Chapter Text
For as long as he can remember, Viktor has been afraid of falling.
It was a fear based around familiarity. Viktor had lost count of the number of times he had lost his balance; for him, falling was as easy as breathing. But that never softened the blow. Each fall left a bitter taste in the back of his mouth, a chip in his shoulder that he could never quite grow out of.
But Viktor was, before any and everything else, prone to fits of recklessness. As a scientist, he knew that there was no reward without a little bit of risk. It was why his preferred place of solitude was at a precipice overlooking the lip of the undercity, so high above ground that his stomach did flips at the thought of it. Despite everything, Viktor found himself standing there again and again, whenever he needed to clear his head or get space that the walls of the Academy could not afford.
Perhaps that was why he found it so difficult to walk away from Jayce Talis.
When it came to Jayce, Viktor knew he was walking a fine line with no foothold. One misstep, and just like his sanctuary overlooking the undercity, he was bound to take a fall he wouldn’t get back up from. It was foolish. Masochistic. Unavoidable. Viktor feared the fall almost as much as he craved the precipice.
“You should go.”
Jayce's eyes – sharp, bleeding with hurt – flicker in the back of Viktor's mind as he washes the night’s mistakes away in the silence of his bathroom. He grits his teeth, dragging the worn cloth over his skin harsher, as if he can scrub the memory away. It doesn’t work.
“I’m not leaving you like this, Viktor.”
Jayce had always worn his heart on his sleeve, a blank page scrawled in pitch-black ink. The waver in his voice betrayed the selflishness lurking behind his words; he wants to stay. Wants to fix the crack in the earth between them, wants to make it right.
Stupid. Viktor squeezes his eyes shut. Stupid, stupid man. There is nothing worth fixing here.
Viktor is familiar with his mortality. Every slip, every fall, every bruise and broken bone had reminded him of it, relentlessly. Viktor did not have the luxury of time. Just like anyone else from the undercity, his days were numbered, each one spent breathing a mercy granted by the aristocracy that built mansions out of their bone hills.
“You're doing it again.”
“Doing… what?”
“Looking at me,” Viktor says. “Like you do in the lab.”
Those fucking eyes of his. Bright, sharp, brilliant eyes, and they clung to Viktor like they couldn't see anything else. Like they didn't want to, like he could stare at Viktor for hours without tiring. Like whatever he saw held answers to questions he hadn't even asked.
“Just… trying to commit this side of you to memory, I guess.”
Jayce's voice is breathless in his memory. His fingers leave burns wherever they meet Viktor's bare skin, brushing down his sides, pressing into the curve of his hip bones. His skin shines with a layer of sweat, and Viktor wants desperately to taste it. Wants to imprint himself in Jayce's skin in a way that can't be washed off.
But. But.
“Do what you’d like,” Viktor tells him quietly. “You won't be seeing it again.”
Abrupt, sharp pain cuts through the memory, and Viktor’s eyes snap open, fingers reflexively releasing the cloth held between them. Blood rushes back into his fingertips, and he looks down to see the pale white of the leg he’d been cleaning interrupted by a path of furious red, rubbed raw in his ministrations.
Enough, Viktor thinks. The bridge has been burned. There's no point breathing in what's left of the smoke.
If Viktor was destined to fall, so be it. But he refused to take Jayce down with him.
* * *
It’s almost funny how much the world can change in an instant.
All it takes is one moment, one single event, and every trouble that has ever come before it suddenly diminishes completely. Eclipsed by something new, something greater, something worse.
“Somebody stole the Gemstone.”
The lab, normally bustling with energy, is filled with a heavy silence in the morning that follows.
Tension sits so densely in the atmosphere that it could be cut with a knife. Viktor breathes it in, thick and poisonous as the Grey. Jayce seems to be fully focused on messing with a spring on the Hex Claw that he'd never had interest in before, but from what Viktor can see of him, he looks rough.
It was obvious from the moment that Jayce walked into the room that he was more hungover than he'd ever been in his life. His clothes, normally neat-pressed and tailor-fit, sit awkwardly on his frame, which slouches perpetually. His hair is unkempt, ghost tracks of his fingers visibly cutting through the longer strands. He is the poster child of the phrase ‘the morning after,’ in every sense of it.
That, of course, does not make him hard to look at. Not at all.
Memories of his touch sift through Viktor's head on an endless slideshow. Jayce’s lips against his throat. The press of his fingers. The fullness of him. How he’d said Viktor's name like it was a prayer.
Dangerous.
Viktor tears his eyes away from his partner, instead looking down at the Hextech Gemstone in his palm. One of the last remaining of their samples. He twists it in his fingers, feels the energy bleeding into his skin just from touching it. A low, steady thrum of life, almost like a pulse.
If nothing else, it will outlive him. There is at least that.
Although that certainly does not sound like a good thing right now.
“We have a meeting,” Jayce says abruptly, startling Viktor from his thoughts. “With the Council. In an hour.”
His words are stiff, drawn short at the end. Viktor glances at him, sees the tension cutting a straight line through his shoulder blades. This weighs heavily on him. Both of them, really, but especially Jayce.
Hextech was, after all, his life’s work first and foremost. Jayce’s hope, manifested in physical form. But in the hands of the one who had stolen it from him, the consequences were lethal.
His beacon of peace and prosperity had turned into a ticking timebomb.
Viktor doesn’t know what he feels in response to it all. Three enforcers dead, one injured – Caitlyn Kiramman, specifically. Somebody close to Jayce, a daughter of a Councilor. The topside in shambles, the undercity growing restless, a dangerous person now armed with a barely conceptualized amount of power, and at the center of it all: Hextech.
Viktor’s feelings are far out of reach. But rationality works, too.
“They are going to blame the undercity,” Viktor tells him.
“It was the undercity, Viktor,” Jayce replies, his tone bitter. “Nobody else would kill enforcers like that. Just for the sake of it. Only the undercity would do that.”
“It was the act of a single individual –”
“Who is just as likely to be working for somebody else!” Jayce rakes a hand through his hair, worsening its poor state. “You know as well as I do how dangerous Hextech can be if it's weaponized. It goes against everything we wanted, all because of some –”
Jayce falters, but Viktor hears every word that could have followed it. Some trencher. Some radical. Some sumprat from the undercity who was too stupid to really understand what they were playing with.
It makes anger lash at Viktor's stomach, sharp and reflexive. Not because he takes it personally, but because he has seen countless times how alluring the promise of distributing blame to the undercity is. Hears it, in the angry string of Jayce's words, the biting of his tongue.
He’d thought Jayce to be different. Better.
“If you are looking to find somebody to blame,” Viktor reminds him, “it would be remiss not to include ourselves at the top of that list.”
Jayce visibly flinches, and Viktor regrets that it hurts him. But it is the truth. They were complicit in this as much as anyone else, both in their negligence to secure it and in its creation in the first place. They might not have built the gun, but the oil was on their hands.
“I know that,” Jayce says tightly. “I know that. I should have grabbed it before I left. I should have –”
“We should have,” Viktor interrupts. “There is no need to discredit me, Jayce. We are both to blame; we are both facing the Council.”
Silence stretches between them once more. Jayce drops his head into his hands, looking so closed off and far away that it makes Viktor's chest ache. He knows he invited this, but he hates it anyway.
“We were supposed to use Hextech to bring the world together,” Jayce says eventually, his voice rife with regret. “But right now it feels like the one thing destined to tear it apart.”
* * *
“Could the trenchers build a weapon with this stolen crystal?”
Viktor decides that he does not like the way that Councilor Bolbok says trenchers. There is absolutely no heat or malice behind it, no more than is usual. He says it matter-of-factly. Like a name. Somehow, that makes it worse. Such a hostile word, so commonly and flippantly used that it loses its necessary edge.
“Shimmer, body replacements,” Council Hoskel spits, fingers twisting erratically around some kind of juvenile puzzle device. “We’ve seen their ingenuity over the years. Of course they can.”
The disdainful man has a point, as loathe as Viktor is to concede it. Whoever had taken the Gemstone wasn’t just some random vigilante with a bad idea. The biggest indicator of their capability was in the fact that pages of his and Jayce’s research had been swiped as well. Somebody who simply intended to start a riot or commit a petty crime would have settled for the Gemstone alone. But somebody who took their notes – highly sophistic, complex, and overflowing with alchemical jargon as they were – wasn’t just interested in an heirloom.
“If the right person got ahold of it, it’s possible they could use its energy,” Jayce says.
It’s the first thing out of his mouth since they arrived.
He looks worn. Tired. Defeated. Like the weight of the world has fallen on his shoulders, and he wants nothing more than to buckle beneath it. Viktor has never once envied Jayce’s role as a public figure, and he certainly doesn’t now. The eyes of the council glaze over Viktor, because to them, he is an accessory.
But Jayce is the main event, and it does him absolutely no favors now.
“We need to address this immediately,” Councilor Kiramman says, interrupting his thoughts.
Her voice is as sharp as a knife, and her eyes even sharper, sweeping through the room as if to cut through it herself. But even the harshness of her demeanor cannot hide the weariness that simmers beneath it. The dark circles under her eyes betray that she speaks from the perspective of a mother, alongside that of a Councilor.
Jayce can't meet her eye. He wears his guilt like a scarlet letter.
Viktor’s chest stirs with something complicated at the sight of him. As always, Jayce shoulders responsibility as if it’s a second skin. It empowers him as much as it cows him, and Viktor does not like the way that Councilor Kiramman says ‘address.’ Like it's a euphemism for ‘punish.’ Whatever Jayce has to say is only going to bounce off of her iron skin like bullets, because she's gone crystal in her fury.
Enough of this.
Viktor tightens his fingers around his crutch and pushes himself upwards. Prepares to remind the council just as he'd reminded Jayce that the undercity was not a ubiquitous thing, and that the punishment they sought could not simply be delivered at range.
And then Jayce cuts him off. Physically, one arm outstretched as if to intercept him – but he doesn't touch Viktor. A hundred times he has touched Viktor unprompted, but this time, he doesn't.
“I agree,” Jayce says, to the Council. “It was my responsibility to safeguard this technology, and I failed. My mistake cost people their lives.”
Our mistake. Viktor’s jaw twitches. What is he trying to say?
“I come before you,” Jayce continues, and then he takes a breath, “to recommend that we suspend all Hextech operations until the situation is resolved. Including our laboratories, the refinery… and the Hexgates.”
It is as if he has dropped a bomb on the Council room.
Somebody is shouting something, but Viktor doesn't hear it past the blood rushing in his ears. All he can hear is Jayce's voice, the same words echoing over and over: Suspend Hextech. And then, behind it, every other word he has said before it: My life’s work. My dream. Our dream.
All of it crumbles to dust in his hands. Just like that.
They were supposed to be partners. They were supposed to make these decisions together. But Jayce never even gave him the chance – no, he stripped him of it. Shut him out with one arm and didn't even touch him when he did it. Couldn't bear to.
Half a decade working together, Viktor thinks, and now he's willing to throw away everything without even consulting me. And for what?
The answer is obvious: Fear. Guilt. Shame. Jayce had become so entangled in his attachments that they were pulling him like strings on a marionette.
Viktor tastes bile in the back of his throat.
“Councilors.”
It is Mel Medarda’s voice who cuts through the cacophony. Her voice is like a beacon; the moment that she speaks, all eyes are on her. Of course they are. She plays this game better than the rest of her fellow Council members could dream of. She has them on a leash, and they don't even know they're wearing a collar. Just like Jayce.
Viktor admires it almost as much as he despises it.
“It appears we are at an impasse,” she continues, her voice of reason like a soothing balm over their rising hysteria. “If we shut down the Hexgates, the city will suffer. But if we do nothing, we leave ourselves vulnerable to malefactors. More lives may be lost.”
Spoken like a true topsider, Viktor thinks, but he knows that her doing so is intentional. She does not leave absent the suffering and loss of life that the undercity will experience because she simply does not concern herself with it. She does so because her audience does not.
To speak of the undercity now would alienate them, and she can't afford that, because she wants to suggest something that needs their investment. Something that she thinks they won't agree to.
“Perhaps,” Council Medarda says, proving his point, “the time has come to explore a more radical solution.”
* * *
A fucking councilor.
Viktor has to give it to Councilor Medarda: she has the guts of a trencher. Only she could so effortlessly get the stone-bitten will of the Council of Piltover to open a chair on a moment’s notice. Only she could do something so unfathomably insane and be completely unflinching about it.
Jayce Talis. Councilor Talis.
She had seen Jayce falter, just as Viktor had. She had seen Jayce slipping on her most valuable investment, and she'd pulled exactly the string that he needed to in order to keep him on his feet.
Viktor decides abruptly then that he has heard enough; he doesn't stick around in the council room long after that.
As it stands, Jayce is so busy with the procedurals of his new anointment that he isn't able to stop him. He calls out to Viktor, once, just as his fingers close around the doorknob, but then Council Medarda appears next to him. Touches his arm, just like she'd done in the hallway the night before; steering him towards her office under the excuse of having lots of paperwork for him to fill out.
Viktor spends the night in the lab, working into the late hours to develop more on their theory of runes.
Jayce never makes it back, likely too busy chewing the leash, but Viktor finds that he welcomes this more than he dislikes it. If Jayce were here, he would be far too distracted to make any significant headway. Between the incident on Progress Day and the hurt he'd inflicted at the Council meeting earlier, just the thought of him was distressing enough. His presence would have only served to exacerbate that, and Viktor couldn’t afford it.
Emotion in a time like this was a hindrance. And if the person who'd stolen the Gemstone was as savvy as Viktor assumed them to be, they were in a race against the clock. He didn't have time to let his wounds fester, for more reasons than one.
So Viktor works until he drops. Literally.
When he wakes up again, the lab is still empty, but something foreign hangs off of his shoulders. A blanket, he realizes, pinching the dark blue fabric between his fingers. A note left on the table catches the corner of his eye soon after, folded neatly and emblazoned with the symbol of House Talis.
Meet me at the Hexgates when you read this, it states, in Jayce's slanted, rushed handwriting. Despite his new title, it is signed simply with the letter J. Just as it always is.
Viktor recognizes the note and the blanket for what they really are: olive branches. It's Jayce acknowledging things aren't right, expressing his regret, and suggesting that they push forward. As any intellectuals forced to share a space with no source of natural light twenty-four-seven do, they have had countless arguments, and Viktor is familiar with this part of it. Even if the context is different.
A hand, extended to pick him up. To pull him back.
It isn't an adequate response now, but it's the only thing they have, and Viktor wants to put his pain behind him now, too. Time persists. War continues to loom.
He returns the blanket to Jayce's side of the room, pockets the note, and goes to the gates.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, their truce does not last very long.
“There you are,” Jayce says, as Viktor arrives. “How… how are you?”
Viktor abruptly decides that he isn't ready to talk about that night on Progress Day. It's dangerous, uncharted territory. Territory that he doesn't have the space or fortitude for, and especially so when Jayce is looking at him like that. Like a wounded puppy.
“I am fine,” Viktor says, keeping his tone cool. “And yourself?”
Jayce looks him over. It's obvious that he wants to say something. But Viktor knows that whatever it is, he isn't able to stomach it. Not yet, at least. Not with everything else happening.
But unfortunately, Jayce doesn't seem to quite clue into that.
“Listen,” Jayce says, in a voice that suggests he's about to say something that's going to ruin Viktor's day. “About that night –”
“Nothing happened, Jayce,” Viktor interrupts him. “We discussed this.”
A shadow of hurt flickers across Jayce's expression. Viktor wishes that he did not feel it as viscerally as he did. This is the right thing to do, he tells himself, over and over again. It's for his own good. He needs to hate me, at least a little bit. Hate is simple.
But Jayce does not look like he hates him. Not yet.
He looks like he wants to, maybe. But hate has never come easily to Jayce, and it's going to take more than that now. Viktor has the distinct feeling that he's going to regret letting his control slip for the rest of his remaining life, no matter how short it may be. A moment of selfishness, and look where it had gotten him.
“If that's what you want,” Jayce says eventually. He sounds tired.
“It is what has to be,” Viktor responds, moving past him. “There are more pressing matters at hand. I assume that you have some new breakthrough you wish to share with me…?”
“... Sort of,” Jayce says, sounding hesitant. “I've been looking through the old logs on who comes in and out. There's some glaring inconsistencies that have been completely ignored.”
Viktor can hardly believe his ears. “Old… logs?”
“As in, who comes in and out,” Jayce explains, like Viktor is stupid and doesn't know what logs are. “Or what. And honestly, from what is in here, I couldn't even tell you. It feels almost purposeful, like –”
“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts him, looking over his shoulder. “With all due respect, I do not give a damn about these… ‘logs.’ That isn't our focus. We should be working on furthering our advances in what we already do. With Hextech. Our work, in case you have forgotten.”
That strikes something in Jayce. He all but bristles, as if Viktor has somehow personally offended him, just by stating the truth. It would be funnier if it wasn't all so fucking absurd.
“I’m a Councilor now, Viktor,” Jayce says sharply. “It's my responsibility to make sure the Hexgates are safe and protected.”
Viktor really hates it when Jayce starts repeating himself.
He especially hates it when this time it is spoken with conviction, rather than defeat as it had when he said it the first time, in the Council room. Not because Viktor is upset with the sudden change of attitude – he'd much rather that Jayce not be wallowing in guilt – but because it's been fed to him right out of Councilor Medarda's mouth.
She knows that Jayce needs purpose. All she has to do is redirect it towards whatever it is she feels threatened by, and he's after it like a bloodhound. She wants evidence, and now he's gone after it.
It's as if everything and everyone else has become background static to him. Bitterly, and perhaps selfishly, Viktor feels a bit betrayed.
“What about our pledge to improve lives?” Viktor demands. “For those in need? For the undercity?”
Jayce sighs. It's probably the heaviest sigh he's ever made in his life.
“Look,” Jayce says. “I’m sorry I didn't announce our other projects in my speech. But soon, we can –”
“Soon?” Viktor spits the word out disdainfully. “There are people who need our help now, Jayce!”
The pitch of his own voice rings hollowly in the vastness of the room around them. Jayce looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time since that night. His shoulders, drawn tight, sink slightly as if in defeat. For a moment, Viktor thinks he might have gotten through to him, and then a new voice interrupts.
“You wanted to see me?”
Viktor’s gaze cuts to the left, and immediately narrows. An enforcer – no, the Sherriff. Even better. Which meant that his conversation with Jayce was officially on hold. Annoying, but probably a good thing, given that Jayce seems to have moved on from being defeated to being pissed within the matter of a moment.
“Have your people ever reviewed these logs?” Jayce asks, turning his anger on the Sherriff.
“Mr. Talis,” Sherriff Marcus says, “I assure you –”
“Councilor,” Jayce corrects him, unflinching. “And the only assurance I need is that you will search and seize any unauthorized merchandise.”
Politics talk. Viktor was dying by the second, their life’s work had been compromised, and Jayce was talking politics. Forms, procedures, logs – these were not things that belonged in Jayce Talis’ hands.
But Councilor Medarda had dangled a carrot in front of his nose to secure her investment, and Jayce was snapping at the bit for it.
Jayce and the Sheriff's conversation steers towards talk of corruption and the undercity, and Viktor can physically feel his patience wane. It's wasteful, he thinks, putting Jayce on policy. All of the great things he could be doing – that they could be doing together, and yet –
Without warning, Viktor's lungs close and then spasm.
It is only through reflex that he is able to spin around and brace himself against the railing, coughing violently against the tightness in his chest. Something thick and sticky sits heavy in his lungs, and then he tastes it in his mouth, coppery and bitter and wrong.
Blood, Viktor realizes, gaze falling to the railing and finding it stained red. Blood?
The sight alone is enough to make his head swim, fingers tightening desperately to hold himself in place as the room warps around him. The complex, interconnected weavings of the Hexgates power banks below him twist and spiral in on themselves, and behind the ringing in his ears, Viktor swears he can hear voices.
They are unfamiliar, distinct from the background chatter of Jayce and the Sheriff behind him. They spill into and between each other, speaking, but not in a language he can understand.
Not at first, at least. The moment that he has the thought, though, their dialect shifts, sharpens. Corrects itself, like a child learning a new word it isn't quite sure how to pronounce.
Viktor. The voice is whisper, a cold breeze against his feverish skin. Viktor. Viktor. Come closer, Viktor –
“Viktor?” Jayce’s voice cuts through the cacophony. “You alright?”
The weight of his partner's hand bears into Viktor’s right shoulder, stabilizing him, anchoring him down. The voices fade to a low and formless hum, and Viktor looks over his shoulder to see Jayce staring at him, features tightened in evident concern.
He's touching me, Viktor thinks numbly, the warmth of Jayce's fingers cutting through the haze in his mind.
With the thought comes all of the tumultuous feelings and memories he'd been desperately trying to forget the last few days. Those fingers in his hair, brushing against his skin, pushing into him, spreading him open –
“A… A headache,” Viktor manages, pushing him away. “I just… I need to get back to the lab.”
* * *
The ghost of Jayce's touch haunts him.
Viktor tries to focus. He tries in the only way he knows how: by burying himself in his work. Endless lists of runes and their interactions scrawl before his eyes, methodically calculated, manipulated, and transformed. He runs test after test, until his eyes burn and his leg hurts and his head swims with shapes.
But if there is one downfall to having a good mind, it is that in its search for stimulation, it was always prone to wander. And wander it does, right to that damned night in his apartment.
I should never have gotten drunk.
It had been foolish. Impulsive. Everything that Viktor usually wasn't, and yet he had done it anyway. Put his fears and his frustrations and everything else into the context of a bottle, and then another. Spent hours in that godforsaken taphouse, in a dark corner with his notebook in front of him, scratching angry lines into its pages.
Nobody had approached him, but that wasn't new. Viktor wasn't interested in being approached. He was interested in being angry, spiteful, and above all, hurt.
If I die before we put Hextech in the hands of the people, he’d thought, then my entire life will have been a waste.
Viktor had always known his time was limited. Jayce had been the one person to make him feel almost okay with that, in his desperate hunt for forward motion; the pursuit of a dream. And now, that rug had been pulled out from under him, too.
Viktor was an oil lamp running on fumes, and right then, he had wanted nothing more than to make the world burn with him.
He doesn't remember leaving the bar, or the blind stumble back to the Academy. He remembers seeing Jayce on every corner – plastered on billboards, posters, blimps, even in the scarce traces of graffiti. Each one had only pissed him off further and further, until eventually he’d found himself banging down Jayce's door. Hot, angry, ready to set fire to the floor just to feel its heat.
Except it hadn't been Jayce's door. And Professor Heimerdinger had been quite unamused by Viktor showing up drunk on his doorstep spitting profanities.
Viktor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He likely owed the Professor an apology, especially for the way he'd acted after the fact – “Where is Jayce? Bring me to him. I need to speak with him. Now.” A tone of voice he'd never use with the Professor if he were sober and patient. And to follow it by immediately passing out on his couch…
Idiot.
Viktor shakes his head and turns his attention back to the rune matrix, swapping the column he'd been working on for another to continue his permutations. The runes flash and flicker before his eyes, each so familiar at this point that they might as well have been his native tongue. It sparks and jumps with each combination, but otherwise stays relatively consistent.
With each flash of the symbol, memories from the night before flicker behind his eyes, a call and response. Jayce's arms wrapped around him as he carried him to his apartment. The feeling of the room spinning, his fingers tight in Jayce's sleeve. Jealousy, lashing angrily beneath his skin as he watched Jayce dance around Councilor Medarda like a lost puppy pleading for her affections.
“I wonder if she has ever seen you like this.”
Viktor's breaths come faster as he remembers the way Jayce had looked at him as he said it. The fire in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw. Like a coil bound tight, or a cog twisted to the point of stripping the screws. It had been innocent at first, drunken teasing meant to get under Jayce's skin as revenge for his stunt at the speech.
And then Jayce had asked him that damning question, point blank, unflinchingly bold –
“What do you want from me, Viktor?”
Viktor's fingers slip on the mechanism, and the Hexcore surges, runes flashing wildly as electricity crackles off the surface. The force of it nearly knocks Viktor backwards, a ringing bursting in his ears. His head swims dangerously, and he has to tighten his grip on the device’s control handles just to keep from falling over.
Viktor. He hears it again, faint amidst the reverberent trill of sound. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor –
As the voice echoes, the runes before him twist and warp, until they almost seem to unfold into a new form that only vaguely characterizes their former. As they distort, the voices around him sharpen, growing in volume, each letter and syllable more and more distinct.
Come, it whispers, the runes flashing wildly. Listen. Hear. Speak. Move. Run. Viktor.
The final iteration of his name strikes something deep inside of Viktor's chest, a dissonant chord amidst a flowing melody. He lurches backwards, releasing the device as he unceremoniously hits the floor, his chair scattering somewhere behind him. Breathing hard, Viktor presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, trying to subdue the dizzying spin of light and shadow around him.
Slowly, like toxin seeping from an open wound, the voices fade and the ringing disperses with it, until the lab is once more filled with silence. It is only interrupted by the intermittent click of the Hexcore resting stagnant on the table and Viktor's wheezing breaths as he tries to settle the jackhammer pounding of his heart in his chest.
What was that? His mind races furiously. The runes, they almost seemed to – to –
As Viktor tries to come up with the right word, the ringing rises once more, albeit fainter than before. It settles over him like a thin layer of fabric, a static rubbing up against his mind. As it does, another sound shifts and warps beneath it, a low murmuring voice. He strains to hear it, and as he does, the sounds change, clarifying into one simple, singular word:
Evolve.