(Promotional Fic) Sentry and Void Chapter 1.

All chapters free on Patreon.com/Herd99.

Chapter 1: The Beginning.

-0-

The fight hadn’t lasted long.

Bob was taller now, and stronger than he remembered being. His father had tried to stand his ground—tried to roar, swing, threaten like always. But something was different this time. Not in the man. In Bob.

His hands had moved first. His mouth hadn’t said a word. There was no warning. No build-up. Just one sharp motion, and the first punch landed harder than it should have. It didn’t stop there.

Now, his father lay on the floor, blood pooling under the side of his face, one hand twitching weakly near his chest. He was still breathing, just barely. Bob didn’t care.

The room was quiet. Not peacefully quiet—dead quiet. The kind of silence that pressed against your ears and felt too heavy for a space so small.

The couch groaned quietly in the corner. His mother sat there—or had been sitting. Her body leaned against the armrest now, neck bent at an unnatural angle. Her eyes stared past him. There was a dried smear of blood across her temple.

She wasn’t moving.

Bob stood barefoot in the middle of the wreckage, his chest rising and falling too fast. His hands hung loosely at his sides, though they trembled slightly. The skin across his knuckles was torn and beginning to swell, but he barely felt it.

The TV buzzed from the corner, flickering between static and a low-volume soap opera rerun no one had been watching. It must have been on the whole time. Maybe the neighbors hadn’t heard anything. Maybe no one had tried to stop it.

Curtains drifted inward from the broken window. Wind stirred the thin fabric like it belonged in another scene, someone else’s life.

Bob looked down at his father, who was trying to speak—some wet, wheezing sound from the back of his throat—but the words never came.

He could’ve knelt beside him. Could’ve helped. But instead, he stepped back and sat on the edge of the coffee table, which cracked beneath him but held.

He stared at his hands. They were still shaking.

He wasn’t angry anymore.

He wasn’t anything.

He had felt rage when it started—raw, white-hot, heavy in his bones. But now there was just silence. Not just around him. Inside him.

Like something inside had gone dark.

Not off. Just... silent.

He looked at his mother again. Her body hadn’t shifted. Her hand still dangled off the edge of the couch like it was waiting for something.

Bob didn’t cry. There were no tears to find. No thoughts sharp enough to cut through the numbness settling over everything.

He closed his eyes and waited.

No voice. No guilt. No grief.

Only stillness.

This, he would remember. Not as a breaking point, but as the moment something else opened its eyes inside him.

Later, when he would try to explain it—to himself, to others—he wouldn’t call it grief or trauma or even madness.

He would call it what it was:

The beginning of the Void.

-0-

They called it Evergreen Youth Correctional Facility, like putting “evergreen” on the sign would make the place less gray.

Nothing grew there. Not outside, not inside. Not in the walls, and definitely not in the kids they locked behind them.

Everything was dull: the food, the uniforms, the paint that peeled off the hallway corners. Even the sky that hovered above the recreation yard looked like it had given up on sunlight.

Bob was processed, fingerprinted, assigned a room. No trial yet. No counselor. Just forms. Sign here. Step forward. Turn your head. He followed orders like an unplugged machine.

They gave him a bed. It creaked when he sat on it. The springs were too stiff, the mattress too thin. A folded set of clothes and a toothbrush waited on top of it, like a hotel for people no one wanted to visit.

The first night, he lay on his side with the blanket pulled tight over his shoulder. He didn’t sleep. Not really. Just watched the ceiling while the shadows shifted across it, minute by minute.

His cellmate snored through most of it. Bob didn’t ask his name. Didn’t care to.

The other kids kept their distance that week. Some stared. Most didn’t. A few whispered. There were always whispers in places like this. Everyone wanted to know what you did. Why you were here. How far you’d gone.

Bob didn’t answer questions.

He didn’t talk, unless a guard demanded it. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t shout when the toilet backed up or when someone else’s screaming kept him awake.

He just watched. Sat through meals. Took his trays back. Went where he was told.

Not silent like he was afraid—silent like he didn’t see the point anymore.

On Thursday night, during dinner, a lanky kid slid into the seat across from him and offered a joint wrapped in crinkled notebook paper.

“Your face says you need it more than I do,” the boy said, voice low and hoarse from too much smoke or too many beatdowns. “Name’s Manny. What’s yours?”

Bob didn’t answer. He took the joint.

They passed it back and forth until their food went cold.

The high dulled things. The ache in his jaw. The weight behind his ribs. The light above the table felt warmer. Softer. The noise in the room drifted further away, like someone had put glass between him and the rest of the world.

It didn’t make him feel better. But it did make him feel less.

And that was something.

Manny took a last drag, then tucked what was left under the table. “They say you put your old man in the ground with your bare hands,” he muttered. “That true?”

Bob said nothing. He didn’t even blink.

Manny smiled like he didn’t expect an answer. “Yeah. Thought so.”

That night, Bob slept. Not well. But better than before.

Two days later, another kid introduced himself—Craig. Broad shoulders, skin like polished stone, and a nose that had clearly been broken more than once. He had a nervous energy, like a coiled spring waiting to snap. Bob liked him more than most.

Craig shared his rules like gospel: Don’t owe anyone. Don’t rat. Don’t trust guards. And don’t feel anything you don’t have to.

“Caring’s how they get you,” he said. “You care, you crack. You crack, they crush you.”

Bob nodded. That made sense.

So that became the routine: wake up, stay out of trouble, get high if you could, keep your head down. Days started blending. Conversations faded into background noise. Faces became interchangeable.

The names didn’t matter. The crimes didn’t matter. Only the hours. The next meal. The next way to disappear into the haze.

He wasn’t numb because he was tough.

He was numb because it was the only thing that worked.

And somewhere, in the quiet between rec shifts and lockdown, a question began to form in the back of his mind.

Not who am I?

That one was useless now.

No—what he began to wonder was much worse:

If I feel nothing…

...how much damage could I really do?

-0-

The cold started in his hands.

It always began there—fingers first, then wrists, slowly creeping up his arms like frost on glass. Even when the room was warm, even when the heater buzzed through the vents, he felt it.

Cold didn’t mean temperature anymore. Cold meant that thing inside him was waking up.

The Void wasn’t loud. Not yet. It came in whispers. Empty moments. The space between thoughts. It felt like walking into a dark room you forgot was part of your house.

Bob learned to wrap his blanket tighter on those days. Not because it helped—but because it looked like he was still just cold. No one asked questions about that.

A week passed. Maybe more. Dates stopped meaning anything once you realized no one was counting them for you.

Bob sat at his usual spot in the cafeteria, elbows on the table, staring down at a plastic tray. The mashed potatoes had the texture of glue. The chicken patty had a vein running through it. Nothing on the tray looked like food. Nothing smelled like it either.

Across from him, Craig was talking about his sister again. He always circled back to her. Said she was probably sixteen by now. Said she liked books. Said she was the only one who visited him—once, two years ago.

“She brought me this tiny sketch she made of our old dog,” Craig said, scratching the back of his neck. “I can’t even remember what he looked like. But that drawing? I got it folded under my mattress. I unfold it sometimes. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid.”

Bob didn’t say anything.

Craig looked down. “You got anyone?”

It was an honest question, not a loaded one. Craig didn’t deal in pity. He asked things because sometimes it helped to know if someone else was floating too.

Bob picked up his spoon, turned it over in his hand. It caught the light.

“No,” he said.

Craig nodded. “Yeah. That tracks.”

The conversation dropped off. Manny showed up late, slid into the seat next to them, and started eating like he was trying to fight the food into submission.

No one said it, but they all felt it.

Some days were colder than others.

That night, Bob lay awake in his bunk, eyes open to the ceiling above. A small crack ran through the paint over his bed. He’d started tracing it with his eyes until it became a ritual. Left edge, up, curve, sharp break, right.

He liked it because it didn’t change. It was the only thing in this place that didn’t shift or dissolve.

The Void stirred again, low in his chest. Not sharp. Just present. Like a cold draft under a locked door.

His mind wandered to his mother—not her death, not the couch, not the blood. Just her voice. One time, she had hummed while folding laundry. The tune had been off-key and forgettable. But it had been real.

He tried to remember it. Just the sound of it.

But the note wouldn’t come. Only silence.

The blanket didn’t help this time.

-0-

The next day, the cold didn’t leave.

Bob kept rubbing his hands together. He wasn’t sure why. He just couldn’t get them to feel like his.

He stared at his reflection in the fogged metal panel above the sink. His face looked longer. Not older. Just stretched, like something behind his eyes was pressing too hard from the inside.

He was so tired.

He didn’t know of what.

The morning rolled forward. Headcount. Breakfast. Cleanup. Rec hour. All of it blurred into one gray mass until nothing stood out.

Until Frank walked in.

Frank wasn’t the worst guard. That was saying very little.

He wasn’t the kind that laughed when a kid cried. He didn’t steal food off trays or smash fingers in doors. But he liked control. Liked being the gravity in a room. Liked that kids flinched when he barked.

Bob didn’t flinch anymore. He didn’t move much at all.

That day, Frank looked worse than usual. His face was tight, jaw tense, eyes scanning the room like it had personally insulted him. Something had happened. Maybe a fight. Maybe paperwork. Maybe nothing.

Didn’t matter.

He saw Manny leaning against the ping pong table, grinning like he always did.

Frank didn’t like that.

“What’s so funny?” he snapped.

Manny shrugged. “Nothing, man. Just having a good time. Sorry I forgot to be miserable.”

Frank stepped in fast. Quicker than anyone expected.

The baton was already in his hand.

First hit landed across Manny’s shoulder. The sound echoed through the room like a gunshot in a tomb.

Second hit came lower. Ribs. Manny dropped.

Craig stood before thinking.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Frank turned.

Craig didn’t get a second word out before a fist cracked across his mouth. He went down hard, lip split.

And Bob just stood there.

Hands clenched. Shoulders tense. Eyes wide.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

The Void pulsed once—low and cold.

And something cracked.