Fantasia Paranoia

Chapter 1

Kumail hit the enter key on two separate keyboards with such force that he broke one. The enter key he had punched with his right hand was now stuck in its depressed state, but that didn't matter. The program had started successfully and Kumail had moved onto the next computer, grabbing a small zip file off his desk and jamming it into his secondary laptop. He hit a few buttons to initiate the file transfer and he moved on.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

He couldn't find his main laptop. Trolling through his mind, reaching for the location, after a fevered moment, it came to him; the bedroom, he had left it in the bedroom!

He scrambled across his apartment, between the myriad computers, all now executing purges and self-destruct sequences, grabbed his laptop off of his bed, nearly yanked the electrical socket out of the wall along with the charger, stuffed both things into his backpack and ran back into the main room.

He stopped for a moment, gazing in horror out his window and across the way as even more SWAT team members forced their way into his friend's apartment. How much time did that leave him? He needed to leave, now, before his apartment was breached, if it wasn't being breached already. He whipped his head towards his front door, but it remained steadfastly on its hinges. Kumail was all right. For now. But he had to get out of there.

He kneeled down behind the first computer, clawed off a small piece of plastic from the back panel and flipped the switch he had installed there. A small pop and a flash from inside the case and he moved on to the next one. Three computers later and he was done. He stood up, again, looking frantically to the door as he patted himself down.

Keys? Yes. Phone, check. Laptop was in the backpack? Totally. But he was missing something. And he knew he was missing something. But what could it be?

He couldn't remember. And he didn't have time. He had to leave before anyone entered his apartment. Fuck it.

He ran to the window and just as he was putting his foot through to the fire escape platform on the other side he let out a yelp. The flash drive!

He threw himself violently away from the window, and towards the desk his former secondary laptop was sitting on, ripped the flash drive from its socket and throwing one last frightened look at the door, he turned and left through the window, leaving it open in his rush to flee the scene.

A short while later and he was fighting the urge to bolt, walking down the street and away from his apartment, as slow as he could force himself to go and as fast as he could dare to allow. Every so often and much to his own chagrin, he would turn to look back towards his now former home and attempt a stealthy glimpse of what was going on. Each time Kumail did so he became even more unnerved. His apartment seemed to be perfectly fine.

There were no flash bangs blowing out the windows, there was no shouting accompanied by the sounds of heavy laden men in military boots storming in, nor was there any sign that much of anything at all was transpiring on his side of the block. Why would they raid his neighbor when he had the largest cache of info? Why would they bother to raid one political opponents home when there was another one less than 700 ft. across the way?

This thought terrified him, but he couldn't let that stop him. He had to keep going and act like nothing was wrong. Even if they were trying to force him into giving up his peers they were out of luck there. As far as Kumail was aware, only one other person that was there had managed to successfully escape arrest and was currently being captured in that apartment on the other side of the block. So there was no problem there. But if they somehow were not following him, and by some twist of fate the Police had absolutely NO IDEA that Kumail had been living across the street, he couldn't risk making a scene so close to a bunch of Cops and end up getting himself arrested. Plus, if they were now tailing him in force with the intent to detain him, at this point, alone and on the run with only his laptop, his cell phone, and a flash drive in his bag there was very little he could do to stop them, although it would not be for want of trying.