[Strange dreams are increasingly common, Viktor has found, so he doesn’t give this particular instance much thought. Work doesn’t stop for it, anyway, and for someone like Viktor, used to compartmentalizing, it’s easy enough to brush off. Besides, whenever the Singularity chooses to inflict something on them, there’s no real avoiding any of it. Though he knows the dream must be a harbinger of something, it’s a few days before he starts to realize that something is wrong.

Viktor tries to go about his activities as usual, even as the locals keep their distance from him and he hears whispers of the dead walking once more. Since he never ventures out into the badlands, it’s easy to dismiss it as superstition until reports start coming in from Libertas. He can’t exactly go and fight, nor does he have a scientific solution for the literal walking dead, but Viktor tries to work regardless. It’s all he knows how to do.

Visitors to his and Jayce’s workspace might find things in increased disarray as time goes on. Viktor himself either hunches over his various projects and notes or stares despondently at his blackboard. If you’re passing by at the right moment, it’s possible to hear or see some kind of outburst—the clattering of equipment, the slamming of a door, or even the shattering of something that spills out into the street from the open bay door of the shop. The culprit himself does not seem contrite, and may even lash out, if someone tries to look at him sideways for it.]

We’re closed.

[Not that you were asking, or anything.]

[Something is wrong in this domain. Where one might usually ascend the wall to the laboratory facilities in the tower, it seems now that the only way an unsuspecting visitor can go is down. Rio, wherever she is, declines to make an appearance.

Some outside force gains more and more control over his domain, or maybe it’s been here the whole time. It inches up from the fissures below, sending tendrils out like creeping vines, criss-crossing fractal webbing with a strange organic quality that only grows worse the deeper one goes into the caves, until it gives way to a complete structural breakdown. If Viktor’s there, he seems entirely enraptured by it—to the point where he might need to be shaken out of it. If he finds you there, instead, he seems alarmed.

Either way, his response is the same.]

What is this?

[When the Horizon drags him to an unfamiliar scene outside of his own domain, Viktor manages to be a little more cogent. It’s hard not to be, when this is like nothing he’s ever seen before. No matter where he ends up, he doesn’t seem cut out for it, though of course some of these scenarios are more dire than others.

The level of panic is entirely dependent on the environment—Viktor doesn’t take the mountain very well, for example—but regardless of the scene in which he finds himself trapped, he calls out to the first (possibly) friendly face he sees with some urgency.]

Hold on—wait—!

[In ordinary circumstances, he might make some Horizon-born effort to mitigate his own physical limitations—that doesn’t seem to be working right now (or, at least, it’s not at the forefront of his mind). He’s clearly struggling, but he isn’t going to let that stop him. Safety in numbers, after all. ]

[hello! plotting post is here. happy to do custom starters for anything/everything. Hit me up on plurk at whitticus!]