CAUTION: This section will contain spoilers for the FAYZ series - do not read this if you do not want it spoiled!
Diana Ladris is a fourteen-year-old girl from Coates Academy. She makes her first appearance in Gone and is loyal to no one but herself, although she claims to be loyal to Caine. She is often called a "witch" by the other FAYZ residents and has shown herself to be selfish and deceitful.
History[]
Before the FAYZ[]
Diana was raised by wealthy parents. At the age of ten, she found out that her father had a mistress. When he refused to buy her a horse, she became angry and told her mother about the mistress. Her mother was going to get a divorce, but she fell down the stairs that night. Her mother was left in a coma, with no foreseeable end. Diana told the police that her father had pushed her mother. When they figured out she was lying, her father sent her to Coates Academy, a school for difficult children.
At Coates, Diana met Caine. She used his infatuation with her to her advantage. The two were accomplices from the start. Diana was the first person Caine told about his power. Later, to Diana’s displeasure, Drake joined their group. Diana eventually developed her own power, the ability to read the power of others.
Gone[]
Diana makes her first appearance in chapter fourteen of Gone, where she attends a meeting held by Caine in the Perdido Beach church. She reads Sam’s power on the way in, but because he is a four bar, she lies and tells Caine she did not get the chance. She is the first to realize that Sam and Caine are twins when she reads Nurse Temple’s laptop. She is the one who convinces Caine of this. Diana helps kidnap Sam, Astrid, and Little Pete. She reads Astrid’s power, two bars, and goes to the gym to help Caine interrogate Sam. She tells Sam that Drake will hurt Astrid if he doesn’t answer all their questions. After Astrid and Little Pete escape, Diana confesses that she neglected to read Little Pete’s power. She assumed that he would not have one because he is five years old and autistic.
Later on in the book, Diana reads Jack’s power while he is sleeping. He is now a three bar, although she once read him as a zero. She wakes him up and threatens to tell Caine he is disloyal. She then makes him promise to do whatever she wants. Shortly after, Diana goes back to Coates along with Caine, Drake, and Jack. There, they film Andrew as he poofs on his fifteenth birthday. Jack manages to get a shot of a monster tempting him, and they figure out a possible way to beat the poof. Sam and some of the other Perdido Beach kids are captured by Drake and plastered, a term which refers to their hands being encased in cement, but Little Pete makes the blocks of cement vanish. Sam uses his power to burn Drake’s arm off, and Caine and Diana run for fear that the formerly plastered freaks will try to attack them. Afterwards, Diana saws off Drake’s burned arm. It is later replaced with a whip.
Near the end of Gone
Diana wakes Jack up in the middle of the night. She reminds him of his promise and instructs him to go to Perdido Beach and tell Sam how to beat the poof. She remains behind at Coates. She attempts unsuccesfully to convince Caine not to attack Perdido Beach. On their way into town, Caine finds the talking coyotes and promises to let them kill and eat the kids in Perdido Beach if they will fight for him. When Sam seems to have died, Diana tells Caine to call off the coyotes. Caine refuses, and Diana gets angry. She tells him that she thinks his real mother abandoned him because she knew he was evil. Sam turns out not to be dead, and he and Caine face off. Diana realizes that Sam still doesn’t know how to beat the poof, and she starts to tell him but is cut off when he turns fifteen. Both Sam and Caine survive, and Sam wins the battle. He tells Caine to leave town so he doesn’t have to kill him. Astrid offers Diana a chance to live in Perdido Beach, but Diana refuses. She says that “the bad girl always ends up with the bad boy” and walks away with Caine.
Hunger[]
At the start of Hunger, Coates is running low on food. Diana is taking care of Caine, who has been driven insane by the Gaiaphage. He regains a little of his sanity and tells her he has a plan to get food. She warns him against doing anything dangerous like attempting to fight Sam again. Drake finds a girl called Orsay at the Stefano Rey National Park. He takes her back to Coates and wants to kill and eat her. Diana is disgusted by this and convinces Caine that they can use her as a spy because Orsay has the ability to see peoples’ dreams. Caine agrees, and they send her to Perdido Beach to see what Sam is dreaming about. When she returns, she has seen Little Pete’s dreams and is in awe of them. When Caine asks about Sam’s dreams, she says that they are simple, and he is dreaming of food. Caine decides that this means he is not worried about what they are doing and will not have anyone guarding the power plant.
Drake talks to Caine in private about his suspicions that Diana is disloyal. Caine does not want to believe it, but he decides to test Diana. He orders her to persuade Jack, who is now in Perdido Beach, to come back to their side. Diana shaves her head and dresses like a boy to sneak into Perdido Beach and talk to Jack. In Perdido Beach, Diana visits the McClub, where she finds Jack talking to Brianna. Jack recognizes her and leaves the club. Diana follows him and tempts him, first by flirting with him, then by offering the “ultimate technological challenge”. Eventually, she succeeds in persuading him and they go back to Coates.
Caine reveals his plan to turn out the lights in Perdido Beach. They arrive at the power plant, and Caine allows Drake to nearly kill the guard, a ten-year-old boy named Josh. Drake also kills a girl named Brittany. She does not actually die, but her heart has stopped. They capture the two other guards to use as hostages. Sam arrives and tries to reason with Caine. He reminds the Coates kids that they don’t have any food with them and have no way of getting any. He says that he would rather not fight, and if they leave now, he will let them go back to Coates. Diana urges Caine to take Sam’s deal, but he realizes that food wasn’t the reason they came. He was manipulated by the Gaiaphage. Diana becomes worried and tries to reason with him, but he doesn’t listen. They steal uranium from the power plant and escape. Caine tells Drake to stay behind and kill Sam.
On the way to the mine, Drake catches up with them. Diana at first thinks he is Sam, and she is relieved that Caine will be stopped but worried that Sam will kill him. Once she realizes it is Drake, she teases him for coming back once again from a fight with Sam with part of his arm missing. At the mine, Drake decides to challenge Caine. He uses his whip hand to severely injure Diana, who is later healed by Lana. At the end of the book, Caine and Diana run away together.
Lies[]
Lies, the third book in the Gone series, was released on May 4, 2010 in the United States of America. This part of the article contains spoilers for Lies. If you have not read Lies yet and do not want it spoiled, please do not read this section.
In Lies, Caine and Diana have returned to Coates Academy. Conditions at Coates are very bad. The remaining kids are literally starving to death. They end up resorting to cannibalism to stay alive: when Panda commits suicide, they cook and eat his body. Shortly after, Caine and Diana make plans to go to San Francisco De Sales, an island that Bug read about that belongs to two actors. Caine makes a deal with the Human Crew, convincing them to start a fire as a distraction while the remaining 16 Coates kids sneak through town to the Marina. The Human Crew double-crosses them and attacks, and Hank shoots a hole in an inflatable boat that they had stolen. Caine kills Hank. Caine, Diana, Penny, Bug, Tyrell, Paint, and Jasmine escape on a second boat. Before long, Jasmine becomes suicidal and jumps off the side of the boat.
During their journey to the island, Diana contemplates her relationship with Caine. In her thoughts, she admits to being in love with him. She seems to think that the two of them are only in love with each other by process of elimination, becau
se nobody else would want them. She compares the concept to flies and worms finding mates among their own kind. She also seriously considers suicide but admits that even now, she would still choose to live.
When they arrive at San Francisco De Sales Island, Caine levitates Bug, Penny, and then Diana and throws them toward the island. He then follows, leaving Paint and Tyrell stranded on the boat. Diana decides that he left them because they have no powers or useful skills. Caine, Diana, Penny, and Bug find a small group of sheep. Caine kills one with his powers, and they try to eat it raw, but they can't get past its fleece to the meat. Sanjit and Virtue find them. They are wrapped in bandages and disguised as lepers. They claim that this is the San Francisco De Sales leper colony, run by two celebrities for charity, and invite the Coates kids to come back to the hospital with them. Diana notices that Virtue seems hesitant about this and sees that the two boys look healthy. She tells Caine to tell them to take off their bandages, which he forces them to do. It turns out that they are not lepers, they are adopted children of celebrities. They take the Coates kids back to the mansion, where Diana reads their power. Sanjit is a zero, and Virtue is a one bar. Caine demands food, and they give the Coates kids drugged food that causes them to pass out. They then tie them up, except for Diana, and prepare to vacate the island.
Diana wakes up and sees that the other three Coates kids are tied up. She was not, but she pretends that she was. Diana walks out without untieing her companions and sees Sanjit and Virtue, along with three yo
unger children, preparing to board a helicopter. She goes back to the room where the other three are and finds that they are no longer tied up. Penny has woken Bug up using her powers. Diana picks up a vase and tries to knock Penny out with it. She decides to try to kill Caine while he is asleep even though she is in love with him, to save the lives of the island kids. She is about to smash the vase down on his head when Penny stops her. Penny reveals that she also has feelings for Caine and then wakes him up using her powers.
Diana follows Caine to the cliff, where he prepares to smash the helicopter and kill the kids inside. She tries to convince him not to do it, but he won't listen. They have an argument in which he accuses her of hating him. She tells him that she loves him. This is the first time she has said it out loud. He says that if she loves him, then she must love the things that he does. She realizes that he is still planning to crash the helicopter and lists all the things that she has done to stay with him that she would never have done otherwise and tells him that she will not stay with him anymore if this is the sort of thing he is going to do. She steps backward a little too far and falls off the cliff. Caine releases the helicopter in time to catch her. At the end of Lies, Caine, Diana, Penny, and Bug are stranded on San Francisco De Sales Island.
Plague[]
On Gaiaphage.com, Michael Grant said that Diana plays an important role in Plague. At the end of the book it's revealed Diana is pregnant with Caine's baby. When the children of the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone) spilt into 2 groups at the end of the book Diana chooses to go with Sam instead of staying with Caine.
Personality Diana is sneaky and manipulative. She usually knows exactly what to say to get people to do what she wants. She can twist almost any situation and use it to her advantage. She is selfish and does not worry about how her actions will affect other people. Diana is a deceptive person who often lies to and betrays others. Even when she does something that could be considered a good thing, her motivation is always wrong. Diana does not seem to be ashamed that she often does bad things. She regularly calls herself a “bad girl” and admits that she is not a nice person. However twisted her intentions, her actions are always justified from her point of view. Her saving grace is that she often tries to persuade or stop Caine from doing truly twisted deeds, and she wants to change him. She hates
Diana on the cover of Fear.
Drake and regularly taunts him.
Fear[]
In Fear, Diana deals with her pregnancy, she reveals to Sam that she's afraid that her baby won't be human and she sometimes refers to her baby as "it" instead of "he" or "she".
Physical Appearance[]
In Gone, Diana is described as having long, dark brown hair and big, dark eyes. Caine calls her "hot.” and many characters seem to think she is physically attractive. In Hunger, Diana shaves her head in order to disguise herself as a boy. In Lies, she has become thin and weak due to starvation. Several characters, including Caine and Penny, point out that she is no longer beautiful.
Power[]
Diana’s power is the ability to read the power levels of others by touching their hand. She describes it as looking like a cell phone signal. The more bars she reads, the more powerful a mutant is.
Relationships[]
Diana and Caine had sex, resulting in Diana getting pregnant with Gaia.
Caine Soren[]
Caine has a crush on Diana. It is unclear whether she has feelings for him. She constantly teases and manipulates him. However, she also sometimes seems to genuinely care about him. In the book Lies she tells Caine that she loves him. In the book Plague, Caine and Diana have some intimate moments,where they have sex. which at the end result in a pregnancy that Diana only tells Sam, Dekka, and Brianna. In light, they both finally admit their feelings for each other before going to the island where they make love one last time. Caine then sacrifices himself to save Diana, and subsequently everyone else, by allowing little Pete into his body to defeat the Gaiaphage who is in the body of Caine and Diana's daughter, Gaia.
Gaia[]
Diana and Caine's daughter, born in Fear.
Drake Merwin[]
Drake and Diana hate each other. She often taunts him by calling him a “sadist” and a “psychopath”, and he has tried to kill her in the past.
Jack[]
At one point, Jack had a crush on Diana. She uses that to her advantage. Diana is able to manipulate Jack very easily.
Penny[]
Diana and Penny seem indifferent to each other for most of Lies. However, at the end, Penny reveals that she has feelings for Caine and is jealous that he likes Diana, rather than her. She insults Diana's appearance, saying that she is not beautiful anymore due to starvation, and implies that she would be more deserving of Caine's affection than Diana is.
Dekka, Brianna, and Taylor[]
Dekka, Brianna, and Taylor were once “plastered” by Caine. They all seem to hate Diana, as well as the other Coate's kids. At the end of Plague, Diana tells Brianna,Dekka, and Sam that she is pregnant
Sam Temple[]
Diana and Sam do not have a good relationship in the beginning of the Gone Series. He doesn’t seem to hate her in particular, but they definitely do not like each other. Diana once sent Jack to tell Sam how to beat the poof. She said that she needed him to survive because she needed someone other than herself for Drake to hate. In Plague, Diana leaves with Sam after she reveals to him that she's pregnant. In Fear, Diana has Sam touch her pregnant belly.
It is implied in the first book that Diana has a crush on Sam, although that is purely speculation. She does call him "Cute", and at the end of Gone kisses him on the mouth- although this was probably platonic.
Astrid Ellison[]
Diana dislikes Astrid for her intelligence and kind nature. Michael Grant once said in an interview[1] that Diana and Astrid are two sides of the same coin.
Michael Grant once said in an interview[2] that Diana is his favorite character to write.