Realising that he didn’t have much time left, Ed decided to not push his luck by looking at his future again. Instead, he chose to go back and search for anything he might have missed outside of the café. They said that they knew someone was going to attack them. If that’s true, then the real criminal might be nearby.

Repeating what he did before, he went back to when he was being carried out of the café. If the criminal was nearby, they would probably have been scared off when they saw this. The guards would’ve showed their hand too early, so the suspect would’ve escaped. Now I just have to look around for someone suspicious.

Finding it impossible to search for the suspect when everything was frozen, Ed took it to just before he was tackled, and began to study the reactions of each passerby. With each time he would step in front of a new person, he would replay the scene again and again, studying every minute detail for a clue.

The further out he went, the more difficult it was for him to even move. His surroundings became fuzzy and faded, until he was unable to make out what was going on around him. Ed realised that he was tethered to the point in time on the string that he had gone back to, and that he couldn’t move too far away from it.

Heading back towards the string, his vision cleared up again and his body began to move normally. He walked in the opposite direction, and continued to study everyone he could see.

Eventually, he found his target. Walking in the middle of a crowd. A man was chatting on the phone, but his eyes were constantly locked on the café. When he saw Ed being carried out, he stopped speaking for a moment, before looking away and going about his day, quickly disappearing from the scene.

Finding the man slightly suspicious, Ed rewound time back to its limit, and followed the man. As it turned out, the man had been in the area since before Elaine had even entered the café. The more Ed watched the man, the more certain he felt that this was the person they were after.

Pausing the scene, he focused on the man and completely memorised his features.

The man had a snake-like appearance. His eyes were a vibrant green and had vertical slits instead of pupils. He had scales covering most of his body, as seen from his forearms. The scales stopped just before they reached his face, where most notably, there were two slits where the man’s nose should be. The man completely lacked any hair. The man was wearing a crisp and clean suit to try and blend in with the more formal attire typical of pride denizens.

Ed reopened his eyes as the van came to a stop, and he waited patiently in the darkness for the back of the van to be opened.

Light flooded into the van, as someone stepped in to drag Ed out. Looking around, he saw that he was surrounded by guards, all of whom were pointing their guns directly at him. He was brought through several layers of security, until he finally entered the grounds of the palace. He was able to behold the true majesty of the palace in all its glory for a moment before he was led down into the dungeon.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The dungeon was an archaic labyrinth made of stone, that stretched beneath the entirety of the palace grounds. The hallways were dimly lit by candlelight, allowing Ed to see the withering and tortured bodies of those who were trapped in the cells. He was led deeper into the dungeon before being thrown into a cell of his own.

Slamming against the cold hard ground, Ed rolled for a bit before coming to a stop. Hearing the footsteps slowly disappear down the hallway, Ed found himself completely alone.

~

“Good morning, Zara.”

Ugh. Zara woke up after having slept for the entire day. The pain and exhaustion she felt had faded away, now only existing in the background.

“Morning Buddie.” She called out with a yawn, walking sleepy-eyed over to the dining table. Feeling too lazy to make her own breakfast, she asked Buddie for a sausage and egg muffin before quickly devouring it.

She woke herself up with a hot shower before getting dressed for work and stepping into the office. Still no signs of Ed. Zara sighed as she sat down at her desk.

Name: Ilja Vassily

Age: 25

Occupation: unemployed

Biography: Born to parents Grigoriy and Asya Vassily, Ilja was fascinated with technology from a very early age. He taught his older parents and grandparents how to use the computer, and from then on would always be the person his family went to when they were struggling with technology... As he grew up, his interest never waned, and his skill and knowledge grew by leaps and bounds. After high school, he found himself in an office job as the company’s IT expert... For some reason, he got on the nerves of one of the higher ups, resulting in him getting fired from his job... Furious at being fired, he fought back in the only way he knew how. He accessed the internal system of the company and gained access to that person’s bank details. He proceeded to siphon money from the account to cover the cost of living... Seeing how easy it was to make money like this, he gave up on finding a new job and instead resorted to stealing people’s information online to make money...

-End of document-

Ooh, I know exactly what I want to do! Reading through the file, an idea immediately formed in Zara’s head. “Buddie, can you put him in a small room in front of a computer please.”

The app opened up on the screen to show Ilja sitting at a desk in front of a computer.

“I want it to be a memory puzzle made up of all the people that he stole from. It will start off easy with some multiple-choice questions, then it will progress to things like true or false and fill in the blanks, with each question getting progressively harder.”

“What happens when he gets a question wrong?” Buddie asked.

“His body will painfully morph to look partially like the person he stole from, with his body becoming more grotesque and unseemly with each one stacking on top of the other.”

“Thank you. Is that all?” Buddie asked.

Zara thought for a moment before nodding her head.

“Thank you for submitting your plans, I will let you know when it’s ready.”