Chapter Text
budding
Viktor had always been a sickly child.
His first memories are of his mother reading books to him in a hospital bed, right around his fourth birthday, when his first bout of pneumonia had sent him to the ICU.
He's the first to get sick during the annual flu season and the last to recover, so it's only natural that socializing isn't exactly high on the list of Viktor's priorities.
He much prefers the solitude he finds in the smallest laboratory the department of neuroscience has to offer, tucked away in the basement between the elevator and a supply closet with outdated or faulty equipment and rows or dusty petri dishes.
Whoever had designed this particular wing must have been similar to him, preferring the functionality of stain resistant concrete floors and tiled walls to the more hospitable upper floors. The solid blocks of cement were only broken up by a few leftover pieces of yellow and black caution tape. The low ceiling had never been covered, allowing any visitor to observe the bowels of the building, the pipes and electrical wiring and vents. The motion sensors make the lights flicker on, accompanied by a dissonant humming sound Viktor's learned to ignore.
It's only a few feet from the elevator to the lab he peruses. His keys jingle when he unlocks the door, unlike the rest of the building, the basement corridor has yet to be upgraded to chip card status.
Viktor is met with the familiar sight of strewn about prosthetics, crumpled up sheets of paper and a tower of empty coffee mugs he should really return to the cafeteria.
He puts down his backpack with a strained sigh and clears a space on his cluttered desk for his laptop, waiting impatiently for it to connect with the shoddy university wifi. One of these days, he fears, his decade old device will give out on him. Half of the markings on the keyboards are already rubbed off by long wear and the internal cooling system sounds like it's on its last breath judging by the distressed whirring noise.
Every morning starts the same - with him checking his emails and finding another dismissed research proposal, another application for funding denied.
When he clicks on the mail icon this morning, there's dozens of unread messages, but only two of importance. One is a lengthy review his supervisor and head of department has left for a paper he's trying to publish. The other is yet another denied application.
He really hates academia today.
"My dear boy, it's not just about your research," professor Heimerdinger never tires of telling him, "it's positive rapport, too."
A horrifyingly euphemistic way of pointing out that connections matter, Viktor thinks.
The problem is that he is simply terrible at sucking up to reviewers and publishers or socializing with his fellow doctoral candidates. He considers it a waste of precious time, time that he could be using to further his own research.
Surrounded by like minded people, by the smartest scientists in the world, Viktor feels more lonely than he ever has in his entire life.
Sometimes the scholarship at the prestigious college doesn't seem like the dream-come-true he had pictured it being.
It's not that everybody here comes from money, or that he's the only student who stays on campus during the holiday, but he's still an outlier. If he were a data point, then he'd be removed from the equation to make sure his presence wouldn't alter the results in an unfavorable way.
But he doesn't miss home, either. His father started drinking after his mother's death, and she was all that had ever kept him coming back. Now she's gone and he's cut loose from every tether, living life without belonging anywhere.
This lab is the closest thing to a home he has.
***
Minutes of skimming through research papers turn into hours spent hunched over his laptop.
Viktor thinks he may be making backwards progress when he re-reads the same paragraph over and over again without it making any more sense than it had five minutes ago.
He glances at the time. Long past noon. By now, he'll be lucky if he even manages to scrape together leftovers in the cafeteria - most likely, kitchen staff have already cleared the dining hall to prepare dinner. He could grab a sandwich from a small little bakery about a five minute walk across campus, but with his cane it takes him at least triple the time.
His usual trip to the vending machine on the first floor it is, then.
Viktor's joints protest when he rises from his seat and stretches. His spine makes a sound it definitely should not be making and his leg is stiff and nearly locked into place when he reaches over for his cane.
He leaves his laptop on his desk and double locks the door, his steps and his cane against the solid concrete floor echo through the empty corridor.
Exiting the basement feels like stepping into a different universe. The walls are painted snow white and lined with posters from research conferences, the floors are carpeted. Instead of dusty supply closets there are windows, offices, comfortable couches and a few plastic palm trees.
Viktor turns left on one of the many labyrinth-like corridors. There's two vending machines crammed into a nook in the wall, one makes the most watery coffee Viktor has ever had the displeasure of tasting, the other offers various snacks and candies.
He feeds the vending machine with a few coins and picks a granola bar and bag of smarties he tears open immediately, shaking half of its contents into his mouth.
"Viktor, my boy!"
Viktor nearly chokes on a mouth full of smarties. Professor Heimerdinger is a short man, he barely reaches up to his chest, with a comically large white mustache.
"Professor," he croaks and stifles a cough.
"Walk with me," the professor says. Viktor struggles to keep up with him in spite of his height. "Have you read over the revision I sent you?"
"Yes, of course." Heimerdinger's reviews are rarely as brutal as the responses he gets from journals. He always leaves a few words of encouragement and the end of assignments, no matter how dreadful the paper is.
"As always," he says, "you excel at your science and mathematics, Viktor. But you've not the data to back your ideas."
"Because," he says, and it isn't the first time they're having this conversation, "I don't have the funding to build cybernetic prosthetics with full neural interfaces. If I only-"
Heimerdinger raises a hand. "Your writing is atrocious. If you included an abstract in your paper, a conclusion - if you followed guidelines..."
"The words are unnecessary," Viktor protests. "The science is enough to back my ideas up! You know it would work."
"What I know," Heimerdinger says, an unfamiliar sharpness to his voice, "is that the most brilliant student I've ever had is sabotaging his own changes for reasons beyond me. Don't be so stubborn. Be nice. Follow the rules, Viktor."
With a last stern gaze, Heimerdinger turns to the staircase. "Oh! One more thing, my boy. I'm giving the introduction lecture to biomedical engineering today. Don't be late, students must know who to turn to for assistance."
Viktor stifles a groan. He's grateful to Heimerdinger for many things - the lab, the possibility of research, introducing him to scientists he's looked up to for years. Being his assistant? Not so much.
Especially not during the first week of the term, when the campus grounds are flooded by students like locusts.
As the professor's assistant, it's his job to mark and grade their homework, make mock exams for them to practice on and be available for any and all questions they might have on Heimerdinger's eccentric style of lecturing. He hates every second of it. It means hours that he's not spending on his own work, and it makes him even more of an outsider than he already feels like. After all, nobody likes a glorified teacher's pet.
He stuffs the rest of his chocolate and granola into his bag. He should really listen to Heimerdinger's advice, but Viktor has never excelled at writing. Doing it in a non-native language is even more challenging, no matter how much he tries, he can't ever convey what he truly wants to say. He knows it's foolish to believe that a revolutionary idea alone is enough to convince committees to fund his research.
Or perhaps it would have been, were his interests anymore marketable.
But cripples - there's no lobby for people such as himself.
***
The auditorium is packed when Viktor arrives, ten minutes before the start of Heimerdinger's introductory lesson. He leans onto his cane and scans the rows of seats for a free spot, but it's so full students are standing it sitting on the descending stairs.
He hates the idea of having to climb down the stairs and over backpacks and legs and coats, but apparently, he doesn't have much say in the matter.
So Viktor grits his teeth and hobbles his way down the stairs, acutely aware of the glances people cast at him behind his back.
None of them are of malicious intent, he's fairly certain. Most of it's pity.
He hates that even more.
"Quiet down, everybody!" Professor Heimerdinger's voice booms over the speakers. The chattering ceases almost immediately. "Welcome to Introduction to Biomedical Engineering! Most of you are engineering students, I assume..."
About half of the crowd cheers in response. Viktor rolls his eyes. The enthusiasm of new students. A few weeks in, and barely half of them will be attending this class.
"Some people are here because of their neuroscience degree, or bioinformatics... But whatever your background, I think you'll find this class will offer you new perspectives."
Much to Viktor's chagrin, Heimerdinger doesn't follow the ethos of keeping the first lesson short and sweet. He launches into a speech on the history of computer tomography and neuroimaging, halfway through the class he pops two painkillers out of a blister and swallows them with a sip of water. The change of seasons makes his leg ache worse than usual, the cold of autumn seeps into his joints and bones and lingers, locking his muscles into some perpetual state of discomfort.
Ten minutes before the clock ticks over to five pm, Heimerdinger calls Viktor up to his desk.
Viktor grabs his cane and rises stiffly, the room is silent and seems to amplify his labored breathing.
He's relieved Heimerdinger doesn't ask him to introduce himself, he's far too busy trying to look less like walking ten feet feels like a goddamn marathon.
"If you have any trouble with the course material, my assistant will be happy to help," emphasis on happy.
Viktor smiles a sour smile and hopes this cohort of students are particularly smart and require little - or, even better - no help on their various assignments.
***
It takes all but three weeks for the first wave of emails to flood his inbox. Viktor wakes up one morning and there's at least a dozen, all of them struggling with the same homework problem. At least that's an easy solve - he can write out an answer and reply to everybody at once.
Other questions are trickier. He enjoys those, when he gets to engage in true scientific debates and think about the intricacies of what they're doing.
He never bothers remembering the names or faces of Heimerdinger's students, until one of them starts popping up multiple times.
Jayce Talis.
His ideas are - for a lack of a better word - inspired. Impossible, obviously. Naive, maybe. But his passion is invigorating and Viktor finds himself curious about his research.
A quick online search reveals next to nothing - just that he'd finished his bachelor's degree a year ago and started his master in engineering at a different university. He clicks the link to his thesis, but the file is corrupted.
Why is he here now? Maybe for the prestige; it's quite possible his first application had been denied.
Viktor contemplates investigating for a split second, then he decides he has a hell of a lot of better uses for his time.
***
Viktor is no stranger to late-night sessions at the laboratory. When office hours are over, nobody comes knocking at his door and he can finally work without being uninterrupted. Sometimes the sun has already risen by the time he's satisfied with his progress. Other times caffeine doesn't suffice to combat the exhaustion that comes along with an entire day of living in a world not made for him and he ends up asleep at his desk.
But something is wrong tonight. Viktor can't quite put his finger on what it is, but when he steps out of the elevator, something feels different. The neon lights flicker on with the familiar delay, accompanied by steady humming and whirring that Viktor thinks may be faulty wiring, the corridor is as empty and abandoned as ever.
There's a sound.
Quiet, barely audible, it sounds like a heavy object scraping over the floor - and it's coming from his lab.
Alternative hypothesis? There's an intruder in his laboratory.
He feels a little foolish sneaking up to the door and pressing his ear against it.
There it is again, the odd scraping.
Somebody is in his lab.
Viktor tightens the grip around his cane, he'll use it as a weapon if he has to.
The door - unlocked - swings open when he pushes down the knob. The lights inside the lab are off, but the intruder has a flashlight, Viktor registers immediately.
He hits the switch on the side of a wall, immediately flooding the room with blindingly bright light. Then he hears a loud bang and a pained groan.
The intruder - a young man - is rubbing his knee. All of Viktor's prototypes that he always keeps in a neat stack atop one of the metal tables lie scattered across the room.
Alternative hypothesis: the intruder ran into the table, gave himself a nasty bruise on the shin and knocked over Viktor's delicate prosthetics.
"Those are fragile!" Viktor snaps and points at the intruder with his cane. "Don't touch! You've already done more enough damage."
The intruder squints into the sudden brightness. He lifts his hands as if he was in one of those stupid cop movies and trying to prove he's not armed.
As if that mattered. With Viktor's condition, anybody could run him over like a bulldozer should they so choose and he'd be next to powerless.
"You're the professor's assistant!" The intruder says, surprised. "This is your lab?"
Viktor leans against the wall and crosses his arms in front of his chest. "And you just broke into it. Why?"
"I didn't think anybody was actually using this scrapyard!"
"Is that supposed to make it any better?"
"Yes?" The intruder says sheepishly.
"It does not. What's your name?" He'll report the intruder - most likely a student agreeing to a dare - to campus security, and if he's lucky, he'll only be reprimanded and not expelled. Not that Viktor cares - for God's sake, he broke into his lab.
"Jayce Talis," the intruder says, and that rings a bell.
Viktor narrows his eyes at him and clicks his tongue thoughtfully. "I've read your emails," he says. "Intriguing ideas."
Jayce scoffs.
"Yeah, sure. Just..." He drags a hand down his face with a heavy sigh, "make this whole thing quick."
"This... Whole thing?"
"Getting expelled. Again."
Viktor's lips quirk into an amused smile. "Is that why you changed universities? Because you were expelled?"
Jayce isn't volunteering any information. He puts down his hands and starts toying with a notebook instead.
"Why?" Viktor asks.
"I was trying to prove a point." Jayce rubs the bridge of his nose, "using equipment I shouldn't have been. But - but I was right! My idea would have worked, I only needed more time-"
He interrupts himself and when he continues, his voice is a lot more measured. "I get it, there's a reason for doing science the way it's supposed to be done. Standardized, passing it by the ethics committee, writing papers."
Viktor hums thoughtfully. In essence, Jayce has captured the precise reasons he hates academia. Where's the room for truly innovative ideas? "Nobody has ever made big advancements by following the rules. Do you know of Dr. Semmelweis?"
"The 19th century doctor?"
Jayce is educated, then. Good.
"His discovery of practicing hand sanitation reduced mortality rates by ninety percent," Viktor's lips curve into a brief smile, "and for his accomplishment, they sent him to die in a psych ward."
"I'm not sure I like that analogy."
Viktor chooses to ignore that. "Why did you break into my lab?"
"I didn't know it was being used!" Jayce points at an old defective spectrometer. "I hears there was tons of equipment down here."
"Indeed. Faulty, or decades old."
"I can fix it," Jayce says.
Viktor considers that. Jayce is an engineer, judging by his emails and inquiries a smart one, at that. As much as he hates to admit it - that's exactly what he needs. An engineer.
He can take care of the technicalities of neural interfaces, he can solve every last equation to allow for a seamless connection between prosthetic and mind.
But he can't build them. Well, he can build them, he's tried, but none of them have worked in the way he's intended. His gaze ends up on one of the many prototypes that had sputtered and given out beneath his weight after a step or two instead of melding into his atrophied muscles and linking with his motoneurons. He can't calibrate the interface and docking points on his own.
"Alright," Viktor says.
"Wait, what?" Jayce furrows his brows. "What do you mean, alright?"
"I won't report you. And you can tinker with the defective equipment," Viktor says. "On one condition."
Jayce's gaze turns weary. "That being?"
"I've got an engineering problem. You help out with that."
Jayce is taller, broader and a lot stronger than he is, but his handshake is surprisingly gentle.
"Deal."