There's a chunky yellow box at the bottom of the TV screen with white writing in it, pronouncing: Storm Guard Disbanded

Instead of thinking about the implications like I should be, I'm just looking at the pretty female reporter standing outside the tall concrete box I'd called home for those few years. Thirty stories tall, five-hundred government agents working inside of it, and it was where I lived when I was training. We all did, until we were sixteen. We slept below ground and trained below ground, and it was dark and grimy and cold, and I wonder if it's why I like shitholes like this bar quite as much as I do. The concrete building was like a giant tombstone above us, as if pronouncing the death of our childhoods to the city. Buried here... The latest recruits for the Storm Guards. RIP.

The reporter is young, and the bar's gone silent but I ask the barman to turn the TV up anyway, 'cause I want her voice to deafen my thoughts.

"... And unfortunately, there just aren't enough of them left -- in America, or globally -- for them to be an effective deterrent any longer. And if they're not a deterrent against Atomic War, then really, and this is the question America has been wrestling with for a long time now: what's the point in them? Millions of taxpayer dollars are sunk into the building behind me annually, and people have been asking: what are they getting out of it? And what have they been getting for their money, Bill?

The screen flicks to a man sitting on a sofa in a studio, wearing a hot air balloon tie and a mustard colored jacket. "Well, they've been trying to find their place for a long time, Jackie, and personally I think they found it. They control and ease national emergencies, and in that respect--"

"I'm going to have to stop you there, Bill. America's last three national emergencies were almost entirely resolved by the military, and by charity and aid organizations. The Storm Guards, when they were there at all, were a side-show to distract the people from the suffering going on. But did they actually help? No."

"I think that's a little unfair," says Bill, tightening his tie. "How about the recent California event?"

Mike lets out a whoop. "That's our celebrity hero he's talking about, folks," he says, raising a glass in my direction.

"That was California, Bill. Not America. And it wasn't a Storm Guard who resolved the issue. It was a free-lancing Storm Born, that was sent in and who allegedly sucked the poison out of the earth."

Not what happened, but my wallet's telling me to keep my mouth shut.

"He was trained as a Storm Guard," Bill argues, but even I can see he's losing the fight.

"Trained, sure. But that's the thing. Why do we need to keep a building like this open, or an organization like the Storm Guard active, when we can just recruit who we need when we need and save, and I'm not exaggerating here, billions of tax-payer dollars? Listen, it's not just America that thinks this. It's the Storm Guard themselves. They could carry on as they started out -- as an independent organization. But from what I'm hearing, they've -- the Storm Guard -- also been active in this decision to close down. It's not just America losing the Guards, it's every country that was lucky enough to have their own contingent. The Guards numbers are simply too low, and that's because there hasn't been a new Storm Born found globally in decades -- they are simply not the deterrent that they once were. In America, we at once time had fifty Guards. We have eight left alive, Bill. Eight."

"That's an interesting point, Jackie. But I ask you this: What's to stop us falling back into Atomic War, if the Storm Guard are no longer a deterrent?"

"Hydrogen bombs, Bill. Something only America has. A thousand times more powerful, more devastating, than an atomic bomb. Far more effective as a deterrent than any Storm Guard ever was, wouldn't you say?"

I turn away as the conversation changes to hydrogen bombs. The reporter is right, maybe. What country would have the stomach for a fight anyway, after the horrors of Atomic War? Half of China and Europe are still skeletal remains. A more devastating war... Doesn't bear thinking about.

"End of an Era," says Mike, not to me just talking to himself, shaking his head. His demeanor has changed, shoulders hunched. "End of a fucking era." I can hear the nerves in his hand. He downs his drink and orders two more.

"Here," he says, sliding one across to me. "You guys deserved to go out with a bang, not a whimper." For the first time I notice the deep wrinkles around his eyes. I've never asked him his age, but he must be ten years older than me.

"I said I could buy my own." Our new friend in the leather jacket has already walked away, as if the news report bored him.

"I know. Just figured you could... That we could use a drink."

He's right, I could. And he's at least as uneasy as me. I sigh away my stubbornness and raise my glass. "Cheers."

"To the Storm Guard."

"Storm Guard."

We clink our glasses together and drink. Then order two more.

A little later, as I'm looking for change in my pocket for the smokes machine, my hand finds the marble. I don't even remember putting it in these pants, but I guess I must have. It's like that gun when I was in the woods, and how it kept finding its way back into my palm.

And my mind walks that forest once more, until it comes to the baby that was waiting there in the center, and the message scrawled on the floor next to her. But now it reads: is she even alive?

Why hadn't they announced finding her? It had been long enough for the tests to have been completed. She might have a boon for us, publicity-wise. For them, I mean. Changed public opinion enough of the Storm Guards enough to secure additional funding, if that's what they needed. To keep them going.

Mike hands me another whiskey, and, at least for a few hours, my thoughts are drunk away.