The air in Zaun is thicker than usual, each breath a weight in his lungs as he slips quietly through the half-empty streets. Enforcers seem to be on every corner, holding down what little power they still hold in these streets.
Suffocating as the air may be its charged with the promise of change.
Nature abhors a vacuum, after all. And the recent chem baron deaths left gaping chasms all were surging to fill.
Viktor is not here to capitalize on this. No, he's far from the running for that position, half-dead and without any real power to his name here. A lifetime in Piltover means he carries its stink, and his hands had helped craft the weaponry the Enforcers now old. However against his will this may have been, he had been warned of the risk of what would be done if this technology were placed in the wrong hands and then naively handed it over with a smile.
No. He's here for shimmer and Singed, and maybe together they could do... something to repent for his role in all of this. Even if Singed's goals did not align with his own, Viktor's research in his hands could still do more than it had done when held jointly with Jayce.
He could try to repair some of the damage he'd done in the time he had left. Even if his efforts to save himself failed, it was better to do too little too late than nothing at all.
A hand lifts to muffle the cough trying to force its way out, leaning against the alleyway wall. The enforcer patrol passes without even a glance, engrossed in their own conversation. Quickly as he can he darts from the alleyway, pavement turning to stone under his feet as he heads for those familiar caves.
A fluxuation in power means suspicion and scrapping over territories. A strange face may well be an enemy, and Viktor supposes it's a small mercy he never much cared for the lime-light. If he had, they wouldn't be grabbing him by a scrawny arm - they'd be pressing a bullet into his temple as thanks for all he'd done.
Maybe they would have anyway, as a warning to all outsiders. Yet the hand attached to the scrawny arm is made of metal, so finely crafted it catches them offguard as it glints in the light.
"I did. Let me go, I want no trouble, I am just trying to see a friend."
But it does not matter what he wants.
The grip on his arm does not relent, and Viktor laments not equipping something better suited for battle. These new parts - recently replaced, still aching where they attached - were meant to to replace the ones he'd lost in the accident. Not enhance them. Just as the box of mechanical organs under his arm was meant to repair what was killing him with every wasted, heavy breath - if only he could get access to enough shimmer to make them take.
And so here he is, stumbling into an audience he doesn't want with a leader he doesn't know.
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