Clearly, the school is surrounded by police.  The police can't rush the building, because we're hostages.  We can't escape, because we're mostly very old folks.  The gunmen can't escape, because they're surrounded.  With luck, the gunmen will settle for an escape vehicle and a few hostages.  Getting an escape vehicle for the gunmen will take time!  With a little time perhaps my son will arrive.  With time, there's some hope for us.  Best of all, we have to go to the bathroom!  We're all seniors (except for me) and we can't last too long without a trip to the bathroom.  Once the guards allow restroom trips, there are people up and down the hall and lots of confusion.  The more confusion, the better.  My son knows how to use confusion to his advantage.

The minutes pass like hours.  I expect the gunmen to start shooting hostages at any moment.  However, there's nothing I can do but wait.

* * *

Lucifer drives the car that he has stolen as close as he can get to the school.  Once he encounters the police barricades, he abandons the car and just walks away from it.  Then he moves in, on foot, until the police would have stopped him.  However, Lucifer simply moves back a bit, ducks behind a truck and transfers into a higher-dimensional space.  To a three-dimensional observer, Lucifer just disappears into thin air.

Multi-dimensional Lucifer can't actually exist in 3-D space.  However, a sort of shadow of Lucifer can exist in 3-D space.  The 3-D shadow is, for most intents and purposes, a fully functional 3-D being.  True, the shadow doesn't quite seem to exist to 3-D people, appearing as a sort of dim, not-quite-there form.  However, the form can move independently in 3-D space and manipulate objects in 3-D space.  Of course, Lucifer can see from higher-dimensional space into 3-D space.  This last is very useful to Lucifer.

Lucifer covers the remaining distance to the school in higher-dimensional space.  The walls and roof of the school are, of course, no barrier to Lucifer, in higher-dimensional space.  Lucifer moves into position in higher dimensional space.  Then Lucifer moves from higher dimensional space into the 3-D corridor of the school.  In front of him is an armed man that he has seen from the higher dimensional space.  The bored man is watching the steady stream of old people shuffling back and forth to the bathroom.  The bored man's back is to Lucifer.

The 3-D shadow of Lucifer moves in and hits the man near the base of the skull with the butt of a hatchet.  The man goes down without a sound.  Working quickly, Lucifer drags the man back into a stub hallway and strings up the still living body with a length of wire about the man’s neck.  The hanged man twitches a few times and then dies, due to a lack of oxygen.  Lucifer quickly rifles the man’s pockets and also removes a wristwatch and a ring from the corpse.  He also retains the man’s rifle and a pistol the man had carried in a belt holster.  With no ceremony, Lucifer then moves back into higher dimensional space.  To a 3-D observer in the hall, Lucifer just disappears!

Lucifer then reappears behind the guard in one of the rooms.  As before, Lucifer hits the man near the base of the skull with the butt of a hatchet.  The second man goes down without a sound.

* * *

I see the shadowy form that's my son!  I get up and tell the old people.  “Stay calm!  The shadowy figure you see is my son.  He won't harm you.  He'll harm the gunmen who have us captive.  If you stay calm and don't make a sound, we'll all get out of this mess.  Again, stay calm and stay quiet!”

The old people are scared out of their minds.  However, they're too old to run and too weak and/or sick to even sustain a full scale panic for long.  So they just wait and don't start running around in a panic.

The shadowy figure drags the unconscious man out of the room and down the stub hallway that contains the corpse of the first man.  A second figure shortly hangs by a wire about his neck, joining the first corpse, in death.  As before, Lucifer relieves the new corpse of valuables and weapons.

From the door of the room, I watch Lucifer take care of business.  Lucifer may kill with skill and savagery, but Lucifer never forgets the bottom line.

As the shadowy figure finishes the grisly work he motions to me and then points.  It seems he wants me to go into the second room.

Okay, Lucifer wants me to go into the second room.  Lucifer must have scanned the other room from wherever it is that he goes when he disappears.  There will be only one guard in the other room.  If I can get the guard’s full attention, Lucifer can strike with no danger to the old people.  I don't like the idea of exposing myself to danger, but then again Lucifer is very efficient,  There's probably no real danger here, or so I tell myself.

Lucifer disappears again.  I wait a few moments, then walk in to the room that Lucifer had pointed to.  I sort of wiggle to a stop in front of the gunman and slowly pull my skirt up until gun boy has a good view of my pantyhose.  I hope he got a real eyeful of my underwear, because it's the last thing he ever saw.

Lucifer suddenly appears behind the man I'm distracting and hits him with something.  The man goes down hard and it doesn't appear that he'll get up again, ever.

Lucifer then motions for me to get the old people out and down the hallway.  The path leads past where he's hanged a couple of corpses.  As good as Lucifer is at what he does, he always seems to leave the dirty jobs for me.

I turn back to the people in the room and sort of stage whisper.  I say, “Listen to me!  My partner has hung a couple of dummies from the ceiling of our escape route.  They're realistic and will stop the other gunmen if they discover we're escaping.  The dummies look gruesome, but you mustn't make any sound or stop to look at them!  You must stay quiet and just keep moving.”

I get the people started out of the room.  Being old people, they move with exasperating slowness.  I have to get out in front of them to get them started past the corpses and then I go back in again to keep the line moving.  I'm not very brave and going back into the hall when I'm almost at the exit is one of the hardest things I have ever done.