Relentless

28- Saige

One hundred and fifty-seven; that's how many victims stood around me on the outskirts of a rundown prison. Both men and woman, children, teenagers, toddlers. People stolen away; lost and tortured. Some sat on the ground in shock, some huddled in groups whispering to each other, others simply couldn't say a word. All of them were crying. The tears they shed were for the same reason. They were all free.

    I wiped the sweat from my forehead softly treading through the crowd seeing if anyone needed anything. Red and blue lights flashed in sync, voices rose into the air too jumbled together to make out just one. I passed a two children, a boy and a girl holding each other close, a blanket wrapped around them both as an EMT gently coaxed them into checking them over. "Wesley! Where's Amber?" The boy's head shot up searching frantically for the source of the voice. "Amber! Wesley!"

    The girl looked up too, "Daddy?" A man burst through the crowd breathing heavily. His gold badge glinted in the sunlight from his belt, dark skin lined in sweat. "Daddy!" The three of them rushed forward, crashing into each other with such force the dad fell backwards. They sobbed in relief, their Dad kissing their foreheads and hugging them tight. The touching scene caught the attention of everyone around. No one dared to disrupt the reunion. A warm feeling erupted in my chest, a bittersweet emotion swirled showing its way onto my lips in a sad smile. I brushed a couple stray tears away stepping back to find someone familiar. Though through the beautiful chaos I wondered how long it would take.

    "The raids of sex trafficking sites continue." I ceased in my tracks to watch the small TV screen perched in a van as the news anchor spoke. They showed footage of walking into a camp we were in just last week. "As you can see the living quarters were far from likable. People were found confined in cages like animals malnourished and frightened. Shots were fired between the perpetrators and police but no casualties were reported. A total of eighteen men and women were arrested, all twenty one victims were set free and taken to hospitals with no word on their conditions as of yet. Meanwhile, we are following up on families and friends being reunited after years of being held in captivity. So far detectives have uncovered over thirty-eight prisons and camps nation wide. Police estimate about two thousand missing persons have been found within all these horrific places."

    I smiled cheekily whispering under my breath, "Two thousand, one hundred and fifty-seven."

    "And counting," Silas stopped beside me with a wide grin. "We just got word of another successful raid in California, five hundred people were counted."

    "How many more prisons does that leave?"

    "According to your father's flash drive, just two."

    "And that's after we plugged it into their database?"

    "Yes, your father was a genius. The prison you were kept gave us everything with that bad boy." He shook his head in disbelief, "This is insane. It's got to be one of the greatest rescue plans ever. At this rate they'll have to build new prisons just for The Unseen with all the people they're arresting."

    "That would be ironic wouldn't it?" I couldn't help the pang of sadness, the wishing of how my parents could have seen this, or if I had just kept it together to find the bunker when we were at the Big House the first time a few months back. These people would have been freed already.

    "Well, I guess this is God's way of bringing the good out of a bad situation." It's like he sensed where my thoughts were going. "Look around you, Saige, we're here now. They're free now. There's no point in thinking of the what if's, we're almost there."

    I spotted Ky and Commander Grayson leaning over the back of a car studying a map in deep thought. Everyone moved around them, but their gaze stayed fixed as they talked to each other. I swallowed a lump beginning to form in my throat, "And there's still no sign of Sarah."