Part Eight: Investigative Matters
"You made that?" Caitlyn asked.
"Yes," Heimerdinger replied. "Or rather, I designed the blueprints in one of our labs here."
Caitlyn looked up at the scientists standing in a group. Clocked the equally concerned expressions on their faces and then looked back at the professor.
"It was stolen," she deduced.
"You've always been perceptive, Caitlyn," Heimerdinger said.
"By Jinx," Vi added in a dark tone.
Heimerdinger looked at Vi and nodded. "I'm afraid that might be the case," he said and then turned down a hall in a quick-footed pace. The other scientists made way for him. "Come with me," he said to Caitlyn and Vi. "There's something I need to show you."
Caitlyn stood and exchanged looks with her partner. Vi did a sort of half-shrug before they followed the professor down the hallway.
"You see," Professor Heimerdinger said. "While your Enforcers were tied up with the matter involving Jinx along the city's outskirts, I was doing some investigating of my own here."
Caitlyn passed a tall glass door as they walked, and briefly eyed a scientist pouring a colorless liquid into large beaker which then overflowed with a thick foam that quickly changed colors the larger it grew.
"With all do respect, Professor," she said. "Investigative matters such as this would be best pursued by the Enforcers. My team is more than capable of handling matters like this."
"Oh, I have nothing but faith in your abilities, dear girl," he replied. "However, the matters of this case in particular were important enough to garner my personal attention."
"Still, civilians shouldn't—"
"And besides," he cut Caitlyn off. Looked up at her with a smile as they stopped at a set of double doors at the end of the hall. "Sometimes, an old yordle just wants a little excitement in his dreary work." Heimerdinger gave them a smile and a wink before scanning an access card to unlock the doors with a beep, and he pushed them open.
Inside was a sprawling facility full of some of the brightest minds that Piltover has to offer, deep into field-testing with various gadgets, chemicals and potions.
"Exactly one night before you two set after Jinx, this very laboratory was broken into," Heimerdinger said as he led them further in.
"Here?" Vi said, gawking at a crude-looking pair of rocket-powered rollerblades in one of the isolation rooms. "Who'd want to break into a research lab? You can't exactly fence these kinds of chems to your typical undercity dealer."
"Precisely," Heimerdinger said. "But whoever it was, they were no amateur. The intruder was somehow able to evade all of our security and cameras – take the core right out of the testing chamber. Nearly induced a meltdown had it not been for our ingenious fail-safe systems."
Eventually, he led them to a large vault door in the center of the room. It hissed as it unlocked and swung open with a low metallic moan, revealing another testing chamber inside.
There were scientists working at consoles throughout the room, and a glass observation window looking into another larger chamber below. In there was a massive tank containing a white glowing substance that seemed to be moving as both a liquid and gas all at once.
Caitlyn was so caught up that she didn't notice Heimerdinger had opened another door that seemed to lead inside of that observation room.
One of the scientists perked up and looked at Heimerdinger like he was one to brake safety protocols like this all too often.
They both went inside and now had a closer look at the massive tank of energy. Bolts of electricity sparked and danced on the inside, and a low hum droned through the ground under their feet.
At its base was a console raised at hip level with several buttons which Caitlyn had no idea what they did. And also six canisters just like the one in the photo, each of them filled with the same white glowing substance in the tank but labelled with different colored rectangular lights just below them on the console.
From the left, the first light was red. The next was purple. Orange, then yellow and blue. Caitlyn looked at the final slot on the far right end. It was empty, there was nothing inserted where the canister should have been, but the light below labelled it as green.
"What… is this?" Caitlyn asked examining the canisters.
Vi tapped the tank with the index of her Hextech Gauntlet, and her touch summoned a wild spark of electricity on the inside.
"Some kind of power source?" Vi asked.
"Not too far off the mark, Vi," Heimerdinger said. "What you see before you is a new form of Hextech innovation. A vessel that is able to define the position of matter, and redirect to any other point of one's choosing."
"A portal, then," Caitlyn said. She noticed Vi suddenly perk up beside her.
"In a way, yes," Heimerdinger replied. "Imagine being able to reach out and tear a slice through the very fiber of space before you, and then enter any and all other feasible points within our planes of existence. Be anywhere in an instant, go any place imaginable." He then pressed a sequence of buttons on the console which caused one of the canisters to drain of its contents. On the inside was a Hexcore – a small, grape-sized ball made of several different pieces, all spinning around it like a dynamo and glowing from the runes inscribed on them.
"Isn't that the main selling point of the supply chain Hexgates?" Vi asked. "Why reinvent the wheel?"
"This is no wheel, my girl," Heimerdinger said. "This is an entirely new engine. Jayce's initial designs can only travel along predetermined routes, but when tuned to the right frequencies, our new Hexcore prototype will be able to do so much more."
Heimerdinger then flipped on a pair of custom-sized welding goggles over his eyes and twisted the canister open. At once, the entire room seemed to dim, and but it took a second for Caitlyn to realize that the object had just become incredibly bright – or rather it always had been and was now outside of the shaded canister. It was as if Heimerdinger was wielding a small star in his hands.
She had to shield her eyes from the sheer intensity. It was a luminance that was so great that human pupils wouldn't be capable of constricting small enough to allow for a direct gaze without frying their retinas in that instant.
Heimerdinger replaced the core back inside of the canister, which had appeared completely black until it was once again lit up by it.
"It's still in its prototype stages," Heimerdinger said flipping his goggles back up. "So, it won't be ready for public use for quite some time, which is why I don't know why anyone would even want to take it."
Caitlyn approached the tank and examined the scene. "Definitely one of Jinx's neater heists, I'd say," she said walking around the tank."
"That's because it wasn't her," Vi replied. Caitlyn stopped in her tracks.
"What?"
"Open your eyes, Cait," Vi replied.
Vi then approached the tank. "It's spotless," she said. Walked all the way around the tank and came out the other side. "No scratches, no graffiti. No burn marks, not a single screw out of place. This was a clean job, cupcake."
Caitlyn didn't know how she didn't see it sooner.
"Whoever did this didn't want us to know it was them. They did it quickly and quietly. It was a pro, but it wasn't Jinx, that's for sure."
"What are you thinking, then?" Caitlyn asked.
"Dunno," Vi replied. "But, I've heard rumors of someone who fits this MO."
A devious smile then came across Vi's face – a thing that Caitlyn loved in most cases though usually came before she got herself into trouble.
"Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?" Caitlyn said.
"Suit up, cupcake," Vi said with a smirk. Made two fists and smacked her Hextech Gauntlets together, summoning a flurry of blue sparks and puffing jets of steam out the exhausts. "Time to pay Zaun a visit."