Chapter 1
The first thing Jayce knows is that he’s asleep.
He knows the feeling well, as every person does. The heavy slackness of his limbs. The comforting rhythm of his breathing. His mind settles from the harsh winds of everyday life and is comforted by the warm shelter of dreams. Dreams he will forget in the morning. Or at least try to. It doesn't matter. Nothing does here. The outside world doesn't factor. He can indulge in his ego all he wants. Abuse the selfish instinct to keep his eyes closed, to lock out the world, to let himself be cradled in the warm darkness a little longer. Keep from living a little longer.
Well, that was probably just him. But what he couldn’t understand is how… distant it felt. He could feel the sensation of his bedsheets fading, not as if they were being drawn off him, but more like his capacity to feel was being stripped away. His breath faded from his lungs without choking him. The gentle beat of his heart grew hushed, quieter and quieter till it was barely a tick on the horizon. Then, he didn’t open his eyes. Yet he still saw.
Stars. Galaxies. Planets. The winding path of cosmic creation stretching before his eyes, purring in perfect harmony. Tiny golden dots scattered across the barest definition of a city. They were people, they were stars, they were cataclysmic singularities that would rip apart reality. The endless sea of space-time hummed and winked at him, as if to say;
You’re not supposed to be here, but we won’t tell.
He questioned how he was here. He questioned if he were even real. He felt oddly calm about the situation. Maybe it was the frequency. He tried to look down, but instead it felt like the entire world remade itself to focus at a different angle, the cosmos twisting itself like a balloon animal to form a vague silhouette of what could be a human body. His body. Or maybe just what gods created when they had only a description of one. A swirling shape of ichor molded after a shadow of an echo of a human. He wasn’t surprised when its shape was unchanged when he attempted to move. Just lift his hand, just twitch his finger. Anything. It seems this body was just for show. Nothing new, then.
Blindingly perfect, yet practically unusable, Jayce pondered to himself. The curves of this form were the base shape of what a human body should be, but the complete lack of personal touch pushed it away from perfection and towards uncanniness. He imagined all the quirks and traits on his body unique to him. The callouses from work, the scars from battle. Tiny aspects down to the way he breathed and walked. It was all what made him him. To remove all that was to inextricably change him. How could he be the same man after every kink was smoothed out. Even if he was ‘perfect’. He wondered if Viktor ever thought of that.
Viktor.
He was here now, in front of him. His old fr- colleague. A wavering imitation of a body, shining starlight onto the face he knew so well, eyes pressed shut. Did his musings drag him here? Nostalgia must be tainting his perceptions of this place. Maskless. Scarless. So strangely peaceful. The lines of his face were so familiar, even after all the years that had passed since those long nights of chalk dust fingers and coffee-stained shirt cuffs. Even back then, the only time Viktor had looked this peaceful was asleep, passed out over some schematics more often than not, ink bleeding all over his face. Jayce would joke that one day, ‘The Impact of Mechanical Exoskeletons in Aquatic Trades’ tattooed across his forehead. Despite how long it had been, Jayce swears he could still remember his chuckle.
But no. That man is dead now. Buried behind a metal mask.
As he remembered his reality, the cosmic void seemed to update to his recollection. Smooth skin blistered and cracked with craters and cuts. Metal plating grew like a net, choking and sinking its prey. An orange glow beneath Viktor’s eyelids indicated the truth that Jayce knew. Instead of the warm, golden brown he dared to dream of some treacherous nights, were cold, mechanical pinpricks glowing with too much hatred to be a machine. Sometimes, when he was alone, and the bottle in his hand was empty enough, he laughed at how Viktor claimed he had purged his emotions, yet looked at him with so much hatred. He laughed and laughed in the empty room, and chose to forget how the sound tore from his throat, and how the echoes circling him turned to sobs. How ridiculous. As if he, the Defender of Tomorrow, would act in such a way. Drunken memories, that's all.
But this dream(??) was going too far. Viktor’s eyelids fluttered. Head nodding slightly. The metal cancer spread up his neck, the hollow of his throat enclosed by thick metal wires, and Jayce watched in horror as it crept up his chin.
No. God’s please no. Not again. I can’t watch him disappear again. Jayce tried to move. Tried to do anything. It wouldn’t work. He could barely lift his chin without the cosmos around them swirling in protest. Viktor was disappearing from him again, all Jayce could do was try to memorise every line, every freckle, before it disappeared behind cold steel once more. Maybe this was his punishment. He was too vain to stop it last time, now he had to watch it again and again and again. Tears sprung to his eyes as the all-too familiar mask engulfed Viktor’s face once more, morphing back into the unmoving picture of malice that had haunted his dreams for too long now. The amber glow snapped and remained steady, and the twitch in Viktor’s chin told Jayce all he needed to know. He was here too.
Maybe he was becoming more lucid. Maybe it was the knowledge that they were really here together now. Maybe seeing Viktor shaking and twitching with shock reminded him of what he really was. For whatever reason, Jayce felt his mind stutter and shift into gear. He knew that mask, jerking around frantically, what it had done, the destruction it had caused. Countless wanted posters combined into one faced him as a singular enemy. He had been so stuck in the past that the present had to cuff him round the ear. It frightened him how easily he had forgotten. He was always a sentimental man. But Viktor didn’t deserve that sentimentality. Not anymore. He clenched his fist.
Hang on.
He clenched his fist.
He looked down. Actually, properly looked down this time. His body responded, his eyes tracing the gleaming gold that spread up his body by the second, defining him as something other from the divine backdrop. He was glowing brighter. They were glowing brighter. Two lighthouses in the swirling cosmos. Which had paused. The stars hung, pinned like butterflies. Eerily silent. A celestial chorus gone still. He was reminded of a conversation he had had with Caitlyn once. As a hunter, the best sound on a hunt was a constant thrum. Twigs cracking, birds chirping, the forest alive with thousands of lives. If it were silent, it meant that it had spotted you.
Or it had spotted something just as deadly.
Jayce looked up. Or did he look down? Was three-dimensional space even a viable determinant here? He couldn't even tell if it was approaching from a mile away or it was in front of him the whole time, just unable to be perceived. Maybe it was just a format of alternate manifolds. A 2nd dimensional creature could never conceptualise how a 3rd dimensional creature existed. Was this a higher plane of existence? Something that existed beyond his 3 dimensional mind? This was getting far too euclidian for a time which he assumed was very late.
(If time doesn't exist here as a 4th dimension, maybe this is something else entirely. A quantum state maybe? Focus Jayce. Crazy space void with your arch-nemesis.)
From somewhere, two entities emerged, stepping forward through the strange space-time like pushing past a veil, or stepping off a carousel. They were shaped like him and Viktor. They glowed like him and Viktor. But his instincts told him they were something else entirely.
Mostly because he couldn’t see their faces.
Haloed silhouettes of pure starlight stood before them with an oddly hesitant demeanor. (Like him and Viktor were the weird ones!) One was shorter than the other. That was the only difference Jayce could make out from the glowing beings before everything started to glow too bright. Like their true visage was forbidden, or locked away somehow. Whatever they were, they belonged to this place, and looking at them too long wasn’t a good idea, even though he was sure he didn't have to worry about his ocular health here. Viktor seemed to have the same idea, as Jayce watched in his peripheral vision as he held a hand over the eye holes of his mask and shuffled back slightly.
Ok. We can fully move now. Awesome. So what the fuck do we do?
Unfortunately, the figures seemed to be more organised than them. One stepped forward, fragmented echoes left in their path, interlacing with the light of the other. Like two refractions of the same entity. One soul, two bodies. Maybe that's how life here existed. One psyche, a thousand facets spiraling out amongst a thousand realities. One stepped toward Viktor. Viktor took a step back.
The entity flickered, and Viktor… reversed..? His step back reshaped into a step forward, face to face with the thing in front of him. Viktor started and tried to jerk his head away, stilted and awkward, suddenly held still by nothing at all. When Jayce took a step to intervene, an intense tingling on his shoulder made him pause. Suddenly, he was drifting away from the two figures, the second being carrying him up and away from Viktor and the other. He tried to kick out and reach to get back to his original position. Whatever these things were, it was a better idea to deal with them together. But this astral plane didn't work by the rules of swimming, and he pathetically drifted further away, flailing limply like a toddler in the kiddie pool.
Jayce’s eyes briefly met Viktor’s as the entity raised its hand towards his head, before his head was wrenched back to face the incandescent hand. The glowing light of its form spiked and reverberated towards the mask, reminding him of metal shavings with a magnet. Close, closer, closer still. The light waned and flickered, and Jayce was unsure if the droning warbles were real sound for just vibrations in his soul. Was there a difference in such a place? Whatever it was, it was making him shiver. The second entity was beside him now, watching. From his peripheral, its figure was easier to process, and Jayce watched as it tilted its head in… concern? Not good.
Something was wrong. Jayce didn't know how he knew, but it was wrong. The tingling on his neck turned cold, the ethereal light bathing them turned cold, his breath turned cold, exhaling atoms and nebulas in tiny clouds. Jayce didn't think he should need to breathe in such a place. The edges of his vision were blurring and brightening. The entity next to him jolted and took a step forward. Too late.
The entity in front of Viktor gently touched his mask, five fingers pressed to his forehead, as if to carefully remove it.
Definitely not good.
Jayce felt everything tilt, like a cold wet towel had been thrown over this entire plane. The flames had burnt too bright. Time to snuff them out. An awful screech echoed throughout the void, like a thousand screams filtered through a broken radio with a bad signal. Jayce’s vision blurred and burned. His mind was blasted and numb, satin sheets straining in a hurricane. A ripping shockwave tore apart his body, rocketing his exposed mind back through the starscape. Images flashed, sun-burned and over-exposed. A thousand keys in one loc- candent blue light imploding from an impossible singulari- a blood-soaked hand stretching towards a- twitching demonic mannequins in a hellsca- a single cog, both clean and corrup- a familiar face split in t- flawless harmony undercut by debilitating fear. Fear is familiar. Fear is human. He is human
Jayce opened his eyes.
He roughly processed a split second scene before him. Viktor spasming. The entity, still stuck to his mask, desperately trying to yank itself off. The second entity, surging towards the first, arm outstretched. As the universe imploded around them, a single word rocketed through Jayce’s mind and chased him as he was sent hurtling back to consciousness.
VIKTOR!
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Jayce bolted upright in bed, sheets sticking to his skin and breath coming heavy.
What the hell was that?!
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, his palm pulling away wet with sweat. His fists clenched his bedsheets in an attempt to stop their shaking. He had had nightmares before. About work, about Piltover, about the ever-increasing pressure on his shoulders. And of course, about him. But never dreams like that. He drained his knuckles white and tried to slow his breathing. Some instinctual, animalistic part of him was taut and twisted deep down, and no grounding exercises seemed to be working. The fear that had dragged him back still had its claws in him.
So it was only fair that he let out a loud sob when the emergency horns he had installed around Piltover began howling, shaking his apartment with the intensity of the noise. He clamped his hands over his mouth, feeling the tears run over them as he slid back down on his mattress, quaking with the panes of his windows. His hands slapped over his ears in an attempt to block out the wailing. Gods, this was pathetic. Here he was, the Defender of Tomorrow, the face of Piltover, curled up on his bed sobbing from a bad dream. He could only clutch his bedsheets and pray he was more presentable when they came knocking at his door. They always did. The Golden Boy could fix all their problems. Just not his own. He exhaled shakily and let it consume him.
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6 hours later, Jayce was standing back in his lab, showered, dressed and completely dissociated, more so than ever. It was just a dream, the feeling will pass. That’s what he had told himself, over and over again. Yet the longer he was awake, the further his mind wandered. To the point where he was questioning if he had even woken up, even with the circumstance. The situation seemed like the perfect tonic for his troubles. Emergencies across the cities, starstruck wardens knocking on his door. Something he could fix. Something that could make up for his mistakes. But it all felt so pointless. And the throbbing headache he was suffering didn't help either.
“Hellooo? Realm to Giopara?”
Vi waved a callused palm in front of his face. If it were anyone else, he may have been insulted enough to actually spark an action in him. But he had grown used to Vi’s bad manners. It was annoying alone, but infinitely entertaining when with others. At least someone could verbally spit in the faces of those stuck-up elites with a silver spoon up their ass. She was a terrible cheat at cards, but he let it slide. Of course, not just because she happened to be married to the Sheriff.
“Sorry. Poor nights sleep. Could you repeat that?”
Caitlyn gave him a stern look that couldn't have been good for him, and gestured back down to the table in front of them.
“Please try to stay focused Jayce. This could be very serious. I'd expect more from you when over a hundred robots materialize scattered all over the hex gates.”
Jayce studied the inert mannequin draped on the table. Robot didn't seem to quite fit. It was too… intricate for such a clunky word. Carved from a smooth white material, the form was thin and elegant, the joints crafted from a golden metal. He gently picked up its left arm and assessed the elbow. The craftsmanship was astounding, perfectly slotted into place and flexing as smooth as butter in a hot pan. It doesn't seem like something any one person could craft, much less left abandoned strewn over Piltover. He noted a strange pattern stretching over certain joints and engraved into the golden grafts of the shoulders. He recalled an odd toy Amaranthine had brought with her one day. Some sort of slime she had got from a vendor at the market. When she stretched it too fine, the material broke into hundreds of holes that grew larger and larger till she had to grab the toy again before it fell to the floor and fused with the carpet. The motif here was similar, but… wrong somehow. More like a mold, or a fungus. It felt both perfectly natural and horrendously artificial. Studying the pattern, his vision shifted and blurred, ebbing and flowing with the pounding in his skull. The golden material shivered and warped, seemingly emanating a purplish glow. He blinked. Nothing. He was really losing his nerve today.
“I don’t recognise the markings from any of the prominent inventors in Piltover.” Caitlyn spoke, shaking her head. “These patterns are distinctive and easy to identify, but there's nothing like it in our archives. This could be an attack from Zaun, but these seem unusual… delicate to have come from down there.”
“Damn straight. Anything this dainty would have been trashed and scrapped for parts by the time it could have raised its fists.” Vi sniffed.
“Are you sure you've never seen anything like it in the fissures?” Caitlyn responded.
Vi glanced back down at the table, and Jayce noted a twitch in her gaze. Glad to know it wasn’t just his dream that wasn't making him lose his nerve around this thing.
“Yeah, not a chance.” Vi said with a chuckle. “Maybe they really are just mannequins? Some freaky art display put up by the chem barons? They probably have enough loot to put something like this up?”
“How would they have gotten them on top of the Hexgates overnight without anyone noticing?” Caitlyn retorted. “Besides, they wouldn’t have wasted their cogs on such a pricey message without any action. Just one of these things would cost thousands to make.
“All a moot point anyway. They aren't mannequins.”
Jayce spoke, regarding the intricacies of the finger joints.
“These joints are too complex. I can't even tell how they were made. Plus, they don’t hold their shape. No use in a non-poseable mannequin.”
He raised the lifeless arm and dropped it onto the table to punctuate his point. The clang echoed through his lab.
“No, these were built with life in mind. Or maybe just… control. Something to puppet.”
His eyes trace up to the thing's face. It was more of an abstract interpretation of one. The lines of the nose and hollows of the eyes were all that suggested it could be human beyond the shape. A human face, smoothed beyond recognition, like a stone in the sea. Like a statue in time. Nauseatingly perfect. The idea felt familiar. His eyes stopped on 5 marks on his forehead. Outlined in gold, the marks glimmered with an iridescent quality that glowed amongst the whites and golds. Raising his left hand, he hovered his palm over its face, widening his fingers. Not a perfect match, but he'd always had large hands anyways. The point was clear. The marks were from fingertips. A familiar tug in his gut made his eyes widen and pull back his hand. He really hoped it was just exhaustion that was tying everything back to his dream.
Caitlyn had that gleam in her eye again. “So, the patterns and complexities don't match any inventor in Piltover. And it's highly unlikely that these are Zaun made. Best guess that this is a message from an outside force.”
“Maybe.” Jayce said, trailing off. He let Vi and Caitlyn’s discussion fade into the background as he explored the nagging feeling in his head. The thing on his work bench wasn't human. More like, a pure white silhouette of one. It was annoyingly familiar and he knew exactly why. He just couldn’t figure out what it all meant. Thoughts and images flashed by before he could catch them. It was like an optical illusion. The more he tried to focus and think about it, the vaguer and more abstract the concepts became. He was coming at it all wrong. He needed a different perspective. An alternate worldview. But with so little information, he couldn't imagine how he could piece everything together in time before the next morning rolled around and he had forgotten all about it. Or, it would just come at him worse for ignoring it. It nagged at him like this damned fucking headache!
He ran a hand over his face and sighed a bit too loud. Caitlyn eyed him.
“Sorry. This headache is really getting to me today.” He shook his head.
“Doesn’t seem like the only thing on your mind. Would you like to share with the class?” Caitlyn responded, crossing her arms. Her intuition was renowned across the city, and Jayce had watched her use it with awe. It always sucked when you were on the receiving end though.
“I just…” Jayce trailed off with a sigh, eyes finding the thing on the desk. A face flashed over the blank white mask. He tried to keep his old associates name out of his mouth as much as possible in recent times. Kept people from remembering their last… collaboration.
“I have this nagging feeling that Viktor could be at the heart of this.”
Vi made a scrunched up face.
“That rusty tin can? This seems a bit delicate for his usual raids?”
“It’s just a hunch. He was always striving for evolution, for perfection. And isn't that what these seem like? Perfect machine followers? Plus the colourings. White and gold. Make me think that whoever made them wanted to make a mockery of Piltover.”
Jayce leans his hands on the table as Vi tilts her head, considering, lost in thought. He turns to Cait, who has that unreadable expression turned at full blast towards him.
“Jayce… we haven't seen Viktor in nearly a year. Putting aside all the glaring issues in your argument, how would he have assembled something to this scale without anyone reporting it?”
Jayce heard the slight disbelief in her tone and felt his pride bristle.
“Look, you asked for my opinion and it's just a hunch. You came to me for a reason right? Besides, they have to have appeared somehow! Were there seriously no witnesses?” He spoke, voice louder than he intended.
Caitlyn sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Jayce immediately felt bad for raising his voice.
“There were a few. It's not much, but we haven't had the time to ask the public fully. We are trying to keep the people from panicking, and suggesting that demented cyborg is back is not the way to do that.” Caitlyn said very pointedly, and Jayce found the corner on the table to suddenly be very interesting.
“But a few wardens did spot the event. They described it as a strange sort of explosion. A loud mechanical boom and then they all appeared simultaneously. One described it as a flip book of sorts. A dozen or so colourful afterimages flashed by and then suddenly they all appeared. Certain anomalies also materialized around them on the buildings. A kind of… physical after-effect. They are being analyzed right now for harmful effects but we’ll send you a sample as soon as we’re able. And…” Caitlyn sighed. “A similar, but far larger flash was reported in Zaun from a squad rounding up a gang who’d been involved with some chemical theft. On the Entresol Level to be precise.”
Viktor’s level. Jayce’s eyes shone with the fires of triumph before being extinguished by a cold stare from Cait.
“There is plenty of activity on that level without a certain zealot traipsing around. Your rivalry is clouding your judgment Jayce.”
He bristled at the suggestion.
“Well, we’ll for ourselves shall we?” He spoke snidely, already turning on his heel to retrieve his hammer.
“No need!” Caitlyn called out. “Several teams have been dispatched. Including one from Clan Ferros.”
Caitlyn didn't bother to hide the disdain in her voice in trusted company. The shift was still enough to make Jayce pause. Cait used it to finish her appeal.
“Besides, we need you here. We have around 150 of these things being delivered to your lab and we need a wise mind to assess them. Strengths, weaknesses, threats or not. We're out of our depth here. And there is no one better to find all we need to know about these things, Jayce.”
Jayce sighed. What if this really was Viktor? He couldn’t let him march around unchecked. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to Cait while he was tinkering away in the lab. But what if it wasn’t him? What if there was a larger threat at play here? What if all these… things activated, and no one was around to stop them? Pride battled with reason. But there was an undercurrent. Something whispering in the crevices of his mind. Something he refused to acknowledge whatsoever. The thing he was pretty sure was the only reason he was dragged back from that dream.
He turned back on his heel, a smug smile settling back onto his face. Caitlyn mirrored it. She was so smart, and so capable. And Vi was with her. If anyone could get it sorted, it would be them.
“Well, so long as the investigation is in good hands, I suppose I can take a peek at these beauties.” He said, laying a hand to rest on the things shin, voice glazed with confidence. “So long as you don’t come crawling back to me for help.”
Caitlyn huffs an indigent laugh.
“Well, I suppose if Viktor has indeed learnt how to materialize things out of thin air, we’ll know who to call.”