Next to Suarez, Agent Booker from the BAU clicks his pen in anticipation as the static gives way to a grim scene:

There’s a young woman hanging by her wrists from the ceiling. She stands on tiptoe atop a discolored concrete floor, swaying precariously. She’s clad in a trendy little dress and tights, brown hair mussed up, shoes gone, looking like she’d just gotten in from a fun night out. Her mouth is taped over, and her eyes are wide with fear as they track something behind the camera.

Footsteps and the sounds of objects being arranged come from offscreen. Then, a voice, distorted as if run through a vocoder: “Sorry to keep you waiting, hon, I had a few more things to grab before we get started.”

A figure saunters into frame, dragging a wheeled tray table behind them and arranging it a few feet away from the hanging girl. The figure is a woman, slightly shorter than her victim and clad neck-to-ankle in a clear vinyl suit, beneath which she wears a well-loved bra and briefs. Her athletic sneakers are similarly well-used. Her head is obscured by some kind of distortion effect, appearing as a murky smear above her neck.

Atop the tray table sits—worryingly—a closed metal box, a rolled up bundle of canvas, a blowtorch, and a power drill. The woman ghosts a hand over the latter.

“Let’s get the necessary part out of the way first, eh?” She picks up the drill, revving it a few times, and the hanging girl’s eyes go impossibly wider. “I’m gonna have to take you down from there at some point, and we can’t have you running out in the middle of a scene.”

The hanging girls squirms, feet scampering in place as she tries fruitlessly to put some distance between her and her captor. She wheezes for breath through her runny nose, the sound of it the loudest thing in the room. Mascara tears stain her cheeks.

“Save the waterworks, kiddo,” the woman says, casually, “You’ve got a long performance ahead of you.”

She kneels down, camera zooming in on where she tears a hole in the knee of the girl’s tights. The drill revs again, and—

Suarez pauses the tape, freezing the screen on the image of a drill bit approaching a kneecap. “You can deduce what happens from there,” she mutters.

“I’ll have to watch the whole thing to complete my profile,” Booker says, though he looks a bit green at the idea.

Suarez huffs, “Well, you can wait until I’m out of the room to do it. I’m not watching that filth again. Right now, I’d like to talk to you about my own ideas.”

Booker adjusts his pad and pen, motioning for her to continue.

“We’ve identified the victim in the video, plus two others, as missing people who disappeared around the same dates written on their respective tapes. No bodies have been found yet. Unless these people turn out to be incredibly dedicated method actors, this definitely isn’t any sort of hoax or film project.

“The genders, ages, and ethnic backgrounds vary greatly between the victims. Of the ones we identified, there are no notable shared interests or occupation—“

Booker jots something down.

“—aside from them all disappearing within the same county. The methods of torture and execution also vary between the videos, as do the methods of restraint; two of the tapes feature the victims suspended, two have the victims tied to a chair, and one has them bound spread-eagle to a wooden frame.

“The only consistency between them is the killer and the location. Regretfully, we have zero promising leads on either, which is why you’re here.”

“And this is the earliest film you found?”

“Yep.”

“Yet she seemed completely comfortable in what she’s doing… there’s no way this tape was her first time.”

Suarez rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that and the fact that there was already dried blood on the floor.”

Booker taps his pen against his notepad, frowning. On the page, a woefully sparse list has formed:

closed-off, private location. basement or warehouse

professional but possibly outdated equipment

takes measures to obscure identity—tapes were probably intended for distribution

female, average height/build, olive or tanned skin

practical, but showy. takes pride in her work.

probably older than her victim

camera zooms in—edited, or the work of an accomplice?

no preference for victims or methods. opportunistic, uncertain, or enjoys variety?