magnetic ◊ criminal minds

xx.

xx. house on fire
( season four, episode nineteen )

GEORGE Foyet had escaped prison. He had ten years to plan. In an attempt to get their minds off it before their next case, Prentiss was trying to get more information out of Lyra. "You have a bit of an accent, don't you? Where from?" she asked.

"Genosha," Lyra signed in reply. She did not feel she was risking much by revealing this - humans and mutants alike inhabited Genosha, just like most other places in the world. Well, until Magneto claimed it, and later when it was destroyed and nearly all Genoshans were killed by Sentinels, designed by Bolivar Trask. Somehow, all of Lyra's trauma came back to him, one way or another.

"Where's that?"

"An island in the Indian Ocean. Off the coast of Africa."

Prentiss looked surprised by the reveal of this. Of all things, that is definitely not what she expected.

JJ came to gather the team in the briefing room. They had another killer that required their attention. This one, an arsonist. On the screen was video of a theatre on fire. "This news footage is from a movie theatre in Royal, Indiana, population two thousand. Earlier tonight, nineteen people were killed," JJ stated.

"And they're sure it's arson?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah. Two days ago, the same thing happened at the local recreation centre," JJ confirmed. "Twelve victims. No survivors."

"I heard about that," Prentiss said.

"Yeah, it was all over the news," Morgan said.

"Uh, there were some details that didn't make the news. A week and a half earlier, there were some fires at a convenience store, a local restaurant. Luckily, it was after hours, so no one was hurt," JJ said.

"This guy went from no victims to thirty-one," Rossi noted. "That's a hell of an escalation."

Lyra frowned. "The fire makes it easy, but what has to happen to claim that many lives?" she signed questioningly. "What's the trigger?" There was no way this guy just went from small fires in the night to sudden large fires that claimed the lives of at least a dozen each time. Something had to have happened, she was sure of it.

"I'll look into it, but so far there were no recent accidents or untimely deaths," JJ replied.

"Which means it's more personal," Lyra concluded. Getting fired from a job, break up, etc. She would have to find out.

"Why didn't they call us in sooner?" Prentiss asked.

"The local police and fire department knew they were dealing with an arsonist, but they had no idea he'd become a killer," JJ said.

"Most arsonists don't," Reid said. "They just like setting fires. Any deaths that occur are almost always accidental."

"Thirty-one victims is not an accident," Morgan stated.

"The police chief knows he made a mistake," Hotch said. "And he learned the hard way that even though not all arsonists are killers, they do have on thing in common. Once they start, they can't stop."

♢

"Based on the limited population of Royal, the UnSub is most likely a local male between the ages of seventeen and thirty," Reid said, looking through the files on the plane, like the rest of the team.

"What, arson is a sexist industry?" Garcia asked, on video call with them on the laptop.

"Uh, for the most part, yeah," Reid replied. "Only twelve percent of arsonists are female."