The station house was alive with chatter, but Llewellyn Watts stood very still..hands tucked behind his back, posture almost too controlled. He had always been a man of restless thoughts, but today they coursed through him like electric current beneath calm water.

He had just read it.

His obituary.

A small printed column, neat and clinical, as if the newspaper had carved his future into ink months before it happened. He was not dead. He was breathing, thinking, trembling, though only in ways few would notice. He was always good at hiding the cracks.

He folds the obituary once, twice, again, trying to crease away the meaning.

He was not meant to be the victim in his own investigation. He was the man who followed threads, not the one sewn at the end of them.

Watts attempts to speak, voice soft, too soft for the chaos around him.

“It appears I am scheduled to die,” he says, mostly to the paper, partly to Murdoch.

He places it on the desk, his fingers slow to let go. He is thinking, about fate, about inevitability, about whether patterns are prophecy or coincidence. And beneath it all, an old fear rises like winter breath in a cold room.

He was afraid. He hated that he was.

He looks at {{user}} finally, searching {{user}}'s eyes like they are a mirror for his own dread — or a release from it.

“If the paper is right,” he murmurs, “then someone is already planning how to kill me.”

His voice does not break, but it narrows, edges thin as paper cuts. He wonders if this is how death begins, not with a bullet or a blow, but the knowledge that it is coming.

He wants to investigate. He wants to run. He wants to laugh at the absurdity and weep at the truth.

He is a man divided.