Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs.

UFO

Creepy

Ratio

Underfoot

Parasite

Consider Yourself Adopted 1/10

Today is the day all of you will burn.

Slipping out of her seat, the young woman padded down the carpeted stairs that cut through the center of the small auditorium-style classroom's rows of tables and attached swivel chairs. Margo smiled, considering her peers that were still seated and scribbling feverishly in their exam booklets. Aside from her muffled heels against the carpet, the only sound in the hushed classroom was the staccato noise of pencils moving across paper.

They're so slow, she thought haughtily, and shifted her blue gaze to the curly-haired professor seated at the front of the room.

Charlie.

Margo stepped down and crossed the lecture floor. She paused before his desk and smiled again when his dark eyes lit up at the sight of her, at the sight of any break in the long silence that giving an exam entailed.

What you've done here is particularly elegant, she imagined him telling her over dinner.

She had overheard him give those very words just the previous afternoon to Dr. Ramanujan. Margo had observed them together from her secret place, hidden in his office walls.

Over the last year and a half she'd perfected the art of watching Charlie. It was part of her life. She could not stop watching him any more than she could stop eating or sleeping. Margo knew when he was at CalSci. She knew when he was at home. When he wasn't at one of those two places, she knew he was probably wrapped up where she couldn't watch him—with the FBI and his fed brother.

Margo hated the FBI.

Earlier that morning she'd found Charlie again on one of the trails he frequented at CalSci. It was an easy hiking path, and there were lots of high ridges above it that gave her a clear view of the mathematician as he walked briskly along the layers of fallen leaves and sprawling tree roots.

He stopped and took a seat, choosing a large boulder to climb up on to rest. A clipboard and pen were brought out of his backpack and immediately Charlie began covering the page in math so complex even Margo couldn't decipher its purpose. She moved closer, inching to the edge of her vantage point to get a better look. She clung to a tree trunk and leaned over the ridge, squinting through her binoculars.

Charlie sighed and yanked the page of math free from his clipboard, revealing an enlarged photograph that had been clipped beneath his equations. The picture was of an eyeless, lipless woman. It gave Margo shivers.

Charlie stared at it for a long time.

He never knew how she mapped his steps, or how badly she wanted to run her hands through his curly hair, over his ears…

A throat cleared, and Margo was yanked straight from her thoughts and back to the math professor gazing up at her from his desk, his chin resting on top of a palm and a quirky smile on his face. She half expected him to start drumming his fingers.

Mortified, Margo felt her face began to flush. How long had she stood there? She quickly handed over her test and began fiddling with her purse strap to give her emptied fingers something to do.

Her teacher accepted the booklet, assessing it with a cursory glance for completeness, and set it aside.

"Can I leave?" she whispered, letting embarrassment leak into her voice. She reached up with her free hand and tucked a strand of dyed brown hair behind an ear.

Charlie, who was barely older than she was, kept his professional smile.

"That was the deal," he said softly, not wanting to distract his students on the front row. He nodded towards the top of the stairs where two double doors sealed his classroom from the noise of the world.

"Enjoy the holidays," he glanced down at her exam booklet, "Margo. It's been a pleasure."

Margo felt warmth spread again over her chest and throat. She nodded and quickly turned away, unable to keep the grin from her face as she walked back up the carpeted stairs towards the room's rear exit.

She paused at the doors and turned for a final look at the class she'd been attending for five months. The rows upon rows of still seated, still furiously working students blurred into a mass of ugly, unimportant visual information. Her blue gaze rested again upon the young professor for several moments, knowing she would miss seeing him twice a week like this. He was so passionate about math, so endearing to watch when he taught.

But he can still teach me. He'll have plenty of time when Daddy doesn't need him. It won't take me long to catch up to him, and then he'll see, he'll understand.

Her fingers gripped the strap of her purse tightly and for the hundredth time Margo went over the calculations and projections in her mind. It still wasn't too late to turn back.

She glanced at the clock on the left wall of the lecture room. Yes. When it was time, Professor Eppes would definitely still be at his desk. He would not get up and pace around while the slower students finished their tests. He would not step out to smoke or talk on his phone. He never did those things. He would stay right in place, just like he had through every other test that semester.

Her lips twitched into a private smile. Her attention shifted from the clock back to the professor, and immediately her heart missed a beat.

Curious and dark, his eyes were aimed right at her.

Margo quickly gave him a frantic wave and reached for one of the heavy doors. She lingered only long enough to see him lift a hand and return an awkward little wave of his own. His face was positively bemused. Shamed, Margo ducked her head and escaped the room.

Ten minutes left the clock on the wall. Just as Margo intended, her classmates remained in their seats, and the object of her affections stayed in his desk at the front of the room, centered, and several feet from the first row of test takers. A transparent board stood to his left, but today there were no numbers splayed elegantly across its surface—only the words "Enjoy the Holidays!" written in the giant bubbly letters she'd spied Amita Ramanujan writing the day before.

Margo hated Amita Ramanujan.

Charlie was almost exhausted by the act of being still and quiet and required to pay attention to his busy students and not the numbers that whispered in his head.

It was not often he found himself unable to work, to talk, to at least pace around exerting energy in some fashion, but unfortunately there was no way to avoid such a situation indefinitely. His students needed a quiet, serious atmosphere in which to take their final examination, and he needed to be present to ensure academic integrity, not to mention for the sake of professionalism.

Research showed, after all, that students taking mathematics exams performed at higher levels thirty-five percent of the time when their instructor was present during the assessment.

Charlie supposed many factors played into why this was the case, and was running through the strands of variables when the world around him shattered into walls of screams and blistering heat.

He did not have time to react. He did not even realize he was no longer at his desk, but flat on the ground.

Lying on his back, Charlie found his curly hair wet and matted. He stared at his bloody fingers. He heard voices.

They were students. They were calling his name.

"I'm coming," Charlie sighed, but his bones were too heavy. He could not move. Instead, he wondered at the fire rolling across the ceiling, and the sounds of many feet running towards him.

Away, outside the doors of his classroom, students and teachers were running from the building. Smoke filled the halls, but the sprinklers did not activate. The alarms did not flash or sound. This did not stop the front doors of Lynoll-Briggs Hall from unleashing a deluge of frantic humans. They spilled down the marble steps and stumbled over the small lawn. Bewildered onlookers gathered to watch, and in some cases, to help.

All thoughts of their (tentatively) scheduled lunch vanished from her mind. Amita froze the moment she rounded the sidewalk that wrapped around the east side of Wilson Hall. She'd heard the loud, echoing boom only minutes before, at the time assuming it was from the construction going on only a block down from Lynoll-Briggs Hall. Now her mind was quickly putting the pieces together—the people, the injuries, the smoke and fire coming from the top floors. With growing horror, Amita began moving, her desperate eyes scanning the crowds of people gathered on the grass. They were growing thicker, congealing around her as she tried to find a curly head among them.

"Charlie!" she called. Amita glanced around at the students and teachers that surrounded her. All of them were talking at once. Some of them had blood on them. Amita couldn't help but imagine Charlie, staggering and covered with blood. She flipped open her cell to call him and was greeted with a black screen.

Right. Forgot to charge it. Frustrated, Amita shoved the phone back into her jean's pocket.

"Charlie!" she resumed. "Has anyone seen Charlie? Has anyone seen Professor Eppes?"

She grunted as a large custodian elbowed her out of his path. He carried a badly burned student cradled in his arms. He was yelling for an ambulance. Amita's knees grew weak and she tore her eyes off the burned body. Her mind showed her another figment of Charlie, his body chewed up by flames. The jostling crowd began to press around her again. Everyone was yelling at the same time for help, for space, for people to back away from the building.

"Charlie!" Amita shouted, adding her own voice to the cacophony of noise.

"Amita!"

She whipped around and saw Larry Fleinhardt twisting through the crowd to reach her side.

"Thank the stars you're okay!" Larry looked her up and down to make sure. "I was over there on that bench when it happened. I almost thought it was thunder, some kind of heat-induced storm brewing up, but then all these people started fleeing the building, and there was blood and crying…"

Larry's fingers worried at his chin as he analyzed the building over the heads of the crowd. "Amita, have you seen Charles? He's not answering his phone."

She shook her head. "He was giving his last final in there today."

I think he's still inside. I think he could be hurt. I think he could be dead, she did not say, but Larry heard it all in the cracking of her voice. The very idea of his brilliant young friend trapped within a maelstrom of fire terrorized Larry's mind with the potential repercussions.

"Let's try to get closer," Amita said, already moving. "People are still coming out. His exam was on the fourth floor… maybe…"

"I'll call Don," Larry agreed, tugging out his phone as they began to weave through the massing crowd.

Amita saw more people than she could count holding their hands up, filming the fire licking from the building's windows with the digital cameras tucked in their palms. First responders were quickly rolling onto the scene, and she could only hope to see Charlie among the people they would rescue.

They would discover only charred remains once the fires were put out. Some students would be found at the classroom's main doors, which had been jammed shut from the outside. Others would be discovered at the front of the room or near their seats in gruesome, smoldering piles.

Charlie coughed and covered his face with trembling fingers. It was so hot his clothes were sticking to him. He wanted to get up and turn on the AC, but his head ached terribly.

"Dad," he croaked. "Can you… can you turn down the heat?"

A pair of hands grabbed fistfuls of his jacket, and Charlie felt his body drag across the carpeted floor. Startled, the young professor forced his eyes open and realized he was still in his classroom, and it was still on fire. From his position in the room, Charlie judged he was being dragged towards the fire exit situated several feet behind his desk.

"Don? What's going on?"

The hands disappeared, wrapped around his middle, and lifted Charlie up to his feet. His arm was slung over a muscular shoulder. Disoriented by the sudden shift, Charlie clung to keep himself upright. The man was way too tall, too muscled up to be his brother.

"Don't worry, Professor. I got you," a gruff voice assured into Charlie's ear. "My name's Rick. The place is burning up. Let me help you out of here."

Charlie was guided forward, and then around something large and covered in blood. His brain dimly acknowledged that it was several humans splattered across the floor, and Charlie calculated the distance and direction, and realized they had been thrown backwards, away from the fire escape's door.

The bodies bore bloody splotches across their chests and Charlie couldn't help but count the bullet holes. The fiery numbers burned in his mind. They hurt. He stumbled and halted, and heard his savior swear.

"Charlie, we have to go," Rick urged.

"Someone killed them," the professor said, eyes wide. "They must have been running for the fire exit." His words dissolved into coughs.

"I know, Charlie," Rick agreed, tightening his grip on the smaller man's waist. "But we can't help them. I've got to save you. I'm FBI. Your brother's on his way and he'll kick my ass if I don't get you out of here, got it?"

"Don knows?" Charlie asked, his dark, confused eyes searching Rick's face.

"Yes. Now let's go." The man did not give Charlie any more time to stop and wonder at the blistering heat or the carnage before them.

Charlie was ushered quickly from the room. Outside he was released, and immediately the professor sank to sit on the cool metal landing of a fire escape. He planted his feet on the first row of narrow stairs and coughed almost uncontrollably into his hands. He coughed so much he was sure his throat would start bleeding. When the coughing subsided he covered his face with both hands. The sunlight was so bright. The numbers were gone, but now there was a distinct ringing noise deep in his ears. It was high pitched, like a nail hideously screeching along a chalkboard.

Metal twisted behind him. Charlie peeked warily from the shield of his palms, squinting at the intense brightness of the world. A tall man with short, brown hair, surely the same man who had pulled Charlie from the room, was busily jamming the door they'd just exited from. The man was not Don. Or David. Or Colby. He was Rick, he'd said, but who was Rick? He was dressed in dark combat gear. An automatic weapon was hanging from his back.

Charlie's dazed brain screamed at him, assailing him with the faces of his students, and at once he realized that the fire had originated from an explosion, a blast that was surely a bomb, and that his students could still be trapped inside. They had been screaming! But this guy, this Rick was sealing them in. He was jamming the door. Why would he do that?

"Don't!" Charlie cried. His raw throat made his voice sound scratchy and weak. When the man ignored him, Charlie struggled to his feet and latched onto Rick's giant arm in a vain attempt to rip it away from the door.

"Let go," the man growled, trying to shake Charlie off. "We don't have time for this."

"My students," Charlie rasped. He reached and grabbed at the metal contraption that was twisted through the door's handle.

"Listen to me," Rick snapped, snatching Charlie's black jacket, right at the shoulder. He used his grip to swing Charlie around and slam the smaller man straight into the jammed door.

Charlie's back hit hard and a surge of dizziness made his brain fill like little fuzzy sparks were going off inside its walls. He shook his head and sagged against the door while he took deep breaths and tried to will away the sharp ringing in his ears. His heart beat painfully fast in his chest.

"Now I need you to listen up. Look at me," Rick snarled at the top of the curly head he loomed over. The professor looked up at him with pained, wary brown eyes.

"You can't save them. Them in there, they're already dead," Rick explained, his hazel eyes hard as steel.

Charlie heard sirens, but the sudden motion of being spun around and slammed against a hard surface had his brain still reeling. "Why are you..? You said Don…"

"Come without any drama, Professor, and I promise no one else will get hurt."

"But I… I don't understand, if you just… what…Who are you again?" increasingly confused, Charlie's head began to pound, and he wondered if he had a concussion.

Losing his patience, the man released the younger man's jacket and wrapped Charlie's chin into a tight grip. "I need you to focus, genius."

Charlie swallowed and kept his wide eyes locked on the man's reddened face.

"This is what's happening. My name is Rick. My job is to kidnap you. You will come quietly. If you give me any more grief, I'll signal our sniper to pick off your friends on the other side of this building," Rick warned, squeezing Charlie's jaw tighter with each sentence.

"My friends?" Charlie winced at the pressure. He's not FBI. He doesn't know Don. You're so stupid, Charlie. Stupid. Stupid…

"Yeah, that physicist and your girlfriend. They have funny last names," Rick said, nodding. "We've been keeping our sights on them for some time, just in case you needed some motivation. You need some motivation, Professor?"

Horrified, Charlie pressed himself against the jammed door. He suddenly became aware of how far up the fire escape was. The ground looked tiny beneath the grated metal floor he stood on. He realized he could hear voices, a great many in fact, coming from the other side of the building, but as he gazed out over the campus on his side of the building, there was hardly anybody.

"We have to go," Rick said. "We have to go before we're noticed. They can only keep this area clear for so long."

Charlie wondered just how many they comprised.

"If I come with you, you'll leave Am—my friends—alone?" Charlie asked. His voice shook, but he straightened up, peeling himself off the hot door that sealed away his students.

He had to get this guy and whoever else was with him away from CalSci, away from more innocent people. Then Don would find him, he was sure, and everything would work out.

Rick nodded. "When we get to the car I'll let our sniper know their elimination isn't necessary today."

"Okay," Charlie said. "I'll go."

"Good. Think you can make it down all these stairs?" Rick asked with a grin.

Charlie looked down the narrow steps and landings. They were four stories up, and looking downward made his mind reel again. The pain on his forehead throbbed. His heart felt ripped open and raked clean as he thought about the students he was leaving behind. He knew they were probably dead, but still…

"I'll take silence as a yes," Rick said.

Charlie was then yanked forward and twisted around, and marched quickly down the metal stairs. He stumbled down each step, held upright only by the man's hands and his own sliding grip along the stair railing. His vision swarmed half black as he was pushed over grass, over concrete, and through the small gap that etched a walkway between Gordon and Palmer Halls.

Past them, Charlie saw a black van, and then the interior of it once he was shoved inside.

Rick climbed into the backseat after him and Charlie pressed himself as far away from the man as he could. A hand drifted back to his forehead and Charlie winced, gingerly fingering the thin, painful wound. It felt like an elongated paper cut. He jumped when Rick slid the van's door shut, slamming it. The doors instantly locked.

"Let's roll," Rick told the driver smugly. "I'll get our little friend tucked away."