The next three days were absolute agony. After thirteen years, there was finally a clue to finding my mother and I desperately wanted to rush off and chase it down. The only thing stopping me was the cold logic that after all this time, she wouldn’t actually still be in the warehouse and that I’d need as much time as I could get to go through everything in that warehouse. This was my best chance to find out what happened to her and I wasn’t going to rush it. For that, I needed to wait until I could leave for awhile and not be missed. So, I sat through three more days of school and worked at the clinic and went to Kung Fu. Everything was normal, except that I was dying inside.
Being in school felt like it had at the beginning of the year all over again, only much worse. This time, I could barely keep my anger in check and I kept having to stop myself from simply getting up in the middle of class and walking out. Eva noticed my change in attitude right away this time, having seen it before, and told me that I needed to take the weekend off again. She was right, only not in the way she intended. I would take the weekend off from being Abby and let Roger do some work.
I told Sister Clara that my ‘friend’ needed to do another software update on the imaging system and that it would be offline for the weekend. This led to a half hour of rescheduling all the patients and it freed me from my only Saturday obligations. Raleigh was only an hour away by plane, but when you factored in the time going to the airport and from the airport, it made more sense to drive. Driving also meant that I wouldn’t have to carry all my gear with me by duffel. Everything that I might need could be stuffed in the back of my truck. The exosuit, the ‘Roger’ outfit with the oversized hoodie and protective gear, the slightly used baseball bat, a few of the guns that I’d found in the Serpentine offices, cameras and computer gear, money and food.
On Friday night, dad and I had an early dinner followed by a few hours of working together out back in the forge. Since working on the Christmas pillow for dad, I’d spent very little time blacksmithing. Finding a solution to my scanning problem had taken up all of my energy. I’d almost forgotten how calming working at the forge could be. It forced you to put all other thoughts away as you concentrated on shaping the metal to match the image in your head. It was a welcome relief from this week’s constant frustration and anticipation, and it left me feeling relaxed for the first time since I heard about the Pearl Dragon.
Dad went to bed at ten o’clock and I was on the road by ten fifteen. Once dad went to bed, he was usually out for the night and I hoped tonight was no exception. I’d warned him that I’d be getting up and heading out very early and that I’d be gone for most of the day. I even remembered to shift my bike to L2, so that he wouldn’t get suspicious if he saw it.
With no traffic and no speed limit issues in L2, I managed to get into Raleigh a few minutes after midnight. Making my way to the Pearl Dragon warehouse took another fifteen minutes and all of a sudden I was parked in front of what looked like an abandoned building. It sat at the edge of Raleigh’s industrial district and was surrounded by a chain link fence. Unlike my memories of the Serpentine warehouse, the warehouse fence wasn’t cared for and had vines growing at various places. There were no cameras set back from the fence and there was no guard shack out front. My heart sank when I saw the broker sign out front proclaiming that the property was for sale.
The google street view images hadn’t shown the sign, but there could be a delay of six-months between the times that the google people would upload new images of an area. I sat in my car and swallowed my disappointment. My dreams of finding my mother were slowly disappearing as my one clue turned to ash. All the anticipation and planning had been for nothing and I slammed my palm against the steering wheel in anger and frustration.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. Eventually, I got out the car and walked through the greyed-out fence and front doors. I’d scanned the building already and the emptiness was not a surprise. My powerful flashlight cut through the darkness and I walked the entire building searching for anything that would let me continue my search. I don’t know what I expected to find; a plea for help scratched into the wall or maybe a note hidden under a loose floorboard? It was just an empty warehouse with some offices out front. Pearl Dragon Corporation had probably abandoned the place after the raid on Serpentine Logistics, fearing a similar raid on their premises and they’d scoured the place of every trace of their slave trade.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
That thought stopped me in my tracks. There was no evidence of the slave trade in the building. Not at all. No basement, no cells, no hidden areas at all. No elaborate security systems. With Serpentine, even the delivery truck had a hidden area and a place to keep the slaves in chains. This building had none of those things. That meant that it hadn’t been used to keep slaves. Only why close it up if it wasn’t connected to the slave trade? With no slaves around, what could a raid have found? Computer records? Blood and hair DNA? Wouldn’t it have been easier to buy new computers and bleach the floor?
There had to be something here. The initials PDC matched up perfectly with Len’s journal. He dropped off dozens of victims here. Those victims weren’t kept here though. This had to be a transfer point. This brought me back to the question of why close the place up. Preparing for a raid would take a few hours of work and then you could just go on with your legitimate business until the you were raided or you were sure that no raid was coming. Why close the place down? What were they trying to hide or to keep anyone from finding?
I scanned the building again and came up with nothing, so I moved my scan outwards into the truck loading area and parking lot. Jackpot! At the low point of the loading area there was a drain that took the rainwater away to the city storm drains. However, instead of having the water run through the drainage sewer cover directly into the water pipe, the water first fell into a four-foot-deep pit with an open water pipe on the side for the water to flow into. I was no drainage expert and couldn’t tell if this drainage system was common or not, but the sealed off shaft running under the pit definitely didn’t seem normal.
The shaft, which had ladder rungs all the way down its twenty-foot drop, was completely filled in with concrete. At the base of the shaft there used to be a tunnel that ran to the edge of the property. That tunnel was also filled in with concrete. Someone really didn’t want the tunnel to be used anymore. It seemed that when Serpentine was exposed, the owners of Pearl Dragon had decided that the risk of a raid on their warehouse and the potential for the discovery of the tunnel were too big to allow operations to continue. By closing down the company and blocking the tunnel, they were presenting the police or the FBI with a dead end.
And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for my meddling field and it’s ability to scan deep underground and see where the tunnel led.
At the end of the warehouse parking lot the tunnel continued under the parking lot of the neighboring property. From there the tunnel turned to the left and crossed under the street for another two city blocks before linking up with the underground parking lot of an eight-story office building. I scanned the building and my heart grew cold as I saw the rows of prison cells on the seventh floor. Offices and a connecting corridor ringed the perimeter of the seventh floor while the entire center of the floor was dedicated to the cells. Most of the cells were full of men, women and children of all ages. Sometimes up to six prisoners would be squished into a cell that was only big enough to fit four comfortably.
My field counted seventy-two prisoners and most of them were in terrible shape. Nothing immediately life threatening, just malnourished and dehydrated. I found a secluded area and shifted back to reality to call Shauna. I changed the voice setting to my Roger voice and waited for her to pick up. It was almost one in the morning, but she picked up on the second ring and sounded alert.
“Shauna. It’s Roger. I’m in Raleigh following up on a lead that Abby sent me. There are seventy-two prisoners here that are going to need the foundation’s help come morning. You and your team should make your way down here.”
“Are you at the Pearl Dragon warehouse?”
“No. That warehouse is closed down, but I found a clue there that led me to these prisoners. Call your FBI contact and tell him that he should join you for the drive. Don’t tell him where you’re going, not even the name of the city. What he doesn’t know, he can’t pass on to the wrong person.”
“Are you sure I should bring him?”
“You’ll need him to vouch for you with the police and get access to the prisoners once they’re freed. I’ll call you with more detail once I’ve finished securing the premises.” I took a page out of Howie’s book and hung up without saying goodbye.