When he thinks about it, really thinks about it, Jayce realises that the first time it happens wasn't the first time at all.
It's a funny little blank moment, a second or seven of absence in Viktor. They leave the man hunched over, pinching at the bridge of his nose as if the semi-permanent headache he carries with him is suddenly much worse.
The most recent, Jayce thinks, is by far the longest of his partners' little space outs, just long enough for Jayce to have waved past Viktor's nose, to have snapped his fingers in front of the man's face, to have called his name and shaken his shoulder.
To start to feel scared.
"What was that?" He asks, his mouth dry, when the lights have come back on in Viktor's golden eyes, like someone turning a dimmer switch back up.
"Vhat was vhat?" Viktor just blinks back at him, his lashes a little too fluttery, his lips slightly parted like he's aware he's missed something, but can't work out what it was. "I don't…" He trails off, confused, "Vhat were we tallkingh about?"
"I-" Jayce's brow is firmly crumpled as he slaps a hand against the chalkboard of notes in front of them, pluming dust. "You were talking me through this calculation of yours. Updating me on the variants you've been trying with the Hexcore while I was… uh …"
Stuck in a council meeting. Arguing with councilman Hoskel. Fending off the headache he's developed from trying to make some sense of the increasing amounts of corruption he's finding as he looks deeper and deeper into the goings-on of Piltover.
They call the Undercity a cesspit, but perhaps Piltover is just as much of one - they just gilt the shit in gold to make it look good.
Viktor's brow is wrinkled like his own headache is bothering him too. He's looking down at the stick of chalk, crumbly between his fingers, like he's never seen it before. Viktor clears his throat, trying his best not to cough on the fresh dust particles in the air, and Jayce feels guilty as he watches the man's throat swallow reflexively, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Oh, well-" Viktor's mouth begins to shape some kind of excuse, his head tilting, but a big hand settling on the bony ridge of his shoulder forestalls him.
"Maybe you should head home for the night," Jayce suggests, not unkindly, his eyebrows busy doing that thing where they go all pinched and worried. They've been doing that a lot since Viktor's hospitalization. Like the man thinks his partner could drop dead at literally any moment - it'd be endearing if only it were a little less realistic. "You went all pale and funny just then, you know?"
Viktor just laughs, the sound awkward and embarrassed, like he's uncomfortable at being called out. Like he's not used to laughing. He goes to slap Jayce's hand away, to push it off, but Jayce doesn't let him.
"Come on, I'm serious." The hand on Viktor's shoulder steers him, haltingly limping, to the side, around the black chalkboard. The lack of resistance his friend provides against it is troubling in itself. "You keep blanking out."Jayce points out, "I thought you were just thinking but that last one was… weird ." Weird enough to make all the fine hairs on the nape of his neck prickle.
And Viktor is staying suspiciously quiet. Strangely quiet. Where's the usual brushing off, the argument?
"Look, just be honest with me, have you eaten today?" Jayce prompts, amazed he's getting away with this, "Did you get enough sleep last night… did you sleep at all?"
Viktor mumbles something mostly incoherent under his breath, but the gist of it seems to be that the most recent project has been keeping him busy. He hasn't met Jayce's eyes.
"That's a no then," Jacye confirms, angry at his partner's horrible self-preservation skills, guiding him closer to his desk in the hopes that he'll just sit down for a second. "Honestly Vik what am I going to d…"
And that's when Viktor stumbles, not unusual in itself; his bad leg stiff and uncooperative as always, his knee twisting outwards while his ankle tries to go in. Jayce has to tighten his existing hold on Viktor's shoulder and fling his other arm out across the man's chest to keep him from falling. The stick clatters to the floor between them as Viktor suddenly finds himself hanging in his friend's grip.
"Careful!" Jayce admonishes, sharply, but really he's mostly afraid that, with how pale Viktor's skin is, he could leave bruises.
The mumbled 'sorry' is also strangely passive. Thin, icy fingers reach up to touch the restraining arm, fumbly and uncertain. There's a fine trembling between the hard ridges of Viktor's shoulder blades and his breathing has gone all stunted and strange, sort of hitched.
"Viktor?" Trying to be more gentle, now hyper-aware of his own hammer-hardened strength, Jace turns the smaller man to face him. "Hey, what's going on?"
The man is intolerably pale; ghostly even. The shadows under his eyes are dark smudgy crescents, his cheeks hollower than Jayce has ever seen them, and the matte, vacant look in Viktor's eyes is straight-up frightening. Like, once more, there's nobody home behind them. Like he's empty.
But Viktor's fingers start to rise, seemingly sentiently. They come up as tremulously as if there's an earthquake going on under his skin, and Jayce wants to be reassured by it, only, when Viktor smudges the pad of his thumb loosely under his nose, his skin comes away deep red.
There's a second.
An unfocused beat.
A bead of blood rolls over Viktor's philtrum and lips and chin and drips and hits the floor with a tiny plip.
Then, barely seconds later, the man's head tips back and his knees crumple and Jayce's reaction time is slow, too slow, because he's busy staring at the little red stain. Viktor slips from his grip and hits the ground hard, the scientist's head ricocheting off rough wooden floorboards, his fingers limp as his knuckles bounce.
"What the… ?! " Jayce crashes to his knees on the floor beside his friend, already reaching out to roll the sprawled body onto its curved back.
There's a surprising amount of resistance to the movement, mostly because Viktor's gone stiff as a board and is shaking like a leaf in a storm. The motions are jerky and uncontrollable like the man has been hit by the taser of an invisible enforcer.
"Viktor?" Jayce calls loudly, his voice rising in pitch with his urgency, tapping his fingers frantically at his partner's cold cheek. "Hey, hey, Viktor, w-what's happening? Come on, wake up! " He wants to shake the man to get him to snap out of it, but Viktor is clearly doing enough of that already.
Instead, Jayce grabs both of his bony shoulders, forcing them down into the floor to try and keep him still, to try and stop… whatever this is. Viktor's head tilts and blood rolls over his jaw and Jayce thinks he might puke because the bizarre, inhuman shaking isn't stopping.
He's never seen the illness do this.
With absolutely no idea what to do, and horror thick in his throat, Jayce does the only thing that punches through the static in his skull and throws back his head to bellow;
" HELP! " His breath catches, stuttering.
" H-HELP! " He needs to be louder. Jayce balls up his fists, winding them in Viktor's shirt and screams.
" H-ELPPPP! "
The pounding of feet in the hall steals what little breath Jayce has left, leaving him gasping, coughing to one side, his own chest burning. He thinks this is how Viktor must feel all the time now, with his damaged lungs. Like there's not enough air in the world to fill them.
There's a slam as the doors crash open and their lab assistant Sky, to her credit, only freezes for a moment at the scene.
Viktor, white as death, rigid and shaking on the floor, with the newly appointed Councilman Talis on his knees beside him, his cheeks streaked with tear tracks and terror in his eyes.
"Viktor!" She skids to a stop, joining them on the floor without a second thought, her eyes wide and worried but far more with it than Jayce could even hope to be right now. "Stop holding him down," She slaps his hands away, leaving Viktor's limbs jumping repeatedly, grotesquely on their own, as if he's being badly puppeteered by an invisible force. "Give him space," Sky commands, shoving her shoulder into Jayce's chest to push him back when, frozen, the man doesn't comply.
Even her little hands look impossibly big on Viktor's skinny shoulder as she rolls him neatly onto his side. Blood runs, thick and vicious, down over the concave hollow of the man's cheek, clinging in diverging red tendrils to his skin and pooling where his tense, trembling jaw meets the floor.
Jayce makes a flat, desperate noise that sounds an awful lot like a porro's chew toy being trodden on.
"It's ok." Sky adds, a little more kindly, given the absolute state of the other man. She takes Jayce's hand and places it against the cool, hollow space of Viktor's back, encouraging him to keep his friend in the position. The knobs of Viktor's spine are like blobs of iron under Jayce's thick fingers and he can feel the gravity of each shuddering, raspy breath as his friend's weak lungs struggle to suck in oxygen around the way his chest is spasming. "It's just a seizure," Sky says, busy tilting the man's head to keep his airways as open as possible, though not too far so as to keep the blood in his nose from sliding down his throat and choking him.
" Just…? " Jayce can only stare, desperately afraid. Brown hair tumbles across Viktor's brow as he shakes, the thin strands sticking to the sheen of cold sweat there. Something unconscious and terrified in Jayce has him reaching out to wipe it away.
" Just a seizure?" Jayce's eyes can't help but linger on the flat, blue bruise that's already forming at the man's temple. Where he'd hit his head. Where he'd hit his head because Jayce didn't catch him.
"He's been having absence ones," Sky points out, smudging her glasses up her freckled nose like it was obvious, "I was worried something like this might happen so I..." For the first time since she's been touching the employer she idolizes, her cheeks flush; like she's just realised what she's doing. "Ah." Sky clears her own throat. "I did some reading."
She busies herself with checking her slim copper wristwatch, her fingers pressed to the thready pulse at Viktor's throat even though the taut, twitching muscles in his jaw and neck make the beat hard to properly track. Jayce, his own heart hammering loud enough in his ears that he's convinced he can't be the only one who can hear it, almost explodes with how calm she seems.
"He's been…?" Jayce gasps in air, banishing the black spots that had begun to build in his vision. "I… geez … Why didn't he tell me?"
Why didn't I notice? A traitorous voice in his head whispers, Sky clearly had.
He and Viktor haven't talked as much since his appointment as Councilor. Jayce has been impossibly busy lately; the new job taking up much of what used to be their lab time together, leaving Viktor, he's sure, to pick up the slack in his absence. But surely it can't have made that much of a difference. Could it?
Viktor is seizing on their laboratory floor, so perhaps it has.
Jayce feels cold all over.
" His illness." Jayce's mouth tastes like ash in the face of such a stark reminder of what this fresh pursuit of scientific knowledge has been for. To save not just people, but maybe even Viktor himself. "This is it getting worse." Jayce feels incredibly selfish, and he doesn't know what to do with it.
Viktor was never supposed to be alone in his goals of greater things for the world. They were supposed to be partners. Jayce's focus has shifted recently toward public safety and political affairs and, yes, that's important, but… his fingers clench and unclench.
Well, it is important. He can't easily set that aside, not even for Viktor.
Sky just shrugs, clearly ignoring Jayce's inner emotional turmoil in favour of watching over the unconscious man on the floor. She starts loosening the red tie at Viktor's throat, and Jayce feels utterly helpless.
What can I do?
Viktor's hands are shaking the worst, palms up where they've been curled in front of him, and so, with no other ideas, Jayce takes one in his free hand and gives it a squeeze.
" Geez ..." Jayce himself is a living furnace but hot hands or otherwise, Viktor's skin feels absolutely, unnaturally freezing against his own. "Why's he so cold?" The lab isn't exactly a sauna, but this seems extreme.
"Window's open." Sky bites her lip, her eyes focused on the watch, "His illness makes him a bit more… sensitive, to, ah, things like that. He…" She looks embarrassed, "He forgets about that sort of stuff when he's caught up in one of his ideas."
It'd almost be admirable if it wasn't so damn stupid.
Jayce curses something low and unrepeatable under his breath and has to press his forehead into his own shoulder to take a breath.
Looking through his lashes, Jayce watches guiltily as his lab partner continues fitting hard. Viktor is paler than Jayce has ever seen him - practically translucent. His knees jolt with violent spasms, locking up his joints in a way that can't be good for his bad leg. Breathing looks almost impossible like this and Viktor's lips have begun to look sort of… blue.
And Jayce is absolutely powerless in the face of it all.
There's nothing he can do.
"How long before I got here did it start?" Sky asks, not even looking at Jayce, whose busy smudging his damp cheeks against his shoulder. "We should add that to the time."
"I…" The man's throat is dry, so he clears it, "I don't know, a minute maybe, I… shouldn't we be doing something. C-calling someone?"
"The book said to time the seizure, keep him safe and comfortable, and wait." Sky ticks the points off on her dark fingers, her face grim, "There's not much more we, or anyone, can do until this stops."
A particularly violent tremor has Viktor's head bouncing against wood again and Jayce feels sick that he didn't think of it first as Sky strips off her white and gold overcoat and wads it into a ball; creating a makeshift pillow under his skull.
Watching her, it strikes Jayce that he knows almost nothing about the younger scientist, other than her employment a couple of years ago in the facility and the fact she's been a studious, diligent lab assistant. And yet here she is, curled over his partner like she's the only thing that'll keep him from…
The horrible pang in his chest feels suspiciously like jealousy.
Viktor is his best friend.
And where have you been? The traitorous voice in his head whispers. Certainly not here enough to show him that. You've been taking him and his work for granted.
"This should pass in a few minutes, hopefully less." Sky tells him, and he should be grateful for that only Jayce's mouth just tastes too sour. "Some seizures only last seconds. We just have to let Viktor's body ride out the spasms."
Jayce grits his teeth. It's been nearing three minutes now, and it feels like forever. This can't last much longer because not only are Viktor's lips looking blue, but his fingers are creeping that way also.
Jayce sandwiches the limp hand he'd captured flat between his own, rubbing them together to try and encourage some of the blood flow back into the smaller man's extremities.
"His circulation's rubbish." Jayce scowls again, sweeping his thumb over the ridges of his partner's knuckles. "I can't believe how cold his hands are."
"Not surprising." Sky frowns, leaning over to take a look, "Oh, his fingers look awful."
"He's not getting enough oxygen ." It's plain to see the restriction the fit is placing on the other man's weak lungs. Viktor's veins look dangerously stark against the greyed alabaster of the rest of his skin - the blue lines showing through as if the surface layer is as thin as wet tissue paper.
"What's causing this?" Jayce just wants it to stop. He'd give anything: all his Hextech, his sponsorship, his council position, anything for this to just stop.
But, of course, it doesn't.
And neither of them really have an answer as to why.
"Should we put something in his mouth?" The councilman suggests, trying to come up with anything that could help. "What if he bites his tongue?" Jayce tilts his head to try and get a better worse it's much worse look at the white, bloodied face.
"No," Sky is quick to stop him as he drops Viktor's hand in favour of reaching toward anything on the desk that might be handy, "He's more likely to choke on anything we could use, his airways have to be unobstructed."
"But…" But what he doesn't know. Jayce is a man of action. Of striking the iron while it's hot. He isn't used to just waiting like this.
It's torture. A worst nightmare Jayce hadn't realised he could have.
There's a long moment of quiet between the councilman and assistant after that - a horrible eternity while Viktor shakes on the floor, his blood puddling on the boards, congealing on his face, seeping cruelly into the white fabric of Sky's jacket.
"Come on Viktor…" Jayce runs a hand over his friend's trembling bicep in an attempt to be reassuring, despite the fact there's no way Viktor is aware of it. There's a blotchy pattern of bruises on the underside of the man's arm, peeking out from a rolled-up sleeve, where the stick so constantly takes his weight.
He's watched Viktor use the cane for years, so why now the marks make Jayce feel miserable, he isn't sure.
"I don't know if he's taken his medication this afternoon." Sky pushes her glasses up her nose and chews on her lip more thoroughly, nervous, "He's usually good about taking them but…"
"But he's been in the lab all day." Jayce finishes for her, "He won't admit it to me, but I think he does keep some here. Have a look in his desk drawer," For the first time he's thought of something that might be helpful, and that gives Jayce more confidence, "We might be able to tell how many are gone."
The blue glow of the Hexcore cools Sky's skin as she rummages, but there's a rattle of pills in their slim plastic packaging and she produces Viktor's medication, triumphant.
"There's a few missing." She rolls her shoulders through an anxious shrug, only half drawing Jayce from the distraction of counting Viktor's thin breaths.
"Y-yeah?" He shifts his hand to the dip of his friend's trembling sternum to try and get a better sense of how his failing lungs are coping. It doesn't feel good.
"There's five empty," Sky notes, "and he went to the pharmacy on Monday." And why she knows that and Jayce doesn't just feels like another hit to his horrible best friend tally. "So it looks like this is one thing he's actually keeping schedule on." Sky offers him a weak smile, "That's reassuring."
It's also, in its own way, a little frustrating. Viktor's horrible at remembering anything when he gets absorbed in lab work; from meals to the basic human necessity of sleep. But he's been taking his meds diligently.
He wants to live. Jayce's vision is getting blurry, and if he cries again now he's going to have to punch something. They have to crack this Hexcore puzzle so it can help him. The runes haven't lined up right yet but they have to.
Jayce glances up again, at the stark black and white of the chalkboard looming over them. The neat, precise lines of symbols and runes - each one narrowing their chance of finding the right one - almost feel mocking.
"We're about to hit four minutes." Sky reels off her watch, real worry now creeping into her voice. "Now."
"He's not coming out of it." Jayce forces the words out of his tight throat, rigid with the way he can feel Viktor tiring, "Why isn't he coming out of it?"
"I don't know ." Sky snaps at him, finally losing her cool, her teeth bared and glasses slipping, "I'm not actually a Doctor, remember?! "
This can't be the end. Jayce squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. It can't be. Not so soon. Not when the Hexcore had given them such hope.
"We should have called someone." Jayce's palms are sweaty where he can feel Viktor gasp for air beneath them, "He needs medical help, he…"
He goes to say more but then Viktor makes a sudden, horrible choking noise, deep in his throat, and convulses harder; the scientist's head thrashing to the side in an uncontrollable attempt to dislodge whatever it is that's blocked his windpipe.
" Shit! " Jayce grabs Viktor's bloodied chin, the sensation squelchy between his fingers as does his best to tip his partner's head further forward, trying to prompt his mouth to open and to free up his airways, but Viktor is still shaking violently, thrashing like an eel on a hook, his muscles stiff and unpliable, and it's far from easy.
"The bleed is getting worse," Sky reports. There's fresh red bubbling on Viktor's parted lips as he gasps, raggedly, for air, his brow pinched with pain, even in unconsciousness. "Compress the cartridge of his nose between your fingers, that should help it clot."
It's not going to help him breathe though, and it feels incredibly wrong as Jayce obeys her, despite the fact Viktor clearly can't breathe through his nose right now anyway.
"Sorry bud." His partner's flank trembles under Jayce's palm as he runs a soothing hand over Viktor's side, trying once more to check the thin, shuddery breathing as it calms. "That's it, it's gonna be ok. You just had to crank this too, huh?"
The strength behind the coughing fades, letting the grip of the seizure take back over.
Jayce isn't sure what Sky is timing this at, but he's pretty sure it's been at least five minutes now.
"Come on Vik," he murmurs, as the seizure goes on dragging itself out, the grip it has on his partner's unconscious body grotesque. "Come on… "
The blue is creeping toward the middle joint in the man's fingers and his breathing is sinking toward desperately shallow. He's getting weaker. Jayce runs his fingers, feather-light, over Viktor's twitching temple, a little afraid of his own strength. The councilman is an incredibly tactile man; a pat on the shoulder, the squeeze of an arm around a waist, a ruffle of fingers through hair - but Viktor has never exactly been incredibly receptive to it, so Jayce tries to be a bit more restrained around him - he hates to make his partner, who's clearly not used to such a thing, uncomfortable.
But Viktor's not exactly able to complain right now, and selfishly it's helping Jayce, in the least.
"He doesn't deserve this." Sky sobs suddenly beside him, her iron will crumbling, "Not V-V-Viktor."
Viktor, who has devoted his life to the advancement of humankind. Viktor who is a dreamer, who saw potential in Jayce's dream. Who saw the better life Hextech could bring to the world long before he ever considered it could help him. Viktor who is… dying. Even though his body is so weak, the other man has such extreme strength to his passions that it's easy to forget, sometimes, that he's so horribly ill.
Jayce curls over his friend, full of frustration and anguish, his fingers tightening into fists.
" Damn it. " Tears squeeze themselves traitorously from the corners of his eyes, and Jayce has to throw his head back again to try, furiously, to scrub them away. His voice breaks on what sounds suspiciously like a sob.
Through the relentless film of water, a swirl of something blue catches his attention for long enough to give him pause - to startle the tears into slowing. Jayce takes a short, halting breath and stares.
The Hexcore is pulsating, thick and soft, like a heartbeat. Had he the thought to count the motion, Jayce would have found it perfectly matched to the thrum of blood within his partner's own veins. Captivated, Jayce finds his fingers reaching toward it. He's never seen it do that before.
The Hexcore…
Sky had been the one to find Viktor last time it got this bad. When… When Jayce had found out just how bad the man's condition really was. She'd been the one to find him on the floor. To call the ambulance. To send a messenger to find Jayce to let him know his partner was in the hospital.
But there's nothing she can do now, and he can't let Viktor just die. He can't.
Selfish and miserable, Jayce doesn't want him to die.
In one surprisingly fluid motion, Jayce pushes himself to his feet, taking poor Sky entirely by surprise.
Reaches for the Hexcore, it has the potential for healing magic, right? So maybe there's something it can…
Viktor falls still and limp with a thud against the floor behind him, and Jayce freezes.
For a long, horrible moment, Jayce can't breathe as he thinks the worst.
No. Please no.
Turning slowly, he finds the man sprawled, perfectly still on the floor, and he chokes on what might be another a sob, his own throat feeling as thick as if it had been filled with glue.
"I… Is he…?"
"It's just the end of the seizure." Sky announces, her voice choked with tears. "Five minutes thirty-six." Privately, dumbstruck, Jayce is bemused by just how much longer than that it had felt.
Viktor is now horribly limp in contrast to the stiff, rigid way he'd been full-body fitting. The absence of the shakes softens his fingers like a ballerina's, though the slightly curled quality, the unconsciousness of them, reveals how desperately wrong it is.
"Come on Viktor," Jayce pleads, ever so soft, sagging back to his knees at his best friend's side, all thoughts of the Hexcore forgotten. "Come back to us."
"He might… he might not wake for a while." Their assistant warns him, drying her cheeks and wet glasses with her shirt sleeve as she tries to get herself back together again. "It should be safe to move him now though." The wooden floor has to be anything but good for the poor man's spine.
"I… Oh, right." Sliding his hands under Viktor's neck, trying to support his head as he shifts the man toward him, Jayce is struck, not for the first time, by just how much smaller his lab partner is than him. Viktor's head lolls to the side, his bloodied cheek smearing a red stain across Jayce's bicep as he tries to be as gentle as possible, manoeuvring his arm under those sharp shoulder blades, getting ready to lift him. He feels like he's made of glass, ready to fracture at the slightest thing. Like a plant on the verge of turning to ash. Rejecting its transmutation.
'Is this safe?' Jayce had asked, and Viktor hadn't cared. Not about himself. Not for one second. He was a doomed man either way.
There's a stunted, choking noise, and Jayce's heart nearly stops then and there, thinking Viktor's about to go into another fit, only to find, instead, that his partner's eyes are open, hazy and unfocused. Jayce's mouth drops open in a perfect O of surprise.
"Viktor?" He clasps the man's hand, rubbing warmth once more into those loose fingers. "Hey. Hey. You with me Vik?"
"Nngh…?" A lazy blink, two. "D-Don't… call me zat…" The head lolls, Viktor's blood-smeared cheek back in view, as he tries to take in what's going on around him, clearly confused, but too weak to be anything but passive about it. "Wha…?" It strikes Jayce that the only warm colour to the man is the honey gold of his eyes, and that he's missed it desperately. Otherwise, Viktor looks impossibly bleached next to Jayce's tan skin and Sky's dark, flushed complexion.
"You had a seizure." Sky explains, shuffling into his line of sight. "There's not been enough oxygenated blood in your system. I imagine testing will prove some kind of cerebral hypoxia."
"O-h." Viktor's mouth shapes again, his brow furrowing with further confusion, "I d-don't-" He's so loose and hazy, eyes glazed and neck wobbly: there's no way he's really understanding any of this.
"Right." Jayce pushes stray hairs out of his own face and tries to sort his head out, "We're gonna get you to the hospital." He announces, eyes flicking up to meet Sky's nod of affirmation. "It's gonna be ok."
"Wha… N-No." Viktor's hand comes up to push ineffectively against Jayce's. The fit has left him weak as a baby badgerbear and with limbs like jelly - his wrists crumpling against the wall of his partner. "No h-hospital. I hav… wurk… to do."
"I'm not listening to you right now." Jayce tells him, "This one is non-negotiable buddy." He checks his hold on his friend. "You know, for such a genius, you really are a goddamn idiot."
There's a weak huff of breath, a laugh , into his shoulder.
"Per...haps," Viktor says around the copper in his mouth, his eyes barely half-lidded, and it's almost worse that he leaves his complaints there, that he doesn't argue further, even as Jayce scoops his partner securely into his arms. Viktor weighs barely anything. Jayce has grown up wielding hammers at his father's forge, and he, in that moment, can't logically think of a single one that had felt like it weighed less than the man in his arms. Sky helps tuck his limp hands into his chest, and Viktor exhales heavily, shakily, his cheek pressed against Jayce's shoulder, curled and safe as Jayce hefts him up and strides for the door, Sky scurrying after them.
The Hexcore buzzes and spins and glows behind them as they leave; almost as if it's angry that it can't reach the blood left smeared on the floor.