Chapter 160 Breaking the Rules Means Death
"Serves him right. Who told him to be greedy and break the rules?"
"In our line of work, you follow the organization's rules. If his selfishness exposed the operation, he deserved to die."
The voices gradually faded away.
Grace released the little girl, and both of them sat up.
She looked around at the other cages. Some contained rare animals—lions and tigers, some skeletal and lifeless on the floor, others pacing frantically in their confined spaces.
Beyond the animals, there were people locked up—mostly women, little girls, and young boys. Some were covered in wounds, others appeared to be barely three years old.
There were also young men, their tendons severed, unable to move.
The entire hold reeked of thick, cloying blood.
The little girl sharing Grace's cage was clearly terrified, hugging her shoulders and trembling while letting out hoarse sobs.
Grace suddenly understood what all these people were.
Those women and children were all commodities with price tags on the dark web. The dark web harbored buyers with special appetites who would purchase women and children for their twisted pleasure.
The term "Meat Pig" that Tom had used was organization slang.
And "Pork" referred to live organs.
Live organ harvesting meant they were being transported as containers to destinations worldwide.
They were no longer people—their greatest value lay in the organs they carried.
Once they reached their destination, they would be...
Grace couldn't bear to think further.
Everyone here represented Black Mass's trafficking operation—human cargo, organs, and protected wildlife.
And she was merchandise too.
She quickly pieced together Jenny's relationship with this organization.
The Black Mass's supreme leader was nameless, faceless—no one knew if this person was male or female, their background a complete mystery. They controlled millions of transaction networks globally, selling "merchandise" through the dark web at premium prices, shipping them to buyers via ocean freight.
Below this leader were several lieutenants, each controlling multiple sub-networks that spread like a multilevel marketing scheme.
Robert was one of these lieutenants' subordinates.
Tom and the other fat man were Robert's underlings.
Jenny had done business with them, though the transaction details were unclear since... Grace had witnessed Jenny and the other two men being silenced.
Yesterday, they'd taken her to the abandoned chicken farm where she'd hoped to escape.
She'd fed them pills that Liam had developed—anyone who took them would become weak and cough up blood. But shortly after, four or five people had burst in and started shooting without warning.
Tom and Jenny were gunned down on the spot. The fat man tried to flee, but she'd heard someone say later that "the other guy was taken care of too."
She'd assumed she was doomed as well, but ironically, Tom had uploaded her information to the dark web, where a buyer had paid seven figures for her as "Meat Pork"—she had to be delivered alive per the order.
That was another organizational rule.
So she'd survived.
Robert was probably dead too, having broken the rules.
As "merchandise," he'd learned about her connection to Alexander and gotten greedy, trying to ransom her outside the dark web system. For this, he'd also been eliminated.
Now she drifted with the cargo ship like any other commodity, destination unknown.
But...
Strangely, she didn't feel that afraid.
Perhaps it was because of the unwavering belief in her heart.
She believed she would eventually make it back to Alexander alive.
She still had to find that child!
Seven years ago, Max's brother—the baby Jenny had claimed was "stillborn"—had definitely been sold. Whether he was alive or dead remained a mystery, but she was determined to find him.
The little girl beside her continued crying hard.
Grace gently stroked her hair. "Don't cry, don't be afraid..."
The little girl sniffled. "They killed my mommy..."
Grace's eyes flickered. "Why..."
The little girl shook her head. "I don't know..." Her young age and heavy crying made her speech unclear. "They... suddenly broke into our house to take me away... I screamed because I was scared, and mommy heard me crying and ran over... they stabbed her to death and buried her in the backyard..."
She cried even harder, tears and snot streaming down her face.
Nearby, a little boy sat in stunned silence.
He mumbled, "My daddy was killed too..." He hung his head—perhaps from extreme trauma, he seemed to have forgotten how to grieve, his response purely catatonic.
This was a textbook trauma response, indicating the boy was filled with panic, helplessness, and...
Confusion.
Everyone trapped here was terrified and lost.
None of them knew what fate awaited them.
Grace looked at the little girl and noticed a collar around her neck.
The collar appeared to be made of titanium alloy, each one bearing a number—the girl's read "61." Grace couldn't see her own number, but there was a small dot that blinked an eerie green light every five seconds.
She raised her hand to touch her own neck and found she wore one too.
Looking around, Grace saw that everyone caged here had similar collars. She couldn't tell what they were for.
"I'm hungry..."
The little girl touched her sunken belly and whimpered pitifully.
She hadn't eaten or drunk anything in two days and two nights. She barely had the strength to cry anymore.
An hour and a half later, several dark-skinned men entered—they looked Southeast Asian.
They wheeled in a cart covered by plastic sheeting that contained many loaves of bread, while carrying what looked like water guns.
"Give us some food..."
"I'm so hungry..."
Pleas from the women and children echoed from various cages.
One man cracked a whip on the ground with a sharp "snap," and the hold fell silent.
"Shut up! Stay quiet, all of you! Anyone who makes another sound gets nothing to eat tonight!"
Tonight?
Was it already night?
Being trapped in this place, Grace had lost all sense of time. But hearing the man's words, she realized it must be the evening of the second day since she'd been kidnapped.