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3:00 AM, 4 months after the attack on Piltover’s Council
A blood-curdling scream reverberated through the ragged stone hallways, making the hairs on the back of Viktor’s neck stand on end. He hadn’t been sleeping, but the sound made him bolt upright anyway. And then the pleading, rising into a shout, “no, no, no, NO, NO !!!” Viktor cautiously crept to the door and cracked it open, peering into the hallway, silent save for the dull thrum of the dim neon lights. He remained alert there for a few minutes, cold sweat running down his neck, while he waited for any further clues. And then a soft sound like a whimper, a tiny crying noise before it faded beneath the hum of the lights again.
He walked back to the threadbare blankets crumpled on the bed in the far end of the room and sat down, his eyes sticking on the journal entry he’d been working on. His old mentor had managed to bring a number of his notes from the Piltover laboratory, but Viktor was now trying to rewrite the most important contents of the others from his memory. Chief amongst his priorities right now was the transcranial stimulator that had been left behind. Singed wouldn’t have known about it, but without maintenance treatments, Viktor had barely been able to sleep without it since the Hexcore accident that had killed his assistant. The nightmares left him so shaken that most nights it didn’t even seem worth it to try sleeping.
1 month after the attack on Piltover’s Council
Somehow, shortly after the Council Chambers’ destruction, Singed and that girl he was protecting, Silco’s heir, had dug Viktor’s body out of the rubble and absconded with him. For the life of him, Viktor could not figure out why, and neither of his captors were exactly forthcoming with their plans for him, other than his mentor’s stern rejoinders that he would soon be thanking them. Why kidnap him and not Jayce or Councilor Medarda, or any of the other Councilors? Viktor knew he had heard some of their voices in the aftermath, and surely they would have been worth far more ransom than a behind-the-scenes research assistant from the Undercity.
In the first month of his captivity, the girl, Jinx, had kept a near constant vigilance on him, missing few opportunities to malign his betrayal of the Undercity, painting him as an Entresol brat who aspired to make a permanent place for himself among the nouveau riche of the topside. Learning he had been kidnapped by the most wanted criminal in all of Piltover had created a new urgency for Viktor: he had to survive. He had no intention of letting everything he had worked for end at the hands of an Undercity assassin, not after what he’d been through with the Hexcore. So he endured her criticism and taunting day after day, observing and trying to responding with the least interesting answers he could imagine.
As Jinx’s interest in him decreased, she followed him less and less frequently, and Viktor began to observe a marked change in her behavior when she thought no one was watching. For someone whose name struck fear in the hearts of enforcers and councilors alike, she seemed empty and apathetic. Allegedly, she was the one who had single handedly orchestrated the destruction of PIltover’s political epicenter, but like Viktor, she didn’t seem to care about any of the politics or news that Singed would bring from the outside world. She started to spend days away from his laboratory–where Viktor was being held–and when she did appear, there was only absent-minded discussion of some logistical matter before vanishing again. And Silco was gone now? What on earth were the two of them doing? It was infuriating for Viktor to be stuck in the dark, and for now it seemed Singed saw fit to do no more than deal with his own work and babysit the two of them.
What worried Viktor most, though, was the presence of the Hexcore. That the girl and the chemist had managed to transport it was a miraculous feat in itself, but if Jayce or Councilor Medarda had survived, its absence would not go unnoticed. And the kinds of danger it could create here he could only imagine.
And then, one day, everything changed. Viktor’s mentor had come to his room and dropped a newspaper onto his desk. As his eyes scanned the pages lazily, Viktor involuntarily hissed and cursed at Singed, “is this what you were fucking trying to do?!” The older man stayed silent while Viktor read the story in detail. Jayce and Councilor Medarda had survived, and they issued a public accusation against him of conspiring in last month’s attack. While no specifics regarding the Hexcore were released to the public, Viktor had also been accused of stealing priceless amounts of laboratory equipment, including Hextech secrets. It was all such an exceedingly convenient narrative. No topsider would spend 5 seconds questioning the involvement of the one Zaunite who’d been in that room. But Jayce? Viktor crumpled the newspaper and threw it back at the old man. In the end, no matter what they’d said, he and Jayce had both always known it was a partnership of convenience, at best.
“This still would’ve happened even if I’d left you up there,” Singed said. “Your partner attracted far too much attention with his failed negotiations with Silco. The topsiders wanted a head on a platter, and it was always going to be the two of you. But casting you aside keeps his head off the cutting block”.
Viktor hung his head and banged his metal hand against the desk.
“Build your laboratory here,” the old man said. “You don’t need the approval of their Academy. Change the world from here.” He held out his hand, and Viktor took a long look at him.
“My own work, only,” he began, hesitantly, “...and…my own space”.
“That could be arranged,” Singed said.
“And…the Hexcore,” Viktor said, trying to stop himself. A battle had been waging for weeks between the Ethics taught to him by the Academy and the visions in his head of a glorious mechanized evolution for his people. Nothing needed to stand in his way if it was only himself. The Council wasn’t going to improve anything for Zaun now…this city would need someone. “It belongs in my lab,” he said finally.
“It is yours, Viktor,” he agreed. Viktor looked at his old mentor’s hand, shook his head, and reached his metal hand forward to shake it.
5 months after the attack on Piltover’s Council
200 steps down this hallway, down 2 floors, 100 steps more, turn to the right, another 100 steps, and up another staircase to connect back to the hallway with the green lights. Another 100 steps back to complete the loop.
Viktor’s enhanced leg didn’t need any strengthening, but he intended to remain vigilant about his health while he was here. A breathing treatment had slowed the degeneration of his lungs for now, but it was still to be seen if he would have the courage to experiment again for a more permanent cure.
“Find any new doors that weren’t there yesterday, Viky?” Jinx’s voice interrupted him from behind and he turned to face her.
She did still startle him from time to time. No matter how indifferent she seemed, it was hard not to fear someone who had killed so many, especially as she was wont to appear silently behind him before deciding to speak. “Er…w-what?” he stammered.
“You pace these hallways every day, 5 times a day. You have about 6 different variations in your route. I’m guessing you’re probably on your…3rd set of the day?” she said, sighing.
“Mmh well, there’s only so much space in these 3 floors,” he responded, shifting his weight uneasily back onto his better leg. Singed had opened up space for Viktor to work, but part of their deal was that he would remain in the compound. Enforcers filled the suspended walkways, tunnels and streets of the Undercity, looking for any word of himself and Jinx.
“Ah…best get back to it, then,” she said. Viktor tried to read her eyes and her expression. What had been the point of this encounter? What did she want from him?
“Yes, well…” Jinx was fidgeting with a leather strap she kept wrapping and unwrapping around her wrist. “Miss…Jinx,” she raised an eyebrow at him flippantly. “Do you… sleep at night?”
Jinx gave him an uninterested chuckle. “And they say I’m weird,” she said, swirling her finger in a loop around her head as she turned away.
“I hear you at night,” he said, more steadily now. Jinx stopped and turned back toward him, her smug grin turned to a scowl. She grabbed Viktor by the collar and lifted him up easily, throwing him back against the wall and causing him to give a pained yelp. “Look, asshole, I don’t care how good of a scientist you are, if this is some perverted shit, I’ll–”
“What?! No!” he exclaimed. “I know because I…the nightmares keep me up, too”.
Jinx let go of him suddenly and glared, waiting for an explanation. “I…I hurt two of my friends. I killed my assistant in my lab, and…it was an accident, but I still covered up the whole thing. And the other…I couldn’t save her because I was too young and didn’t know enough to be able to help”. There was no change in Jinx’s expression. “I…still hear their voices in my dreams and watch them die a hundred times over”.
Viktor thought he saw something soften in her expression, but best not to assume. He cleared his throat. “Anyways, I built a neuromodulation device to counter these dreams, and well, I had to rebuild it since I couldn’t bring the one from Piltover. If you want to try it, just… let me know”. He stepped backward cautiously, as Jinx had still given no indication of her next move.
She sighed. “This is a pretty half-hearted attempt at trying to murder me, Viktor”.
VIktor felt a pang of sadness pass through him. They had been sharing the empty space of the tunnels between Singed’s laboratory and Jinx’s workshop for months, but she remained distant as ever. He had only ever heard of her as a psychotic terrorist, but the girl in these tunnels was, no matter what she tried to portray, melancholy and forsaken, desperately alone. The intellect he knew lay within her, having deconstructed her bombs in Piltover, was directionless and dormant. He didn’t need to know her history to know it took deep hurt to wear a person down so far. Maybe she wasn’t worthy of his help, as everyone he knew would have told him, but Viktor had never been one to label anyone as less deserving than another.
“You can watch me use it,” he smiled slightly, “then decide”.
This took a moment to register with Jinx, who laughed sardonically. “You that sure I won’t cut ya in your sleep?”
Now it was Viktor’s turn to laugh. “If you wanted to, you already would have. Good day, Miss Jinx”.
Viktor laughed at himself, watching the notorious killer turning the thin metal device over in her hands. I must be losing my mind down here . She had shown up that night, smirking with the excuse that if the device didn’t fry his brain, maybe she could alter it so it would.
“Your design could use some work…” Jinx tsked and tossed the curved thin bar back to him. “You don’t have much of an eye for aesthetics…”
“Maybe decide what you’re going to do with it before insulting it”, he replied.
She shrugged, slumping back in a chair with one of his notebooks.
“Oh, one more thing,” he added, reaching into a basket at the foot of his bed. He pulled out a frayed blanket and draped it over her shoulders. “It gets cold in here”.
It took Jinx a full minute to register what had happened before she looked back to Viktor, but he had already lay down and secured the device in place around his forehead. She crept over to the bed and cautiously reached over to tap her finger to the skin just above the electrode. None of the familiar sensations of electrical burns she’d accidentally sustained in her own workshop.
“I’m still alive,” he said, smirking on feeling her touch. Jinx scowled and walked back over to the chair.
Viktor awoke to a chill and blinked his eyes slowly, momentarily disoriented. This was certainly the most soundly he had slept in months. He removed the stimulator from his forehead and set it on the small table beside his bed. Immediately he froze, remembering that Jinx was in the room with him.
She appeared just barely asleep, with the blanket now wrapped tightly around her. Viktor looked around the room and stepped out of bed to don a sweater, then sighed. This would be a delicate operation with a high chance of him ending up injured at the end. He walked to the chair where she lay sleeping and, leaning back slowly, lifted it up and carried it over toward the bed. He set it down and grabbed another blanket, wrapping it beneath her legs. Gently, he started pulling up on the edges of both blankets, lifting her out of the chair and onto the bed. She yawned and turned in her sleep, and Viktor breathed a sigh of relief, draping one more blanket over her before backing away. “Please don’t leave…” she murmured, her face contorting as though she were about to cry. Viktor stopped and looked back to confirm she was still very much asleep. He frowned and walked over to the desk, where he picked up a journal to record his findings.
Jinx stretched and made a satisfied little noise. She recognized that she was awake, but something was different. She was warm and comfortable, even if still exhausted. The sound of a turning page caused her eyes to snap open and she gasped, but stopped short on seeing the familiar sight of Viktor, realizing where she was. But hadn’t she been freezing in that chair? Something felt soft in her heart, a feeling that hadn’t returned since before Silco’s death.
Viktor had noticed her waking and walked back to kneel beside the bed, asking, “Are you warm enough?”
Inexplicably, Jinx felt her cheeks burning, and something stirred in her chest as her eyes caught the light bouncing off of his own. She felt almost lightheaded, the way you would after stapling together a gaping wound, drunk on some delicious sensation. This was different from the comforting closeness she’d felt with Silco, maybe even better? Her heart was beating faster. What are you, Viky?
She cleared her throat and said suddenly, quickly, “well, I see you survived…it’s not like anything else is going on down here so I guess I’ll try, if the doc signs off on it…” she continued, referring to Singed, “but not a word about my nightmares”. She sat up and picked up the device to examine again. Viktor smiled and gestured for her to take it with her.
Jinx paused, then leapt forward to hug him. He stood stunned for a moment before wrapping his arms around her and returning the embrace. Her ear pressed to his chest, she heard his heart speeding up, too, and let a tiny smile escape unseen beneath him.
“Your laboratory is…” Viktor trailed off as his eyes scanned the chaotic assortment of metal gears, buckets of explosive powders and books strewn across Jinx’s workshop table and the floor around it. It all seemed precariously balanced on the giant mining fan they were walking across.
“Genius?” she asked, “I know”.
“I was going to say it’s a very…complex design? All these structures really withstand your experiments?”
Jinx looked back at him incredulously. “What are you talking about? That’s kind of the entire reason it’s built here. Where do you throw things when they’re about to blow up?” she said, gesturing to the abyss of the tunnel beneath them.
“I try to not have them explode in the first place, I guess…” he said under his breath.
Jinx gestured to a dimly lit alcove, leading him across the center of one of the fan’s blades. Viktor tried to avoid looking over the edge as he imagined for a moment the plumes of toxic smoke that used to rise through these air tunnels when they had been in active use for mining.
“So just make sure it’s set up right?” Jinx asked, gesturing to an alcove where a pile of pillows and rumpled up sheets were strewn across a bed. Despite the messy nature, he could tell everything was expensive, quality that would rival the interiors of a Councilwoman’s boudoir. Jinx truly was Silco’s most cherished project; Jayce’s proposal for peace had never stood a chance.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” Viktor responded. “But I’ll make sure you’re tolerating the treatment”.
Jinx lay down and pulled a blanket over herself. Viktor secured the transcranial stimulator to her forehead and before turning it on, asked, “is it comfortable?”
She sighed and nodded, but as he was about to power it on, she grabbed his wrist and stopped him. Viktor noticed a tinge of pink in the slight tear lining her eyes. “Every time, they keep leaving me behind,” she whispered.
He furrowed his brow in inquiry. “Everyone. When I dream. My sister, my friends. Only Silco ever loved me, and now he’s gone, too. I wish…I’d always been alone,” she decided.
“Do you want those dreams to go away?” Viktor asked.
Jinx nodded, closing her eyes. “I don’t want them holding me back anymore”. Viktor let his finger hover above the power switch… and then flipped it on.
A dull and familiar hum with an occasional crackle rose into Jinx’s consciousness. Without opening her eyes, she first noticed the lack of her constant headache. She opened her eyes and removed the stimulator from her forehead. Only the familiar sounds of her workshop echoed around her, and she sat up, bringing her knees to her chest. It actually worked?
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the mess of dark brown hair leaning against the side of her bed, illuminated in the glow from the neon magenta light above. Viktor had fallen asleep sitting on the floor beside her, his notebook lying open in his lap. She looked at her clock, realizing it had been nearly 7 hours that she slept.
For the first time since Silco’s death, Jinx felt her confidence returning. She silently thanked the creepy old scientist, for saving her life, yes, but also for bringing him …. She reached out a hand to Viktor’s face, and as his eyes slowly fluttered open, leaned down to kiss him. Again, a delay from the shock, then he backed away just enough to look her in the eyes, a blush burning his pale cheeks.
“...Jinx…?” he said, unable to find any more words.
“Shut up,” she laughed, and pulled him up to sit on the bed beside her.
Viktor was not entirely sure if he was awake or dreaming, but Jinx rested her hands on either side of his ribs, and he allowed himself to lean into the kiss, wrapping his hand into the small of her back to pull her closer. She was warm and soft and felt surprisingly fragile against him. He had only briefly dabbled in the realm of romantic relationships before, seldom finding it worth his time and never before encountering anyone he considered his intellectual equal. But Jinx, his captor and over 10 years his junior (though her mind was far more capable than most women twice her age), was intoxicating. This girl, who had none of the formal training he’d received, but whose technical ability already equalled his own, knew who she was and what she wanted and made no apology for it.
Maybe she… would understand his dreams? No, don’t go there . Their lips parted and each one caught their breath as their eyes locked at close distance. The glow in Jinx’s eyes signalled something few others could understand. She already knew what it was for a body to evolve. Smiling, he brought his hand to her face and stroked her cheek with the backs of his metal fingers.
Jinx lowered her head and nuzzled her head under his, making a satisfied noise into his chest. “I do not know who hurt you, Jinx, but I won’t let it happen again,” he said, embracing her tightly. He was giddy, his mind bounding forward toward visions of a new, Zaunite Glorious Evolution, but maybe he wouldn’t have to do it alone.