The only thing more dangerous than modern human inventions was modern human boredom. And right now, Lithia Blackwinter — war veteran, aura master, noble heiress, self-declared goddess of not giving a single damn — was being held hostage by it.
Her prison? The Hensleys' living room. Her captors? Two glorified apes named Harper and Micah, who were currently trying to convince her to join what they described as an "epic adventure." Translation: "A guaranteed recipe for police involvement, bodily harm, and poor life choices."
"So there's this abandoned construction site," Micah began, already smiling the way only someone who mistook 'danger' for 'fun' could.
Lithia raised a hand, already unimpressed. "Stop. I've heard this one before. The punchline ends with someone getting tetanus."
Harper waved her phone. "No, this is serious! It's like urban exploration — only illegal, and probably haunted."
Lithia tilted her head, looking genuinely more offended than interested. "You expect me to risk my immortal dignity crawling through a rusted deathtrap, for what? Instagram likes?"
"Exactly!" Micah beamed, clearly missing the sarcasm.
Fast forward two hours and there she was. Standing at the edge of a construction site that looked like OSHA's recurring nightmare. Steel bones of unfinished buildings jutted into the sky like the ribcage of some long-dead god. Rusty cranes loomed overhead, their hooks swaying ominously in the wind like they were hungry for fresh idiots.
Lithia sighed, tapping her boot against a cracked slab of concrete. "Wonderful. The local graveyard for common sense."
Micah, already halfway inside, called out, "C'mon, Lithia! If you're gonna survive the modern world, you've gotta embrace the chaos!"
She followed, not out of trust, but out of that dangerous, bitter cocktail of boredom and morbid curiosity. The same instinct that got her adopted by a human family in the first place.
Inside, the place was even worse. Collapsing beams, water-logged floors, a questionable smell that screamed, "someone definitely died here, and the mold threw a funeral."
Harper wandered off snapping "aesthetic" shots like some half-baked art student who thought darkness was a personality. Micah kept trying to climb things, despite gravity making its opinion on that very clear by nearly killing him twice in under ten minutes.
Lithia, meanwhile, strolled through the wreckage like she owned the place.Not because she felt comfortable — no, she would've torched the whole site if she still had her army — but because the alternative was admitting this was a bad idea, and her pride would rather explode.
And then, like every bad idea hitting its logical conclusion, the drone arrived.
A sleek, angular security bot with all the charm of a brick wall and the social skills of a tax auditor. Its synthetic voice boomed across the site:
"UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY DETECTED. LEAVING IS NOW YOUR ONLY OPTION."
Micah blinked. "Huh. Didn't think they still used those."
Lithia casually leaned against a steel beam. "You'd be surprised how persistent primitive defense systems can be. I've seen ones that use actual fire."
The drone locked its sensor on them."ALERT. AUTHORITIES NOTIFIED. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHED FOR IDENTIFICATION."
"Crap," Harper muttered. "It's calling the cops."
Lithia's expression didn't even twitch. "I've had worse creatures hunt me down. And at least those things didn't need batteries."
"Run!" Micah yelped, already sprinting like his life depended on it — which, to be fair, it did.
Lithia didn't run. Not immediately. She walked. Calm. Calculated. She didn't sprint until the spotlight snapped to her like an overenthusiastic lighthouse trying to expose her tax fraud.
Cue the chase scene.
The trio dodged piles of debris, scrambled up half-assembled staircases, and vaulted over support beams with the grace of caffeinated raccoons. Lithia's dead expression never cracked, even as Micah nearly faceplanted into a cement mixer.
"Why aren't you freaking out?!" Micah panted between gulps of air.
Lithia side-eyed him mid-run. "Because I'm not you. And also, screaming is a waste of oxygen."
Harper, gasping, snapped back, "You sound like an ancient warlord, not a teenager."
Lithia smirked. "Observation: accurate."
Eventually, they ducked into a hollow steel shipping container. The drone hovered nearby, its searchlight slicing the dark like it was auditioning for a slasher film. The second it drifted out of earshot, Harper collapsed, Micah flopped onto the floor like a dying fish, and Lithia casually dusted off her coat like she'd just returned from grocery shopping.
"You two are clearly designed for extinction," she muttered, inspecting her perfectly intact nails. "And somehow, I'm still here."
Micah wheezed, "Are you even human?"
Lithia tilted her head, smile thin as paper. "Now that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?"
The walk back home was equally chaotic, just with less sprinting and more post-adrenaline sarcasm.
Harper, still out of breath: "So... that's your definition of fun?"Lithia, stone-cold: "No. That was 'acceptable entertainment.' Fun would involve more explosions."
Micah, grinning like an idiot: "We should do this again."
Lithia's only reply was a low hum — the kind that could either mean agreement or plans for their funeral. The two of them didn't dare ask which.
Later that night, perched on her bed like a vampire-themed furniture model, Lithia stared at the ceiling, thinking.
Not about friendship, or feelings, or any of that gooey nonsense humans wrote songs about. No, her mind was occupied with the fact that this world, for all its stupidity, had one thing in common with her old one:
It was rarely boring for long.
And that, for now, was good enough.
End of Chapter 7.