Inside a bustling cafe, Jace and Natalie sat across from each other.
Jace held a cup of coffee, the warmth radiating through the porcelain, while Natalie had a cup of black coffee in hers.
Jace was occasionally shifting his gaze between Natalie and the information papers Homer had provided—which were kept open on the table between them.
Jace still didn't know what to make of the whole thing because, quite frankly, it didn't feel right.
The target was Edward Lane, a good-looking man of thirty-eight years.
He was a former doctor who had quit his practice two years ago, and he currently lived in the North Borough in a somewhat isolated bungalow.
According to the individual who had set the bounty, Edward was a psychopath and a cannibal who had already claimed the lives of tens of people.
He was also a Sequence 7 Psychiatrist.
But the fundamental problem remained: how the hell did a mid-level Beyonder of the Spectator pathway get caught? It defied logic.
He looked up at Natalie and said, "This doesn't feel right. A Spectator of the Sequence 7 pathway would never get caught like this. They are masters of the mind; they see everything coming."
Natalie set her coffee cup down with a soft 'clink' and asked, "So why did he?" She watched Jace, waiting for his analysis.
Jace thought for a moment, tracing the edge of the paper with his finger. "Well... there are a few possibilities. The first being that he caught the eye of someone who is of a higher sequence than him, perhaps someone within his own organization or a rival.
The second would be that he deliberately let loose, and this is just a trap—a lure. Or the third, someone close to him sold him out."
Natalie listened quietly and then said, "Why don't you perform a divination and find out more?" she suggested, her tone flat and professional.
Jace narrowed his eyes and looked around the coffee shop. It was filled with patrons, the morning air thick with the smell of roasted beans and the murmur of casual conversation.
He looked at Natalie and asked, "Here?"
Natalie simply shrugged, unbothered by the crowd.
Jace sighed, resigning himself to the public display.
He took the papers and brought them closer to him. He put his elbow on the table and rested his head on his hand, shielding his eyes to be more discreet about the process.
Jace figured he would be able to perform a dream divination with the given information.
Since the target was of the Spectator pathway, he likely would not have any significant anti-divination capabilities, unless he had a sealed artifact specifically for that purpose.
Muttering the incantation in an ancient language seven times, Jace entered the state of cogitation and slipped into a half-sleep mode, his consciousness drifting into the ethereal.
.
.
.
The vision hit him like a cold gust of wind.
The first scene materialized into a middle-aged man with sharp, handsome features. He stood in a kitchen, wearing a simple apron tied firmly to his waist.
He was carving meat with terrifying precision and practiced ease—the wet, rhythmic 'thwack' of the blade hitting the wooden board echoed unnaturally loud in Jace's ears.
The scene shifted to the man searing the meat in a pan; the hiss of fat hitting the heat was visceral.
He took the first bite, his expression one of calm, culinary appreciation. In the periphery, sitting on a high stool in the background, was a black cat, watching the entire process with unchanging, green eyes.
The scene faded and reformed. Now, the man was brewing a potion, his movements clinical and precise.
Then, the image transitioned to where the man stood before another, a homeless man who looked starved and desperate. The poor man was drinking a potion the target had just brewed. The black cat was there again, perched atop a stack of rotting crates, observing with an inscrutable, stone-cold face.
The scene shifted once more, descending into a dark, lightless room. The man was strangling the homeless victim, a wide, delirious smile of genuine joy stretched across his face.
In the deep shadows, a pair of glowing green eyes were hidden, watching the brutality unfold.
Later, the homeless man was hung upside down like a pig in a butcher house, swaying slightly in the dark. The target approached him with a scraper, methodically removing the meat from the bone, his movements meticulous and rhythmic, like a surgeon performing a task he dearly loved...
.
.
.
Jace jolted awake, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
He sat upright, his chest heaving, and looked around, his pulse racing.
"Oh, boy," he whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
He winced and rubbed his eyes, hoping to erase the gore he had just witnessed, but the images were seared into his mind.
The scenes he had seen seemed simple on the surface, but they were far from it. Every light, every color, and every object held hidden signs and meanings; as a Seer, he had to decode them.
So, he fell into deep contemplation, parsing through the fragments of the dream.
A minute or two later, he looked up at Natalie, who had finished her coffee and was waiting for him to finish his process.
"Well, for starters, we can confirm that the guy is indeed a psychopath and a cannibal," Jace said, his voice carrying a kind of dark, amused expression.
"And?" Natalie asked, unblinking.
Jace thought for a moment and said, "He doesn't know—it's not a trap. The guy is oblivious, busy... cooking people... with salt and... butter...Yes, like a steak. It looked like he was seasoning the—"
"Jace!" Natalie called out firmly, cutting him off before he could get into the gruesome specifics.
Jace snapped out of his reverie. "Huh? Oh—I'm sorry. It was a disturbing sight, to say the least," he said, as he picked up his glass of water and drank it down.
"Also, I found out the one who put on the bounty," he said with a smile.
Natalie narrowed her eyes. "Who?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.
"Heh," Jace chuckled. "It doesn't matter. You'll know soon enough. You'll never see it coming," he said with a smile and laughed softly to himself.
He stopped laughing and turned serious. "Well, for now, we can attempt to kill him, but it will be difficult. Since a Sequence 7 of the Spectator pathway is different, and it's possible that he has a sealed artifact as well," he explained, though his lips again broke into a smile of genuine amusement.
Natalie frowned at Jace's erratic attitude toward such gruesome things. But she couldn't help but feel amazed and envious of his prowess.
'He figured out all this from a single dream divination,' she wondered. She found herself questioning what his other powers were, as he had never shown any to her.
'Perhaps I should have chosen a different pathway,' she thought.
Shaking her thoughts away, Natalie got up. "Let's go," she said to Jace.
"Mm?" Jace looked up, surprised. "Where?"
"North Borough," Natalie replied and began to walk away.
"Wait—" Jace got up, hurriedly collected the papers from the table, and followed her. "We are doing it today?"
"Yes," she replied without slowing down, and exited the cafe, stepping into the carriage waiting outside.
Jace could only follow her. His smile couldn't help but widen a little. 'How amusing,' he thought.
'It's a cat. It was the fucking cat.' He laughed inwardly.