scattered the money. Latham ran after the flying bills, shouting and grasping, but the wind took them all out into the bay. Prime-Latham jumped up and down on the shore, cursing.

"Prime!" I shouted to him. "You have to help me! I'm the governor!"

Blaise was laughing at Prime, laughing at me. DozerDurg herded the jokers, forcing them deeper into the water. "Well, Fatboy, they've got you trapped, but then you already know that."

I looked down to see the penguin grinning up at me. A huge key ring was hung over the funnel hat; an ornate ancient key dangled from the ring. "Shut up. Go away," I told it.

"Whassamatta, Gov? You afraid?" The penguin tsked softly, shaking its head. The key rang against the ring with a dull chiming. "You have so much potential, so much power."

"I don't have any power," I raged. "Nothing. The caves just came; I don't know how I did it or how to do it again. It's all a sham. Damn it, I could make this place something wonderful if they'd just let me."

"You certainly could," the penguin agreed. "If you'd get off your big ass and use that power. But you won't. You don't really believe in it."

I began pacing the perimeter of my cage. I was the Outcast now, with an empty scabbard banging against my hip as a reminder of my impotence. I shook the bars; I raged.

None of it did any good. Blaise laughed, Latham ignored me. Dozer-Durg drove the jokers out until the waters of the bay closed over them with black finality.

Blaise's arm snaked around Tachyon's swelling waist and walked her over to my prison. "You see," he said to her. "He's nothing. He's powerless to help you. He's lost everything." He pointed at me, low, and chuckled.

I looked down. Blaise was right. I was naked, and where my genitals should have been there was nothing but smooth unbroken skin. I began to scream…

I was still screaming when I woke up.

"You'll take the message to Latham?" I asked Croyd. "Is it safe for you?"