The Intelligence Control and Analysis Program

Chapter 1

Hotch shook his head. "No, not at all."

Genius turned back to look at Morgan and took a deep breath.

Hotch was legitimately scared for a moment, especially when he saw Genius' hands start to move, and he silently wondered if he had made a terrible mistake.

"You have eight victims, each showing up in a group of four. They have been tortured in ways that lead you to write 'unsub likely has military background or experience,' in the margins. I have to take your word on that, and this leads me to—"

"Why do you have to take our word for that?" Rossi asked, swiveling his chair idly to the left and right.

Genius clenched his fists, the expression of frustration on his face almost tantrum-like in nature. Hotch immediately thought of the mood swings, but Genius did little more than stomp his foot and get a little red in the face.

"Stop interrupting. You're making this take so long." Genius huffed, blowing his bangs out of his eyes and tapping rapidly on his right temple. "I can't learn anything beyond the basics of any division of the United States government. That's the entire point of ICAP: keeping geniuses from overthrowing the government. So, obviously, my knowledge in that area is limited, but I know yours is not, and you're all relatively intelligent people, so it's highly unlikely you came to the wrong conclusion about this."

To his credit, Rossi simply pursed his lips and nodded, utterly unaffected. He didn't have any trouble letting Genius' attitude roll over him.

Morgan, on the other hand, already looked like he wanted to wring the kid's neck, and it had barely been a minute.

"Anyway, as I was saying." Genius tapped the whiteboard with his marker. "If this individual is military, he would have to be of a relatively high level to be involved with the enhanced interrogation techniques used on the victims. He's not just skilled, he's very skilled. He has an ego, so everything about his killing is going to be a shrine to himself. Knowing that, I took the victims and divided them up based on how a trained individual would take them out." He held up his hand before JJ could speak. "I said I don't know about the military; I never said I don't know how tactical combat works." He dropped the hand. "He's not killing them all at the same time, but he's dropping them all at the same time. It couldn't represent a rapid-fire gun or an explosive, because those would all cause the instantaneous death of multiple people. You could look at some sort of biological weapon, but the hands-on violence and torture suggests something more focused and clearly targeted."

Genius turned to the board and started to write and draw as he spoke. "If we look at all the victims, these two stood out not only because they're the only blondes but because, if you look at their x-rays, you'll see he broke three of their ribs. He never let the broken ribs be next to each other, meaning he specifically broke them with a fairly thin object. All the other victims had flail chest, but not these two."

Morgan nodded slightly and opened his mouth, determined to talk whether Genius liked it or not. "Typically, the most important victims are the first or last."

"Yes, but he knew that. He wanted you to think it was the first or fourth when it's actually the third." Genius started to write numbers and stats, drawing lines between the victims and the bubbles containing traits he had listed up to that point. "He tricked you into thinking four was the magic number, because it feeds his ego to outsmart federal agents. But he couldn't kill without acknowledging himself, so he put the three broken ribs on the third victim in each set. If you take the significance of the third victims, the ego, the military background, and the fact that all four victims were killed days apart but dropped at once, you get to a sniper."