Iori

He stood with his back to the camera, his posture deliberately insouciant, as if he knew exactly where the camera was. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking at something off to the side that only he could see.

Agent Lowenstein hissed in a long, deep breath. “Unsub’s pretty arrogant, isn’t he?”

“That’s not the worst of it, sir,” the little techie - Novak? - said.

“I know what happens - the entire place goes up in flames, and he did it.” Lowenstein pointed to the screen. “That crescent moon on his back is distinctive. He’s taunting us, but it’ll cost him.”

“Maybe not, sir,” Novak said. “Just watch.”

Lowenstein wished that security feed didn’t always have the background-buzzing quality of a low-budget film. If these multinational corporations could afford lear jets for their executives, surely they could afford better cameras for security. Fat cats liked to cut corners in all the wrong places.

The unsub straightened up, hands at his sides, and curled his fingers into fists slowly. The motion was filled with leased tension and anger, and Lowenstein frowned. The conflagration had been massive, and the fire crews insisted that some sort of accelerant had been used, though their lab hadn’t been able to identify it yet. A glance at the clock running in the corner of the screen said that the fire started in thirty seconds, and Lowenstein saw no accelerant at hand for the unsub, and the unsub was making no moves to escape the building.

“Here it comes,” Novak murmured.

Lowenstein could only stared as black flames ignited in the palms of the the unsub’s hands. His mouth fell open as the flames dripped from the man’s hands and spread across the floor of the warehouse in lovely geometric patterns, zig-zagging and zooming across the floor.

The unsub turned.

Lowenstein leaned in closer, desperate to see the man’s face, and abruptly the entire warehouse burst into flames, black flames that became yellow as they fanned outwards.

“What the hell? Is the unsub dead?”

Novak said, “It gets better.”

A shape lunged out of the black flames, and Lowenstein recoiled. A man’s face, dark with the shadows flung by the black flames, filled the screen. He mouthed something, a word or maybe two, and then his lips curved into a wicked, amused smile. And then he turned, slid his hands back into his pockets, and walked away.

(404 words)