The rain fell like bullets.

David Underwood blinked against the drops. Darkness pressed against both sides of his eyelids and the air smelled of burnt motor oil. The salvo of rain swept over the expanse of a lighted billboard.

“Need a lawyer?” read the emblazoned pitch, followed by an alphabet soup of advertising copy that swam in David’s vision. The sign was upside down.

He was flat on his back, looking up, his clothes soaked. He couldn’t lift his head. The rain beat tiny tattoos on his face and crawled along his skin in sinuous trickles. The surface beneath him was hard and cold. He let his head tilt toward the right and he saw a cluster of distant lights.

Buildings. A town.

But which town?

And, the bigger question: who was he this time?

He tested his fingers. None were broken, though the knuckles were sore. Maybe he’d been in a fight. Or mugged and left to leak fluids onto the pavement.

Underwood. David Underwood.

That was his name. The one he’d been born with, not the name they’d given him. Whoever “they” were.

He focused on the billboard. It featured a bland, stern face. No doubt the attorney, desperate to cash in on the misfortunes of others.

Injured in a car crash? Worker compensation claims? Product liability lawsuit? The bottom of the ad heralded a toll-free number.

David wondered if he owned a cell phone. He usually didn’t, but sometimes they gave him one, slipped it into his jacket pocket with prepaid minutes.

Prepaid minutes. That was a laugh. “Pay as you go” was the name of this game.

The rain must have been pounding him for a while, because he lay in a puddle. And it was summer because he wasn’t shivering. A car horn blared, probably fifty feet away, and tires spat white noise across the wet asphalt.