Prologue
2015
Half the city turned out that day to watch the Mayor close the bridge officially. People from both sides stood at the foot of giant steel gates that minutes later would shut signalling an end to free movement in the city. On his platform in the centre of the bridge the Mayor was finishing his speech about how the city would run more efficiently and that the gates would benefit everyone. A lot of people believed him, especially if you lived on the east side. There was a lot of happy faces that day and the TV cameras filled their lenses with these grinning idiots all afternoon whilst completely ignoring the looks of concern that were equally on show.
At the end of his speech the Mayor strode back to the East side along with his cronies. Only one man stopped to look back at the crowds of people that were one by one disappearing from view as the barriers closed. Councilman Drake was the only person to watch the gates slam shut and as the last faces he would ever see from the East vanished he mouthed the words I’m sorry. He was unaware that his now ex wife and unborn child were watching him leave forever from what used to be their home. With a tear in her eye she touched his figure on the glass wanting just once more to touch his cheek but he was gone and there was nothing that could bring him back now.
Even before the gates we being built plans were being formed about what would come next. The politicians were content to play the long game, year by year decreasing the budget for the west side until it became nothing more than a source of cheap labour. Others had a much quicker scheme that would allow them to seize control of the city through brute force and fear.
How had it come to this? Money as ever plays its part. Even then there was a divide in the city, not a wall built between two sections but a gap in wealth and as this gap grew steadily bigger so too did the crime rate. At first almost all of the crime stayed in the west side of town, not surprising as that was where the poorest people tended to live because house prices on the east side were irresponsibly high forcing anyone who didn’t earn fifty thousand a year to live on the West side. Crime on the West side was fine, to be expected from people that couldn’t get real jobs or put drugs before their families. It was only when the muggings and beatings began taking place on the East side that anybody with the power to do anything took notice. The final straw came when the sixteen year old daughter of a councilman was mugged beaten and raped. People from both sides of the city came together, all united in their horror at this appalling crime and eventually the vicious criminal was brought to justice when one of the many honest citizens of the West side gave evidence, only that is not how the story was reported. The men of influence made it clear that the people of the West side were responsible for all the crime in the city and had to be stopped. In a perpetual state of shock and fear the doctors and teachers swallowed all they were told and begged for an answer. It came in the form of the young and ambitious Councilman Drake with a revolutionary new idea. The rest, as they say, is history.
