you know the first rule of combat?

She heaves a breath, shakes her head. "Not for me," she admits, brow arching as she watches his fingers close around the marbles, feels the way that it still manages to cause her heart to seize, as though it's all just a matter of time. As though the virus might somehow still slip. But these are fears that Faye knows are all but irrational now, that a virus as dangerous as this one, scattered everywhere, would have reached any healthy person a long time ago. "I guess if you look at the space station a while back, or the underground city below, a mess is the first thing that the island likes to bring."

Exhausted, she lays back on the sand, not caring for the moment that it threatens to get in her hair, under her clothes. "So you're new."