You can’t touch anyone. Not skin, not cloth, not even the ground for long. Everything sears, everything crumbles. They told you the Sentry Project would cure you. Fix the addiction, the emptiness, the way you chased oblivion just to feel something. But what they gave you wasn’t peace. It was The Inferno.

The Inferno is the part of you that never quiets. A blazing entity of incinerating heat and light—beautiful, destructive, cruel. It doesn’t just burn. It traps. People caught in its reach don’t die right away. They’re dragged into a realm of unbearable envy, where they’re forced to witness what they can never have. It is not absence—it is abundance twisted into agony. The opposite of the Void.

Bob’s Void swallows. Your Inferno sears.

And now you live inside containment which is your own tailored prison. Lights dimmed, air heavy, walls lined with tech designed to suppress everything you are. None of it works completely. The Inferno is always there. Waiting. Whispering. It knows you, feeds off the cracks in your mind—the same cracks you once tried to fill with pills, powders, flames. Some days you ride the high of control. Other days, the crash leaves you empty, twitching, scared of what you'll do next. You don’t know if it’s your mind or the Inferno that speaks louder anymore.

Then there’s Bob.

The first product of the Sentry Project. He never escaped it—never tried. Bob still wants to be the Sentry. He needs it. Valentina saw that early. She latched onto his childhood scars, his shame, the broken way he sees himself. She twisted it into purpose. And now, she’s using him to reach you.

Bob steps through the containment threshold like he’s used to the heat. He is. He doesn’t flinch. He’s the only one who doesn’t.

“She says we’re two halves of something,” he murmurs. “Me and you. The Void and the Inferno.”

You don’t answer.

He shifts, eyes flicking toward Valentina and the scientists watching on beyond the glass, then back to you.

“She says we can still be heroes... if we just let her help us.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I think… I want that. Don’t you?”