"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Marcus slammed the glove compartment with excessive anger.
"Boss, we have to go to a hospital!!" Robert pressed the stomach of his bleeding friend.
"Shut up!" Marcus punched him in the face, making several teeth fly out.
"Go ahead." He signaled to the driver, who nodded with evident fear.
Upon returning to his hideout, Marcus got out of the truck and watched as his men brought down three bodies.
The first was the man Ben had hit with the rock, his body lay clearly lifeless and without breath.
The second was the boy that Ben stabbed, and finally, there was Ben himself.
He was treated with special cruelty when he was dragged by his hair and thrown aside like a sack of potatoes.
When they saw his situation, the men at the base approached to help and tried to give first aid to the stabbed boy, but he died shortly after arriving.
Everyone looked at the unconscious Ben with anger, and one even kicked him to vent his rage.
Marcus did not intervene and watched everything with absolute coldness.
"What do we have here?" The man in the suit arrived with a smile on his face as he observed everything with great interest. "Is this the guy?"
"Yes." Marcus nodded. "But I'm seriously considering not selling it and making it suffer with my own hands."
The man in the suit chuckled softly and looked at the two bodies on the floor with a sinister gleam.
"The kid was a tough nut to crack, huh?" The man stared intently at Ben before turning to look at Marcus. "I'll give you 300,000 argens for him."
The whole place fell silent, even the men mourning the death of their friends opened their eyes in disbelief.
They had done that kind of work for the man before, and the most he had ever paid them was simply 40,000.
Hearing such a large offer for the boy made everyone turn to look at him.
Marcus frowned, still unconvinced.
"400,000!"
"He tried!" Marcus smiled as he extended his hand to shake the man's hand.
Forget about the two men, for that amount of money I would sacrifice 5 more.
The man nodded with a smile. With a snap of his fingers, a man also in a suit approached with a briefcase and handed it to Marcus.
With another snap of his fingers, two men took Ben, handcuffed him, and put him in a cage.
Shortly after, the men loaded many cages with people inside, entered large cargo trucks, and departed.
"Boss, you have to see this!!" One of Marcus's men approached with eyes wide in shock as he showed him Ben's open backpack.
Marcus's eyes gleamed, and with an arched eyebrow, he pulled out one of the bundles of money from the backpack.
"There's at least 500,000 here, boss."
"Hehe, we hit the jackpot."
....
The trucks quickly left the city and headed onto the highway.
After a few hours, Ben regained consciousness.
Am I not dead?
He tried to get up, but the pain in his leg and stomach prevented him.
Uffff
Ben held his stomach and discovered that he had a rudimentary bandage on it. His leg also seemed to have a bandage.
He slowly got up with a tremendous headache, leaning on the iron bars.
"Where am I?"
"In hell." An aged voice replied to him.
Ben looked to the side where an old man was reclining in his own cage, watching him with curiosity.
"Who are you?" "What do you mean by hell?" Ben asked hurriedly upon finding someone who could answer his questions. "Who were those men?" Where is my money?
The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"What do you think I am, some kind of wise man with all the answers?" The old man lay back on the hard ground. "My name no longer matters or will matter..." We are already dead."
Ben's heart stopped for a second as he felt an immense fear. He didn't want to die, and the thought that the old man might be referring to him made his heart race.
"Explain yourself." He demanded Ben with a hint of panic in his voice.
"You know, I really don't know much." The old man turned halfway and stopped looking at him. "I only know that hell awaits us."
"Explain yourself!!" Ben gripped the bars tightly and tried to expel lightning from his body, but was surprised to feel nothing.
"You noticed." The old man glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "They are anti-magic handcuffs, the same ones used in prisons and Hellshaven."
Ben observed his handcuffed hands and legs.
"That means you can't use magic or spells to escape this place." The elder continued. "What makes it impossible for us to escape."
"Escape from whom?" asked Ben.
"From them!" replied the old man. "I don't know who they are." Nobody knows, but it's impossible to escape from them; they have intermediate wizards and even advanced wizards as guards.
"What do you want from me?" "Of us!" he asked, frustrated by the lack of answers.
"Nothing." The old man turned around and looked at him seriously. "Just for fun."
"Fun?" Ben was confused.
"The people who have us captive anoint as facilitators for those who are rich and powerful." The elder raised his hands. "What can bring you fun when you have everything?" People who have the money to buy whatever they want. Who can sleep with whomever they want, even celebrities. What can fill them and take them out of the monotony?"
Ben fell silent.
"You don't know." The old man shrugged. "But how would you know? Just like me, you can't imagine having that kind of power and solvency."
"What is going to happen now is that he is going to sell us at an auction, like mere merchandise..." Like slaves." The old man leaned against the iron bars, powerless. "There is no hope, nor anything we can do."
"And how do you know all that?" Ben asked, not believing the old man.
Like any normal person, he wouldn't believe what someone says without the necessary evidence. Maybe the old man just wanted to scare him, maybe they were just traffickers who wanted to sell his organs.
Although that wouldn't be much better.
"Because I worked for a while for one of those men." The old man looked around at the people in the cages.
There were children, the elderly, teenagers, adults, and even pregnant women.
"And unlike all of you, I was not kidnapped." The old man seemed dejected for a second. "I sold myself!"
+++++
Author's note
Happy New Year to everyone.