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((The Mon/Wen/Fri Double -- page 1 of 2))
The slavers that had taken control of Miro were perhaps the worst kind. The kind associated with Abolish.

Raul had only observed the town for a few hours, at most, and he hadn't even gotten that close. He'd found a vantage point atop a rocky cliff and spied on the inhabitants with binoculars. But in that short time, he'd witnessed public beatings and people being branded like cattle. He'd seen groveling and weeping in the streets. And he'd seen forced labor as well. A large field of orange trees sat on the western edge of the town, and a handful of people were being forced to pick the fruit.

It didn't seem like slave labor was their chief motivator, however. The number of slaves they had on the job was small when compared to how many were being tormented in the rest of the town.

No, Raul suspected that they were mainly being rounded up and shipped off to be sold elsewhere. And indeed, those suspicions soon turned out to be accurate when he witnessed a big truck being loaded up with people who had been freshly branded by their captors.

Kidnapping for the purpose of the slave trade obviously had enormous historical precedence as well, but as far as Raul knew, the practice had all but disappeared in the modern day. Most forms of slavery today were variations on wage slavery. Not this.

Only real monsters could get away with this.

Esai broke the silence of their dinner, stirring Raul from his thoughts. "If they're still branding them, then the take over must have been pretty recent."

Neither Raul nor Adan responded.

They were in the privacy of their own hotel room, but Esai was still purposely leaving some identifying words out. No mention of Miro, nor what the "branding" specifically referred to. Perhaps it was an unnecessary precaution, but you never did know who might overhear, even in places of seeming seclusion.