Disclaimer: I own no part of Numb3rs. This is just for fun

Rated T for violence and langue

This is my first Numb3rs fanfic and is not beta read. All mistakes are my own

The Seventh Trumpet

Chapter One

"The Beast Ascends"

Now Charley Eppes knew what it would feel like to be attacked by Godzilla. One second he stood, leaning against his car watching his friend fumble with the keys to unlock the door to her gallery. He turned to say something to Mike. For the life of him, he could not remember what. He thought he heard someone call his name and suddenly hell came to earth with a deafening roar and a blast of white hot wind.

He was propelled backwards by a nightmarish force and slammed into something immovable. He bounced off, falling face first to the pavement. Screams echoed in his ears, including his own. He fought to breath, but it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much.

Charley couldn't see. Something was running in his eyes, blinding him. He couldn't think. He couldn't move. He was in a black pit surrounded by pain and the smell and taste of blood. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, but in reality it had only taken seconds for his greatest fear of all these months to come to fruition. All their efforts had been for nothing and the sad thing was, he had no idea why this was happening in the first place. 'Guess 'why' doesn't matter anymore,' he thought.

Charley took a deep, shuttering breath. What a stupid, useless way for it all to end! Well, at least one thing would come of it. At least now, he would no longer have to bare the pity in Don's and his father's eyes every time they looked at him. It was like, since Amita left, they were waiting for him to fall apart any second. That was getting really irritating. Oh yeah, and he didn't have to go with his Dad to his cousin Lisa's daughter's ballet recital. Have fun with that one, Don!

He wondered if he had paid the cable bill. Dad would be pissed if was turned off again because his supposed genius son couldn't get a handle on everyday life. As he slowly slipped farther into darkness, Charley thought of his brother, Don. He had hoped to have more time with his big brother. They had spent so many years apart. He had wanted to get a chance to really know him. He wished he had told his family how much he loved them. Well, it was too late now .

Charley regretted so many things. If he could give his Dad and Don any advice at all, it would be not to die with a heart filled with regrets. That was the saddest thing of all.

He wanted Don to know he was sorry for all the attention their parents had lavished on him because he was some kind of prodigy.

He was sorry for years their mother had spent with him at Princeton away from Don and Dad. He had only been thirteen when he was sent 2400 miles away from home to college and everyone thought he needed his Mommy. A guardian would not have been good enough. He was sure Don still resented him for that.

He regretted how Don seemed to get swept aside and left to fend for himself while the folks struggled with how to raise a gifted child. He regretted being called "the gifted child" as if that somehow made him more important than his brother.

Charley wished he had told his brother that he had always envied how cool Don always appeared to be in every situation, how he had wished in high school that just a little of Don's popularity could have worn off on him. It never happened, but it would have been nice to have been known among his peers as something other than a geek, a freak, and Don Eppes' weird kid brother.

He wished he had told Don about the time when he was nineteen, and he and Tommy Graves stole a bottle of Southern Comfort from Tommy's roommate, drank the whole thing , knocked over a statue of some long dead college benefactor and wound up puking off a bridge. Don would consider that a really non-Charley thing to do. God, Don, if you only knew the half of it …!

One last regret touched his fading consciousness. He wished he had a chance to tell Don to dig under the blue garden gnome near the koi pond. There he would find that damned GI Joe with the kung fu grip that went missing so many years before.

Don had spent days looking for it, but it never turned up. He was always misplacing his toys, so his parents weren't overly concerned. They hated the toy anyway. No one had even bothered to ask the little golden child, who sat silently watching the search, if he knew anything.

The golden child never revealed how he had sneaked into his big brother's room, grabbed the action figure and buried it under the gnome on a Saturday afternoon. In his defense, Donny had once again broken his promise to play with his six year old brother and had taken off with his friends.

Don had called him Squirt, ruffling his curls as he walked by, jostling his friends and tossing a baseball in the air, catching it with ease. To make matters worse Don had laughed and agreed when his friends asked, "Your brother's some kind of alien isn't he?" For that childish offence, Poor GI Joe had been relegated to an unmarked grave under the gnome and he went back to his books and tutors and left more carefree Saturday afternoons to other kids not so 'gifted'.

Mea culpa Don, for all the above. What more could he say?

"Weird, the things that go through your mind when you're dying," he thought, and then he fell into nothingness.

It had been a relatively quiet Wednesday morning at the FBI. Agent Don Eppes and his team took advantage of the lull to catch up on paperwork. Don sighed and reread his evaluation of his team's recent performance for the third time hoping to catch all his mistakes before he sent it on to the powers that be. He had learned long ago the dangers inherent in relying solely on spell check to proof his work. Though the feature could be a life saver, it did not catch everything.

He had once sent a report to the director of the FBI concerning his brother, Charley, in which he referred to the renowned mathematician as a 'vital geek' to the team. He had meant asset of course and he had no explanation as to why he had made such a glaring error.

"I think it was Freudian," David Sinclair had said, laughing so hard he nearly fell over when he heard, "You wrote what you were really thinking."

Everyone thought the slip was hilarious, everyone except Charley who would go to his grave swearing Don had done it on purpose to get back at him for some imagined slight.

"Speaking of Charley," Don said under his breath. He glanced at the time. His brother was supposed to meet him for lunch and he was now forty-five minutes late. He felt concern touch the back of his mind, but dismissed it as quickly as it came.

Since Amita had broken off their engagement and headed for Harvard, the mathematician had been distracted to say the least. Don had been seriously worried about how Charley was handling the breakup. He had even gone to their father about his little brother's state of mind, and their pragmatic Dad had tried to put Don's concerns to rest.

"Charley just needs his space right now, Don," he had said. "He had all these plans and dreams of what his life was going to be like with Amita, and now that has all changed. He's feeling a little lost, but he'll come around. Everyone does, son. We've all had our hearts broken at sometime and we survive. You did, so will your brother."

"Yeah, but Charley's not like everyone else," Don had said, but he had known the old man was right. Charley probably just needed time to lick his wounds and heal. He was a grown man and had been for quite some time now. Charley would get past this and life would go on.

Don picked up his mobile and dialed. The call went straight to voice mail. "Of course," he said , tossing the phone onto the pile of files scattered across his desk. "My brother is becoming the poster boy for absent- minded professors everywhere," Don sighed in exasperation. His genius brother had probably forgotten to charge his damn phone, or better yet, he had lost it again.

"Guess I'll order in," he thought.

Lead Agent Don Eppes cringed when he looked up to see Colby Grainger heading his way. He looked like a man with a purpose and that never bodes well.

"Hey, boss," the younger agent said with a grin.

Don's eyes narrowed and he waited for it.

"It's been kind of quiet around here today, how about we knock off a couple of hours early and grab a couple of beers. First round's on me."

And then, as if some passing god had over heard him and decided to rain on his parade, they heard a deep rumbling in the distance and the windows rattled with the force.

The entire bullpen fell silent. Don stood, pushing his chair against the wall.

"Was that an explosion?" David Sinclair gave voice to what everyone was thinking.

As if in answer, every phone in the bullpen began to frantically ring and before he could give the order, Agent Eppes' well trained team was geared up and headed out the door, their esteemed leader close behind.

The quite Wednesday was over.

To Be Continued: