Interestingly, that’s 74K words on the nose. It was 73,998 when I finished the section, so I added two more words where they’d do the most good. Just for the look of it, I guess.
I’d say that the three cultists looked just anybody else when we burst through the door, except that it’d be a lie and we all know it. Sure, the two women and one man weren’t physically deformed, but there’s more than one kind of ugliness. The three of them had all relaxed in what they thought was quiet isolation, which meant that their true smiles and expressions had come out.
Their names were — well, we all had a therapy session after this (except for Oft, of course), so some of the details are a little hazy. I remember that they were new hires, no more than three months in-system, and that two of them were female and one was male. Call them Jane, Rose, and Lu. All young, too, but that’s cultists for you. It’s not a life path that has lots of lifespan attached to it.
When you arrest somebody, even out here in the Tomb Worlds, there’s supposed to be a system to it. You say who you are and why you’re doing the arrest, confirm that there’s a safe place for the arrestee to go to, and just try to avoid, you know, panic and rash moves. If things go right, the arrestee will end up securing themselves, which cuts down the risk for everybody. Nobody wants to die because somebody else decided on the spot that they were space-happy, right?
Things did not go right.