“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too, for all the good it does.” She sounded bitter. Angry. Not at him, but at the universe. Then, in an intense whisper: “First, isolate her. Take out Drake. And Sam, if you need to, take out Diana.”
That cold-blooded advice shocked him. “Diana?” Since when had Astrid used a euphemism like “take out”? And since when had she ever counseled him to be so hard?
“Gaia seemed to be relating to her. If you find Diana’s still alive, it will be because Gaia needs her or maybe even cares for her. That’s a vulnerability. Exploit that vulnerability.”
He tried to treat it lightly. “You’re kind of ruining the mood.”
“I’ll recapture the mood,” she said. “But first, you promise me, Sam: whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to survive.”
“Astrid—”
Suddenly she grabbed his face with one hand and squeezed too hard. “You listen to me. I’m not losing you because you played fair. You’re not getting killed. You’re not dying. This isn’t some doomed last mission. Do you understand me? This does not end with me crying and missing you every day for the rest of my life. This ends with us walking out of this nightmare together. You and me, Sam.”
There was silence between them for a long moment. Sam didn’t know what to say.
Astrid found the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head. She unbuckled his belt and shoved his jeans to the deck. She pushed him, gently but insistently, onto the bed. Then she undressed herself and stood in the faint light, looking down at him as he gazed up at her.
“You’re giving me a reason to live,” he said, half joking.
“I’m just recapturing the mood,” she said, trying to make it sound light and sexy.
“You captured me a long time ago.”
She climbed atop him. “We walk out of this together, Sam. Whatever it takes. You and me.”
“You and me,” he said.
She would not yet let him have her. “Whatever it takes,” she insisted. “Say it.”
“You and me,” he said at last. “Whatever it takes.”
“Swear it.”
“Astrid . . .”
“Swear it. Say the words. Say ‘I swear.’”
“I swear,” he said, saying it too easily. Saying it even though he didn’t feel it. Saying it because he wanted her and wanted to be happy right here and right at this moment.
He rolled a condom into place and she gasped as he entered her. “This is not the last time, Sam,” she said.
“This is not the last time,” he said, knowing that neither of them believed it.
Lana Arwen Lazar woke suddenly, and as she often did when startled, she grabbed for the big pistol beneath her pillow. She sat up and leveled the automatic, all in one easy motion.
Sanjit Brattle-Chance dropped to his belly and, in a surprisingly reasonable tone of voice, considering his face was in the ragged carpet, said, “If you shoot me, I can’t tell you where I hid your cigarettes.”
“You what?” Lana snapped. It was still fairly dark in the room. Clifftop Resort, where she had lived since the coming of the FAYZ, had excellent, thick curtains that blocked out the sun. The only light getting in came from a hole that had been burned in the curtains by one of said cigarettes.
“I think you need to cut back,” Sanjit said, bravely getting back to his feet despite the fact that Lana had not dropped the gun.
Patrick, Lana’s faithful dog, had an instinct for dangerous situations and took the opportunity to jump off the end of the bed and crawl behind the sofa.
“Cut back?”
“Quit, actually. But cut down for now.”
“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,” Sanjit 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.