The partially slagged warehouse jutted into the sky like a monument. The walls jutted out like an over-pressurized can of soda, and dried droplets of molten metal ran down them at irregular intervals, the flashing red lights made it look like the building was bleeding. All Brent could do was grimace up at it as the bomb squad slowly piled out of the building, announcing it clear.
Last night 911 dispatchers had received numerous calls about a loud explosion in the warehouse district near the abandoned port, and then a couple minutes later they had gotten more calls about an unsanctioned firework display also from the same area.
With a sigh, he pushed through the crowd of bystanders (civilians could not mind their own business for some reason) and ducked under the yellow caution and towards the warehouse.
“Ah Lieutenant, I was waiting for you!” one of the CSI guys rushed over to him. “You were on scene for the house fire last week yes?”
At a nod from Brent, the man spoke “Perfect, the reason I ask is that there are some major irregularities similar to the last fire! Here follow me, we will start from what we think was the entry point to the warehouse.” The CSI man - whose name tag read ‘Simion’ - led Brent around to the side of the building.
Simion gestured to the wall which had several lines missing from the wall in regular alternating intervals. Reaching into his pocket Brent produced a pair of disposable latex gloves, as he slipped them on he walked over to the wall and positioned his hand into one of the holes, there were slight divots that he could feel that his fingers slotted perfectly into.
“Someone melted handholds into this wall?” he questioned Simion.
The man nodded frantically “Yes! On the inside there are indents matching that of fingers, but no fingerprints.”
“Do we know any method to do something like this simion?”
“No sir, unless they were scalding their fingers they couldn’t have made marks like this before the metal stopped being malleable! Also at the top, there used to be a window, probably with wooden frames, that was completely pushed, we think they somehow managed to make the metal hot enough to be malleable and climb it without being burned and then burn the window frames to break in.” Simion presented his theory much to the curiosity of Brent.
Still thinking Brent asked his next question. “Why does the building look like a chipmunk after it found a bag of peanuts?”
That got a quiet chuckle out of Simion as he gestured for Brent to follow him. They walked back over to the front of the building and through to the inside of the warehouse. The first thing that got the Lieutenant's attention was a circular hole melted through the ceiling. Next was the ash, a dusting of ash a centimeter thick layered the floor like a really angry snow day.
“The way the contraption that did this was set up is genius!” Simion proceeded to go on a five-minute rant about how the perpetrator had created a sawdust explosion.
“Correct me if I’m wrong Simion but a saw dust explosion still has the heat of a wood fire correct?” Simion blinked at being interrupted but nodded “Then what heated the building enough to cause the walls to start melting?” Simion blinked rapidly before looking around at the drop of colled metal on the walls and ground.
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“That's an excellent question. We have no idea! I guess we will get back to that later, we have a couple more things to show you.” Simion started walking over to the hole in the roof which Brent could now see was slightly elliptical in shape. “That hole is what baffles us CSI guys the most. When we were looking at it initially we thought it had been cut out, but we couldn't find it so when we went up to look at the hole we swabbed it and found a thin layer of carbon around the edges.” Brent just looked at him, confused.
“And what does that mean exactly?”
“What it means is that whatever did that” he gestured up at the hole “was burning hot enough to carbonize steel in an instant, given that the surroundings show no signs of melting. Do you remember those calls we got about the fireworks in this area? Well, our thought is that what if something could shoot fire hot enough to do that, and keep going.”
Brent’s eyes were wide “What kind of temperature would be required for that?”
Simion’s mouth formed a tight line. “Close to 7500 degrees Fahrenheit, more than ¾ the temperature of the sun's surface. And there wasn’t any residue of any material that can burn that hot left behind.”
“Just like the house fire,” Brent muttered.
“We have one more thing you need to see.” as Simion began walking outside he started talking. “You know that handprint we found in the wall at the house, the one that was less burned than the rest? Well… you’ll see.” They started to climb a ladder that had been positioned leaning on the building. As he crested the top a gasp escaped from Brent. Imprinted on the ground was a handprint the size of his entire body, scorched into the metal roof.
“Well… aint this a shit show”
----------------------------------------
The woman on the other side of the glass seemed oddly excited, gesturing wildly
with hands spread apart as she enthusiastically told a story
“- and then a pillar of blue fire came through the roof! It was so hot I could feel it from the ground 200 feet away! And then get this a dude jumped out of the building onto the roof, and I'm not talking like a really big step, I mean he jumped out and an extra 5 feet on top of that! It was crazy, I was looking around for like a movie camera or wires and just didn’t see any, then out of the corner of my eye I saw a light so obviously I looked over and where his hand was there was a massive hand made of fire! It was bigger than he was!”
Brent sighed as he looked over at one of the detectives. “We’ve done a psych eval on her right?”
“We have not, but given we also didn’t tell her about the handprint on the roof…” the detective trailed off.
“Then we have to consider an unfortunate possibility… what if she’s telling the truth?”
“But Luitenatnt! That’s crazy people can’t make giant fire hands!” the detective interjected.
“Well, Detective Kalchow, how do you suppose she knew about the handprint without us telling her?” The detective in question clearly didn’t have a response to that so Brent turned back to the questioning in progress as the witness described the way the suspect had fled the scene at a superhuman pace with something that seemed like admiration in her eyes, that look rubbed Brent the wrong way.
He turned back to the detective next to him. “Get people on the roofs of neighboring warehouses, we should look for footprints on those too. On another note we need to keep an eye on her, she has this look, just make sure she doesn't become a sympathizer or something in the future.” as he said those words and looked back at the woman images began flashing through his eyes, it felt like his mind was being stuffed full of so much stuff that it was going to implode. Brent Smith was out before he hit the ground, body racked with spasms hard enough to break the table leg he landed by with seemingly superhuman strength.