Vi, despite Cipher's countless warnings not to associate with metahumans, was hanging out with one, and even followed her to fight against Queen Bee's elite forces.
Viktor had two main reasons for keeping quiet about this dangerous development.
First, the metahuman she was hanging out with was simply too powerful. He felt that if Cipher tried to "educate" Vi about the dangers, he might end up being educated himself by that metahuman, possibly in a very painful way.
There was a very real possibility that Cipher would lose both the argument and the fight, which would be embarrassing for everyone involved.
That female metahuman, who went by the callsign "Hawkgirl," could destroy the massive war machines deployed by Bialyan forces with her Nth metal mace. He had personally witnessed her casual strike shatter reinforced armor plating while her wings allowed her to outmaneuver entire squadrons.
He once suspected she wasn't entirely human, how could a normal person fly without technological assistance? He'd seen her energy mace cut through plasma shields like they were made of paper, the Nth metal seeming to disrupt the very molecular bonds of whatever it struck.
When he later learned she was actually a Thanagarian, the same species as the refugees they'd been hearing about, everything clicked into place. She wasn't just fighting Queen Bee's forces randomly; she was investigating what had happened to the Thanagarian refugees and why some had ended up in Bialyan custody.
The scientific impossibility of her flight capabilities kept him awake at night, trying to understand the physics behind Thanagarian technology.
Then there were Vander and Sevika, who weren't exactly being discreet about their own entanglements either.
Vander, being fundamentally a good-natured man despite his intimidating appearance, had caught the attention of an older Quraci veteran whose callsign was "Wildcat." The grizzled fighter's enhanced reflexes and decades of combat experience made him a legendary figure among the resistance forces, and he persistently tried to recruit Vander into their organization, the Quraci Liberation Front.
Initially irritated by the constant recruitment attempts, he had casually mentioned that he only believed in protecting his family and wasn't interested in grand political causes or revolutionary movements.
Rather than discouraging the recruiter, this had led to deeper ideological exchanges between the two men. Wildcat became even more excited by Vander's pragmatic worldview, seeing it as exactly the kind of grounded thinking their cause needed.
He insisted that Vander join their organization to help spread "revolutionary" ideas against oppressive regimes like Queen Bee's autocracy, arguing that protecting family naturally extended to protecting one's entire community.
Though Vander continued to politely refuse these overtures, Viktor could already tell, Vander, who genuinely yearned for more power to protect those he cared about, wouldn't be able to resist such an offer indefinitely.
It wouldn't be long before he was won over by the veteran's combination of idealism and practical strength.
Because Wildcat was also unimaginably capable in Viktor's assessment.
The veteran practiced something called "Nine Lives Boxing," a fighting system that seemed to let him anticipate and counter multiple attacks simultaneously. Even sustained plasma rifle fire couldn't touch him due to his enhanced reflexes and decades of experience fighting overwhelming odds.
According to Wildcat, the technique was a classical combat method he'd perfected through years of fighting against technologically superior opponents, originally developed during his early career as a prizefighter before adapting it for military applications.
If Vander joined their cause, he would receive personal training from Wildcat himself, along with access to the resistance's combat enhancement protocols.
Then there was Sevika, whose situation was equally concerning in its own way.
She had once drunkenly expressed her deep-seated hatred for corrupt corporations and oppressive regimes while drinking at a tavern with a Quraci intelligence operative known only as "Sergeant Steel." The operative had been gathering information about Zaun's leadership structure, but Sevika's passionate rants had apparently impressed rather than alarmed him.
After one drink too many, she had even started ranting that corporate executives and dictators should be dragged from their ivory towers and made to face the consequences of their actions, preferably in very public and unpleasant ways.
Soon after that drunken conversation, she received a rare invitation to join the Quraci Resistance Corps from someone with the codename "Bronze Tiger." The invitation offered training in advanced combat techniques focused on guerrilla warfare and asymmetric tactics specifically designed for fighting against technologically superior forces.
The fact that this unit traditionally only accepted male soldiers, it was historically a male-only special operations group, made the invitation even more significant.
There was no doubt that Sevika was genuinely tempted by the offer. Bronze Tiger was also absurdly capable in combat situations. Sevika had practiced marksmanship for a while under various instructors, but unlike Cipher, she wasn't particularly talented with precision weapons that required finesse and steady hands.
However, she had raw physical power and a naturally sturdy frame, perfect for the close-quarters combat style that the Resistance Corps specialized in.
Viktor even started to feel that Silco, usually the most level-headed and calculating among them, was acting oddly out of character.
Recently, Silco had been spending considerable time with a strange Thanagarian refugee youth whose cybernetic implants were rumored to contain advanced "Neural Interface" technology. That refugee was apparently someone of significant political importance among his displaced people, though the exact details remained classified.
Viktor strongly suspected that Silco had his calculating eye on the Neural Interface technology rather than forming any genuine friendship. According to technical briefings they'd received, the Thanagarian neural technology could theoretically be adapted for human use with proper modification and extensive testing.
This also explained Silco's sudden interest in the situation. If Hawkgirl was involved and investigating Thanagarian refugees, there might be opportunities to access more advanced biotechnology than they'd initially realized.
Among this whole group of increasingly problematic misfits, the one who seemed the least troublesome turned out to be Powder, ironically, the person everyone had originally thought would be the most likely to cause international incidents.
She was diligently studying every day, methodically tinkering with her increasingly sophisticated inventions, and generally looking harmless and focused on her work. It was actually kind of endearing to watch her intense concentration as she worked through complex technical problems.
Still, Viktor couldn't begin to understand these metahumans and technologically enhanced individuals, especially those who possessed advanced alien technology or had undergone genetic modifications that defied conventional scientific understanding.
Why were they all so impossibly strong? Each one of them seemed like a walking weapon of mass destruction, capable of single-handedly changing the outcome of entire military engagements.
He could rationally accept that the advanced technology they'd acquired from both the Apex dimension and Bialyan research could theoretically create devastating weapons through understood scientific principles. But these enhanced individuals operated on principles that seemed to violate basic physics...
Forget it.
He didn't even want to think about it anymore. The scientific impossibilities were giving him headaches.
Fortunately, the weapons they'd developed by combining technologies from multiple dimensional sources were advanced enough to hold their own, at least somewhat, against those superhuman individuals in direct confrontations.
Otherwise, he might've already considered giving in and joining one of their organizations, simply because he couldn't match their capabilities through conventional means and it was becoming increasingly clear that raw technological superiority wasn't always enough.
Because of his congenital disability and steadily worsening condition, every time he encountered these enhanced individuals who seemed to operate beyond normal human limitations, it felt like a knife twisting slowly in his chest, reminding him of his own mortality and physical weakness.
Cyborg... no, he's apparently called Steel Heart now. He's also been enhanced with Thanagarian biotechnology. His medical data... Viktor murmured to himself, his gaze filled with an intensity and passion he'd never shown before, even when discussing his most ambitious mechanical projects.
If he too could gain the enhanced capabilities of such individuals, then his degenerative condition wouldn't matter anymore. He could continue his work, continue contributing to Zaun's development, continue being useful to the people who depended on him.
He gripped the precious data files in his hands with even more force.
"Let's go. To the Shimmer Lab."
Cipher noticed that Viktor had been standing motionless for an unusually long time, lost in contemplation, and spoke up to gently remind him of their purpose.
"Yeah, let's go," Viktor replied, snapping out of his intense trance like someone waking from a particularly vivid dream.
---
Ever since he became the dean of Zaun University's Chemical Engineering Institute, Dr. Singed had received substantial research funding from the city's rapidly expanding budget. Cipher had even helped design and build him a state-of-the-art laboratory facility to his exact specifications, complete with advanced safety protocols and equipment that rivaled anything in Piltover.
So, Singed had finally moved out of the crude makeshift lab he'd been operating by the polluted river, where he'd conducted his early experiments under much more primitive and dangerous conditions.
"It's been... years since I last saw Dr. Singed."
Upon arriving at the impressive new Zaun University Chemical Engineering Institute building, Viktor suddenly spoke with a deep sigh that carried years of regret and complicated emotions.
Back then, he couldn't understand or accept Singed's seemingly callous attitude toward human life and suffering. He believed Singed was experimenting recklessly with human subjects, lacking any ethical boundaries or moral constraints in his relentless pursuit of scientific advancement.
So, he had chosen to leave Singed and his controversial research behind, going to Piltover Academy to pursue what he considered the more ethical field of mechanical science, where his work wouldn't directly involve human experimentation.
Meanwhile, Singed had remained in Zaun, tirelessly researching chemical enhancement technology for years in relative isolation, even creating a powerful drug like shimmer, which clearly required extensive human testing and data collection to refine into its current form.
Because of his deep-rooted ethical concerns and moral objections regarding Singed's research methods, Viktor had deliberately avoided visiting his former mentor since returning to Zaun to help build their new society, until now, when his own survival was directly on the line and he had no other viable options remaining.
"Everyone has their own reasons for staying true to something they believe in. Our hearts are big, they hold the Undercity, even the entire multiverse we're gradually discovering through dimensional travel. But Dr. Singed's heart is small and focused. It can only hold one person at a time."
Cipher narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, trying to find something understanding and perhaps even sympathetic to say about Singed's motivations. The man's scientific talent was genuinely terrifying, at least in the specialized field of biochemical enhancement and alchemical research, he was without question a top-tier genius whose work could revolutionize medicine.
"He once told me something that stuck with me: 'The only thing that can make a person willingly become a monster hated by the entire world... is love.'"
Viktor's expression visibly trembled with unexpected emotion. He never would have expected that the man he had seen as someone who experimented without moral limits and had no ethical boundaries, essentially a mad scientist, could express such a deeply human sentiment about the driving forces behind his work.
"When I was helping him relocate his laboratory equipment to this new facility, I learned that he had a daughter. If she's still alive, she would be about your age now. He keeps her in a specially designed life-support chamber, maintained by complex chemical compounds that provide just enough biological function to preserve basic life signs and brain activity."
"Everything he has done over all these years was ultimately aimed at bringing his daughter back to full life. He wants to create a world where death no longer claims the innocent before their time. It's mad, certainly. But also understandable in a deeply human way. At least, as a father trying to save his child, I think he's great, even if his methods are questionable."
Cipher shrugged as he revealed this shocking truth.
"Maybe... I need to completely reevaluate my understanding of Dr. Singed and his motivations," Viktor said, drawing in a sharp breath as he processed this new information.