"Can you please stay still, son of a bitch?"

In a shabby barn, a therizinosaurus, a huge herbivore with claws about half a meter long, was bound by heavy chains while three humans were trying to cut its thick feathers with rather rudimentary tools.

"Rodney, Dodge, hurry up. Miss Santos wants that animal's feathers ready for shipment within an hour" grumbled another man sitting nearby with a large rifle in his hand. "If you make me look bad, I swear I'll make you pay, or my name is no longer John Landon!"

"Easy to say, dad! This stubborn one doesn't want to cooperate!" shouted Dodge, who was trying in vain to cut at least one of the dinosaur's feathers. "Whenever I touch him, this bastard dodges! Tell me, who is the one that have that unhealthy idea of burn its eyes? Now it reacts to my every touch and plucking it is practically impossible!"

The therizinosaurus' head turned ninety degrees, showing glassy, lightless eyes. The dinosaur was blind. Around its eyeballs there were scars and abrasion marks, a sign that something very acid had been poured on them.

"Rainn did it" Rodney told him. "And at the time it actually seemed like a good idea. This asshole has always been restless, he thought that by removing its sight it would calm down..."

"Calm down my ass! It became even more hyperactive! Do you want to stay still!?"

The therizinosaur let out a loud cry in response and fidgeted even more. The chains rattled dangerously.

"Ok, that's enough!" Dodge exclaimed at one point, grabbing the skin of his thigh and pulling it towards him. "I don't care if you don't calm down. If I'll make a mistake and cut your skin, be angry with yourself!"

"TAKE OFF THOSE LURID HANDS OF ME, LURID HUMAN BASTARD!"

There was a moment of silence in the barn, then delirium; the chains broke as if they were made of plaster and the claws of the therizinosaur instantly impaled the two who were plucking him.

"Fuck!" John exclaimed. He started to aim the rifle at the beast, but something stabbed him from behind.

********

Soyona Santos was what could have been called a broker on Earth. This woman with long blond hair, the penetrating gaze and the perfect face as if made of porcelain had a good chunk of the world's black market in her hands.

Wherever there was civilization, there would always be things that couldn't be purchased by traditional methods: it was an inherent law of every human civilization. And in every civilization there would in turn be unscrupulous people ready to take advantage of the opportunity to make money where all the others could not.

Soyona Santos was one of those people. She always dressed in white, always with an impassive expression on her face, she was always calm, but underneath that disguise there was a soul as black and dirty as the most muddy swamp.

However, no one could get their hands dirty alone. Like any company, the black market was also a system that had to please a large number of people. One person couldn't do everything. Soyona had many people under her scattered all over the world who did business for her. It was the only way to satisfy all requests and prevent the competition from overtaking them. And it was also a sort of insurance for the future: it would have been much more difficult to trace her crimes if they were committed by others, who often did not even know the broker's identity.

To manage all those people, each black market was structured like a corporation: at the top was Soyona, followed by some of his trusted assistants who controlled the various branches of the criminal organization, who in turn had other people who controlled other people, and so on. This allowed them to do business better, but it also caused an unpleasant effect: those people who were close to Soyona in fact gained power and, consequently, began to acquire more and more independence over time. Thus, from the orders, we passed to pure collaboration. That is why in important cases Soyona and all of her 'businessmen' gathered together in a secret location. Cases like that one.

"With all due respect, Mrs. Santos, I don't think it's a good idea to go on with the dinosaur trade!" exclaimed one of the businessmen, a stout middle-aged man with a strange goatee. "Dinosaurs have already revolted in two of our markets. Many of my men are already in the grave! It won't be long before the dinosaurs rebel elsewhere too"

"You're such a crap, Hoskins" laughed another, a young man with rather thick dark hair. "If the dinosaurs rebel then you should just invest in stronger chains and cages, right?"

Vic Hoskins was a man of sound principles, and among them was the one he did not like to be contradicted. "Always licking ass, huh, Delacourt?" he growled him. "Mrs. Santos, tell your little dog to not talk when he doesn't know anything about the subject!"

Rainn Delacourt was one of the members of the organization closest to Soyona, a social climber who never missed an opportunity to praise his superiors. However, that didn't mean he couldn't pull his teeth out when he wanted. "Wouldn't I know anything on the subject? Who tells you?"

"The simple fact that if you knew something you wouldn't talk like that!" Hoskins exclaimed. "I've been involved with illegal dinosaur fighting for years. I have personally trained many of the fighters, and believe me when I tell you that I have taken all possible safety measures. But nothing was able to stop them when they rebelled! We can also get thicker chains if you like, but it won't change anything!"

"Maybe we could get a more capable administrator, instead..."

"Are you calling me incompetent?"

"Yes, maybe!"

"Stop shouting!" Soyona yelled causing silence to settle in the room again. "Mr. Hoskins, I understand your concerns, but we can't stop now. Right now, any product derived from dinosaurs is worth more than gold. Skin, feathers, horns, thorns, teeth, meat, eggs... any part of their body, even the most ephemeral, now have such a high cost as to exceed what you would get by selling all your organs"

On this point no one could blame her. Ever since the peace treaty went into effect and dinosaur farms closed, any dinosaur-derived product had seen its price skyrocket. While previously buying a shawl made from the feathers of any theropod would have cost not even a few cents, now that same merchandise sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

It was the law of the market: as long as the product was easily accessible to everyone, then its price remained low; but if suddenly the product became rare, then its cost would rise to stratospheric levels. And at the time the dinosaurs, on which much of the textile, pharmaceutical and medical industries were based in addition to the food industry, had become an absolute rarity since their exploitation was forbidden.

"We have too many pending claims and too much profit to lose to stop now" Soyona said. "However, I agree with Mr. Hoskins about the dangers of dinosaurs. We will therefore cancel any dinosaur fighting for now and curb the sales of dinosaurs for sport hunting and domestication. As for all dinosaurs that are raised for other reasons, we will take drastic measures. For safety we will deprive them of their natural weapons: we will tear their teeth, we will cut off their fingers and claws, we will remove their horns, and so on"

"We might as well deprive them of their sense organs" Rainn suggested. He knew it would work: he had already done the experiment some time ago with a therizinosaurus.

"Not a bad idea" Soyona said. "Obviously, we will make sure that the deprivation of these parts of the body doesn't affect the quality of the product. Here's how we will act..."

*********

"You should have waited for the signal"

"Sorry, I couldn't stop myself anymore"

Snock stared intently at the blind therizinosaurus in front of him, who still had two people stuck in his claws. The atrociraptors in the service of the giganotosaurus jumped on the giant dinosaur's hands and helped him get rid of the corpses.

Snock and his team had found the place about two days ago. Well, actually it was Rambo and his intelligence that did it; Snock and his aides had simply gone to the place indicated. The place was located on the outskirts of a town called Taimon. So far it was the worst farm they had ever found: from the outside it looked like a common farm, but inside it was consumed unspeakable horrors.

The dinosaurs were kept in pitiful condition. Many of the females, especially sauropods, were forced to continually lay eggs, and were sometimes forced to mate to encourage production. Ceratopsids and stegosaurids were continually subjected to injections of strange substances to stimulate the growth of horns and plates; normally in nature these animals would have rubbed themselves on the trees to keep these structures at an acceptable weight, but there they were not allowed to do so and so they found themselves having enormous horns and plates that brought them profound discomfort. Theropods, such as therizinosaurus, were constantly plucked, often without clean and sterilized tools, resulting in them developing skin infections that caused severe pain. The cubs were separated from their mothers and grew up almost never seeing the sun.

And these were just some of the abuses that those poor animals suffered in that bad place.

Snock and his team were immediately set in motion. They had contacted all the captive dinosaurs and had meticulously studied a mass escape.

"Well, now this is not important, what's done is done. It will mean that we will speed up operations" Snock said. "I beg you, maximum alert. There are at least sixty humans around here and they are all armed and dangerous"

The other dinosaurs in the barn nodded. They all agree with him: all of them were aware of how much dangerous humans were, no one of them dared to underestimate them.

"The plan doesn't change. We'll get rid of the ceratopsids and stegosaurids first, then everyone else" Snock said. "Therefore, we first head to the building where they are locked up. Activate [Ambush], and remember: don't attack humans unless you are sure you cannot alerting everyone else. Kills must be quick and silent"

The dinosaurs in the barn activated [Ambush] and disappeared from the sight of any living thing. In the two days preceding they had studied the route to reach the building where the ceratopsids were confined. Snock had also wrapped his tail around the therizinosaurus' leg so he wouldn't lose his way despite his blindness.

A long night was about to begin.