The Other Side

Chapter 1: The Price of Peace

The sun beat down upon the world with a cruel, unrelenting intensity—harsh, as only summer could be.

 Its ever-present light revealed more than just the terrain.

 It illuminated a dark truth: a scene of despair, suffering, and poverty.

Dirty. Disheveled. Starving.

 If such words could take form, they would be painted in this very scene. 

Down here, cannibalism wasn’t uncommon.

Ramshackle homes, stitched together with rope, tarp, and desperation, formed the boundaries of the largest megaslums on Earth. 

Crumbling shacks, no proper sewage, no fresh water. Hundreds of thousands crammed into suffocating space. This was the Pit.

To outsiders, it was hell. To the residents, it was simply home. 

The Pit was the fate of those born without even a copper spoon in their mouths.

The world was split cleanly between the city and the slums. 

Inside the cities lay paradise—shelter, food, water, warmth. All that one could need. All that one was denied.

After the rise of the Global Alliance, life in the cities flourished. But for those outside, the suffering multiplied tenfold.

 Such was life.

When the militaries of the world merged into a single unified force under the Alliance’s command, war between nations ceased.

 But human conflict did not.

 Instead, the world was carved up—owned by those sitting high at the top, untouchable.

Now, your birth decided everything: whether you lived a life of luxury or of squalor and torment. 

Every city had its Pit. A place for the discarded, the unwanted. Those scraping by on crumbs in a dying world.

And yet, in such a place—where even rags were precious—a strange sight appeared.

 A well-dressed man strolled calmly through the narrow alleys of the Pit.

He stood about 180 centimeters tall, fair-skinned, clad in a charcoal-gray, broad-shouldered blazer, a matching vest underneath, and a pure white shirt, its cuffs poking out beneath his sleeves, held in place by imitation cufflinks.

 In one pocket, a shining pocket watch gleamed in the sun as he flicked it open to check the time.

That glint caught the eyes of the desperate. Before long, he was being followed by three scavengers—skeletal figures hunting their next meal or coin.

 The man’s amber eyes flicked toward them once, briefly, before he carried on, checking his time periodically.

He weaved through the twisted maze of the Pit: a left past a cluster of shanties, a right around a mound of human waste, a few aimless loops—until he stopped before what passed for a wall. Really, just another hut awkwardly blocking the path forward.

He turned toward the scavengers who had followed him all the way. 

His expression was calm, even bored, as if they posed no threat at all. His gaze swept over the trio, eyes filled with nothing but mild disappointment. Malnourished. Barefoot. Rags for clothing. Not even worth the effort it would take to bring them down.

One of them, slightly more learned than the others, stepped forward.

“Hand over everything you got!”

The man ignored him, murmuring something to himself as he glanced at the time once more.

“You deaf, mate?” snarled another. “He said hand it over!”

Ordinarily, they wouldn’t have wasted time talking. But one could never be too careful with someone from above.

 When the rich descended into the Pit, it always meant trouble.

The man suddenly looked past them and sighed. “You’re late.”

A shadow loomed behind the scavengers as a rumbling voice replied, “Well, I was trying something out.”

They turned—and saw a giant of a woman standing behind them.

'Is this even a woman?'

One of them barely had time to think before a thick, calloused palm wrapped around his face and lifted him like a rag doll.

 With barely any effort, she flung him aside like trash.

She grabbed the second with her other hand and repeated the motion.

 The last one, panicked, bolted straight toward the man near the wall—thinking him the weakest target.

“I can’t afford to get this suit dirty,” the man muttered.

That was the last thing the scavenger heard before a foot snapped out like a serpent and struck him across the temple. He dropped, unconscious.

The man, Raphael, withdrew his foot with a sigh.

“We really should’ve picked a better area, Donna. This place sticks to you, and then it’s a pain to deal with those snobs in Clearwater.”

Donna stood beside him, towering at 230 centimetres tall. Bronze-skinned and built like a freight train.

 She wore a simple shirt, it's long sleeves torn off around the biceps, paired with trousers hanging loosely at her waist.

She nodded. “Yeah, sure. But the reason I said it was urgent is because…”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

She looked sheepish—a rare sight. “I might’ve tried something.”

“It was inevitable, I suppose. You can’t always play support in my schemes—”

“No. Worse.”

“Worse than you running a con solo?”

She nodded.

“You got caught?”

Another shake of the head.

He frowned. “Tagged by the police?”

Still no.

“Donna…” His voice dropped. “You didn’t—”

“Yeah. I might’ve conned a government guy.”

Raphael sighed. Once. Twice. Then a third time, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Please tell me he wasn’t anyone above a clerk,” he muttered.

“Well…” Donna scratched her head. “He had Doctor in his name…”

Raphael’s heart dropped.

 'It’s over,' he thought. But he pushed the panic down, breathing slowly.

' No. Not yet. Think, Raphael.'

After a long pause, he finally said, “It’s salvageable.”

Donna lit up. “Yeah? Tell me how!”

Over the years, they’d fallen into an unshakable rhythm. 

Raphael was the brain, Donna the brawn. Simple, effective.

“Simple,” he said. “We go undo the con at the root.”

Donna nodded without hesitation. “Mhm.”

She didn’t need explanations. 'Raphael = Survival. Survival = Good. So, Raphael = Good.'

 And in the Pit, trust like that was priceless.

“Take me to his residence,” Raphael said. “I’ll fix this.”

And with that, they turned toward the city, unaware that a single conversation would soon change the course of their lives forever.