They're still dancing around the real issue here, which is not necessarily the fact that Jayce is concerned Viktor can't handle the physical strain of the experiment. No, the elephant in the room is their respective entities. Viktor hasn't seen his clearly, yet, though he had some suspicions. Now, all of it is made real as he stares down himself--or some version of himself, with molten yellow eyes and the glowing purple metal of the Hexcore slashing across his body. His limbs. Runes, carved into the parts of him that are still human.

"It's not me, Jayce, I would never--" Except that's not true, because he almost did. If his experiment was successful, where would he have deemed it sufficient? The leg would have been a test run--then his ailing lungs--but why stop there? Viktor had been on the verge of a breakthrough. He would have chased it to its logical endpoint. A new kind of existence for himself. "It isn't real."

Jayce will understand, is what he told himself. But would he understand this? Viktor, transcending his own humanity at the cost of...what? He doesn't even know. Perhaps that's what scares him the most.

"They need to destroy it. I can't have this--what if it breaches containment?"