A blinding light filtered through the loosely knit wool fabric. Shapes of things. An upside-down world, hazy and distorted. Billy was hanging by his feet from a rattling iron chain. Someone else had to be hanging beside him. Every time he heard the hiss of a Bunsen burner nearby, it was followed by a blood-curdling scream, and the entire metal structure he was hanging from would sway and shake. It wasn’t Isaac’s voice; he was sure of that. It was another man. A Stranded. The few frightened, exhausted words he managed to mumble sounded like he was from a distant part of the East. What had brought him here? Likely the same thing that brought all Stranded: the hope for a better life.

And what he got instead…

Someone yanked the bag off Billy’s head so hard it felt like his ears were coming off with it.

… was what Billy was about to feel himself.

Wide-eyed, he stared at black pant legs as the hiss of the gas burner started again. Then a man held the scorching flame to Billy’s stomach for a few seconds.

Billy screamed in agony, though he realized a second later that, thanks to the experimental painkiller from the researcher, he wasn’t actually feeling any pain. Only a strange pressure on his belly.

But the shock alone was enough to make him scream.

"What do you want from me?" he managed, trying to orient himself in the harsh light of several lamps set up around them.

"Your name, first."

"Billy Jones," he said, glancing at the battered figure of the Asian man next to him. His face was a distorted mass of bruises, blood, and open wounds. His eyes were so swollen he couldn’t open them at all. The sight was so horrifying that Billy had to look away immediately. The thought that he was about to endure the same thing sent raw fear coursing through him, his legs flailing wildly on the chain.

"Let me down!" he shouted.

"Where you live?"

"I…"

Hell, I don’t have a home anymore, he thought.

"Nowhere," Billy replied. "I live like most Stranded—on the street, in the Lincoln Tunnel, or somewhere in the shantytown on the edge of the third borough."

"But you have family, surely," the man said with a thick accent.

"I… no, not anymore."

What was the point of these questions? Did they want the secret documents? Were they from Thandros Corporation?

The man quickly lost patience with him. Billy heard the hiss of the Bunsen burner again, so he grabbed the gas hose in one swift movement and ripped it out of the man’s hand.

The man responded by slamming his shoe into Billy’s face with all his might. Like a stamp, it sent a brutal message that these criminals weren’t playing games.

Billy’s head snapped back from the force of the blow, and his spine cracked. Moments later, blood trickled from both nostrils like a fountain from the depths of hell.

Suddenly, another man approached—a big, heavy guy in a leather jacket. He patted the first man on the shoulder while talking on the phone.

"You got the thirty thousand now?"

Billy glanced down at the men’s legs, searching for Isaac. But beyond the lamps, there was only darkness. All he saw was blinding light.

"No, you not gettin' more time. You had plenty of time," the big man said, hanging up and giving a quick command to the other. With that, the man released the foot restraints, and the Asian man hit the ground headfirst. He tried painfully to push himself up but was far too weak.

"What about this one?" the man asked, looking Billy over. "Family?"

"He says no. But they always say no."

"Cut him loose. We taking him. We got clients who have no time to wait."

As the criminal worked on Billy’s foot restraints and the Asian man begged for his life, Billy looked into the thug’s face, terror-stricken.

Clients? What the hell does that mean?

----------------------------------------

In a long, dark corridor underground, a door opened, and an older man in a suit stepped out. He had a thick mustache, which he stroked with his thumb—a habitual gesture—as he quietly closed the door behind him. He wore a hat and carried a cooler in his left hand, tilting slightly to one side from its weight.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

"Help me," Billy whispered weakly.

But the man didn’t respond. As he walked past, his glasses flashed in the dim light. He smiled and nodded briefly to the thug at Billy’s side, then continued wordlessly down the hall.

The thug opened the door the suited man had just exited and shoved Billy inside. He caught himself just in time, grabbing onto something to avoid falling—only to realize what had broken his fall: a rolling operating table.

He shoved it aside, and it creaked and rattled across the dirty floor until it clattered against the wall and stayed there. Three surgeons in blood-splattered green scrubs looked up at him without any expression. Billy didn’t know where to look first.

What the hell…

These were organ dealers.

Two cartel goons were stuffing the gutted body of the Asian man into a large, heavy-duty bag. Billy caught sight of the dead man’s legs before he disappeared into the plastic and was hauled off to the crematorium, a massive industrial furnace in the next room, from which waves of searing heat spilled out as they opened the door.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Where the hell were they? A morgue?

Certainly not an official one. More like an abandoned factory from the coal energy era.

On the next table lay another body, hastily stitched up, of a dark-skinned man. Billy’s heart skipped a beat. Could that be Isaac? The face was covered by a cloth, but the body type was similar: slim, wiry, small.

My god, he thought, that’s Isaac.

And I’m next.

"What did you do to him?" he demanded, pointing clearly at the lifeless body, but the surgeons remained silent, focused on their work. Blood bags were stored on a refrigerated counter, and one doctor casually made an incision around the eye of a third corpse with a scalpel, removing the cornea and placing it into a small preservation container.

"My god," Billy muttered.

The room was hot from the industrial furnace next door, and the air was thick with the rancid smell of rotting flesh mixed with the sour stench of vomit... the final remains of half-digested food that the bodies had carried in their intestines.

Billy’s heart raced, pumping blood so hard that his pulse pounded like a river rushing behind his eardrums. He realized, with horror, that he was in an organ dealer’s operating room, the kind that filled New Yorkers with dread whenever they appeared in the news.

His heart rate, close to two hundred beats per minute, suddenly slowed as if someone had unplugged a machine running at full power. He felt a tiny prick under his skin, and then something flowed into his bloodstream, calming his heart and his entire mind. Billy turned slightly, strangely calm and free of fear. A surgeon stood behind him, still holding the empty syringe, its needle pointing up.

Billy felt pleasantly dazed. Dizzy, even. But it didn’t bother him. He staggered into the arms of the cartel member who had brought him here, almost as if he were seeking support. Or trying to hug him.

"What… are you doing?" he slurred, raising his gaze sluggishly. But the next time he opened his eyes, he was already lying shirtless on an operating table. Memory gaps. Whatever they’d injected him with was more than just a sedative.

Billy tried to clench his fists, but he had no strength in his fingers, as if waking from a deep sleep. His hands and feet were bound to the table with leather straps.

"Let… me… go," he whispered. Or maybe he only thought it. Maybe he was mumbling so badly that no one could understand him, because even his tongue felt sluggish, failing to keep up with his thoughts.

Two surgeons stood on either side of him, conversing in their language, casting brief glances at Billy as their gloved fingers traced along his stomach, marking an imaginary incision line over his chest. As one held his head steady, the other lifted an oxygen mask and moved it slowly toward his mouth and nose, like a spaceship docking with a station.

Billy barely resisted; it wouldn’t have done any good anyway.

As the surgeon pressed the mask over his face and gas began flowing from the tube, Billy held his breath for a few seconds.

His heart pounded, and icy sweat dripped down his temples. He caught a final glimpse of the doctor drawing up a second syringe filled with anesthetic.

Billy couldn’t believe this was happening. That this was his end.

The doctor slid the thin needle into the vein in his left arm as the other pressed a scalpel to his stomach, positioning it for a vertical cut.

Goodbye, cruel, cruel world.

At the moment Billy decided to inhale and accept his fate, the door suddenly swung open, and a young man stepped in, looking somewhat out of breath but familiar.

But his appearance only made everything more confusing.

It was Isaac who entered the operating room, looking confident and unharmed, as if he were in charge of the illegal organ business.

Was he? Had Billy misjudged him too?

Isaac stood in the doorway, holding up a gold signet ring so the surgeons and cartel members could see it.

"Unless you want King Omar to personally rip you apart, it’d be a good idea to let the man over there go. Now," he said.

It was probably only partly due to the sedative that Billy couldn’t make sense of what was happening. But the doctors understood well enough. They released him from the restraints. Instantly, Billy stood up from the table. He was so dizzy that he lost his balance and stumbled. In disgust and anger, he shoved the surgeon next to him aside, pulled the blood-soaked cotton from his nostrils, grabbed his blood-smeared, blue-checkered shirt, and staggered over to Isaac.

"Damn it, I was two seconds away from having my organs removed and my body tossed into a furnace. What the hell is going on here? Why are you here? Why didn’t they… My god, don’t tell me you’re involved in this disgusting business."

"In a way, yes," Isaac said. "But not how you think. Just... trust me."

"Trust you? This horrible cartel kidnaps innocent people, tortures them to extort ransom, and when the families can’t pay, they kill the captives and sell their organs. If you’re even slightly involved, I’ll never speak another word to you."

"Fine," Isaac replied, stopping in the middle of a dim hallway. "We’re in the corridors of an old industrial complex. An abandoned tuna factory by the harbor. The only reason I’m alive and standing here to save you is pure luck."

Billy listened intently, but skeptically. He swallowed uncontrollably, still feeling woozy, and leaned against the damp wall for support. "Luck?" he asked.

Isaac said, "I was tied to a chair while they set up a car battery next to me and tortured my chest with both clamps of a jumper cable." To prove it, he carefully lifted his shirt, revealing burns along his ribs—fresh wounds, wet and visibly painful.

"Even though I couldn’t take the torture, I tried to buy myself some time. I knew what would happen if I didn’t. Any Stranded knows what happens in the underground here. Hell, I even knew someone who managed to escape from these organ dealers. So, I knew right away what I was facing. So I fed them some numbers. They keep their victims alive for days if you give them the prospect of money. Fortunately, it didn’t take long before Omar Branett walked in. He’d just come from some kind of meeting with high-ranking figures from the underworld, clan leaders, cartel bosses. I called out his name."

Billy pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes. "Why?"

"Because… King Omar took me in back when I arrived here as a Stranded. Tabitha and I had no future; we first stayed in the shantytowns, scraping by with petty theft. We were so poor, we had to steal returnable bottles from other homeless people. Then we moved to Manhattan, and there…"

"You met the king of the underground."

"No, I ran into him again. I’d done a few jobs for him before I…"

"Before you what?"

"Before we hid in the PROMISED LAND. We were safe from Omar’s men there. We paid the locksmith to make us new identities with the dirty money we’d saved."

Billy crossed his arms, scrutinizing Isaac. "That explains how you know Omar, but not why he spared you and why these people listen to you."

"Here," Isaac said, tossing him Omar Branett’s signet ring.

Billy caught it with both hands, laid it in his palm, and examined it. Made of high-quality gold, it was large and heavy enough that two of his fingers could have fit through it. The engraving showed the mirrored initials: OB.

"He gave me this so his men would listen to me. I don’t know exactly how to put it, but Omar… he just likes me, I guess."

Billy looked at the ring, then at Isaac. "It’s worth a lot, no doubt. Maybe we could convince the locksmith to trade it for the fake IDs."

They climbed the stairs toward the emergency exit.

"You don’t understand," Isaac said. "We can’t sell the ring. From now on, we’re in Omar’s debt. Both of us. It’s not like we’re free men now, and he gave me the ring out of kindness. I know the way out of here, but beyond that, I’m not sure. Whatever happens next is out of our hands."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Isaac pushed open the door of the old tuna factory. They found themselves in an abandoned lot. A few burnt-out gasoline cars littered the parking area. Snow was falling. The faint hum of tires on the wet, slushy asphalt reached their ears as a black electric limousine glided up almost silently behind them. It stopped a few steps away, and Billy could see the falling snow reflected in the red taillights. A door opened, and a tall, gaunt man stepped out. He didn’t look like a thug, but he also didn’t seem like someone who’d own a signet ring of this size. He opened the passenger door and gestured to Isaac and Billy, as if giving a small clap to the air, motioning them to get in.

Billy hesitated.

"The devil let us out of his hell," Isaac muttered, swallowing hard, "and now we have to kiss his ass in gratitude."