Disclaimer: I don't own the show Numb3rs, but I borrowed its characters and themes from its episodes to create this piece of fiction, in which any names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously
Rating: T
Timeline: team from season two, AU: Charlie hasn't been working for Don's team
A/N: I hadn't intended to write this, or rather, I had intended not to write this, since I thought it to be a little too off-canon. But apparently, I've become addicted to writing such stuff, so sorry, I can't help it.

Chapter 1: Long Time No See

As he was scanning the building before them, Don was chewing on his gum, which had become hard and inelastic some time ago. By now, it had lost all its flavor, but that didn't matter, that was, in fact, the way Don needed it to be. Nothing was supposed to divert his attention in a situation like this, when they were about to carry out a raid, all he needed was an outlet for his nervous energy, and that was a purpose that the tasteless gum was serving perfectly.

"We're ready," Jake Atkins, the commander of the SWAT unit, informed him over the radio

With a glance towards Megan, his second-in-command, Don made sure that they too were ready to go. A single nod told him that they were. One last time, he went over the checklist in his head, making sure that they'd covered all angles, for he knew: they could not allow themselves to make a mistake today.

According to their informants, the group was holding a meeting right now, so they assumed that most of them were assembled in the great hall in the back of the building, on the east side. They were guarding all the exits and entrances and had surrounded the building so that nobody could escape without their knowledge. Granted, they had had to use an immense amount of manpower to do that, but it was worth it, for the group they were dealing with was a ticking bomb that they had to diffuse while there was still time to do so. True, at first glance, they seemed like your average group of eco-activists, but Don and his team had come to suspect them of being far less harmless than that, namely a homegrown terrorist cell prepared to further their agenda by any means possible. The fact that worried the agents even more though was that lately, the group had been in contact with shady people – people that were closely linked to foreign terrorist cells of a whole different level.

The case had started out far smaller than that. A local oil company had reported attacks against them committed by this rather small organization called 'Life's Matter'. There had been some minor vandalism, then threats (delivered through what they'd called a 'manifesto') and then the group had actually tampered with the company's electricity supply, bringing it to a standstill for a period of almost thirty-six hours. When Don and his team had investigated further though, they had discovered that this was but the tip of the iceberg. While they still didn't have a clear picture of the organization as a whole and could only estimate that it had between a hundred and five hundred members, they did know some of the people connected to this group, whom they had then taken a closer look at. During this investigation, they had discovered the more troublesome links to known terrorist cells in the Middle East, and that was when this case had gotten big, so big that they were now surrounding this building with several dozen agents from SWAT.

They assumed that there were about thirty people inside, most likely the hard-core followers of this group, and thus a number that with all the agents present, they could handle well. The problem was that they couldn't be sure how much resistance the activists would offer. They simply knew far too little about this group as though they could have said for certain whether they had to expect to walk into an armory of guns or into a trap that was spiked with explosives. But that couldn't be helped, they just had to take this opportunity when they were offered it, so all that was left for them to do was be on their guard.

"Alright, let's do this," Don said and within seconds, they had closed in on the place and were edging forward, towards the great hall in the east, while some of the agents kept surrounding the place and going through the north and south end of the building.

The moment they burst open the doors to the hall, chaos ensued, but it was a chaos that Don could master, it was one of their own making. The activists though were shouting and shrieking with shock and surprise, struggling to understand what was happening to them. Most of them were still quite young, probably students, and they were lacking the calm and worldly wisdom that comes with age and that, maybe, would have enabled them to cope with this situation better. As it was, however, most of their suspects hadn't turned thirty yet, and they were reacting to the sudden disturbance either with a hysterical form of panic or with a form of naive indignation and attempts at putting up resistance.

Within seconds, Don and his fellow agents had obtained control over the people in this room, even though some of them were still struggling against the police force.

"Where is your warrant?" one of the activists in Don's vicinity protested, struggling against the grip of the SWAT agent holding him down. "You can't be doing this without a warrant! We have rights!"

The agent was just about to pull a taser from his belt when Don held him back. "I don't think that'll be necessary," he said and instead pulled the warrant from his pocket, holding it under the nose of the man who had to be one of the older ones in the group, for he had to be in his thirties, if not forties. "Here's our warrant," he answered the question that he very well knew had been rhetorical, and indeed, the man's struggling abated while he was trying to read the text in front of his eyes, which couldn't be an easy task while being pressed to the floor.

Suddenly, the commotion that in the meanwhile had been taking place only a couple of yards to Don's right was growing more vehement.

"Let go of me!" a girl shrieked. She had to be in her early twenties, and her long, blonde hair was in disarray, several strands hanging across her face. "You have no right to do this! Ouch!"

The SWAT agent that had been trying to calm her down had pinned her on the floor and was kneeling on her legs. He tore her arms on her back and cuffed her, but that only amplified her resistance.

"The rooms on the north front are all clear," Megan told him, turning his attention away from the protests around them that were slowly dying down. "They found four more suspects in one of the rooms on the south front, they're taking them outside as we speak."

Don nodded and, when he saw that everything was under control in this hall as well, gave a small sigh of relief. This had gone remarkably well, there hadn't even been a single shot fired.

"Alright, guys!" he called out to his colleagues as he stepped towards a young man who was being held down by another member of the SWAT unit, one who had instantly caught Don's attention when they had entered the hall, someone who had been occupying a more prominent position in the room and was sticking out by his whole demeanor on top of that. "Let's take them away one by one!"

To the young man he'd approached and that he was now pulling up at his arm, he said, "And I suggest we start with you." Given that the guy had been the one speaking to the crowd when they had entered, he was likely to hold some kind of pertinent role within the group.

"This is unlawful oppression, you're restricting our human rights!" the young man protested as Don took him over from the SWAT agent, and Don rolled his eyes. He'd heard the speech before. "You're just following the orders of a despotic group of powerful people that want to shut us up, but you can't keep the truth buried forever!"

"Remember you have the right to remain silent," Don reminded him. "Now would be a good time to exercise that right. You can save it all for the interrogation."

While Megan stayed behind to make sure everything was going its due course, Don brought his prisoner outside. When he stepped out of the building, the suspect before him, he cursed inwardly. He was squinting against the low evening sun, that was something they should have taken into account before doing the raid, for it was an added risk. Luckily though, his prisoner seemed to be all talk, for now that Don had him in a pretty effective hold, he'd ceased to fight back.

"Don!" David called out towards him from one of the vans. "These are the ones we picked up in the south front. Should we keep them separated from the rest?"

In the shadows of the vans, the four men were kneeling on the ground with their backs towards him, their hands cuffed and guns pointed at their heads. Don thought for a second, doing the calculations. They should have enough space and personnel to keep them separated, just in case. "It's probably better if we do," he therefore told David.

At that moment, he noticed out of the corners of his eyes that one of the four kneeling suspects was turning his head around towards him, and he froze. He looked harder, almost certain that he was mistaken, but even with the less than optimal light conditions, he knew those eyes far too well as though he could be wrong about this. Yet, he just didn't understand.

What the hell was Charlie doing here?