This was total starshit! 

“When I said I wanted to get intimate, I didn’t mean leave me tied to a chair with heat resistant chains for a week,” Eris hissed, aggressively fighting at them until they cut at her already damaged scales. “Get your traitorous ass back here! Fight me like a cyber man!” She slammed the chair into the floor. “Coward.”

Bolivar kept his back turned to her. He sat at a table with several varied articles of electronics and cyber technology. “Quiet. I’m busy.” 

In the small hotel room, there was only three feet between them in the main room. Besides that there was a single, basic bedroom. It was grossly cheap. 

“You’ll be busier one you get some of these claws up your ass,” Eris spat, flipping him off with both hands. 

Being in an underground hotel was cruel, stealing Eris’ ability to recharge her fire. What little remained, she had used in a tantrum against Bolivar when he first tried to chain her. Scorch marks touched the edges of the table, curtains, and bed. He’d betrayed her. Anyone else would have hurt less than her boyfriend. 

“If you keep trying to break the chains, you’ll hurt yourself, get an infection, and die,” Bolivar declared, his voice matter of fact as he continued to work on what was in front of him. 

“Why would you care? You chained me here,” Eris scoffed. “Trying to pretend like you still like me is cruel.” 

Bolivar’s back stiffened. “I don’t, that’s why you would die.” 

“I—“ Eris lost her ability of form words. 

Bolivar turned around, staring at her with a blank expression. 

Silence continued between them, unbroken, as if by doing so it would raise questions Eris didn’t want answered. 

Eris returned to thrashing. “This is ridiculous! You can’t keep holding me here.” 

Blinking, Bolivar turns around, returning to what looks to be bomb assembly. 

Scooting her chair forward, Eris grabbed a piece off the table and flicked it at him. 

“Ah!” Bolivar jumped back. A burst of smoke filled the room. “Eris! Are you trying to get us killed!” 

“So it is a bomb,” Eris stated with a smug smile. “Who aer you trying to blow up, what’s—“ 

A gag was stuffed in her mouth cutting off the rest of her words. Eris snarls, leaning forward and head butting Bolivar in the face with her horns. 

“Star shit, Eris!” Bolivar cried, holding onto his bleeding nose and quickly forming black eye. 

Eris glowered. “Mmmph.” 

“Sorry.” Bolivar grimaced. “Can’t understand you with the gag on.” 

Eris rose both middle fingers. 

“Oh.”

“H to B, report,” a device chimed from the other room. 

Bolivar gave Eris one last look, though this one was different, it carried concern and worry she hadn’t seen in his face since he’d kidnapped her. Stepping away, he closed to the door behind him. 

After being here and bored for so long, Eris had trained herself to listen for the voice of whoever he was talking to. The information would be vital if she ever managed to get out of here. No, not if, when. She would get out of here, it was only a matter of time. 

“B to H, reporting,” Bolivar whispered loudly. Stars, stealth was not his thing, it never had been. 

“Is it ready?” The soft voice asked. 

“Almost, had a set back thanks to—you know.” 

The voice sighed. “You do know your task was to kill her, not kidnap. Why is she still alive?”

Fucken starshit. Kill? Bolivar was supposed to ‘Kill’ her? Desperation bled into the forefront of Eris’ mind. She had to get out of her before he came back. The keys to the chains sat abandoned on the table. Looking between the closed door and the table, Eris did one chair hop. It sounded like a clap of thundered with her weight. 

The two continued talking, seemingly undisturbed. Bolivar likely thought she was just thrashing uselessly again, believing that he had the keys tucked safely into his pocket. 

“It’s just—we have a history. I don’t know if I can do that. As long as she stays out of the way, it’s fine, right?” Bolivar asked, his voice wavering. 

The voice cleared their throat. “But you just said that she—“ 

“It’s fine!” Bolivar shouted. “Everything is fine!” 

Eris used the opportunity to chair hop again. So close. She only needed one more. 

“That’s why I can clearly hear her trying to escape every time you click on?” H asked, doubt and sarcasm penetrating their normally light manner. 

Starshit. Eris did one more chair hop and grabbed the key. She placed it in her mouth, undoing one of the chains and moving to do the other. 

Bolivar slammed the door open and grabbed her wrist with one hand and holding the communication device in the other. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” His brown eyes were full of mixed emotions, nothing clearly definable. “Eris is an active sleeper.”

“Don’t let your personal emotions get in the way of your duty, B, or Akio won’t be the only one of the hit list,” H hissed, clicking out. 

Bolivar turned off the device. Crying out, he threw it across the room. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? You idiot.” 

Eris jerked her arm from his grip and punched him in the nose. Yanking the gag from her mouth, she punched him again. “No. I’m trying to get out of here ‘idiot.’” 

With a quick hit, Eris struck him in the throat, stomach, and face, bringing Bolivar to his knees. She unlocked her other hand. 

Bolivar rose to his feet and pinned her down. “If you leave, I can’t protect you, it has always been my sworn duty to keep you safe, even if it means holding you hostage.” 

Growling, Eris slyly unlocked one of the chains on her feet with her tail. “You are no longer my body guard.” Whirling around, she slammed the chair into Bolivar, shattering it on his back. “You’re fired.” 

Thrown by the hit, Bolivar stumbled backwards, slamming his head on the table and collapsing into a heap on the floor. Part of Eris felt guilty for hurting the cyber man she once cared for, but it was too late for those feelings. He’d betrayed her, he’d betrayed Akio, he’d betrayed everyone. She should kill him here and now. It would be her best chance of escape. 

Taking the gun from his holster, she pressed it to his temple, her finger hovering over the trigger. “Dammit,” she hissed, as her hand fell uselessly at her side. “I’ll spare you once, for sparing me. Next time we meet, I’m putting one between your eyes.” 

The soft, weak part of her missed the boy who brought her flowers, took her to the lake to talk about everything and anything. She missed that boy. She hated the man Bolivar became. But, she couldn’t kill him while look at his face. 

Donning a cloak, she left the hotel, creeping along the shadows of the underworld kingdom. She couldn’t let her scales be seen or she’d be instantly recognized. Turning around, she aimed at the partially assembled bomb through the window, closing her eyes as she took the shot that sent everything inside her heart into explosive chaos.