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faith.
    I sat down on a bench next to the pond, absently tossed the food in, and stared upward through the glass ceiling. It was almost as black as full night up there—except for the lightning. It never stopped . The rain hadn’t started yet, so I was getting a clear view of the clouds above us, and besides the bolts that were cutting across the sky in an unstoppable barrage, there was lightning illuminating the insides of the clouds as well.
    Even through glass that I now knew was a full foot thick, the thunder vibrated everything. I was wrong about the fish. They fled to hide under overhanging rocks or the lily pads. It was just me and the storm, and the foot of glass didn’t seem like nearly enough.
    Then the rain hit. And I mean hit . I actually jumped and nearly fell off my bench. My head knew that hundreds, if not thousands of these storms had struck HQ before this one. My gut, however, was dead certain there was no way that layer of glass between me and the storm was going to hold. My gut, used to the storms of the mountains, was sure the next thing that was coming were hailstones the size of my head. I left, and in a hurry.
    But this was no time to go to my room. With something like that raging outside, thunder a constant growl and the very fabric of the building trembling under it, I wanted other people around and I wanted them now. I headed straight for the lounge.
    It looked like I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, since the lounge was packed. Archer was there, and Armorer Kent, and Hammer and Steel. I saw Dazzle in the middle of one of the big sofas, squashed in between four other Hunters. One of them was another of the Elite, a woman with the call-sign of Scarlet; that might even have been her real name. Scarlet was a totally stunning woman, with long red hair, the face and body of an antique goddess, and the poise of a dancer. And on top of all that, she was one of the nicest people I’d met in the Elite. Right now she was being nice to one of the new Hunters, who was clearly shaken up by the storm. The lounge was actually so packed that mostly all I saw were bodies and the backs of heads. I was disappointed not to see Mark, and then concerned; I queried by Perscom and was relieved to see that his status was listed as “in quarters.” Well, he didn’t much like the lounge get-togethers at the best of times, and as crowded as it was now, he’d probably just put something on his vid that was loud enough to drown out the thunder.
    I spotted Retro, and for a minute, I was afraid he was going to work his way over to me and…I don’t know…press things, I guess. But all he did was raise his eyebrows and grin when he caught me looking at him, wave casually, then go back to the conversation he was in.
    You’d think that people that Hunt monsters every single day (or night) wouldn’t be afraid of a storm. But no matter how much we tried to tell ourselves that we were surely safe behind our thick, clever walls, our guts knew better. The terrible storms of the Diseray were still with us, punishing us for what our ancestors had done.
    The big vid-screen wasn’t showing Hunt footage for a change. Someone had set it to a loop of a nice, crackling fireplace. It actually made me feel homesick, and I started getting the inevitable horrid feelings of wanting home so bad I could taste it.
    But before I could leave, Trev spotted me and waved at me enthusiastically, pointing to an empty chair across from him. Regi and Sara looked to see who he was waving at, and started waving their arms around like idiots. I couldn’t help it, that put a big old smile on my face, and I wiggled my way through the crowd toward them.
    I felt myself being seized around the waist and got lifted over the back of a couch by Hammer and set down on the chair I’d been aiming for. I turned my head to give him a thanks grin, and he flashed one back at me, before edging his way toward—well, toward something I couldn’t see in the