WIP Wednesday, The Meet-nerd 🖤

WIP Wednesday, the meet-nerd 🖤

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Jayce had nearly forgotten about the exchange—until a few days later, when he stepped into his lab and found a stranger standing in the middle of the room. 

A sharp pang of irritation flared in his chest. 

“Hey, this area is off-limits. How the hell did you even get in—” 

“Your calculations on chiral entanglement are incomplete.” 

The voice was smooth, thickly accented, matter-of-fact. Jayce froze mid-step, his words catching in his throat. 

“Excuse me?” 

The man turned slightly. “You are accounting for time distortion within the Beach, yes, but your equations assume a constant gravitational influence. Chiral space is not bound by such constraints.” He gestured lazily toward the scrawled equations on the large holo screen of the far wall. “You need a variable to account for the fluctuations. Otherwise, your model collapses at high densities.” 

Jayce blinked, momentarily stunned into silence. He followed the man’s gaze to his own notes, scanning the numbers.  

Finally, he shut his mouth and took in the stranger properly. 

He was shorter than Jayce, as most people were, his frame rail thin. He leaned heavily on a cane, kept the weight off his right leg. His cheekbones were razor sharp, his complexion pale. A mole sat below his eye, another just above his lip. Waves of chestnut-brown hair cascaded halfway to his shoulders, a shock of light blond peeking out from underneath.  

But what struck him most were his eyes. 

They were chiral gold. 

“You must be Viktor,” Jayce muttered. He wandered deeper into the room, the door hissing shut behind him. He stepped up to the holo board and ran his gaze over the calculations, rubbing his chin as he rearranged the numbers in his mind to account for Viktor’s correction. 

And—damn it. He was right. 

How had he not seen it before? 

He felt a rush of heat—startled, flustered. He had spent his life studying chiralium, was regarded as Runeterra’s foremost expert on the subject, and yet this stranger had waltzed in and pointed out a flaw he hadn’t even considered. Embarrassing. 

And yet… exhilarating. 

Jayce exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. “Alright. That could improve data transfer stability. But it still doesn’t solve the real problem—how to move physical materials through the Beach.” 

“No, it doesn’t,” Viktor conceded, tilting his head slightly. “Tell me, what do you know about tar?” 

Jayce frowned. “It manifests in BT-dense areas,” he said slowly. “And in places where voidouts have occurred.” 

“Indeed—regions where the boundary between our world and the Beach is thin.” Viktor tapped his cane idly against the floor. “Do you know what happens when an object falls into a pool of tar?” 

Jayce gave him a look. “You don’t get it back.” 

“Correct. Even after the tar recedes, the object is gone.” Viktor’s gaze was sharp, pinning Jayce in place like butterfly wings. “It has been speculated that the tar acts as a buffer of sorts—a conduit between worlds. It is where BTs come through, yes, but it is a two-way gate. Anything swallowed by it here is transported to the Beach.” 

Jayce’s eyebrows shot up. 

“I’ve never heard that theory.” 

“It is not widely accepted,” Viktor admitted with a wry smile. “But reports from Jumpers would appear to support it. Buildings appearing on their Beaches. Objects from our world.” 

A thrum of excitement shot through Jayce, the gears in his mind turning at full speed. “If we could track travel through the tar...” 

“Then we could quantify the relationship between entry and exit points,” Viktor mused. “And then, perhaps, we could learn how to direct it.” 

Jayce's hands were already moving, clearing a space on his cluttered desk to pull up a holographic interface. Equations, schematics, old reports—his thoughts racing ahead of his fingers. “We’d need controlled experiments. Objects with tracking devices, maybe something embedded with chiralium to send the data back—” 

Their conversation tumbled forward in a rush of mutual excitement. Jayce had never encountered someone who could not only keep pace with him but push him to rethink his assumptions, recontextualize his own expertise. He had spent years dissecting the properties of chiralium, convinced it held the key to bridging the gap between cities, between worlds, but Viktor was opening an entirely new avenue of thought. 

Jayce had always regarded the black, viscous liquid as a byproduct, an environmental hazard. That tar was a phenomenon to be avoided or mitigated. But Viktor approached it differently. He spoke of its composition, the presence of d-amino acids—a biological anomaly in a world built from l-amino structures—suggesting that the tar was not simply an inert remnant of the Beach, but an active medium. A birthing pool for new forms of life. 

The implications sent a thrill down Jayce’s spine. 

The more they spoke, the clearer the picture became. Jayce had spent years staring at one half of the equation, never realizing he had been missing the other. Tar and chiralium—two sides of the same coin, inextricably bound.  

Jayce had already forgotten why he was angry at Mel for bringing Viktor here. For the first time in months, he felt something other than frustration. He felt the edge of a breakthrough.  

It wasn’t until he caught Viktor struggling to keep his eyes open that he realized how much time had slipped away. He glanced at the clock, startled to find it was already late, their enthralling discussion having consumed the hours without notice. 

“You must be tired from the trip,” Jayce noted, studying Viktor more closely. The man looked haggard, exhausted. “When did you get to Piltover?” 

Viktor stifled a yawn, setting the tablet down on the desk he had been leaning against. “A little after noon.” 

Not long before Jayce had discovered him here. “And you haven’t slept?” 

Viktor shrugged, gave a noncommittal hum. 

Jayce stared. A multi-day trek through unstable terrain, past BT-infested zones, and he hadn’t even stopped to rest. Most people would have collapsed into bed the moment they arrived. He was impressed, but he supposed he should have expected as much. The kind of mind that could keep up with him like this—of course it belonged to someone just as obsessive. Just as willing to push past human limits, no matter the toll. 

He understood, but concern still nagged at him. There was something here—something gravitational, pulling him in with a force he’d never quite experienced before. He felt himself drawn in, his focus shifting toward Viktor like a satellite dish locking onto a signal of interest. The last thing he wanted was for him to keel over before they’d even begun. 

"Well, I think we’ve done more than enough for one day,” he said, stepping forward, his hand landing on Viktor’s narrow shoulder. Viktor glanced down at the contact in a sort of detached curiosity before flicking his gaze up to meet Jayce’s. 

For the tenth time that day, those golden eyes startled him. 

“Let’s go figure out where they’ve put you up and get you settled.” 

For a moment, Viktor hesitated. Then, with a slight nod, he fell into step beside Jayce, cane clicking as they headed out the door.