One shot.

If I miss, it's all fucking over.

I feel their eyes boring into me. All of them watching. The whole room is hushed as if waiting for an explosion -- and they know there ain't no point running from the flames. Too late for that. So instead, they're just going to watch it happen and enjoy the carnage.

Deep breath. Concentrate. Clear my mind.

"You can do it, babe!"

Shut up, sweetie. Daddy needs some quiet right now.

I pull my arm back, keep the stick steady in the other hand. Hunch my back until I'm almost level with the table.

Mike has set me up rotten here. I'm going to have pull off a fucking miracle.

My arm thrusts forward like a controlled punch. The stick hits the white just perfect. White hits the table; ball ricochets off green velvet. It clacks loud as it hits the black.

My heart skips as the black rolls, rolls, rolls, slowly, towards the corner hole.

And everyone in the bar believes, just for a moment, that I'm going to pull it off.

I believe it, even. And for a second, as black falls into the pocket, I think I've fucking done it!

But I didn't keep my eye on the white, and it's heading with a lazy inevitability towards the opposite pocket.

As it sinks, so does my heart.

"Shit."

"Ouch. Hard luck, Sammy boy." Mike smacks my back and puffs on the cheap cigar he seems to keep permanently between his teeth as if glued there. "Five hundred dollars, if you please."

"Oh, poor baby," says Shelly, but I ain't even certain she knows what happened. Still, she's smart enough to work out from my face that I'm not happy.

"Yeah. I'd say well done, Mike, but this table is as crooked as you are." Even so, I take out my wallet and skim some notes out onto Mike's palm. The money is nothing to me, and that's the funny thing 'bout money -- it was nothing to me when I didn't have any, and it's nothing to me now that my bank account is bulging. But my pride, now that does matter. That always matters. Because it's all I've ever had.

"Same time tomorrow?" Mike asks.

He knows my grunt is a: 'Yeah, you fuck. I'll see you then and I'll be getting my money back.' That's how it goes; we've seemed to take it in turns to win each night, ever since we started two weeks ago, back when I first stumbled into this little pit beneath the ground. O'Reilly's. Carpet and wallpaper are infused with the stink of beer and piss and failure, and I kind of feel at home here. It's a hidden jewel in Sacramento's nightlife. It doesn't suffer from what too many bars above ground here do: lack of smoke (where's the friggin' ambiance?), harsh white lights that make you think you're drinking in a hospital waiting room, and filled at least a dozen douchebags. Down here, there's only one, and he's taken my cash and is heading to the gents.

"Don''t worry, you'll get him tomorrow baby. He just got real lucky." Shelly's not wearing much more than a swimsuit and she's sticking her chest out at me like she's some kind of prize hen. She leans forward and whispers in my ear, "I know something that'll take a load off your mind." She squeezes my balls. "And a load out of here, too."

I'm not in the mood right now and I could be more tactful, but I say, "You're not on the clock, right now, are ya? Cause you're sure acting like you are and it's got me nervous as my wallet's already light."

It takes her a moment, but then the flash of red on her cheeks -- like lightning blowing up some clouds close to sunset. "I'm not a fucking whore, Sammy. Might have been once, but you know I ain't no more."

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My eyes roam her body. "If you're not a whore, then how about not dressing like one?"

Her palm turns my cheek red and numb. I'm aware of distant laughter as Shelly grabs her jacket from a chair, says, "Fuck you, Sammy. Like you don't walk around like a whore yourself, in my little white panties, when you think I'm fast asleep."

Then she's walking us the stairs and the guys are keeled over with laughter.

"She's making that shit up," I tell 'em, but no one believes me.

I'm half tempted to run up the stairs and tell Shelly I'm sorry, but that just ain't me. And truth is I just don't care about her enough to do so. Instead, I decide to get my glass refilled.

"I'll get you this one, Sammy," says Mike, sliding up on the barstool next to me.

"I'll get my own."

"Oh, but I can afford it. Come into some money recently, don't you know."

"You should probably invest it," I say. "Cause you ain't getting no more. Not from me. And I doubt any fucker's stupid enough to actually pay you a wage."

He grins, "Damn, you are in a bad mood tonight."

He's right, and I know it. Can't even put my finger on why I feel like this, but I know it started long before I lost the snooker. Just a feeling that began a few days ago as a tiny seed of unease, deep in my belly, but once it got rooted, it grew and grew and is now blossoming into something thorny, that's prickling my chest and my brain.

"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

I turn to see a young guy standing behind me, wearing a heavy leather jacket, his hair's pulled back into a ponytail. "Maybe. But I don't know you." I turn back to the bar, but the kid continues.

"Yeah! I do know you!" I can hear the excitement in his tone and it's like spears being shoved down my ears. "You were on TV a few weeks back. On Letterman, right? A fucking Storm Born!"

I wish I'd been on Letterman. No, that's not true. Just wish I hadn't been on any show at all. Fame got to my head for a little while, and I became a moth chasing its bright light. "Leno," I correct him.

"That was it! Yeah, Leno, that new guy. Really made me miss Carson. But uh...You were..." He clicks his fingers as he's trying to remember what I was doing on it.

Mike turns around, whiskey in his hand, and joins us. Great.

"Sammy here is a real hero. Remember that forest fire a few months back, up north? That was Sammy that pissed it out. But he got too close to the heat and that's why his face looks like five other faces stitched together."

"Poison fog," I correct him. Seem to be correcting everyone today. Maybe I'll just go get myself an honest job at a kindergarten.

"That was it!" The new guy slaps my back. "Yeah! That was why your face was so messed up, I remember. Hey, you're looking a lot better, by the way, despite what your friend says." He chuckles. "I remember now, I remember thinking you looked like something my wife might have cooked up."

"Must be a bad cook," says Mike.

"Terrible," he laments. "Can't even make a sandwich without burning it. But, yeah, thanks for what you did and everything. You know, a lot of my friends think you Storms are just a bunch of overprivileged -- well, I won't repeat that language, but suffice it to say, they're not your biggest fans. Waste of taxpayer money and all that."

That's a sentiment that's grown from a whisper to a shout over the last ten years. Not been much of a need for the Storm Guards recently I guess. And if they're out of public view, then the public think they're not doing anything and probably not worth their money. And maybe they're right.

"And what do you think?" I ask.

"You sucked the poison straight out of the earth, right? That's what you said on Letterman."

"Leno."

"Right. Well, whatever. You did something good and everyone knows about it. Made me reconsider my view, to be honest. Maybe it's good to have you guys around, just in case."

"Stick around and get to know this fella," Mike tells him, "and you'll change your mind about them all over again."

Except I'm not even part of the Guards. They just paid me a shit-ton of money to come back for one last mission, to find a baby, to bring it back to them, to not tell anyone about the baby. 'We want to run a few tests on the child, before we announce to the world that we've found the first Storm Born in twenty years. You can understand that, can't you Samuel? We'll double what we promised you, if you sign this and this and this. It's just for a few weeks when we run the tests. You know it makes sense. She might be good publicity for us, but... If we announce her arrival right now, well, she's already killed hundreds of people, Samuel. We need to be smart about this.'

And I did understand. Or at least, I understood enough that I wanted to get the fuck away from all of them. The general, Susie... That baby that just made me feel like someone I wasn't meant to be.

So I cashed myself out and left the casino.

I try not to dwell on my thoughts too often. Because somewhere inside me, a thought that I can't quite mute, keeps resurfacing.

It's just for a few weeks, while we run the tests.

That was almost four months ago. Why haven't they announced anything yet?

Then right on queue, the barman flicks the TV over to a news channel.