"Hurry up! Don't make me hit you again!" one of the slavers shouted out, his voice echoing through the dimly lit lower district of the Hive city. The air was thick with the stench of sweat and despair, the narrow streets crowded with the downtrodden and the desperate.
"You damn slave! Can't you carry it correctly!? Uh!?" another slaver shouted while lashing out with a whip at a young boy who had stumbled under the weight of the cargo he was forced to carry.
The boy cried out in pain, but the slavers showed no mercy; their laughter was cruel and unrelenting.
The Hive city was a towering megastructure, hundreds of thousands of kilometers wide and stretching high into the sky.
It was a common sight across the galaxy; it was a self-contained ecosystem where the wealthy lived in the upper districts, bathed in the light of the stars, while the lower districts were shrouded in perpetual darkness.
