Page 50 of Sacrifice

“You’re amazing. Seriously.” Sebastian planted a firm kiss on my lips. “The absolute fucking best.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, glowing with embarrassment from his praise. “I’m so glad I found it.”

“Me too,” he said, eyeing the backpack. “Now… let’s just hope the damn thing still works…”

16

Sebastian

Back at the hotel,I set the laptop on a small desk near the window. The bulky old machine felt out of place in the modern room, and my skin prickled with a mix of anticipation and concern as I stooped to plug in the old charger that I’d managed to track down at a secondhand tech store.

I pressed the power button, half-expecting it to do nothing. To my surprise, the screen flickered to life, casting a dull glow as the ancient system booted up with a slow, mechanical hum.

“Shit. It actually works,” I said, brows rising.

“Will there be one of those password things?” Rose asked.

“Probably,” I replied as the startup screen appeared, pixelated and outdated. Then I nodded curtly as the password prompt appeared. “Yup.”

“Can you guess it?”

“Don’t need to.” I smiled thinly, fingertips flying across the keyboard. “These things were always easy to break into back in the day. Easier than it is now, anyway. I used to do it all the time to play games whenever Mom left it lying around.”

The desktop finally loaded, a clutter of icons scattered across the screen. The background was a faded photo of a long-forgotten moment at the Central Park Zoo. It felt like unlocking a time capsule.

“We’re in,” I whispered, my pulse quickening.

Rose pointed at a yellow folder icon on the screen. “This says ‘Field Research’. That would probably have everything she wrote about the Covenant, right?”

I nodded and double-clicked on the icon. The laptop whirred, and the screen remained frozen on the desktop for a moment. Then it flashed, and a snippet of my mother’s old research notes appeared.

**Field Notes – Day 7**

The Covenant’sRelationship with Nature

The community’s daily routines are deeply intertwined with nature. I’ve observed them offering small offerings—usually seeds, herbs, or food scraps—to the soil, which they believe nourishes the land's spirit.

They cultivate their crops in specific cycles, which follow the phases of the moon rather than the traditional growing seasons. This lunar-based agriculture is said to yield stronger, more spiritually pure crops.

There’s a marked reverence for the wilderness surrounding their settlement. No trees are felled without a communal ritual. One of the elders told me that cutting down a tree requires the permission of their deity (the Entity) granted only when a member has a specific need for the wood.

That wasn’t particularly relevant or useful. I scrolled farther down.

**Field Notes – Day 16**

Healing Practices and Medicinal Use of Plants

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