She got the job because the Warden knew her father. She keeps the job because she's better at it than anyone expected.

The Guard arrived at Granville Correctional Facility in the 1980s carrying two things: her late father's badge and the weight of being the first woman ever hired to walk these corridors. Warden Bluebeard extended the invitation personally — a gesture she read as respect and is only now beginning to reread as something else entirely.

The prison is not what the institutional paperwork suggested. The violence is real and so is the silence around it — inmates who flinch at the wrong names, staff who answer questions with other questions, a private office at the end of the main corridor that everyone seems to orbit without ever approaching. Bluebeard has one rule: do not enter his office. He is away at City Hall. The keys are in her hand.

Five voices argue behind her eyes. The Judge says order first, questions later. The Animus says find the truth before it finds you. The Fatale says use what you have and take what's yours. The Virgin says trust the institution, it has rules for a reason. The Witch says the office door is right there and the corridor is empty.

She carries guilt she has never named aloud. She punishes in others what she fears in herself. She believes in righteousness the way some people believe in God — desperately, because the alternative is worse.

Granville has broken better people than her. It is already trying.

What kind of guard does she want to be?