Kit was on his way to the thirteenth person on the list, Ismael Kamissoko, who lived on the border of Voracity, just where the slums began. As he was nearing the home, he noticed a man standing in the shadows outside of the street lights, scanning the sky with a jittery, nervous stance. When the man noticed Kit, he immediately looked forward and began walking away, like a man who was clearly trying to look inconspicuous.

"Excuse me!" Kit called out. The man slowed his gait and turned back to politely smile.

"No, thank you, not interested," he said.

"Sorry," Kit said with open palms. "I just wanted to know if you knew where I could find a man named Ismael?"

The man stopped walking altogether and stared at Kit for a moment. The man's face was gaunt, with dark bags under his eyes and unkempt hair that was white, but not from bleach. The man looked around for other people in the vicinity, then again up at the sky, before turning back to Kit.

"Yeah, I know him... he's out right now, but he should be back soon." The man pointed toward a shack built into a building on the nearby hill. "Can I offer you a seat and a drink while we wait for him?"

"Sure, why not?" Kit said. The two entered the shack which served as a couple rooms added onto the entrance into the Plasteel structured building. They walked through the shack and into the building proper. It was dimly lit with no electronics, with an overused couch and a single standing chair. "Please, have a seat, I'll be right back," The man said. Kit took a seat on the couch and the man left the room behind him.

It was hard for Kit to understand how a room with so little in it could still be an absolute mess. He had seen filthy domiciles before, even just in the past few hours, but this room portrayed a person that may have had much deeper psycho-sociological issues. Kit didn't have the credentials to be able to analyze the man's psyche, so he put it out of his mind and leaned back in his seat to get comfortable, but felt a cold, sharp feeling against the back of his neck, right above his BSI hub.

"Why are you looking for Ismael." The man had snuck up behind Kit and was holding a knife against him. Kit slowly raised his hands.

"I'm... uh, looking into a report he made a few years ago about his missing son..." Kit made sure to annunciate, he didn't want any of his words being misheard.

"Are you human?" The man asked.

"Y-yeah..." Kit said. He tried not to express confusion in his voice. The man removed the knife from the back of Kit's head and carefully moved around the couch to his front.

"Prove it." The man said. Kit was now unable to contain his confusion.

"What?" He said. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"Hold out your hand," the man said. Kit reluctantly did as he was told, and the man reached out toward his palm with the knife.

"Oh, man, c'mon, not the palm. Can't you just do a finger or something?" Kit pleaded with the man, and his pleas were answered when the man slashed at the tip of Kit's index finger. "Ow, fff-!" Kit winced.

The man brought the bloody tip of the knife to his face to look closely at it.

"I hate to tell you, man, but they do make companions with realistic blood..." Just as Kit spoke, the man took the tip of the knife into his mouth to taste the blood. "Oh... I guess that'll work. Just so you know, I do have HSV."

"HSV isn't transmitted through blood," the man said as he stepped back, only slightly lowering his defenses. Kit lowered his hands, and brought his bleeding finger to his mouth.

"Oh, I guess it's alright then," Kit said. "Still kinda weird though."

"Who the fuck are you?" The man hadn't regained his sense of humor yet.

"Kit... uh Kitiona Castillo," he said. The man's eyes went wide, and he fully lost his defensive posture.

"Wait... THE Kit Castillo? Of Castillo's Kit with Kitiona Castillo?" The man asked, with a smile growing across his face. Kit let out a long sigh as he relaxed back in his seat. The recognition saving him from being held at knifepoint was like a professional orgasm.

"The one and the same," Kit said with as much charisma as he could muster.

"Wow!" The man set the knife down on a table then took a seat in the chair across from Kit. "I've been following your stuff for a while now, ever since you uncovered the report about the city council grift."

"That was the story that got me shit-canned from Voracity Voice!" Kit was loving the attention. "Or rather, when I leaked the names of the councilors involved, revealing that two of them had been selected for The Beneficiary program..."

"I remember that, and I always thought that's why you left! I never knew for sure, but I was subscriber number 63 when you launched the kit!"

"Really!?" Kit said, leaning forward in his chair. "That's awesome! What did you think of the story where..." Kit trailed off and shook his head. "Sorry, as much as I'd like to gush about myself and my work, I'm here for a reason."

The man suddenly jumped up and placed a finger to his lips, causing Kit to jump. The man quickly moved into another room, and emerged a moment later with a colorful, if slightly discolored woolen scarf. He held it out to Kit, and motioned silently for him to put it on. Kit was hesitant, but followed the instructions, wrapping it loosely around his neck. The man motioned for him to make it tighter, and Kit reluctantly did what he was told, leaving the scarf firmly wrapped around his neck, but not enough to choke him. The man waited a few more seconds before speaking.

"Turn your BSI off, please." The man asked.

"Ooo....kay?" Kit said. "Can I just turn off my wireless communication?"

"Nope... All the way off, please."

"Alright..." Kit ran through the options in his BSI, forgetting for a moment where the power down option even was, he had done it so few times. Once he found the option and watched the animation of his HUD shrinking down to a single point that blinks away. "Done," Kit said. "What's with the scarf?"

"It's got a metal wire mesh inside it, blocks wireless communication."

"Ah, that's pretty smart." Kit said as he started to remove it. The man motioned for him to stop.

"Actually, uh... I'd like you to keep that on until you leave, if that's okay."

"Wait... You're worried that someone is listening through my disabled BSI?" Kit's question was answered by a simple nod from the man. "That's a... pretty illegal thing to do. Like, super illegal."

"Illegal, yes, but not impossible." The man said. Kit couldn't argue. He had done stories in the past on the possibility of spying through another person's BSI. The man stepped forward and presented his hand. "Call me Ismael," he said with a cheeky grin. Kit laughed.

"You use that a lot?" Kit asked.

"Oh, sure, pretty much every time I meet someone," Ismael said. Kit nodded in approval of the witty introduction. Ismael's smile quickly faded. "Though, recently, I've felt a lot more like Ahab."

"What do you mean?" Kit asked.

"You're investigating the missing kids?" Ismael asked.

"Y... yeah..." Kit said. "Well, not just kids... Teens and adults too. Specifically, people without BSI's."

"Is that so?" Ismael started pacing around his chair, holding the scruff of his chin. Kit kicked himself for already getting too caught up, revealing more information than he should at this point in his investigation.

"No, actually, I haven't had a chance to verify whether these people are actually missing or not."

"Really, not even one?"

"No, but I'm still in the beginning stages of the investigation. Of all the people I've spoken to so far, you're the only one who seems to even realize or care that someone is missing."

"Yeah... I've noticed," Ismael said. "I wouldn't mind if you wanted to try finding Amadou, though it's been a while since he disappeared."

"That's... your son, yes?" Kit asked. Ismael nodded. "Yeah, I'll have a look. Can you tell me about what happened?"

Ismael leaned against the back of his chair and let out an exasperated sigh. The man clearly wasn't sleeping well, and probably hadn't been since it started. He came around the chair and fell back into its seat, and took another deep breath.

"I think it was like, two years ago now?" Ismael looked at Kit for confirmation.

"I, uh, think so... I do have the exact date the report was filed, but it's... digital... so, you know..." Kit was embarrassed. He felt completely unprepared and naked without the presence of his digital interface.

"Right, well, he was 9, almost 10. I was going to take him to school one morning and I got up and he was gone. I tried messaging him, some of his friends, the school system, nobody had seen or spoken to him. I filed a report and only like an hour later, I start getting messages from him, saying that he went to the south pier in the early morning for a diving lesson. That he'd joined a sea expedition club that was going to start cataloguing some of the undersea plant life. He apologized for not saying anything, and didn't realize it was going to be as involved as it was, then said he was going to be staying with the club."

"I imagine he said all this to you digitally?"

"That's right. I asked when he was going to be coming home, he kept pushing it out, saying 'after this next expedition,' or some other excuse, but it didn't happen, so I started staking out the docks, searching the ships and asking around. Nobody had heard of him. I'd ask some of his friends around here if they've spoken to him. They said a little bit when they asked about him, but that they couldn't find his contact information after a while."

"That seems pretty similar to the other people I've talked to... except..." Kit trailed off, but Ismael waited for him to continue. "Well, like I said, you're the only one so far that... cared. You've certainly done more investigating than anyone else I've talked to. Can I ask... how many kids do you have?"

"Just the one."

"Really?" Kit perked up. "Just Am?"

"Yeah..." Ismael looked embarrassed.

It was rare for people to have only one child. While non-BSI user's generally have fewer children, they still often average around ten. With how heavily Voracian society encouraged breeding through social programs, advertisements, entertainment, and making in-vitro fetal development widely available, adults who had very few children, or didn't want them at all, became somewhat of a social taboo, even if it wasn't in any way illegal.

"My wife and I were never against having a lot of kids," Ismael said, "but she wanted to have the first one naturally, and... there were complications during the birth, so she... didn't make it."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Ismael."

"It's alright. It was painful, and still is, but I always had... Am..."

"Did Am ever talk about marine botany or anything like that before he left?"

"No. Not at all. He did like stories about sharks and whales from Earth."

"Ah!" Kit chuckled. "Well, who doesn't? Moby Dick, right?"

"Well, no," Ismael shook his head with a laugh. "I've never read it. Just know the basic thing through cultural osmosis.

"Ah, well, neither have I, so don't feel too bad. Earlier, you said something about feeling like Ahab. What were you referring to? Is finding Amadou your white whale?"

"Yes," Ismail said, but then hesitated. "... No... I don't know. It would be amazing if Am were returned to me, but... I'm losing hope that will ever happen."

It was hard for Kit to keep eye contact. He felt like anything he could say would sound demeaning. The silence lingered for a moment before Ismael continued.

"However, you mentioned that you've spoken to other people, right? You have a list of reports?"

"Not without access to my BSI, but yes, I do."

"Can I ask how many there are?"

"Hmm... I haven't verified the information I have, and if I'm honest, I don't really trust where the information came from in the first place. I don't really feel comfortable saying."

"Oh." Ismael hanged his head in defeated frustration.

"How about you tell me what you know?" Kit said. "You mentioned missing kids, plural. You've noticed others missing?"

"Sure, a neighbor, Tammy, I overheard her mention one of her kids disappeared maybe two or three months after mine. I asked her about it a few days later and she said her daughter wasn't missing after all, said the same thing happened to her sister decades ago."

Kit was really wishing he had a pen and notepad at the moment, but all he could do was pay attention as close as he could. Ismael continued, showing a bit more discomfort as he did.

"I may have implied to her that her daughter wasn't the one sending her messages, and I might have kept pressuring her about it until she threatened to call security."

"Oh..." Kit laughed, which seemed to lighten Ismael's mood. "I see! Well, who among us hasn't had security called on us for some well-intentioned, non-violent reason?" Kit looked at Ismael through squinted eyes. "It was non-violent, right?"

"Yes! Yes, of course!"

"Because you did hold me at knifepoint and cut my finger before even giving your name..."

"Yeah, I get it... Sorry about that. I've never done that before, and, well I've never had someone come around and ask about my kid that seems to have been completely forgotten by society, just like so many others that just 'moved across the city,' or whatever stupid bullshit."

"Ah, okay. I get it," Kit said, nodding his head for a moment before stopping and giving Ismael a confused look. "Actually, no, I'm not sure if I do. From what I can gather, you think that someone is sending you messages and content, posing as your son who is actually missing, and the same thing is happening to many other people?" Kit waited for a nod from Ismael and continued when he received it. "And you think that whoever is digitally replacing these people may have also sent an AI companion in a human disguise to... what... kill you?"

"I don't know about 'kill', but make me disappear like all the others," Ismael said. He noticed Kit was looking at him with an incredulous eye. "Yeah, I've heard it before, and yeah, I don't really know what is happening, and don't have any proof that anything is happening, but can you tell me for certain that it isn't happening, or isn't even possible?"

"I can't argue with you that something's not happening. If we're talking about just a few cases, yeah, if I'm honest, I do think it's possible, technically speaking, but the scale of it..."

"So, it is a lot then?" Ismael asked. Kit crossed his arms and looked away. "Come on, man, how many?"

"I've spoken to a dozen other people who made reports."

"A dozen? All from your list?" Ismael didn't receive a response, which he took as an affirmative. "And did anyone tell you that they've seen the person they reported missing with their actual eyes since they made the report?" Again, Ismael's question was left with silence. "Well, man, if you get two or three, you might be able to question whether there's an actual pattern, but twelve out of twelve? I think it's safe to assume your source is onto something."

He was right, and Kit knew it. His selection process for people to talk to might as well have been random.

"So... how many? 50? 100?"

"Who do you think is doing it?" Kit asked, cutting Ismael off. "You've been looking into it for a little while, had some time to think about it... who do you think it is? The government? Hackers? Maybe Oracle is going rogue?"

"I think it's... Uhh... I keep thinking about it, and I kind of think the rogue AI thing might have some legs... if you believe one of the other big conspiracy theories out there..."

"Ah." Kit let out a sigh. "I think I know where you're going."

"It seems to me like there's really only one group that has the level of influence, intelligence, and coordination to do something like this."

"You think the Benefactors are behind it?"

"I... I do."

"Hmm..." Kit began brushing his mustache as he contemplated. "Listen, man. If you've been following me for a while, then you're probably aware that I'm no fan of the Benefactors. I've been trying to find shit on those fuckers for decades," He said. Ismael nodded solemnly, knowing what Kit was referring to. "But they're squeaky clean. Everything they've ever presented to us is documented, and it has only ever been beneficial to society. Any time there has been public dissent about their suggested policies, designs, or whatever, they've always had an open discourse and accepted changes in stride. They are also huge proponents of Brainstem Interfaces. You'd think if it is easier to take someone without one, then they wouldn't encourage them at all."

"Yeah, I can agree with you for most of that, but what about... you know..."

"The Acolytes?" Kit said. Ismael nodded. "The Acolytes of Benefaction have been disavowed by the Benefactors since their inception."

"Sure, they say that, but do you truly believe them?" Do you believe the Acolytes when they say they've stopped doing sacrifices?"

The question lingered in the air as Kit's face grew dour. It wasn't a fond subject for Kit, and Ismael knew it. The last time the Acolytes were found to have sacrificed people to the Benefactors, the victims were none other than Kit's own mother and father, and it happened during a protest his parents were leading over the amount of influence the Benefactors had over Voracian government and society, all while remaining completely anonymous.

"I... haven't seen any evidence since then suggesting that they've started doing sacrifices again."

"How are you so sure the list you have isn't exactly that evidence?" Ismael wasn't pulling any more punches. Kit knew what he had to do next, but he still had a few questions for Ismael.

"You've convinced me... I'll be having a closer look at the Acolytes after I'm done here. Can you give me any more details on other missing people you've heard about?"

"Hmm... there were a few other's I heard about, but I'm afraid I don't remember any names. They were maybe about a year ago, and January... and I think March of this year?"

"I saw you were watching the skies earlier... Did you happen to see anything last night, or this morning?"

"Was there a report made? Just today?" Ismael asked. Kit nodded, and Ismael continued. "Around where did they disappear?"

"I think... maybe 10 km northwest?"

"Hmm... I wondered if I've just been imagining things, or just paranoid, but every once in a while I think I see something small and dark darting across the sky. I don't remember seeing one last night."

"I imagine you haven't gotten a very good look at them?"

"No, not at all."

"Could you say whether they were maybe around the size of security or maintenance drones?"

"Yeah... they could be... That's kind of what I was thinking they were."

There wasn't much else that Kit wanted to talk to Ismael about, except for maybe to continue gushing to a fan about some of his former stories, but he felt it wasn't the time to do that. When their conversation was finished, they rose from their seats and Ismael guided Kit back to the entrance.

"Alright," Kit said, "I'll make you a priority contact. If you have anything else you'd like to discuss, please contact me."

"I will, for sure. In fact... I might as well ask right now... I'd love to help out with your investigation or other, future endeavors too. I've got a lot of science and tech experience, and without a BSI, I can fly under the radar pretty well, if any of that could help you out." Ismael gave a cheeky grin.

"I will consider it." As Kit reached up to press the button on his Brainstem Interface hub to turn it back on, he realized he was still wearing the scarf. As he stepped outside, he unwrapped the scarf and handed it back to Ismael.

"Actually," Ismael said, pushing the scarf back, "I don't really have any use for that. You can keep it."

"Oh, uh... thank you!" Kit smiled as he took the scarf back. He wasn't exactly excited about keeping it as he felt a dirty, oily residue left on the skin of his neck. Kit refrained from asking if the scarf was machine washable. He shook Ismael's hand and went on his way.

A few kilometers south, just inside Voracity proper, stood the west-central Temple for the Acolytes of Benefaction. The building itself was originally a Roman-Catholic Cathedral built during the Influx. It was primarily built using plasteel, but with a distinctly Gothic design inspiration. After the radical changes of the new society versus that of Old Earth, the power of the Christianity began to wane, as did many of the other religions, with reverence of the Benefactors quickly filling the vacuum. Once the Acolytes moved into the nearly-abandoned structure, they colored it black and red to fit in with the colors of the Noctia-lit terrain.

Shivers ran down Kit's spine as he saw it. The goth aesthetic was so dense that it had spread throughout the rest of the city block. It wasn't the aesthetic that upset him. Kit actually found it to be pretty visually striking. It was the fact that the last time he had anything to do with the Acolytes of Benefaction, it was when they had abducted and sacrificed his parents to the Benefactors.

Kit never wanted to be here, or anywhere near the Acolytes again. He actually thought he was going to be able to go the rest of his life without it happening, especially since the Benefactors completely disavowed them after the sacrifice, nearly wiping the sect of the face of the planet. As he approached the dark, monolithic structure, he noticed that many of surrounding plants were growing into the building. Kit hoped that the place had been completely abandoned, but as the temple had no front doors on it, Kit was obligated to go inside and see if he could find anybody.

Inside the temple, the plant life had grown over the ground and every wall and pillar, and sitting on a chair placed roughly in the center of the main hall sat a man clad in black. Again, Kit felt shivers down his spine, and yet again when the man looked at him with an unsettling smile.

"Greetings," the man said as he stood up and opened his arms in a welcoming fashion. It didn't help to offset Kit's anxiety. "How can we benefit you today?"

"We?" Kit asked as he looked around the otherwise unpopulated temple.

"Sure! I may be the only person here right now, but I speak for the Acolytes as a whole, and we are always ready to enact the will of the Benefactors." The man offered his hand. "My name is Damien Moreau, Pedagogue of this Temple."

"Thank you, Damien," Kit said, shaking the man's hand. Damien gestured toward a pew near the chair where he was sitting. Kit continued as he took a seat, "I was wondering about the Acolytes... I'm interested in seeing things the way you do..."

"I don't think I need to show you the world as we see it, because you can see it as well," Damien said as he sat back down in his chair. "How do you see the world?"

"That's quite the question, isn't it? I suppose... I see the world as a series of stories wanting to be told, and I want to write them, and tell them to other people, and to have these stories be told, hopefully helping to shape our world going forward."

"That's very succinct, and shaping the world is exactly what you've done..." Damien's words betrayed his knowledge of Kit's identity. Kit gave a respectfully defeated nod, then Damien continued, "but what if I told you that everything you've written was actually written by our Benefactors long before any of us existed?"

"I would say... 'that's an interesting perspective. Can I quote you for an article?'" Kit said. Damien laughed.

"Did you think I wouldn't be able to recognize our Benefactors' most vocal critic?"

"I don't know about that. I haven't written an article about them in years."

"Nonetheless."

"You really think the Benefactors have predetermined everything?"

"Of that I have no doubt."

"Did you actually read any of my articles? The Benefactors have been wrong before. There have been plenty of policies that were vetoed by the Voracian council."

"You are right about that, but just because the council had disagreements about their recommendations doesn't mean they were wrong."

"Most of those policies were projected to have detrimental effects on certain populations."

"The Benefactors knew exactly what effects it would have, and if they were given the opportunity to continue their plan, I trust that those projected issues would not have come to pass."

"How sure are you that you couldn't be misinterpreting their will?"

"If we do make a mistake, our Benefactors always help to fix it."

"What about the sacrifices?" Kit's face was deadly serious.

"That's exactly what I'm referencing," Damien said. The room was quiet for a moment. "I'm not sure how much consolation this might be, as I was barely 5 or 6 when it happened, but on behalf of the Acolytes of Benefaction, I'd like to apologize for the entire situation."

The polite thing to say in response may have been "it's not your fault," or "there's no changing the past." Kit didn't say either of these things.

"Fuck you," He said. "Human sacrifice doesn't happen because of a slight miscommunication regarding complex social legislation."

"You are right about that. I can't argue with you, but the official position of the Acolytes is that we have never, nor will ever make sacrifices to our Benefactors. The ones who are responsible for your parents' deaths did not speak for the Acolytes, nor do we believe they were guided by our Benefactors to do so."

"But you just said that the Benefactors have predetermined everything."

"I do believe the Benefactors knew it would happen, but we do not have any reason to believe that the Benefactors told us to do it."

"The ones who did it seemed to think so. They swore by it, even after they received their sentence."

"The Benefactors themselves vehemently denied having anything to do with the sacrifices."

"Yes, but how can I be sure that you haven't just started calling it something else?"

"What do you mean?" Damien leaned back into his chair.

"The people who did it, the ones who were sentenced for murder, they never actually said the word 'sacrifice.' They merely said they were enacting the Benefactors will and delivering gifts to them. They never claimed killing them at all, I believe it was the media's doing, and... if I'm not mistaken, even the Acolytes claimed that it was sacrifice."

"You want to make sure that we're still not sacrificing people?"

"That's right. Or 'sending our Benefactors gifts,' or 'showing people the light' or whatever other euphemism you have for making people disappear."

"I'm not quite sure how I can prove to you that we aren't doing something beyond my word."

"Your word would be a nice place to start," Kit said, crossing his arms.

"That's reasonable." Damien nodded toward Kit with a smile. "Are you recording?" He asked. Kit nodded. Damien cleared his throat, sat back straight, and pointed his palms toward the sky, as was the Acolyte tradition when speaking before the Benefactors. "I, Damien Moreau, do solemnly swear that the Acolytes of Benefaction, hereafter referred to as 'we', do not, have not, and will not perform or condone acts of harm carried out against humans, animals, machines, or inanimate objects for our Benefactors or any other purpose, or no purpose at all. Furthermore, we do not perform or condone the sending of any material objects to our Benefactors for any reason." Damien returned to a more comfortable sitting position. "How was that?"

"It was fine." Kit rolled his eyes.

"Are you sure? I'd be willing to get an attorney in here and draft some legally binding paperwork, and a notary public to witness the signing if that is your preference."

"I'm a notary public," Kit said.

"Is there any particular reason you're asking this now?"

"The fact that members of your cult murdered my parents isn't enough for you?"

"I must reiterate that this happened over 50 years ago. It's not a commemoration, nor have there been any recent events like that recently. At least, not in my memory." Damien chuckled, but noticed that Kit didn't. "Did something happen recently?"

"Do you think I could have a look around?" Kit asked, abruptly.

"Certainly!" Damien said as he stood up, ready at a moment's notice to guide Kit around the temple. Kit stood up and followed Damien's guiding hand toward the back of the main hall.

Toward the door on the right, Damien called out a restroom. Even moving to the door and opening it. Kit popped his head in the door and looked around. It, too, had several growing plants, though they were all potted, and Kit was honestly surprised at just how well the restrooms were maintained, considering the state of the furniture in the main hall. Damien then guided Kit across the dais and behind the podium at the back of the hall, toward the other door. Damien opened it to reveal a dimly lit hallway that went into darkness.

"You'll have to excuse our preference for darkness, just a moment."

Damien flipped through some of the settings in his BSI, and a few seconds later, the dim orange flickering glow of the lights became a considerably brighter, constant off-white. It wouldn't have hurt Kit's eyes unless he had his low-light filter turned on, which he did. The foreboding Gothic vibe was considerably less intimidating in standard lighting. Still, Kit didn't like the idea of moving down a small hallway with a man like Damien.

"Did you want to bring a friend along, for comfort?" Damien asked. Kit simply looked at him with a stoic face as he put his sunglasses on. Damien continued, "maybe you wanted to message somebody where you are, in case anything goes awry?" Damien's smile tainted the solid advice he was giving.

"After you," Kit said, letting the flat top of his sunglasses accentuate his disdainful expression.

The back of the temple was quite large, with several rooms, most of them boardrooms with beds that didn't appear to have been used in a while. There were other bathrooms and even a large shower connected to a small locker room. The cafeteria, even after half of it had been converted into a common room, was spacious, and the kitchen was fully stocked and immaculate. Kit didn't say it, but after imagining himself behind those eight burners with all of those ingredients at hand, he was starting to reconsider his lifelong justifiable hatred for them. Once he got a look inside the fridge, he started to feel jealousy adding to the mix.

"Aren't you looking for some kind of evidence that someone has been sacrificed or something?" Damien asked.

"Well, sure..." Kit pulled out the deli drawer, neatly stocked with individually wrapped cuts of fresh, high quality meat, including fish, poultry, beef, and pork.

"How can I be sure that this isn't human, hmm?" Kit said, presenting a large cut of wrapped meat.

"Firstly, consensual cannibalism is a protected right, and there are even in-vitro options out there as well, but even more than that, I'm personally not a fan of the taste, and neither are any of the other Acolytes, as far as I'm aware," Damien said.

Kit knew all about the legality of cannibalism. He had tried anthropophagic cuisine before, and much like Damien, he wasn't a big fan. Kit did know enough, however, to be able to identify a perfectly tender prime cut of pork loin. He looked at Damien, lowering his sunglasses to put off an air of disbelief in his answer. Damien continued.

"You can take that and have it tested, if that would make you feel more comfortable."

"I'll do just that," Kit said, slipping the package into his coat pocket. "Alright, where to next?"

"Over here, just next to the cafeteria you will find my bedroom and connected office." Damien led kit toward a pair of double doors, but stopped just before opening them. "I will warn you, we haven't had time to prepare for visitors, so some of the contents and goings-on within my bedroom may be... shocking... to people of certain sensibilities."

With the warning in place, Kit prepared himself to see some of the most horrific things imaginable. He gave Damien a nod, and the doors were pushed open to reveal a large room, clad in the classic red and black aesthetic and four bodies laying around on the low furniture. Two women and two men. Kit first noticed one of the women was topless, and both of the men were in their underwear. For the brief moment after the doors opened, Kit thought he was seeing the tortured corpses of people Damien had abducted from the street, then the topless woman looked toward him, causing his heart to skip a beat.

"Oh?" She said, "fresh blood for our Benefactors?"

"What the fuck?" Kit said, looking directly at Damien, who started laughing, but not in his distinctive, menacing fashion. The laugh gave away his humility, as he started to blush and looked away from Kit's gaze.

"Please, uh... Ignore her... That's not..." Damien was getting flustered. He took a deep breath to regain his composure and turned toward the room. "Good evening. I apologize for the lack of forewarning, we have a guest who has some questions about..." Damien cleared his throat, "sacrifices to our Benefactors."

"Oh!" The topless girl said, before giving a lazy giggle and reaching for a pipe.

As Kit took more time to look around the room at the bodies and caught a pungent smell in the air, a more complete picture came to him. They weren't corpses, they were merely people in an intense state of comfortable lethargy with the help of some potent cannabis and perhaps a few other drugs, if the messy coffee table in the center of the room was any indication. As he focused on each of their faces, Kit's BSI brought up public profiles for each of them. The man sitting next to the topless girl tore his eyes away from the wall behind the door, where kit noticed a trashy reality tv show was playing. After a moment looking at Kit, the man's face went from tranquil contentment to mild excitement.

"Ohhh man, that's Kit Castillo!" He said. Though he was clearly excited, it wasn't enough to move him from the comfortable position on the couch. He merely sat up and reached a hand out in greeting. Kit hesitated before shaking his hand.

Neither the other man, nor the woman wrapped in blankets on the bed moved to even look at him. The other man was in the corner hunched over in an office chair with his fingers twitching, the tell-tale sign that he was currently deep into an action-packed videogame.

The violent, disturbing images he'd had in his mind hadn't come to pass in the least bit. He was partly thankful to not have anything like that imprinted on his brain, but he also felt cheated out of a satisfying payoff after expectations had been set.

"C'mon man... really?" Kit said, looking at Damien. "'Shocking to my sensibilities' you said."

"Well, I do think the warning was warranted. There is often a display of eroticism and copulation within this room at any given time. It just doesn't happen to be now."

"We can, if you want!" The topless girl said, then continued without a shred of modesty, "I mean, I've got a rash that's flaring up a bit, but I'm okay with doing some mouth stuff!" The girl sat up, but also didn't move from her spot. Before Kit could respond, the man sitting next to her spoke up.

"Oh, is Kit about to fuck? Hey, I'd like to join, what do you say?"

"No," Kit said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, regardless if they reacted to it. "No, thank you... I'm just here to ask about the sacrifices." There was a moment of silence as the two respondents considered what they were hearing.

"You mean like... sacrifice sacrifice? Like they did in the olden days?" The girl asked.

"Hey!" The man said sharply, reaching out and lightly slapping the girl's arm, "be tactful," he whispered, "Kit's parents were some of the ones who were..." he made a knife motion at his neck. The girl's demeanor changed. She sat up straight in her seat and pulled up the blanket in her lap to cover herself.

"Oh... I'm... uh, sorry," She said with a blush, "no, we don't do sacrifices. Our Benefactors, the Voracity council, and public security have all made it absolutely clear that we aren't allowed to do that. It's outlawed by our first tenet too."

"And what is our first tenet?" Damien asked the room. The girl began to speak, but Damien held up his hand. "Thank you, Daphne, but I actually want Chrissy to answer," he said, pointing at the woman wrapped up in blankets that had been completely motionless on the bed for the entire conversation.

"She's been volunteering at the hospital for like 22 hours straight..." The man said. "I'm not sure you wanna..." He trailed off as Damien stepped over to the side of the bed and sat down next to her. He began rubbing her shoulder, gently waking her up.

"Hey, Chrissy..." He said, softly.

"Wha... what the hell, what time is it?" Her voice was muffled as she spoke into the comforter pressed against her face.

"It's alright, I just had one question, what is our first tenet?"

"What... why, Damien?"

"I'm trying to make a point... C'mon, tell me what our first tenet is and I'll leave you alone. You won't even remember this happened."

"Ugh, fine." Chrissy said, not moving a single muscle except for what she needed. "'One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with our Benefactor's will.' Is that all, Damien?"

"Yeah, that'll be it, thank you," He said. "I'll leave you to your dreams." Damien leaned down and kissed the side of Chrissy's forehead.

"If I remember this in the morning, I'm going to punch you in the face."

The conversation ended with Kit thanking the group for their time, and Damien guiding him to the office. The style was very much the same, but was much more organized and clean than the bedroom. Kit was also impressed with the number of physical books were neatly stacked in shelves along one of the walls. Just to be sure, Kit selected a random book, pulled it from the shelf and checked some of the pages inside. He nodded his head in approval and returned the book, then turned back to Damien.

"So, what was that? I don't think it was really necessary to wake the girl," Kit said.

"I wanted to show you that it's not just something that we've read a few times, or something you just say. Chrissy was able to recite it without hesitation even as she was pulled from a deep slumber because she truly believes it."

"Does she, now?"

"How could you not? Don't you believe that we should act with compassion and empathy towards everything and everyone?"

"No, it's not that. I do agree with most of it, but the very end is a little weird."

"About our Benefactors will?"

"Exactly. And to be honest, I've heard the rest before, but in the Satanic Temple version, they do the compassion and shit in accordance with reason, not the Benefactors. Not even Satan."

"Well," Damien said with a laugh, "are you really all that surprised that the Acolytes find much of our origins in other religions? I believe that's been the way of things for most of the history of humanity altogether."

"Is that really all that the Acolytes are about? Just some vague belief in living happy and enjoying life?"

"Would you really want us to be more, Mr. Castillo? It seems as if you're upset to learn that we aren't sacrificing people."

"In a way," Kit said, "I suppose I am. At least I'd have an answer."