Numbers painted on them.
Faded now.
But visible.
A memory detonates behind my eyes—
Children drugged inside transport trucks.
Tiny hands reaching through cage bars.
A guard laughing:
Don’t worry. Most of them won’t remember this place anyway.
I physically recoil.
Clay catches me immediately.
“Easy.”
“No,” I whisper shakily.
“No, no, no…”
Gabriel’s face drains of color beside me.
Because he remembers now too.
“This wasn’t just transport,” he says quietly.
Russ looks between us sharply.
“What was it?”
Nobody answers immediately.
Because deep down—
we already know.
The steel doors.
The rails.
The underground routes connected to ports.
Children moved between countries like cargo.
Human trafficking beneath churches.
Beneath schools.
Beneath orphanages.
Hidden under places people trusted.
Lucas mutters a curse under his breath.
