Once You Are Awake [Humans]

Leo

I asked Mattie to go with us when we were back inside and she hesitated. I felt Mia starring at me so I muttered an apology for being rude.

"I don't think she could hear you, Leo," Mia said.

"It's okay." Mattie smiled. "I'll come with you if you want me to."

Being glad she didn't ask me to repeat it, I said, "Good. Er, thanks." Growing up with a bunch of synths obviously meant I didn't have any exercise in human manners. I had to work on that.

We got back to the borrowed car in which Max had left his laptop and the first thing he did was looking for more information about the incident they had talked about on the news.

He managed to find out in which area the synths had been seen and we decided to go there and look for Niska. The location was in the middle of the woods and it took us three hours to get there. We parked the car and went on by foot. Mattie and I were dropping a little behind the others. She was quiet.

"It would be quite a coincidence to find something that leads us to her," I said.

Mattie nodded in agreement.

"I just hope we'll find her anyway. Before she does anything stupid."

She nodded again, still not saying a word. I was getting uncomfortable.

"Mattie, I'm sorry for what I said earlier."

She raised her eyebrows. "You've apologized already."

"No, about what I said before. I was being arrogant."

"No you were right. School is boring."

"You're with us now," I reminded her. "Soon you'll be wanting your life to be boring again."

She laughed a little. Then she asked, "Are you worried?"

"Yes," I answered honestly.

"We will find Niska."

"Hopefully."

"I will help you, Leo. We find her and we're going to solve any problems she's responsible for. I promise."

We looked into each other's eyes. Mia called us before any of us could say another thing. We hurried to reach the others.

An old building, some sort of warehouse was in sight so we went to have a look inside. It was quite empty. However, it looked like someone had been in there and searched it a while before we did.

"Do you think she was here?" Max asked me.

"I don't know, Maxie. It looks kind of like a place where she would hide, doesn't it?"

"That's just what I was thinking."

"Would this help?" Mattie held a book in her hand. "Looks like someone forgot it here."

"Give it to me." I read the title. It was a copy of The Ghost in the Machine.

"That's hers!" It was clear now. "She was here."

"But where did she go?" Mia wondered.

"We will know soon!" I was getting enthusiastic.

We went on searching the warehouse but we didn't find anything else, so we searched the area around. It was certainly not a coincidence that the building was that close to the factory where about 30 synths had been stolen a couple of days ago. We were getting closer to her.

However, our search didn't come to any result that day. It was getting dark and we decided to stay at the warehouse, so Mia and Max could charge and Mattie and I could get some sleep. The enthusiasm that had grabbed hold of me when I had held Niska's favourite book in my hand, was leaving me again. There was a good chance that finding my sister would eventually be harder than I had thought.