02 He sat silently in his overstuffed chair, fire consuming him.

Says:

He sat silently in his overstuffed chair, fire consuming him. His entire body went stiff, eyes frozen; still wide open, they stared into the open book that lay on his lap. His mouth was still agape, though he was cut off mid sentence. Not a bit of him moved from the seemingly awkward position in which he sat, as the flames continued to envelop him and his surroundings.

The entire library was filled with the fierce flame, and yet as the fire spread throughout the room, there was no smoke. Nothing was burning, but the fire continually grew in volume. With nothing damaged, there was no notable source of fuel being used. Soon enough the entire room was engulfed, and the book that lay in man’s lap began to glow bright white.

It was in this moment that the flames stopped. They did not disappear, but merely froze in their curving shapes, creating intricate ornate sculptures. And then the man blinked. The flames melted away in slow motion, and the bright lights faded as the book fell upon the chair where the man once was.

In a minute and twenty six seconds later from this exact instant, the door was forced open. A squad of eight men wearing heavy armor and gas masks scurried in through the haze of smoke grenades they’d thrown in before them. The lasers on their guns glowed bright red, and their goggles bright green. These faceless men began to search the room around them, and as they did a ninth man walked in through the smoke. A good three feet taller than the other men, he seemingly hovered across the room. His head high above the smoke and his cape barely grazing the wooden floor, he approached the thick red arm chair in the center of the room. He picked up the book and grimaced at the page. He knew it was too late.

Yet another had found escape. This man was the fourth to break away from the “faction”, and he would not be the last. It wasn’t this that bothered the tall man shrouded in smoke. It was the fact that he still had the medallion.