Time Thieves

“There's only one more of them. I'll have you free in a minute.”
        
        “Be careful.”
        
        “Yes.”
        
        He entered the living room and looked up the steps.
        
        “No!” her thoughts screamed.
        
        “What?”
        
        He searched through the chaos of her thoughts and could not find the exact source of her fear. All that swirled there were images of him, of his corpses, dead and cold and gone from her forever. And roiling over the corpse were roaches, centipedes, snakes…
        
        “Think clearly!”
        
        She seemed to calm herself.
        
        “He went out the front door,” she thought.
        
        “Who?”
        
        “That last of them. I thought you knew!”
        
        As the full impact of what she said reached him, he swung about, facing the darkness of the dining room. Just then, the fourth and last of the inhuman hunters appeared there. He was holding a second amber pistol.
        
        Pete threw himself at the thing.
        
        It fired, missed, and backstepped away from him, calling his name over and over again and urging him to cooperate.
        
        He rolled and struck the robot's feet, sending it tumbling backwards. It struck its head on the corner of the dining room table, sloughing off a few inches of the malleable plastic flesh. But that was all that it did. The thing did not seem either hurt or dazed. It grappled with him, bringing its superhuman resources into the fight.
        
        The amber weapon flew free of the robot's fingers, clattered against the hutch, spun around once on the carpet and was still.
        
        They rolled; the mechanical man had the top. He weighed so much that he might have cracked Pete's hips if he had wanted to do so. Instead, he leaned forward, holding the man beneath him, and clamped one hand over Pete's mouth and nose.
        
        He smiled, waiting.
        
        Pete could barely struggle against the heavy machine. He sucked desperately for breath, and he felt the first tingling of suffocation begin in his lungs.
        
        “Painless, really,” the mechanical said in the new-caster's voice.
        
        As dizziness ballooned, he began to feel the thoughts of those nearby pouring across the threshold of his consciousness.
        
        He was innundated by Della's almost mindless fear as she watched him being strangled to death.
        
        It was her fear-and the ensuing rage he felt towards the eight-fingered alien for generating that fear-which drove him up from the brown shadows that had begun to blanket him. He blinked his eyes and looked into the robot's simple smile. He obeyed instinct this time and bit the robot's palm. He caused the machine no pain, but he managed to chew away most of the plastic flesh and gain breathing space. The steel would not mold to his contours and could not seal the air out effectively enough.
        
        Strength returned with the breath he took, enough strength to let him buck hard, driving upwards. He tilted the mechanical man and slammed it sideways, rolling out from underneath it.
        
        The room spun as he scrambled to his feet.
        
        Della projected a scream. He sealed it out, along with the other thoughts he was receiving and didn't want.
        
        When he turned, he saw that the robot had gotten to the amber pistol and held it once more. Even as this registered, he saw the darts spinning at him. He felt them prick his neck and cheek.
        
        He was surrounded by yellow as he lapsed into unconsciousness.
        

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    XVII
        
        
        He woke, feeling empty. Strangely, he felt no pain, not even the slight uneasiness of a cramped muscle or a headache. It was just this hollow feeling, as if he had been used, taken and directed and run through his steps like some sophisticated puppet.
        
        There was intense darkness on all sides of him, so deep and unremitting that, for a moment, he thought that he might be blind. When he looked down at himself, however, he knew his eyes were functioning. He could see his bare chest. By turning his head, he could see the white dais on which he lay.
        
        He tried to rise up.
        
        He could not.
        
        He called out.
        
        His mouth spoke