A werewolf among us

knew who the stalker in his nightmare was, remembered Angela, remembered her face in death, saw dark hair and dark eyes, saw her metamorphose into Tina… He screamed and lunged forward, leapt for the robot that had already begun to move away from him.
    Luckily, his hands caught under what would have been a chin if it were human; he tried to drag it backwards, like a child wrestling with a dog three times his size.
    Teddy swiveled his head, attempted to wrench free of the detective, his angle of approach to Tina shifting as he failed.
    Tina had turned and was holding the pistol before her in both hands. Like a caveman who thinks he can beat an armored tank with nothing more than a slingshot, thought St. Cyr as he rode the silver robot.
    A robot is harmless, valuable property.
    St. Cyr's weight sufficiently deflected the master unit, sent it into the shelves beside the girl, where books had already been spilled. It brushed her skirt, nothing more.
    Teddy tried to climb now; he rose a dozen feet, lifting the detective free of the floor.
    St. Cyr's battered arms were so strained and bleeding that they had gone numb. He just hoped that the paralysis did not creep into his hands and force him to relinquish his hold on the master unit. How long could the damn thing go on like this? It was feeding a good bit of energy into its gravplate mobility-system to be able to perform like this. Its batteries couldn't last forever without a recharge from the house generator. No matter what happened to his arms, he could surely hold out longer than Teddy…
    Smoothly, Teddy's arms raised, bent backwards in an impossibly complex movement that was no strain at all on the special ball joints and the double-elbow lever system. The steel fingers closed around
St. Cyr's wrists and squeezed.
    He
screamed, kicked, but held on.
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Tina had moved and was sighting on the plate that covered the majority of the robot's control terminals.
    Teddy shifted his grip on St. Cyr's left hand and carefully broke that thumb in one clean jerk.
    Tina fired.
    Teddy methodically broke the little finger on the same hand, where the thumb hung like a rag.
St. Cyr let go with that arm, blackness bubbling up inside of him. Yet he would not let go with his other arm.
    Tina fired again—three short, quick bursts.
    Teddy was slammed sideways into the bookshelves, dragging the detective with him. St. Cyr felt a sharp thrust of broken shelving pierce his thigh.
    Tina stepped closer and shot again.
    Teddy hissed, squawked as he changed voice tapes in a desperate attempt to put together a few last words, perhaps some last epithet that Dannery had programmed into him. He could not do it. The hiss died
with a pop, like a balloon exploding under the sharp jab of a pin, and the robot fell to the floor twelve feet below, landing on top of the cyberdetective, who had not let go. Teddy was finished.
    And so am I, St. Cyr thought.
    Emotional nonsense.
    Blackness bubbled completely over him. This time, instead of a nightmare there was a pleasant warmth, soft light, Angela and Tina standing before him with their arms outstretched. He went to be with them forever.
     

EIGHTEEN: A
New Life
     
    Whirring.
    Clicking.
    Lights, no shapes.
    Warmth, the smell of honey, cold metal fingers—
    —terror, a sting, relaxation, sleep.
    Different lights.
    A woman's face: Angela? Tina?
    No nightmares.
    Sleep…
    No nightmares.
    Soft covers.
    A hand on his forehead…
    He opened his eyes and looked at Tina Alderban, smiled when she smiled, and tried to speak. His voice was not a voice, just the slide of stones down a rough plank.
    "Water?" she asked.
    He nodded.
    She brought a glass of water, watched him drink, took it out of his trembling hands when he was finished. "How do you feel?"
    "Okay." He settled back against the pillow, frowned and said, "No, not okay, pretty terrible."
    She leaned into him and, her voice intense, her words clipped and strained, she said, "I want to destroy your bio-computer shell. I want your permission to grind it into little pieces."
    He felt his chest and realized he was not wearing the shell.
    He said, "Costs money."
    "I'll buy it from you, whatever it costs."
    He seemed to remember something and, working his sour mouth, he said, "What happened to the others?"
    "Later," she insisted. "First, tell me if I can have the bio-computer."
    "Are they dead?"
    "The bio-computer," she said, setting her mouth in a tight line.
    He