Byer tells Cross that they are "sin eaters," doing the "morally indefensible" but absolutely necessary thing, "so that the rest of our cause can stay pure." This is a reference to a short story by Margaret Atwood, "The Sin-Eater." The story is that a village has one person who is treated extremely well and whose job is to eat food symbolic of people's sins, so that he assumes all their sins so that they can die in a state of grace. The sin eater is extremely old and weighed down by the sins of hundreds of people. A young man is being groomed to be a sin-eater. The old sin-eater dies and the first task the pure and innocent young man must do is eat the sins of the sin-eater including the lifetime of sins he has consumed which, by extension, includes the sins of all the thousands that have been absorbed by endless generations of sin-eaters. In other words, lured by the comforts to be provided by the adoring villagers, the young man becomes the most damnable person in history. His only hope is that one day, many years later, another young man will be similarly lured into eating all the sins that this young man will have to bear.

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