We took the Mustang. I hadn't walked willingly over to it, so I'd soon found my ankles tethered together by an ice cube thick enough to have sunk the Titanic. Whoever Carl was, he was well trained and irritatingly powerful.

Once they bundled me into the back of the car, the two of them decided handcuffs would suffice and probably do less damage than the ice. Didn't want the goods to develop hyperthermia, I guessed.

Carl's younger than me. I'd noticed it before, but not really considered it. Maybe ten years. Explained why I didn't know him -- I'd been off the team for that long. Or AWOL, depending on your perspective.

There hadn't been a new Storm Born found in twenty years, at least as far as I knew. And if I had to guess, I'd have said Carl was somewhere in his mid-twenties -- that would make him one of, if not the last Storm found.

We were a dying breed, now more than ever.

For a while, I practice some of my more colorful vocabulary with Elena and Carl -- profanities that I'd picked up all over the globe.

Instead of icing my mouth, Carl just turns up the radio until I'm drowned out. Eventually, voice hoarse, I give it up. Figure I'll get payback another time. And I figure also, seeing as how the sandman hadn't stayed with me for long last night, that I'll catch a few winks instead.

***

The radio is quieter when I awake, but the sun screams in my eyes and the world's ablaze. Or maybe it's just my eyes on fire. Result is still the same.

"Where are we?" I ask, shifting my body upright, skin slurping off the leather upholstery.

"Good morning," says Elena, turning to check on me. She even offers a smile that creases the skin around her mole.

My head's spinning. "I need a drink."

"Sorry," she says. "No drinks available on this journey. But don't worry, I think you'll make it through."

"I'm not so sure. God, I feel like shit."

"Look like it too," says Carl. "But don't worry, we're almost there."

The Mustang is bumping its way over a dirt road and it ain't helping my head. On my right, through still bleary eyes, I see endless rows of trees climbing up hillside. On my left, a camp of some sorts. It's all plastics and glass and everything is domed, but it has the same haphazard look as the Fort town we'd just left. As if someone had dropped the buildings out of a plane and just gone, 'fuck it, that'll do for town planning'.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"I expected more than five big tents. This all you guys can afford now? Government funding dried up?"

It was true that they weren't the global agency they'd once been. Too many Storms dead for them to be relevant any longer -- and that was before the recent spate of fatalities. Not enough wars, either. Wars were the bread and butter of the Storm Guard. Everything else, every other problem, was better solved by intelligence, than by water or fire.

"We've got to keep it mobile," says Carl. "In case the pathogen spreads this way. We've already had to shift base of operations twice and move it further down south."

"Yeah? Well it looks like a bunch of greenhouses. You guys sell tomatoes? I love big juicy tomatoes."

"We tried to move the people back in town, you know," says Elena. Is there something like guilt in her voice?

"Uh huh."

"But they're stubborn. Born there. Parents born there. Say they'll die there."

"They will if they have any of that beer." I try to catch Carl's eyes in the rearview mirror, but I can't hold them. "Your name really Carl?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not really."

"Carlos," he says. "But you can still call me Carl."

"I'd rather call you asshole."

He shrugs. "If you want your lips to be frozen off your face, you do that."

I fucking hate Storm Guards. Almost forgot why, but Carl - Carlos -- brings it all back to me. He's as up himself as any of them. And the worst thing? I bet he believes he's doing it for all the right reasons. He'll justify any shit, killing, torture, freezing my balls off me, any of it, because someone's whispering in his ear telling him that it's the right thing to do. None of them can think for themselves.

"You must be looking forward to seeing Autumn," Elena says, her voice not unkind. "She's spoken highly of you."

I laugh. A deep rumble that rises from my belly and soon swallows the inside of the car. "Highly? Get out of here. You know the last thing she said to me?"

No answer.

"She said: 'get fucked and die'. Speaks highly of me now, does she indeed? Bullshit."

"Well..." she says, "you do kind of have that effect on people. But, even if she did feel like that, well, it's been a long time and people change."

"She's married," says Carlos, as if he knows just which of my buttons to press. Then he makes it exponentially more painful for me by adding, "To a Storm. They've got a son, too. Cute little kid. As cute as a button. Beautiful family."

Now it's my turn to fall silent. I could ask which Storm, but I don't really want an answer. Hell, I don't even know why it cuts so deep, but it does all the same. Of course she's fucking married. Of course she has a child. Why wouldn't she? She always wanted a family, and she could have had any man she wanted. Or woman, for that matter. And a family, settling down, that was one thing she wasn't ever going to get from me.

Part of me, I think, is happy for her, even. But it's a tiny nugget of gold in a river of resentment. Of jealousy.

The Mustang jerks to a halt. "We're here."

Carlos and Elena get out of the car; Carlos comes around and opens the door next to me. He pats my cheek hard with the palm of his hand and says, "Now, if we let you out of your handcuffs, will you be a good boy and behave for us?"

I grunt.

"I'll take that a yes."

"Come on," says Elena. "You've got another old friend who wants to speak to you."

"Well aren't I mister popular?"

"Not that popular, Sammy," says Carlos, grinning. "He's been pretty pissed with you for about a decade."

"Yeah? Try to find me someone who isn't."