"There's no need to be rude," Sebastian said, watching their waitress gossip to the cook.

"Why? She’ll be plenty rude when she complains to the cook. She’s only polite because it makes it more enjoyable to be vicious behind our backs," grumbled Erika through her food. "Her life is bleak and boring but she's too scared to pick up from this place, divorce, lose some weight, and leave. So she bullies the other waitresses and then goes back home and cries herself to sleep." Erika rolled her eyes.

"It's a big deal, leaving your home and everything behind like that." Sebastian said.

"Well, then don't sit around tearing yourself up thinking your life's the worst and doing nothing about it," Erika growled.

"Well, then what about you?" Sebastian asked. "They let you out all the time. Why not drive off now? I'm hardly going to stop you."

Erika turned away as if she had been struck.

"Nevermind," he said, seeing the look on her face. "Forget I said anything."

They turned back to their food. Behind them some child, far too old for it, began to scream.

"There are a lot of reasons," said Erika quietly. "The short one is that I've tried. They always found me again. Their old prophet could always tell where I'd run. And when they found me, I'd be beaten, raped. So I stopped."

Sebastian felt something sick twist up in his throat. But she interrupted him before he could speak.

"But that's not the real reason. The real reason, the long reason is----have you ever just 'woken up'? Even though you're already awake? Suddenly you realize that you've been acting without thinking about what you're doing. You don't understand why you did all those terrible things... It's like that for me. All the time. I'm always waking up, wondering why everything seems to be happening without me."

The crying child bawled. At last its parent gave in, showering her with assurances, false promises that whatever she wanted would be granted. The child quieted.

"There's this idea," said Sebastian, "in philosophy, of a machine that looks and acts like a person, but when in reality, there's no internal experience. All it does is perceive and react, but there’s nothing inside."

Sebastian looked up to Erika. She nodded her agreement, slowly and without any show of emotion.

"But you're not that," said Sebastian. "You told me yourself, you hate the things you do around Freeman, in the cult. There's something in there that wants to be a better person. You're more than what he makes you do."

The two of them watched the parents usher the crying child and her mute younger sibling out the diner. She hiccuped quietly in her mother's arms while her parents apologized to the waitress.

"It's a kind thought, Sebastian. But that's not how it works. I only hate it when I'm around you. When it was just me and him, acting for Freeman, killing, spying, it feels right. It's why I stopped visiting you. Because you made me feel terrible about myself and the things that I've done."

Neither he nor Erika had the appetite for food, now. Erika called over the waitress, paid, and packed up the food. Erika waited at the front of the van while Sebastian put the food away and bandaged his newly cleaned wound.

"A while ago, before we left, you were going to tell me something," she said.

"Oh," said Sebastian. It seemed like an age ago. "I was going to say that even if you wanted to, you couldn't stay at Haven. It looked like it was killing you."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I won't lie. Some days I hope that it will."