Serph watches Jack thumb the back of his hand, the movement giving rise to that strange feeling of being hungry. His own voice feels oddly distant as he responds, distracted.

"I died." They all had, supposedly. Serph frowns, thinking about the terrified scientists who he questioned. "No, killed. Somehow, I was a demon. But the demon virus didn't exist yet."

He curls his fingers more tightly around Jack's hand, lifting his gaze back to Jack's face.

"I am an AI. An artificial being created to inhabit a virtual world. I don't know why I was made in the image of the human." Cielo's quiet observation floats back to the forefront of his mind. We still don't know if we're dead, or if we were never real to begin with. "I didn't have the chance to ask my creator the truth of our origins."