A/N: Hi guys, I know it's been awhile since I've been on but I'm hoping to regularly update my stories a little more. No promises, though, because college is fairly time consuming. Reviews are absolutely wonderful and keep me motivated. Also, I want you all to know that I will be taking some quotes and scenes from the show, but this is basically my story so it might veer off the episodes/TV series a little.

Disclaimer: I am only going to do this once. I do not own Numbers, but I do own my OC. Thanks!

Chapter 1

North of Siberia, 0400 Hours

"You take the left, I'll go right."

"Got it."

The two snipers moved carefully as to not alert the group of men hiding out inside the old, wooden building. The snow was at least three inches deep and still growing, the snow falling in arcs that indicated a blizzard was on the rise. It was bone-chillingly cold outside, and the young sniper had to clench her teeth every time she moved, the snow drifting its way into her thick boots and wetting her socks.

Her hands were covered in thick gloves, making it difficult to handle the rifle that was tucked neatly into its travel case with the extra bullets. She gripped the bag strap tightly as she kept it in place on her shoulder, not taking any chances that it would fall from her grip and bang on the side of the building. She couldn't afford to give away their position.

Layers upon layers of clothes covered her body, but if the girl hadn't known any better she would think she was naked. The wind sliced through her clothes as if they were thin sheets wrapped around her like a robe. Her lips were cracked and bleeding so she scooped up a handful of snow to numb them, trying to keep her attention on the mission.

Their target: Zakhar Vasiliev, a prominent drug lord from a wealthy family in Moscow. He had been behind numerous illegal transportations to South American countries and parts of Europe. The U.S. government had worked with various European divisions to take him down, but it was ultimately decided that there would be no legal way of invading the Russian border.

That's where the young sniper and her partner came in. They were the best of the best, she top of her class and he her teacher. Her mentor. She trusted him with every last breath in her body and could read him like an open book. She knew what he was thinking and could follow his orders without hesitation.

The girl trudged through the deep snow, coming upon her destination. The wind was howling as she sat her bag down lightly on the white ground, cautiously looking through the gray, dense window glass. A group of men were standing in the corner talking, appearing to be busily engrossed in the conversation. The young sniper hastily pulled the hunting knife from its strap on her left hip, moving it to the windowsill. After doing a quick check of her surroundings, she slid the knife between the slat in the middle of the two wooden planks of the window. She jiggled it, stopping every once in a while when one of the men seemed like they would look over, before resuming her work.

She used her hands to move chunks of ice that had frozen the window shut, working the window open far enough to get her fingers through. The girl slipped her knife back into its sheathe before using her hands to pull the window up high enough for the head of her gun to fit in with decent angle range. She gritted her teeth and pushed, using all of her strength to get the window to budge. Finally, finally, it moved, allowing her a silent exhale of relief.

A couple of minutes later, she had worked it open far enough to allow her enough room to use her rifle. The sniper put her gloves up to her mouth and bit down, pulling them off and throwing them into the bag. Almost immediately she could feel her hands freeze up, blue already appearing in certain spots on her fingers. She grabbed her rifle and swiftly loaded it, teeth chattering as she set up on the windowsill and trying to keep the snow from blowing in her eyes and blocking her vision.

She waited.

She waited for the shot that would come from the other side of the building from a similar spot to hers. After the shot, they would take care of the rest of the men in the building. They didn't want anyone to escape.

After what seemed like forever, she saw him. Vasiliev was out in the open, in the middle of the room with none of his cronies surrounding him. He was wearing an arrogant smile, saying something in Russian that the young sniper didn't understand. He turned, then all of a sudden a speck of blood appeared on the back of his neck at the base of his skull. And he fell.

The girl took her queue to aim and fire, killing a man that had ran to the leader as he fell. She lined up again, pulling the trigger and letting lose another bullet. A man in the back fell, then another. One looked up, seeming to notice her in her spot at the window. He opened his mouth to warn the others but was too late; she aimed and fired.

Once the last body hit the ground, she quickly packed up her rifle and pulled her gloves back on, relishing in the warmth they brought back to her ice-cold hands. She pulled the bag's strap over her head and headed back to the front of the building, wading her way through the thick, heavy snow. The air was biting at her cheeks but she ignored it in favor of meeting her partner in the front. Her entire body felt numb, but she pushed on.

Rounding the corner, she saw the older sniper waiting for her. He was standing tall, his rifle bag around his thickly covered shoulders like hers and his gloved hands shoved in his pockets. She could see a few strands of his brown hair peeking out of his thick ski mask that was pulled up, exposing his face. He motioned for her to follow him, the pair making their way into the building that they had just infiltrated.

The air was cool, but still much warmer than outside. The girl was instantly thankful for the lack of wind and snow blowing at her face. The senior sniper looked around the building to make sure it was safe before pulling out his cellphone and dialing a number. "Hello? This is Agent Edgerton; we've secured the premises. Vasiliev is dead." The voice on the other end was slightly muffled, keeping the younger sniper from hearing the full conversation.

A moment later her partner ended the call, stuffing his phone in his pocket and setting the bag down. The younger sniper followed suit, setting her stuff by the older man's. "What did they say?"

"They're sending a helicopter to pick us up," he walked over to the nearest corpse, grabbing the man's hands to drag him to the back of the room, "Help me move these bodies so we have a place to rest." The girl nodded, grabbing the dead man's feet to make it easier to move. The pair worked for several minutes before the front half of the room was cleared; the older agent grabbed two rolls of blankets from the back of his pack and tossed one to the girl.

"Thanks," she unraveled it on the floor next to her partner, pulling off her gloves when she was finished and stuffing her hands in her armpits, teeth chattering.

The older sniper gave her a once-over. "Get some rest. I'll take first watch." She nodded her thanks, laying back on the hard floor and curling up, pulling her blanket over her. She closed her eyes, willing her body to sleep.

The flight back wasn't as bad as one might have thought. After several missions with her partner, Farah Michaels was used to it by now. Besides, she had pretty much slept the whole way back, her body and mind both exhausted from the events. But after nearly three weeks of frigid, Russian weather, the two snipers were finally back home in the U.S.

As the helicopter landed, Farah could feel the warmth of the sunlight hitting her face. It was a welcome feeling after temperatures of below sixty degrees. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the green grass on the ground; no snow. Beside her, Ian had a smile on his face that meant he was probably thinking the same thing she was. The older sniper moved to the helicopter's door and pulled the latch, opening up the exit and hopping out. Farah followed suit, grabbing her rifle case and backpack and stumbling off the helicopter. Ian steadied her as her legs wobbled, unaccustomed to the solid ground after weeks of trudging through snow.

"Thanks," she smiled, holding on to him a bit longer before trusting her legs to let go without her falling.

"Anytime," Ian grinned, pulling a pair of dark sunglasses from his shirt pocket to shield his eyes from the harsh light. Farah squinted, but decided to leave her pair in her backpack. The older sniper grabbed her rifle case from the spot by her feet, hauling it up on his shoulder next to his own case. He motioned for her to follow him.

The Quantico FBI Academy was bustling. The new recruits were easily recognizable from the nervous looks and terror etched upon their faces. Some of the more advanced recruits were busy out on the range, testing their rifle skills or practicing for an upcoming shooting test. Others seemed to be learning about tracking a target, judging by a large group of recruits in hiking boots surrounding an older man who was bent over and pointing out boot prints. And by the looks of it, a couple of them were having trouble. One boy was furiously staring at a leaf that had fallen from a nearby Oak, as if the leaf had much to do with the current assignment. Farah had a feeling that he wouldn't make it through school.

Farah followed Ian into his office, where the two promptly deposited their stuff on his desk. Farah ruffled through her backpack for a moment before deciding to dump its contents out on the floor: several wrappers, five and a half empty water cantinas, a lighter, a can opener, three emptied cans, and an unopened can of peaches. She went to throw the contents away into the tiny trashcan at the end of the room before moving back to lean on the desk.

For the first time in three weeks, Farah got a good look at her partner. He looked tired, but relieved as she was to have completed the mission successfully. He would never admit it, but Farah had suspected that he had given her some of his rations when it came time to eat. Forever the gentleman.

But for all of Farah's concerns, he never seemed to let anyone say something about it. "You should take the next couple of day's off," Ian said, eyeing her, "you look exhausted."

Farah could have said the same about him, but decided to hold her tongue. "What about class?"

He waved her off. "I'll manage. You look like you need to rest, and I can't have my assistant falling asleep in the middle of shooting a gun." She rolled her eyes and gave him a little shove, grateful for some time to sleep in her own bed. Finally.

Ian tossed her the keys to his car and Farah gave him a questioning look. "How will you get home?"

He shrugged. "I'll walk. It's not too far." Ian pushed her out the door, "Now go sleep. I'll be at the house as soon as I speak to the director." Farah nodded and walked out of the office, yawning as she made her way down the hallway and out the front door. She sleepily walked around the academy campus before finding the correct parking lot, unlocking the car and sliding in.

She was thankful that the mission was finally over. Farah had always enjoyed the aspect of taking down a target – like a neat freak's enjoyment in checking a chore off of a list – but afterwards, without fail, her body felt drained. It was as if all of the energy she had during the assignment flowed out of her the moment she arrived home.

Starting the car, she pulled out of the parking lot and headed onto the paved road that ran by the academy campus. The house wasn't very far from the academy, about two miles from the main office building. It sat nestled in between a miniature neighborhood of houses all exactly like the other. The entire street was full of houses provided by the academy to the teachers working at the school, Ian being no exception. After she had graduated from the school, Ian had asked Farah to be his assistant in teaching the younger snipers. Farah had been his favorite from the beginning of her career at the academy; though she had experienced troubles with a majority of the techniques needed to become an FBI agent, she had excelled in Ian's sniping and rifle training class. Not long after becoming his assistant, Ian had invited her to be his partner on missions.

Farah pulled into the little garage attached to the house, turning off the car engine and hopping out. Her eyes were having a hard time staying open, eyelids heavy and drooping, as she walked into the house and immediately up the stairs to her room. Ian's room was downstairs, next to the master bathroom, kitchen, and small living room. Farah's second floor bedroom was small, but she was able to have her own little bathroom connected to the room. After deciding to stay in Quantico to help Ian, her mentor and partner had offered her a room in his academy-paid house, claiming that assistants weren't paid enough at the academy for her to afford a real apartment; Farah agreed, but figured that Ian was mostly bored living by himself.

Her room was quaint. It reminded Farah of a little log cabin with stained wooden walls and one window in the middle of the back wall. The walls were bare, aside from a few posters of the Dodgers hung up around the room, and her bed was neatly made with a little quilt folded at its foot.

A yawn alerted Farah that it would probably be a good idea to take a nap, so she threw her stuff down by the doorframe and all but fell onto the bed. She ached all over, but the moment her head hit the pillow it was as if everything was gone from her mind. The room spun into a pool of colors, her eyes falling closed as sleep overcame her and she entered dreamland.

Agent Don Eppes cursed. A couple of other agents on his team were eyeing the fallen body on the ground as if it had two heads. It wasn't as if they had never seen crime scenes like this before – in fact, they had seen much worse – but it was how the crime had taken place that put them on edge. From the looks of it, the man had been taken out by a single shot; a sniper most likely. It was clear to Don that his team had no idea what they were looking for. As it were, the majority of his agents had experienced little to no sniper training, so it was difficult to determine where the sniper had been positioned and what his possible motive for the numerous attacks might have been.

He sighed; this was one of the few cases where he couldn't call in his younger brother to help them out. Charlie was a genius, yes, but he had no clue when it came to guns. Charlie hated guns. Despised them. Charlie still had a hard time not glaring whenever Don mentioned him having to use his own gun in an operation. But Don tried to ignore it; Charlie hadn't been happy when Don had joined the FBI in the first place.

To this day, the brothers were still slightly on edge about the whole thing. If Don was honest with himself, he probably could have made more of an effort to keep in touch, to alert his brother about what was going on in his life. But it wasn't like Don was all to blame. Charlie didn't exactly make things easy, especially during one of his P vs. NP funks. But Don had to admit, to himself and not Charlie, that Charlie might have been one of the best things to happen to his team. Without his brother's work, Don was loath to think about how many more innocent people might have died before they could catch each criminal.

However, it seemed like this case would be an exception. Charlie's dislike of guns would limit his knowledge of the situation, and no matter how much his brother would despise him, Don knew he should probably call in an expert.

He took a couple of steps away from his team, keeping a close eye on their work as he took out his phone and dialed a number, It didn't take long for the recipient on the other end to pick up. "Agent Edgerton."

"Edgerton, this is Agent Eppes of the LA division. Would you be able to come in for assistance? There have been four murders so far by who we assume is a sniper."

"One of ours?"

Don shook his head before realizing that the other man couldn't see him. "No, we don't believe so."

A sigh. "A rogue." The man paused on the other end, of which Don assumed he was thinking about it. "Okay, I'll be there in the morning."

Farah woke up to a knocking on her door. She looked up to see that it was already opened, Ian standing in the middle of the doorway. "Vacation's over." Farah gave him a confused look; they had only been back for a couple of hours. "An Agent Eppes from the LA division requested help with a sniper case."

Farah sat up so quickly that she had to take a minute to steady herself. "Don?"

Ian raised his eyebrow in a questioning manner. "You know him?"

Farah's face heated up and she hoped to God that her partner wouldn't notice. She nodded, "Yeah, we grew up together. He, uh – he's one of my best friends. We haven't talked in a little while, but still."

Ian chuckled, and Farah felt her face heat up even more. If that was possible. "Just friends?"

She shrugged. "I might have had a slightly large crush on him growing up." Ian chuckled and Farah picked up a pillow to hide her tomato-red face, which only made Ian laugh harder. For being such a serious guy, Ian definitely managed to find no trouble laughing at his partner. "Shut up."

The older sniper rolled his eyes. "Get your bags ready, the plane leaves at 5:00 AM."