CHAPTER FOUR: Guns and Gas Leaks

TAMANA Minajri ran up the steps of the stairwell leading to the Sri Padmavati-the university's girls hostels and burst through the door of her hostel, slamming it shut then throwing herself face first onto the white covers of her bed. That was when she finally let it all out.

The covers began to get soaked with tears as she cried her heart out, her voice coming out muffled and breaking through sobs. She had never felt such pain. Such torment.

Tamana must have wept for nearly an hour and would have gone on forever when a distinct beeping sound broke through her anguish. Given her current state, she would have ignored this had she not instantly recognized that very sound.

Forcing herself to sit up, Tamana found her glasses that had been buried somewhere under the covers. She put them on, ignoring her then wet face. Everything came into focus, particularly the worktable near her bed where a laptop lay closed. Her second laptop. The beeping sound was coming from it.

Apparently, Tamana had set up different notification sounds for different people in her life and this particular one was the one she had set for her father's messages. Suddenly, there was a slight glimmer of hope gradually glowing within her broken heart. Her father had sent her a message. Maybe there was a chance he was not. . .

Tamana held on to that thought, quietly sobbing as she opened her laptop. A bunch of messages immediately popped up on her desktop: End of term thesis report on Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology; Immunology CAT reminder; Three new emails, Instagram pop-ups-she gasped, tracing the cursor back to the emails. One of them was tagged Akshay, her father's name.

She quickly clicked on it and the message opened up in a new window. Though it was hardly a message.

To the One that 1 love most in the world,

If only I could Reverse all the moments with you.

Take care and know whom to trust.

The message made tears well back in her eyes. Whether it was the fact that her father had sent her a last farewell or it was how he had always been so bad at typing; the two crushed Tamana's spirit even more.

The time stamp for the email revealed that the message had been delivered at around four in the morning. She had received the tragic news of her father's passing many hours later. But that was not the end of it. Further down the message was a document attached.

Tamana quickly clicked on it, her heart now palpitating. She still had hope that there could have been something wrong somewhere.

The result momentarily drew her away from her grief and plunged her into confusion. Instead of a new window popping up after clicking on the document, another message appeared. At first, Tamana assumed it was an error message, which read:

Message will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Remote transfer requested!

Self-destruct? Tamana was lost. Then a timer actually popped up after the message. A thousand scenarios then began to play over in her mind. Her father had managed to send her information about his "supposed" death? Maybe it was a secret location about his whereabouts after he had faked his death? She wanted to believe anything that did not involve her father losing his life. The timer was still counting down. Only twenty seconds left.

She forced herself to calm down, recalling the second message. A remote transfer. She remembered how her father liked to copy down all of his work on separate devices other than his work computers. She also did this, saving all her school work on external drives in case her laptop crashed.

This led her to her backpack. She opened it and rummaged through until she found what she was looking for. A black hard drive.

Now, Tamana had never been that big of a movie buff but she suddenly had a terrifying image of her laptop exploding when the timer hit zero, just like in a certain Mission Impossible film where encoded messages would self-destruct. She couldn't quite remember which movie exactly but was certain Tom Cruise was in it-she digressed. She connected her hard drive to the laptop and the document her father had sent her was already in the middle of transfer.

Tamana stepped away from the laptop, unsure of what would happen when the timer ran out. The document was already transferred when the timer hit the fifth second then counted down to zero. Tamana flinched, covering her face and awaiting a deafening blast but all she heard was a tiny radioed sound.

She dared to look. No laptop blown up or anything. Tamana silently cursed. No wonder she never liked watching too many movies-she had Priya to blame for that.

She approached the laptop and was shocked to find the message her father had sent her to be gone, as if it had deleted itself. All that was left was a blank inbox page. Even her father's sender address was nowhere to be seen.

Turning to the hard drive, Tamana was about to click on the device and access whatever it is that she had currently transferred there when there came a knock on her hostel door.

Tamana closed her laptop, wiped her tears and headed for the door. Upon opening it, she was met by a strange sight of a man wearing grey overalls and a gray cap that was not doing any favors for his thick afro-like hair that was just as overgrown as his beard. He had on a bag hanging across his chest and a tool belt strapped to his waist.

"Hello Miss," the man spoke and Tamana could tell he was white, though his accent was hard to place-somewhere between American and British, "Sorry to disturb you at such short notice but there's been reports of gas leaks in the hostels."

"What?" Tamana raised an eyebrow, "in here?"

"I know," the man said, "Maintenance called it in. Just a routine check. I have to check out the entire block to make sure. Here."

He handed Tamana a sheet of laminated paper which she scrutinized and found it to be a request from the university's fire and safety department. Convinced, she handed the paper back and let the gas company guy inside.

Tamana ignored her guest and her previous thoughts came flooding back into her mind. Her father was really dead. It had actually happened earlier that day, several thousand miles away from her. She remembered the last time they had spoken. Barely two weeks ago when he had promised to take a break from work and the two would go on vacation probably somewhere in Greece or even in the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland-where her father had been working for the past fifteen years. This would have happened in the following month of August when Tamana would finish her second semester. But not anymore. . .

She felt the tears again. Her father had sent her one final message almost as if . . . Tamana snapped, pulling her mind back to the present. The message! Why had her father mentioned about trust? Suddenly, new thoughts began to take over, which was a habit she had acquired both from watching her father work and while working with biochemical equations and DNA structures. Theories would always spring up.

This led her to turn to her laptop. She rushed over to it right before the gas company guy appeared from the kitchen to catch her slip something dark inside her jeans pocket.

"You're good here," he said with a smile, "nothing to worry about."

"Oh, that's great to hear," Tamana responded, her voice coming out an octane higher, apparently getting a weird sense of dread. But why?

"I guess I should be on my way then," the gas company guy turned to the door.

"Yes, of-" Tamana's voice caught, "of course."

Her heart rate increased. Why was she feeling this way?

Well, the answer presented itself almost immediately. The gas company guy grabbed at the door handle but instead of pulling it open, he gently pushed, locking the door until there was a click!

The clicking sound silenced everything else in the hostel, replacing it with an overwhelming ominousness. Tamana swallowed, trying hard to keep her heart from going up her mouth as the gas company guy slowly turned to face her.

"Wha-what are you doing?"

The gas company guy approached her, his dark eyes barely visible under the cap. Tamana reared until the small of her back was against her worktable.

The gas company guy stopped less than a foot away from her, briefly taking his eyes off of her, directing them to the laptop then back to her. He then moved so fast that Tamana barely had time to stifle a yelp before she was flung onto the bed.

She was about to scream to the heavens when there was another clicking sound.

"Try that and see how fast it'll take me to pull this trigger!" the man said coolly, aiming a gun at Tamana's head, point blank.

Tamana felt the scream wither away in her throat, her grey eyes wide with terror as she stared at the weapon's muzzle.

She watched as the man opened her laptop and the email window popped up.

"Where is it?" the man growled, still staring at Tamana's laptop screen.

"W-Where is what?" Tamana whimpered.

The man turned, his eyes having grown even darker.

"Don't fuck with me, kid! I know he sent it to you!"

"I s-swear, I don't know what you're t-talking-"

"Bullshit!" the man spat, roaring in Tamana's face and held the gun directly in front of her forehead.

Tamana flinched, her face wet with tears once more. She knew she could not keep this up. The man would find it eventually.

"Smart girl, huh?" the man whispered, his face twisting with a smile and Tamana's fears came true. "You copied it, didn't you?"

Tamana was thinking of a way to respond when something caught her eye.

"Alright, out with it, kid! I know it's in your pocket!"

The man cocked the gun and Tamana shivered. She complied by dipping her hand into her right pocket, deliberately taking her time to pull out the drive.

"Hurry up!"

Tamana finally took out the drive.

"That's a good girl!"

The man held out his gloved hand as Tamana handed the drive with a trembling hand. Whether the trembling had been intended or not, it made her drop the drive. The man cursed and followed it with his eyes as it hit the floor. It was a split-second reaction but it had been more than enough for Tamana to draw the large monkey wrench hanging from the gas company guy's toolbelt and brought it up sharply, knocking the gun free from his grip before the wrench connected with his bearded jaw with a reassuring crunch!

The scene became one of total chaos: the sound of a gunshot, the gas company guy howling in pain and staggering backwards; Tamana restoring the drive back into her pocket and shooting up from the bed.

She almost made it to the door, monkey wrench still in hand when she was viciously yanked back by the arm and face-to-face with her assailant.

Tamana would have been pleased by how much damage she had actually done with that little stunt had what she was then looking at not scared her shitless.

The gas company guy's cap had fallen off together with his afro. A wig. His natural hair-or rather her natural hair-dark brown, was tightly pulled back and tied up into a bun at the back. Her face was even scarier than the disguise she had taken up before. Her eyes were darker, piercing, contrasting greatly with her pale complexion which reddened at the base of her chin where a slight cut was visible. The fake beard was parted and hung loosely to one side, making her appearance even more horrendous.

Tamana tried to swing the wrench at her face but her gender-transformed attacker caught at it, snapping Tamana's wrist. The pain shot up her arm like an electrical surge as the wrench clattered to the floor. The attacker gripped at her jaw, making it difficult to open her mouth and yell out the pain. She was immensely strong. Her eyes glared down into Tamana's like two fiery orbs of black fire, willing her into submission.

"You little shit!" the attacker hissed, her voice now miraculously feminine but with a faint European accent to it, "you're lucky he needs you alive but that doesn't mean I can't break-"

There was a knock at the door. Louder than how the attacker had done earlier in her disguise.

Tamana tried to scream for help but her jaw was held like a vice. The door handle was already turning.

"Tam! Tam, what's going on in there?" Priya was about to open the door.

She would get hurt or worse. Tamana tried to wriggle free. Her attacker dragged her, stooping to pick up her gun and Tamana attempted a kick, getting her in the left shin. Her attacker growled and her grip loosened. Tamana took this chance and bolted for the door, crashing into her best friend on the way out and they both fell on the porch.

Ganesh, Ranjit and several other students hurried over to them.

"Tam! What?" Priya, dumbfounded, turned to her, helping both of them get up, "Tam-"

"She's-gasp-she's in there! She's trying to-sob-kill me! She-"

"Hey! Hey! Tam! Calm down-"

"No! You don't. . .the killer-" Tamana was delirious, unable to control herself.

Ganesh charged inside the hostel.

"No! Don't!" Tamana cried.

Inside, no killer was found. No cap with a wig, no wrench or gun. Nothing.

"But we did hear a gunshot," Ranjit offered.

"Tam, you're okay now, alright?" Priya said softly, trying to comfort Tamana who was still shaking and wide-eyed.

"Security's on its way," one student said and almost immediately, someone had pushed his way through the crowd and rushed past Ganesh into the hostel.

"There's no one here, sir," Ganesh said, failing to wonder since when did their school security wear suits.

The man was tall, a worried look on his face as he noticed a rounded crack on the opposite wall where a bullet had lodged itself then to the pulled up window where the attacker had escaped through. He did not think it would happen this early. But the attacker was not his immediate concern at the moment. He walked out of the hostel and stood before Tamana.

"You are not safe here anymore, Tam," the man addressed her and she would have been surprised as to how a security guard knew her name but by the casualness of how he had said it-not to mention the familiarity of his voice and of course, his face-Tamana instantly recognized him.

With the wipe of a tear and a sob, Tamana Minajri looked up at him and uttered, "Uncle?"