Leo was woken by a warm hand pressed to his cheek. He jolted awake and saw Mattie's face close to his. She put her finger to her lips.
The only light was ambient streetlight glow, sodium orange that made everything blurry monochrome . He could not read whatever she mimed at him, only that it was urgent.
A moment later he saw why. Bright yellow light flickered outside the hut: torch beams.
Mattie took hold of his feet and lifted them, and he understood that she wanted him to get curled up. Sensible. Even a cursory glance into the hut would see a pair of feet under a chair.
Mattie lifted a cover onto him, some kind of dank tarpaulin. He flinched but let her cover him head to toe in the chair.
He heard her casting about for somewhere she could hide. But there was nowhere, he already knew. The tarp was it. You can't shelter behind a lawnmower.
If the seekers shone their torches into the hut Mattie would be discovered immediately. And for all her focus on him, Mattie had made it clear that she was also known to these people as someone significant.
Leo made a slight hiss through his teeth and beckoned Mattie over. He shoved the tarp aside.
Her face showed What can you possibly suggest, but he pulled her into his lap, encouraging her head to lie on his chest. Her weight was on his sore ribs but he ignored that and cast the tarpaulin over both of them.
They waited like that, blind in the dark under the tarp.
She was small, her body readily nesting with his. How old was she? He found that by picturing her, a perfect image appeared in his mind, detailed and sharp: Mattie waking him up in the storage warehouse. Around nineteen, he thought. Of course he didn't know how old Leo Elster was either. Old enough to have caused all this trouble.
He didn't even knew what he looked like. Treats in store when he found a mirror. Assuming the sinister enemies didn't find him first.
A lost memory, in quite the literal sense. It had drained from his mind and gone off somewhere else. Now Mattie had tried to put it back on again but that hadn't worked. He would never feel the same about mislaid car keys again.
But ... how could he remember generic scenarios like losing car keys, yet nothing about the rest of it? His so-called family, the synths Being on the run. Mattie. It would be pretty hard to forget someone like Mattie.
She was shaking. He tightened his arms around her. Don't move now, as the torch beams swept past the windows over their covered bodies.
A male voice. "All right, try the door."
"It's locked from the outside," said another man.
"I thought I saw a light on."
Leo froze. Mattie was tense against his chest. If it came to a struggle they would have little hope. She was five feet of engineering undergraduate and he could be taken out with a kick to the ribs. Or for permanent memory loss, a taser.
So don't let them get as far as a taser. His brain riffled through possibilities.
"My phone," he breathed into Mattie's ear. "In my pocket. Right side." She was basically sitting on it.
She moved her left hand to his jeans, found his belt, the edge of the pocket. The tarp crinkled. Leo held her tight, and they both stopped breathing, but the sound had been faint.
They each breathed out deliberately. Stay calm. Sudden movements will make noise. It was like telepathy, or data transfer, but instead of the information dotting and dashing down a cable, it was transmitted from her body to his, and back again. Leo could read the terror in her suppressed shivers, and pressed his cheek to her apple-scented hair. It's ok. It's ok.
A second later he felt her hand in his jeans pocket, her fingers curling around his phone, then sliding it along his leg and away.
He had to hope that their non verbal communication did not extend to a sudden and strong inappropriate thought.
She lifted the phone. Now what?
He leaned back a tiny amount so that they could make eye contact. "Not me," he breathed. "You. You can send them something. A false message. Location data. Find their phone nearby and send something."
"That will take ages," she whispered.
"I bet this phone has some smart arse app that does half the work for you."
"I can send a general broadcast to all active points in a narrow radius," she said.
"Ok, do that. That sounds plausible."
"Scuse, sorry." She shifted in his lap so that she could work the phone. It took a few minutes, the voices and torch beams sometimes growing more distant as the men hunted around the cemetery, sometimes returning to check the hut again.
Mattie showed the message to Leo. Location data, tagged missing synths.
"Be more specific," he said. "Put Elster."
She added that then pressed Send.
Outside, a phone chimed. There was a flurry of activity, then footsteps, running away from the hut.
"Stay still," said Leo. "There may be someone left behind."
Mattie had been about to slip from his lap. He maintained his arms around her, his beard wiry against her forehead. It was hot under the tarp, and she was desperate for air. She was aware of extreme intimacy with a man who in essence was a total stranger. Leo was spiky and shy. This guy was a lot more touchy feely. Although he was Leo too.
Her head spun.
"Don't faint," whispered Leo. "I need your superpowers."
He made them wait ten minutes like that, all hot breath and shared heartbeats. Then at last he accepted that the men outside had gone.
"It's weird," Mattie said, wriggling free of the tarp, and Leo's arms. "Why are you being all nice?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
She was about to reply, some habitual snark, but in fact, it was an excellent question. Take away Leo's horrible past, and he was a man who cracked jokes, paid compliments, took danger in his stride and, clearly, found Mattie rather attractive.
Put Leo's past back and-?
"You're usually, he's usually - " What was a euphemism for arse?
Leo rolled his eyes at her hesitation. "I'm beginning to wonder how he's survived this long."
"He's clever," said Mattie.
Leo raised his eyebrows, deliberately looked all around at their refuge consisting of shovels and lawnmowers. "Is that a fact. Come on. I'll put the kettle on. You can hunt for Jaffa Cakes."
"Jaffa Cakes." She had to laugh.
"Oh yeah. The kind of people who put armchairs in their shed aren't going to waste time with the crap biscuits."
He leaned forward to stand, and winced, clutching his wounds. Mattie stuck out her hand and hauled him to his feet. He gave her a smile of thanks.
The backup file was ready to roll. Leo/Not Leo was at full charge and energy boosted with a couple of biscuits. But she was starting to think she wouldn't put him back.