The Slip

by Tom C Willoughby

  The Professor’s mouth was frozen open in mid speech, dumbfounded as to what was happening. Sam made contact with his hand and transferred out of Li into the Professor. Sam seamlessly used what there was of the full force of the Professor’s sixty-plus year old body to bring an elbow back hard across Li’s face, knocking him backwards flat on his ass, tripping over his bound feet.

  Finally free, Commander Li shouted furiously at the men down the hallway to not let anyone through the door they faced. This order combined with the sight of Li being attacked and knocked down brought the full contingency of armed men running down the corridor yelling for everyone to freeze.

  Sam was already using the Professor’s handprint and code to open the door, which was unlocked by the time the group of what were now pursuers arrived, running and shouting.

  Sam muscled the door open, grabbed the frozen and confused Peng forcibly and shoved him through the door, then he followed and pulled it closed just as the bodies of the pursuers slammed into it from the other side.

  Sam, now in the Professor’s body, was having his second taste of the effects of age after the sheriff experience, and immediately felt much slower. On this side of the now re-locked door was an eight-foot square room with an elevator opposite the door they just came through, and what looked like a door to stairs on his right. Sam had seen the President taking the elevator and, following suit, pushed the only button present to call the elevator. The single button likely indicated that this elevator only went one way and that was down.

  “Please trust me Peng. I’ll explain everything, but for now we have to keep moving,” Sam said to Peng as they waited anxiously for the elevator.

  The muffled voices of the pursuers could be heard coming from the hall trying to get someone to open the door for them. Sam figured they had a couple minutes before they managed to get the door open by which time he would be in the data center with a plan materializing. Hopefully.

  52

  COMMANDER LI, FINALLY FREE OF the insufferable situation of having to watch uncontrollably as the Slip manipulated his body and thwarted him at every turn, now stoked his fury into a steady burn. He was back in control and ready to use the considerable tools at his disposable to start hunting the demon that was in their midst. Why did the demon come here, what was so important about the data center here? Li wondered. Had he tried to comb through Sam’s thoughts he might have obtained the answers to these questions. As was one of his gifts, Li took the long view and set his goal not on stopping the immediate sabotage that was being attempted but on figuring out how to apprehend this demon and put an end to this once and for all. The special forces would handle the immediate issue at hand, and they were not under Li’s command anyway.

  What time was it? Li intended to make that call to the President, but how would he explain what was happening? The situation was beyond belief; he would not have believed it himself had he not directly experienced the demon’s intrusion into his own mind. One step at a time, Li, he reminded himself.

  The special forces were focused on getting the door open and trampled Li inadvertently in their haste. Li grabbed one of the men’s legs and told him to unlock the immobilizing cuffs. The special forces were not accustomed to arresting people and did not carry handcuffs or the keys to unlock them. Clearly he was not their priority, and the soldier moved to rejoin his comrades after indicating he didn't have keys. Li grabbed the soldier’s shirt keeping him from standing up and told him to get a key from the security personnel in the office down the hall. They locked eyes as the soldier wrestled with the affront of taking orders from this unknown person. Li’s steely stare won out and the soldier put up his hands acquiescing. Li held his shirt a few seconds longer for good measure before dismissing him with a gruff release.

  The soldier returned quickly and Li took the keys without looking at him, the soldier now an afterthought. Unlocking the ankle cuffs, Li was struck by an idea of how to track the demon and hopefully capture it. Standing up, he began walking back down the hallway.

  53

  THE ELEVATOR DOORS SLID OPEN revealing a small room with a window opposite the elevator through which was visible a vast data center. Set into the window wall was a secured door to access the data center. To the right was a corridor along which the window wall continued. The long window wall showcased the countless aisles of racked equipment within the data center.

  Sam’s primary target was the Dragonfly operations control room which was a much smaller room than the data center in front of him per the President’s memories. He started down the hall on the right which had to lead to the additional rooms on this level beside the data center itself. Just as Sam started down the corridor, a door 20 feet farther ahead flew open on the wall side of the corridor. The armed pursuers from above started pouring into the hallway.

  Shit, Sam thought, that must be where the stairs connected from above to this level. He had been counting on a little bit more time and now he was cut off and pinned against the elevator. Professor Chan must have full access to this facility, Sam thought and quickly retraced his steps toward the elevator with Peng in tow. The soldiers spotted them and their boots echoed as they started in their direction.

  Sam identified the card Chan kept on a retractable wire clipped to his belt which he pulled out and used to unlock the door to the data center. Peng look at him, conflicted thoughts evident on his face. Sam gave him his best reassuring look as he ushered him into the room and slammed the door closed just as the pursuers arrived. It was noticeably colder in the data center and Sam paused, watching the soldiers bang on the glass and pull on the locked door, helpless without a key. Sam started running inside the data center, paralleling the corridor, passing the armed pursuers watching them from the opposite side of the glass.

  Sam heard gunfire behind them and the sound of glass hitting the floor. It appeared they were in a much more serious pursuit scenario now. Shouts filled the air and the remaining soldiers on the opposite side of the glass started running in the same direction as Sam and Peng and quickly passed them as Professor Chan’s body really only allowed a quick jog. Sam assumed they were intending to surround them from behind and also cut them off by entering the data center room from a point farther down the hallway.

  The group yelled at them through the broken door to stop and put their hands in the air.

  Taking two seconds to think Sam realized he would have to engage with the pursuers in the data center. He changed direction, and ran down the aisle in front of him, perpendicular to the corridor, into the rows of equipment.

  54

  LI MANAGED TO TAKE COMMAND of the Security Control room easily and had the two men pulling up images at his command. These men were part of the Central Security Bureau the same as Li, and he outranked them. He instructed the operators to use the cameras to keep track of anyone resisting the pursuers, even if the people resisting changed periodically. The two men looked at Li strangely for a moment at his choice of words. There was no way Li could explain what they were up against, they would see for themselves shortly. Li’s mind was working overtime to identify a way to contain the demon, or if he had to, to destroy it.

  A screen showed Peng and the Professor’s back as they turned down an equipment aisle and then disappeared from view as the camera angle was cutoff. One of the security men pointed to another screen which had picked Peng and the Professor up again. This camera was at the opposite end of the aisle and showed them running towards it, still at a distance but closing.

  The special forces had found the second data center entrance and were coming from both ends of the room. The two groups of soldiers ran towards each other along the window wall shared with the corridor. A soldier was sent down each new equipment aisle they passed and Li watched as the two groups thinned as they approached each other. They were canvassing every path in the data center. There was no way Peng and the Professor could stay hidden for long.

  From the various camera angles Li could see a crossing aisle a
t the center of the room cutting through the innumerable rows of equipment racks. That made three aisles running the length of the room in parallel to the exterior corridor. One was immediately adjacent to the corridor and separated by the glass wall. This was the path the soldier groups were using. Another corridor was on the opposite side of the room where the equipment racks all ended, and then there was the one in the middle of the room bisecting all the equipment racks.

  There were motion sensors controlling the lights which created a strobe effect as the men moved down the aisles activating the lights. This made it more difficult to track Peng and the demon with the distracting flashes emanating from the various displays in the security room.

  The screen where Peng and Chan had last been seen went blank. Li yelled at the men to find where they went and the three of them scanned the monitors furiously.

  Lights continued to blink on as the special forces marched down their aisles, now past the perpendicular cross aisle at the midway point.

  The light trail Peng and Chan had left behind in their aisle had switched back off. The motion sensors were set up to turn on automatically and then to also turn off quickly unless one of the manual switches was activated. Data centers were such energy hogs that inclusion of these types of energy saving devices was standard procedure and a minuscule cost as compared to the larger complexities of these facilities. As the men now in the data center were not aware of the manual switches, they were followed around by bubbles of light as the darkness reclaimed itself almost as quickly as it appeared along their paths. It was as if they were in a cave carrying a torch.

  Peng and Chan’s disappearance had to mean they had stopped moving. Li knew why they would have done this but the special forces would not. This was where things would get interesting.

  55

  CROUCHED DOWN AT THE END of an aisle, side by side in the darkness, Sam whispered through Professor Chan to Peng, “I am very sorry for the trouble I got you in back at ZG, that was not my intent, and now understanding what a good person you are I feel even worse. I brought you on this endeavor in the hope that I would find a way to repair the damage that I have done to your position with the Central Security Bureau and with Commander Kung. I think you might sense that my purpose here is to pursue justice and that my intentions are not bad. Either way I need to ask you to try to protect Professor Chan and take him to safety in a couple moments.”

  Peng did not respond and they both returned to silence resting their heads back against the equipment supports that they were crouched against. The racks of equipment that separated the walkway aisles were approximately six feet wide, and Sam was hoping they would remain out of the soldiers’ line of sight when the lights around them turned on, at least long enough that he could transition.

  There was a slight hum emitted by the lights as they turned on, and it was this sound that Sam could hear getting nearer as the soldiers made their way toward their position. Their protective shroud of darkness began to lift in increments of grey as the illumination got closer and bled with the darkness, continuously eroding its depth until finally the soldiers were close enough that Sam could hear their shoes on the floor.

  It appeared they were favoring silence over speed probably feeling they had their quarry cornered which, in essence, they did. As did he, if all went right.

  As far as Sam could determine, the soldiers in the aisles on either side of their position were approaching at roughly the same rate, judging by the positions of the receding lines of darkness on the floor at the end of each aisle, which eventually would combine and disappear.

  “Stay hidden here, don’t move. I will lead our pursuers in the other direction and hopefully you can get to one of the exits. If you follow along the perimeter of the room you should be safe,” Sam said. Sam couldn’t be sure what Peng would do or if he believed what he was telling him. But he was out of time and had to trust his gut about Peng.

  When Sam felt the soldiers were close enough to almost see them around the corner of the equipment, he stood and walked out into one of the aisles with his arms raised straight up to surrender.

  Startled, the soldier yelled, “Stop,” as he brought his weapon up and halted his forward progress.

  The soldier was six feet away and Sam raised his hands and slowed his gait but kept moving towards the soldier as he said, “I am here, I surrender.”

  “Where is the soldier who was with you?” the soldier asked brusquely looking from side to side. He was more worried about the soldier than an old professor, which ordinarily would be the right approach.

  Now three feet away, Sam slowed again slightly but not completely. He held his arms out in front of him as if waiting for cuffs. “I don’t know. We went different ways,” Sam said.

  The soldier motioned with his rifle for the Professor to move towards the exit where they had come from.

  The instant the rifle was pointed away from him, Sam lunged the remaining 2.5 feet and grabbed the soldier’s wrist just below his uniform sleeve. The soldier was caught off guard, not suspecting an old professor to attack an armed soldier and instantaneously Sam was in.

  Leaving the Professor’s body behind, it was good to feel the strength of this young and fit soldier’s body. “Go back with Peng,” Sam directed the Professor as he flicked off the rifle’s safety. The old man stumbled backward, blinked and then turned to go as directed.

  Might as well start the destruction here. Sam moved quickly back down the aisle away from Peng and the Professor, pointed the rifle at the racks of equipment separating him from the soldier on the other side, and pulled the trigger strafing the equipment as he moved.

  56

  SHARP FLASHES OF LIGHT BROUGHT Li’s attention back to the monitor on his left followed closely by the muffled sounds of gunfire which barely made it up to his ears from the floors below.

  He could see one of the soldiers firing into the machinery either trying to destroy the equipment or shoot someone on the other side.

  Li had lost his sense of positional awareness within the data center. The soldiers all looked the same in their uniforms and the equipment was an endless monotony of black and silver metal. There were aisle numbers visible at times on the floor and at either end but otherwise no unique identifiers.

  The monitors in the security room automatically displayed the camera images where they sensed motion. The disorienting rotation of camera views combined with the muzzle flashes and lights turning on and off created a stroboscopic stop motion display. The soldiers were patrons in a macabre night club from which not everyone was going to leave.

  Li glanced nervously at his watch, it was 7:37, he was more than 20 minutes late for his call with the President. There wasn’t going to be a good time and he couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Keep track of anyone resisting,” Li barked to the officers as he got up from his chair.

  He left the security office and found a quiet corner on the 2nd floor where he dialed the President’s encrypted direct line.

  “Li, what is happening? Why are you late calling me? I am getting reports that special forces have engaged an enemy in the data center,” the President said as soon as the line connected.

  “Yes, sir, that is correct. I have taken control of the security office where I can see everything that is happening in the data center.” Li paused to collect his thoughts, he was not sure how the President would react to the truth of the situation, but he saw no other path forward and took a step over the ledge.

  “Sir, I am not sure why this location is of interest to the enemy, but I need to tell you something about what we are dealing with.”

  Silence on the other end didn’t help to calm Li’s nerves as he continued and finished his leap, no ground beneath him now.

  “I’m not sure how to describe it, but the enemy is not a person…well, he…it…might be a person but it does not have a body, at least that I know of. What I’m trying to say is it enters other people’s minds and bodies and takes them ove
r. It sounds crazy, and I would not have believed it if it had not happened to me. This DEMON, took control of my own body in order to leave ZG and only just released me before continuing down to the data center.”

  Li held his breath waiting for the President’s words.

  57

  CONFUSION WAS SAM’S FRIEND AT this point so he started to shoot out the lights in addition to the machinery as he travelled down the aisle now approaching the midpoint marked by the crossroads of the perpendicular aisle.

  Unable to see through the equipment racks, the other soldiers could not identify who was shooting but knew by the sound of the weapon it was one of theirs.

  The equipment was sending off sparks and there were now swaths where indicator lights were no longer showing life. Without any other sign of damage, it was hard to be sure how successful the shoot’em up approach was. As soon as this thought entered his mind, he became aware of two light grenades that he and all special forces carried on their belts. Bullets were good, but explosives were better. He grinned and pulled one of the canisters off his belt, squeezed the trigger down and pulled the pin.

  58

  LI WAS WATCHING A MONITOR with a camera view looking at the shooter from the end of the aisle. He could see two soldiers round the midpoint aisle corner 10 feet away from the shooter who Li assumed was possessed by the demon. The 2 soldiers were partially blocked from view, but they were clearly agitated and yelling at the demon who dropped something, and then the screen went blank followed by a muffled boom.