The Key to Midnight

taverns.
        Alex tensed, keeping his eyes on the bend in the trail just four feet away. The subzero air had so numbed his hand that he couldn't feel the rock any more. He squeezed hard, hoping that the weapon was still in his grip, but for all he knew, he might have dropped it and might be curling his half-frozen fingers around empty air.
        Carrera appeared, moving fast, bent forward, intent on the vague footprints that he was following.
        Alex swung his arm high and brought the rock down with all his strength, and it caught Carrera in the face. The big man dropped to his knees as if he'd been hit by a sledgehammer, toppled forward, and knocked Alex off his feet. They rolled along the sloping trail, through the snow, and came to a stop side by side, face down.
        Gasping air so bitterly cold that it made his lungs ache, Alex pushed onto his knees and then to his feet again.
        Carrera remained on the ground: a dark, huddled, vaguely human shape in the bed of snow.
        In spite of his still desperate circumstances and even though Joanna remained captive in the house, Alex felt a thrill of triumph, the dark animal exhilaration of having gone up against a predator and beaten him.
        He looked up the trail, back through the woods, but he'd come too far to be able to see the house any more. Considering Carrera's size and ferocity, the other men wouldn't give Alex much chance of getting out of the woods alive, so his quick return would take them by surprise and might give him just the advantage he needed.
        He started to go back for Joanna, but Carrera grabbed his ankle.

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        Joanna rammed her knee into Rotenhausen's crotch. He sensed it coming and deflected most of the impact with his thigh. The blow made him cry out in pain, however, and he bent forward reflexively, protectively.
        His mechanical hand slid down her throat as his cold, clicking fingers loosened their grip on her.
        She slipped out of his grasp, from between him and the wall, but he was after her at once, His pain forced him to hobble like a troll, but he wasn't disabled nearly enough to let her get away.
        Unable to reach the door in time to throw the lock and get out, she put the wheeled cart between them instead. In addition to an array of syringes, a bottle of glucose for the IV tree, a packet of tongue depressors, a penlight, a device for examining eyes, and many small bottles of various drugs, the instrument tray on the cart held a pair of surgical scissors. Joanna snatched them up and brandished them at Rotenhausen.
        He glared at her, red-faced and furious.
        'I won't let you do it to me again,' she said. 'I won't let you tamper with my mind. You'll either have to let me go or kill me.'
        With his mechanical hand, he reached across the cart, seized the scissors, wrenched them away from her, and squeezed them in his steel fingers until the blades snapped.
        'I could do the same to you,' he said.
        He threw the broken scissors aside.
        Joanna's heartbeat exploded, and the governor on the engine of time seemed to burn out. Suddenly everything happened very fast:
        She plucked the glucose from the tray, thankful it wasn't in one of the plastic bags so widely used these days, but the robotic hand arced down, smashing the bottle before she could throw it. Glass and glucose showered across the floor, leaving her with only the neck of the bottle in her grip. He shoved the cart out of the way, toppling it, scattering the instruments and the small bottles of drugs, and he rushed her, pale eyes bright with murderous intent. Desperately she turned. Scanning the floor. The litter. A weapon. Something. Anything. He grabbed her by the hair. She already had the weapon. In her hand. The bottle. The broken neck of the bottle. He yanked her around to face him. She thrust. Jagged glass. Deep into his throat. Blood spurting. Oh, God. Pale eyes wide. Yellow and wide. The robotic fingers released her hair, plucked at the glass in his throat - click, click, click - but only succeeded in bringing forth more blood. He gagged, slipped on the glucose-wet floor, fell to his knees, reached for her with his steel hand, working the fingers uselessly in the air, fell onto his side, twitched, kicked, made a terrible raspy effort to breathe, spasmed as if an electrical current had crackled through him, spasmed again, and was