Page 5 of Broken Empire
“What the hell is this place?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “It looks like a child’s bedroom.”
Robert ignored my question and pointed to the open door of the walk-in closet. “You’re expected to look nice for the cameras while you’re awake,” he said. “You’ll find everything you need in there.”
I took a tentative step forward and peered into the closet. It was filled with colorful dresses and shoes with bows, ruffles, and gingham patterns. There was a small white vanity at the back, too, covered in bottles of makeup and hair products.
I turned back to Robert. “What cameras are you talking about?” I asked in a low voice, wondering if they were already on.
“There are ten of them altogether,” he replied, pointing to a series of black devices mounted on the walls and furniture. “If you want privacy, there are no cameras in the bathroom, but you’re only allowed in there for an hour a day. Any more than that and a handler will be sent in to deal with you.”
A shudder ran through my upper body, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “Please tell me what’s happening, Robert,” I said, sinking down onto the end of the bed. “What is this place, and why are you keeping me here? And why will I never meet that Russian man? He paid so much money for me. It… it doesn’t make sense.”
Robert’s forehead creased. “Have you ever heard of a red room?”
“You mean the Fifty Shades of Grey thing?” I said, brows shooting up.
He smirked. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “How about this—have you ever heard of the dark web?”
I nodded. I’d never visited the dark web before, but I’d heard plenty of stories about it. Everyone had. It was the shadowy Wild West of the internet, where you could buy drugs, stolen credit card details, guns, and exotic pets. I’d even heard that you could hire assassins on there if you knew the right site to visit.
“Red rooms are very popular on there, but they’re hard to set up and maintain without getting caught unless you have a certain level of money and power,” Robert said. He pulled out his phone, typed something into it, and handed it to me. “Here. Read this. It explains it better than I can. Don’t bother trying to call or text anyone, either. I’m watching you.”
I gulped and lowered my eyes to the article on the screen.
Deep Web Legends – The Red Rooms
There are many legends about the deep web—or dark web, as it is often referred to—but none are so heinous as the legend of the Red Rooms. The name alone is enough to inspire fear in those who’ve heard whispers of their existence, and many movie plots have been inspired by the stories. Do these nightmarish spaces really exist in the underbelly of the internet, though, or are they just an urban legend? I intend to find out.
Firstly—what is the deep web?
The term refers to non-indexed webpages that are invisible to traditional search engines. Because of this, access to deep-web sites is a manual process. If you don’t know the address for the site you want to view, you won’t be able to find it. The main purpose of this is to provide a way for people to browse and host websites without being tracked or monitored. This in turn provides a haven for illicit activity—the dark web.
There have always been rumors of dark web spaces where you can hire hitmen, purchase slaves, watch real-time gladiator-style fights, or view live feeds of medical experimentation. However, rumors of red rooms are the most persistent of all the stories.
So what exactly are these red rooms?
The term refers to sites on the dark web where people can watch or participate in torture. Videos of victims are live-streamed on these sites, and viewers can interact by asking the captor to torture the victim by any means they want.
Here’s how they (supposedly) work:
Intended viewers send their details to website owners. The owners then send them the site address, which requires payment for access via an untraceable service (usually cryptocurrency). Once a user has paid, they gain access to that particular red room. They can choose to simply watch the proceedings, or they can choose to pay even more money to participate by asking for certain forms of torture. The worse the torture, the higher the cost.
A particularly bone-chilling offshoot of the red room concept is something known as a ‘black room’. These are spaces where people can watch others being murdered on camera, and they command the highest prices of all. No one has ever been able to produce any solid evidence that black rooms actually exist, though.
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I tapped on the screen to read the next page, but Robert snatched the phone out of my hand. “That’s enough.”
Bile rose in my throat as everything I’d just read finally sank into my tired, muddled brain. “This is part of a red room, isn’t it?” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “That’s what all the cameras are for?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s what the Schöneberg Group really does. You make money off these red rooms.”
“It’s part of it, yes, but our biggest moneymaker is black rooms.”
My stomach lurched. “So… they’re real?”
“Of course they are,” Robert replied in a breezy tone, as if we were discussing something completely innocuous. “Our buyers have all sorts of tastes, though. Some purchase people for red rooms and later put them into black rooms, while some only want black rooms from the second the transaction is complete. But in the end, they all get what they want—a video of their purchased subject being murdered in whatever manner they choose. Otherwise known as a snuff film.”
