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“Give me my cigarettes.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Do you see this gun?”
“I noticed it, yes.”
“Give me my cigarettes.”
“I don’t want you getting lung cancer. You’re very good at healing injuries, but you know as well as I do you aren’t much use against disease.”
Lana stared hard at him. “See this bed? Do you ever expect to be back in this bed? With me?”
Sanjit sighed unhappily. He was thin, not very tall, dark-skinned with dark hair and darker eyes, all of it generally lit up by a devil-may-care smile. However, he knew better than to smile at this particular moment. “I’m not going to even respond to that, because the day will come when you’ll be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting—”
“Give me my cigarettes.”
Sanjit reached into his pocket. He handed something to Lana.
“What is this?”
“It’s half a cigarette.”
Without putting down the gun she reached for her lighter. She lit the half cigarette and filled her lungs. “Where’s the other half?”
“On a completely different topic,” Sanji
t said, “there’s something kind of disturbing going on.”
“This is the FAYZ, there’s always something disturbing going on, and right now it’s the fact that I’m calculating whether I can shoot you in the eyeball.”
Sanjit ignored her and opened the curtains.
“Yes, daylight is disturbing,” Lana said, blinking. She had smoked the half cigarette down to a length of about five millimeters and was still determined to get another puff, even if it burned her fingers.
Finally curiosity got the better of her, and she swung her feet out of bed, stood up with a groan, and walked to the sliding glass door. Sanjit opened the door and stood aside. Lana stepped out and froze.
The balcony provided an amazing view of the ocean. But since moving into Clifftop the left side had been nothing but the pearly-gray FAYZ wall. Two days earlier that wall had gone transparent, so she’d been able to see the rest of the ocean, and of course the rest of the hotel. But there had been no one in sight, and that was how Lana liked it.
Now, however, there were six people standing together on the balcony just to the left of hers. They were no more than six feet away.
Cameras—ranging from cell phones to full-on Canons with huge lenses—rose in unison and aimed at her.
Lana’s hair was sticking out in multiple directions, she was wearing a ragged purple T-shirt that read “FCKH8” over boys’ boxer shorts, and she was sucking a cigarette butt down to the ash.
And then there was the automatic pistol in her right hand.
Lana went back inside and said, “Okay: now where are my cigarettes?”
“How did that happen?” the red-haired man demanded. He looked at his friend, still on the other side. He reached over and banged on the barrier and got zapped in payment.
His friend was miming the same look: How did that happen? Then he whipped out his own phone and began to shoot video.
“How did that happen?” a stunned Diana asked Gaia.
Gaia did not look surprised. She did look troubled. “I hit Nemesis,” Gaia answered, as though it was obvious. “But it wasn’t good, really.” She suddenly bit at the cuticle of her thumb, a nervous gesture Diana recognized: Caine.
“He was stronger than I expected,” Gaia said. “I think I just made him realize . . . Never mind. I may have to move faster than I’d thought.” She sighed and seemed surprised to have made the sound. Then she said, “But at least I have food to feed this body you made for me. Diana.”
