Page 167 of Strays
They found a lot in that warehouse: computers, hard drives, dozens of file boxes packed with records, not even encrypted.
Aranya really didn’t think anyone would ever touch him. He kept everything — client logs, financial spreadsheets, handwritten notes. There were lists of buyers, properties, schedules, routes. Addresses for every woman they moved and locations owned by the network: hotels, motels, so-called private wellness centers, basement parlors.
The FBI pulled in a full team, over a hundred people including analysts, field agents and forensics. They knew they didn’t have time. If word got out about Aranya, the rest of the net would burn evidence and shut down every site before they could get there.
So they ran everything that night. Worked in shifts. Logged every hard drive. Took pictures of every file and cross-checked the names and addresses. And before the sun came up, they launched a national raid.
They didn’t find the people at the top because the one thing Aranya didn’t register was the names of the big shots we know he had above him. But they found the women. Three hundred and forty-seven, all locked up. Some drugged, some so far gone they didn’t even react when agents walked in. But they were alive.
There was a separate section in the report on Aranya himself. According to the files, he’d been doing this for more than twenty years, not just with one group. He moved between networks, picked up contracts, selling women like they were inventory.
And the medical process he came up with was exactly what Jo figured out. Everything she told us before about temperature regulation, sedation, hydration levels, it’s all there. Word for word.
We hit national television on the third day. It was massive. Suddenly, we were everywhere, and we went from violent aegis on trial to romanticized heroes in no time.
The headlines said things like “Aegis pack rescues kidnapped nyra and uncovers national trafficking network.” “Three aegis, one nyra and a mission that saved 347 women.”
They weren’t framing what we did as reckless; they were calling it devotion.
“They would’ve torn the world apart to get her back.” That’s how they put it.Over and over, on every network.
Talk shows ran with it like it was a fairytale. Some networks even mentioned the incident in the backyard with Luc. Days ago, they called us dangerous, said the human we hit was the real victim. Now they were saying that Luc had sexually harassed Jo, and we risked everything to protect her.
The press floods our home, our phones, way more than before the trial. They’re waiting outside the house, camped in cars across the street, shoving cameras in our faces any time we step out.
On top of the stress with the press, Jo’s mother calls her. We’re sitting at the table, having breakfast, when Jo picks up her ringing phone and just stares at it for a whole minute before looking at us and whispering, “It’s my mom.”
If it were up to me, she wouldn’t answer. After everything she’s just been through, she doesn’t deserve another call to break her heart like her parents did last time. But I can’t tell her not to talk to her own mother, so I keep my mouth shut. My brothers are just as silent and tense.
This time, she doesn’t go upstairs to take the call. She just answers it right there in the kitchen, her hand gripping Shane’s on the table.
Even though she’s pressing the phone hard to her ear, I can hear every word perfectly. The first thing that hits me is how much her mother’s voice sounds like hers.
“Jo, oh my god! Are you okay?”
Jo’s shoulders ease a little. “I’m okay, Mom. I’m home now.”
“I’m so sorry, Jo, I’m so sorry. I wanted to talk to you all this time, but your father forbade me — you know him, he’s so stubborn… but I couldn’t stand it when I heard your name on TV, I needed to hear your voice.”
For a man who told Jo all her life that aegis were possessive and controlling, it’s a hell of a thing to forbid his wife from making a phone call.
Jo goes stiff, but she just says, “Thank you for calling me, Mom. I’m glad you did.” There’s a pause, then: “Dad, he…?”
Jo’s mother’s voice goes thinner. “He’s worried about you. When we heard what happened to you, he just said that ‘the wages of sin is death,’ but I know that deep down, he’s worried. He’s just hurt.”
I feel the pain slice through Jo’s face, and she squeezes Shane’s hand tighter. “Okay. I understand.”
When she hangs up, all I feel is pride swelling in my chest. She’s hurt, but she doesn’t waste a single tear on her shitty father.
“I used to idolize him,” she says. “I thought he was the best father in the world and that I had to work hard to repay him for his love, for everything he did for me. But now I can see he’s just an ignorant man, blinded by his religion. How can I admire a man cruel enough to condition his love for his daughter on her living exactly the way he wants?”
In the afternoon, we get another call and find out the truth about how we ended up on television: it was the MAB that leaked everything to the press.
“Sorry, Kory,” Commander Eneas says. “It was the only move we had left.”
He sounds tired. “We tried everything behind closed doors, but with political pressure mounting, Renner advised that the only way to lock this down was to get public opinion on your side. And he was right; the story changed everything.”
Then came the part that mattered. “Effective this morning, the MAB signed off on full operational immunity. Everything that happened at Aranya’s house and at the warehouse has been reclassified as an emergency response under a new Nyra Protection Protocol we pushed through. You’re officially off the hook.”
