For several minutes after the announcement, the public communication channels became chaotic.
The slavery revelation struck first.
Many people had believed those practices disappeared years ago.
Learning that entire populations had simply been moved beyond ordinary scrutiny created anger that spread much faster than Lootwell expected.
Then the names of rescued people began appearing.
Families recognized some of them.
That changed everything.
A woman in the Western Continent discovered that her older brother, missing for more than twenty years, was alive on a mining world in the void.
An elderly couple received confirmation that the daughter they had assumed dead had survived and now had children of her own.
Several communities learned that groups who had vanished from remote settlements years earlier had never been killed at all.
They had been transported.
The first reunions happened through communication devices before physical travel could even be arranged.
