They packed the people they had abducted into large crates, disguised them as cargo, and transported them into the hotel. Then they secretly hid them in the cells beneath it.
The place was heavily guarded. The people overseeing and transporting the prisoners all appeared to be hotel staff, so their comings and goings aroused no suspicion.
More importantly, no one would have imagined that beneath this luxurious hotel lay a den of human traffickers.
The cells were filthy, dark, and damp, crawling with rats and ants. The prisoners never saw sunlight. They had no freedom or dignity; they were nothing more than goods waiting to be sold.
The slightest disobedience earned them a beating. At worst, they were beaten to death. Cries and sobs echoed through the underground prison, making it a scene straight out of hell.
The buyers disguised themselves as hotel guests and came every so often to select suitable "goods."
But evil could not stay hidden forever. The truth eventually came to light, all because of a mysterious fire. After the blaze, people who had come to help put it out accidentally uncovered the crimes concealed beneath the hotel.
Strangely, every guest and staff member who died in the fire had been directly involved in human trafficking. The guests were the buyers, while the staff, presumably, were the sellers.
Even more bizarrely, the flames raged through the hotel. The staff guarding the prisoners underground scrambled to escape, but every one of them burned to death inside the building, reduced to charred corpses as they fled.
Yet the people locked in the cells, waiting to die, all somehow survived. The fire not reaching them was strange enough, but the scorching heat and choking smoke had barely harmed them either.
There was no scientific explanation for it. It was