“Is the camera on?” A voice said.

“I think so.” Someone else said. “Hang on…it looks like it’s still black…I’m not sure what the problem is…camera’s charged, light’s on…”

“Is the livestream working?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a good connection…oh wait! I left the lens caps on. Let me take care of that…”

‘You’re so stupid Denise…”

With the sound of the camera being jostled, the black screen changed as the cap was removed. It showed an indistinct figure, sitting in the dim light. “Switching it over to nightvision mode.” The person holding the camera said and the view adjusted, changing to the monochrome greenish tint. The figure was, suddenly much clearer: a young woman, not 21 years old, sitting in the driver’s seat of an old van. “Say hi to everybody!” the person holding the camera said, cheerfully.

“Hi!” The woman said, waving. She was dressed for a warm summer night, in a tank top and shorts. Her hair, green in the night vision, was tied back in a ponytail. “Well, with classes out for the summer, we thought we would do a little exploring.” The woman told the camera. “I’m Samantha!”

She reached forward and grabbed the camera. It spun drunkenly as she turned it around to face the other person in the car; another young woman, slightly younger then the first. “And I’m Denise!” the girl said. She had a striking resemblance to the first girl, not surprising, since they were sisters. She had on a t-shirt and a skirt.

As Denise took the camera back, Samantha started the car. As she drove she started talking again. “Tonight we’ll be exploring an abandoned factory, done by the waterfront. It used to be a major cannery, but it was closed down after an accident and a bunch of people were killed.” She glanced over, quickly at the camera to flash a smile, before turning her attention back to the road. “Some people say this place may be haunted! So who knows, we might get lucky and see a ghost tonight!”

“Here’s hoping.” Denise replied. The two girls drove for another five minutes, making small talk, until Samantha pointed forward.

“I think that’s it!” she said. The camera swung away from her. Through the windshield of the car, a large building loomed in the darkness. The tall wall was lined with high, broken windows, pitch black on the other side.

Samantha parked the car at the side of the narrow, unpaved road. The two sisters grabbed their backpacks and got out of the car. A few yards away, a chain link fence surrounded the facility. The gate was closed, locked shut with a rusted chain and padlock. A sign was hung from the gate saying “No Trespassing.”

“Don’t try this at home, kids.” Samantha teased the camera. A short distance away, someone had hit the fence with their car, taking out one section of fencing. No one had ever bothered to get it repaired. The two girls climbed over the crumbled remains of the chain link fence and walked around the outside of the factory. Fifty yards or so down, there was a broken door, hanging from one hinge. Samantha pushed it open with a loud creak.

“Alright. We’re heading in.” She said, looking back over her shoulder at the camera. Samantha opened her backpack and pulled out a flashlight. The beam was bright in the night vision filter. Holding it out in front of her, Samantha stepped into the building. Denise, holding the camera, followed after her.

For the next ten minutes, the girls wandered in a green haze. Every now and again, a wall or a bit of complex machinery would suddenly appear, looming out of the gloom as it came within the range of the night vision filter.

The abandoned factory was quiet, the thick brick wall muffling the sounds of the city. The girls’ footsteps echoed in the large space of the cannery floor. The soft sounds of their breathing seemed loud.

“Spooky…”Denise whispered, panning the camera across the line of broken, rusting machines covered in cobwebs.

“Denise!” Samantha whispered insistently. “Denise! Come over here, quick!” She waved from the window, where she was standing. The camera bobbed as Denise jogged over to her sister.

“What is it?” She said, pointing the camera at Samantha. The older girl pointed out the window. Denise turned the camera out the broken window. Immediately outside the window was an open lot. Beyond, several large buildings were just visible in the dark, some sort of storage buildings.

“I thought I saw someone over there.” Samantha whispered. The two were quiet a moment, watching. Then, Samantha spoke up again. “There!” she said, sharply, pointing. “I see it!”

Denise zoomed the camera in, panning it around wildly, trying to catch the figures. There were three-no four figures, white in the moonlight against the dark background. The video was too blurry to make out any further details. The figures bobbed unsteadily as they moved around the side of the warehouse before suddenly disappearing.

“Do you think they were ghosts?” Denise asked excitedly. Film proof of spectral activity! They were going to be famous!

“I don’t think so…” Samantha replied. “But I do think we should investigate further.”

The sister turned away from the window. They searched around a few minutes before finding a door. Samantha had to shoulder it open. Silently, the girls jogged across the wide, empty expanse of broken, weather worn concrete to the warehouse. The camera’s microphone could pick up the sound of water splashing as they neared.

“ugh! What’s that smell?” Denise groaned.

“Brine. We’re right on the bay.” Samantha replied quietly. “They must have brought the catch right in here, into this building fresh off the boats, before sending it over to the cannery to be processed.”

The two slowly worked their way around the building, looking for a way in, eyes peeled for the pale figures they had seen. But all the doors were either locked or jammed shut and all the windows were boarded up. After a few minutes, the sisters were close to giving up trying to get in when Denise spotted an open door, at the top of a rusted fire escape.

“Give me a boost!” Samantha said and Denise set the camera down on the ground to help her sister reach up and grab the ladder. Out of sight of the video feed, it still picked up the sounds of the girls awkwardly trying to pull the fire escape ladder down. Finally, with a screech and a shower of rust, it lowered. Denise picked the camera back up again to record their climb up to the second floor of the building.

The girls entered the warehouse. They found themselves at one end of a hallway, with small administrative offices on either side. Another door, at the far end, seemed to lead out onto a catwalk, overlooking the large open space of the warehouse. There was some sort of light, coming from down below. Slowly, the girls creeped down the hallway, towards the door.

Samantha opened the door a crack, and peered through the gap. “oh my god…” Samantha exclaimed in shock as she opened the door. “Denise! Look at this!” The younger girl stepped towards the door with the camera. Samantha held the door open, so Denise could poke the camera lens out and peer through the gap.

“What the hell is this!” Denise said, startled. Someone had cleared out the inside of the abandoned warehouse and set up a number of floodlights to illuminate the center of the warehouse. Set up in the center of the floor were two rows of large metal cages. The cells were filled with dozens of young women! The girls were all completely naked. As far as Denise could make out, their hands and feet were shackled and the girls were fitted with ballgags.

“Samantha, what’s going on down there?” Denise asked, incredulous. Moving between the cages were several men, dressed from head to toe in black, with face concealing ski masks on, guarding the captives. As the girls watched, a couple more men appeared, dragging a line of naked captives tethered together at the neck. The sobbing girls were led to one of the empty cages and locked inside.

“I’m not sure.” Samantha replied, “but if I had to guess, I would bet these people are part of the white slave trade.”

“We should get out of here!” Denise said, insistently. “We can call the cops when we’re back at the car.”

“Yeah…” Samantha started to agree. “Let’s-oh hang on! The guards are leaving.” Denise swept the camera back around the interior of the warehouse. Sure enough, the guards were making their way towards one of the doors. “Maybe we can get down there and free those poor women. Come on!” She said, slipping quietly out onto the catwalk. “We can’t just leave them here!”

“Samantha!” Denise called out. The younger woman hesitated a moment before reluctantly following after her sister. The camera swung wildly as she ran forward, now showing the floor, now the rafters holding up the warehouse’s roof. “Let’s get out of here before we get…”

“Hey!” A man’s voice called out. The mic picked up the sound of booted feet pounding against the concrete floor.

“Shit!” Samantha swore, somewhere nearby. “Run Denise! Run!” The camera’s movements became even more erratic as the two girls turned and fled back up the stairs, the slavers chasing after them. At some point, Denise lost her grip on the camera. It tumbled over the side of the railing. With a loud crack, it hit the ground. An ugly crack jutted across the view of the lens, now showing a dark corner underneath the stairwell. The camera slid in and out of focus, the image hazy.

The microphone still worked fine though. Somewhere not far away, the two girls cried out in despair, first Samantha, then Denise, as they were grabbed by the slavers and dragged away…  

***  

“Mmmppphhh!!!” Samantha groaned miserably as the man holding her dragged the young woman forward.

“Mmmppphhh!!!” Denise, nearby, whimpered in reply. She had just enough time to give her sister a frightened look before she was grabbed as well. The two girls struggled in their captor’s grasp as they stumbled down the hallway.

The sisters had been stripped completely naked by the slavers. Their hands were pinned behind their backs with plastic zip-ties at the wrists and, painfully, at the elbows.

“Eeeellllp!!!” The two frightened captives sobbed. They had both been fitted with jaw crushing ballgags, rendering their terrified pleas into meaningless babble. They kept up a chorus of muffled complaints as the slavers dragged the two captives back towards the main space of the warehouse where the cage with their other captives were set up. The helpless captives in the cages moaned as they watched through the bars of the slave pens as the sisters stumbled down the aisle.

Samantha and Denise were forced to kneel in the center of the warehouse, The two girls looked at each other, trembling with fear, as the slavers gathered around them. It seemed impossible to believe that, from exploring an abandoned factory, they had fallen into the clutches of a group of white slavers! Silently, they wondered what was going to happen to them now.

The girls looked up, eyes wide in terror, as a large man, obviously in charge of the others, stepped in front of them and looked down at the naked captives with a leering gaze. “Well well, what do we have here?” he asked.

“Coupla’ curious girls, poking around the place.” Another slaver answered. “We spotted them looking in and chased after ‘em.”

“Were they alone?”

The other man nodded. “We think so. I’ve got people searching the grounds to be sure. We checked their cellphones when we stripped them. Neither of them managed to get a call off before we nabbed them.”

Their leader nodded. “Good. Put them in cage 6 with those girls Harry’s team brought in last week. That lot is a couple of girls light.” He turned back to the two captives. “We’ve got some buyers coming in to look you girls over. Try to make a good impression for your future owners.” He taunted. The two sisters whimpered as they were roughly jerked to their feet.

The slavers dragged them to one of the cages. The door was unlocked and they were shoved in. As the girls stumbled against the far wall of metal bars, the door was slammed shut and looked. As the sisters struggled to rise to their feet, no easy task with their hands tied, the other captives looked over the two newcomers, mumbling something sympathetically through their gags.        

For the next twenty minutes or so, the two could only watch, miserably, as the slavers began to prepare for the slave sale. Samantha looked over at her sister. If anything, she felt all the worse, for getting her little sister trapped alongside her, about to be sold into slavery!

Before long, other people began to appear in the warehouse; tough, cruel looking men dressed in dark, severely cut suits, wearing shades and carrying briefcases. They came in in groups of two or three, accompanied by an equal number of slavers. They passed by the cages, inspecting the helpless girls trapped inside them.

“Perhaps you would like to consider these girls, Herr Adler?” A slaver said to a bald man with a hook nose. He regarded the captives with a cruel leer. “I’m sure your organization would be able to train fine ponygirls with this stock…” The slaver nodded to one of his associates who produced a key and unlocked the cage. Opening the door, the slaver reached in and grabbed one of the girls near the door. The frightened girl whimpered through her gag, squirming as she was dragged out.

“Feel free to inspect her, Mein Herr…” The slaver said, offering the trembling girl to the buyer. The man reached forward and casually groped the sobbing girl. After a moment, the man shook her head. The slave was pushed back into the cage with the other girls and the door locked while the men moved down to the next pen and inspected the next group of captives and then the next. These girls seemed to meet his qualifications. The men haggled for some time. The helpless women in the pen could only watch, nervously, as their fate was being decided.

Finally, the men agreed on a price. Hands were shaken. The buyer opened his briefcase and took out bricks of cash, until he had enough to pay for the slaves he had just bought. The slaver nodded to his men. The cage was opened and the sobbing captives inside were herded out.

“Take them to my boat and stow them down below!” Their new owner ordered. The slaves moaned as they were led off to an uncertain future…

More buyers came around, examining the slaves cowering in their cages. More girls were taken out and felt up by the men. Samantha grunted angrily into her gag as Denise was pulled out by the slavers. The younger woman sobbed as a large man turned to her, a leering grin on his face. Samantha could only watch through the bars, in furious helplessness as her sister’s naked body was felt up by the man.

“These girls will do.” The buyer told the slavers. “I’m sure my customers will just love them!” He said, leering into the cages at the naked captives. “How much for the lot?” The two men haggled over price for quite a while. Samantha and Denise kept hoping they wouldn’t come to an agreement, that he would move on, even if all it meant was that someone else would eventually purchase them. To their disappointment, the two men shook hands.

“Move this lot to Mr. Jones’ yacht.” The slaver ordered several of his men. “It’s the one at the far end.” The cage door was opened and slavers forced the captives inside out with whips. The newly sold slaves sobbed as they shuffled forward, heads bowed. Guided by rough shoves and barked orders, they stumbled across the warehouse, through a large door.

On the other side was a run-down dock, partially covered by the warehouse roof, one large wall open to the dark bay. Half a dozen large ocean-going boats were docked along the wooden piers. At the far end, they could see another group of sobbing captives being herded up a gangplank onto one of the boats. The two sisters and the other girls were marched to a different boat. They hesitated, moaning through their gag. They knew, once they were onboard, heading out to sea, their fates would be sealed.

All of a sudden, the warehouse lit up with noise and light. A voice crackled over a loudspeaker. “This is the Police! Drop you weapons and surrender!” In an instant, there were dozens of men dressed in swat gear, rushing into the docks, pointing their weapons at the slavers. The stunned criminals threw down their whips and raised their hands.

Samantha and Denise looked at each other, in stunned joy. They could hear more police rushing into the warehouse where the rest of the slavers and their captives were. The howls of disappointment from the slavers were drowned out by the happy cries of the now women.

A policewoman walked over to the sister’s group. Pulling out a utility knife, she quickly went to each girl, cutting her bindings. Samantha reached up and eagerly unbuckled her gag. She groaned in relief as the large rubber plug popped out and she could close her sore jaws. Turning, she helped her sister take off her gag as well.

“hey, it’s you!” The policewoman said, spotting the two of them. “Hey Sarge! I found them!” She called out. An older man jogged over.

“Are you Samantha and Denise?” He asked. The girls nodded. “You two are very lucky.” The man told them. “Someone was watching your livestream and saw you get captured. He called us and we were able to trace the signal from your camera here. We’ve been trying to find out where this sale was going to be held for weeks and thanks you to, we nabbed the whole bunch!” He gave them a grin. “In light of all that, I think we’ll overlook the slight matter of your trespassing this one time…”

Overcome by relief that they weren’t about to be sold into slavery, the two sisters could only laugh at that…