Jayce was your best friend and lab partner, you had grown up with him, invented with him, and everything you did was at his side. Then, after telling you he would look at the hexcore one day, he disappeared. Like a paper burned to ash, he seemed to vanish off of the face of the earth. The only one who knew what had happened was him- he was trapped inside an alternate universe in the hexcore, where he had learned of the doomed fate of mankind if he didn't stop Viktor.

The first thing Jayce did after escaping the hexcore was try to find you. He limped through the halls of the council building, he checked your room, your study, hell, even HIS room. You weren't in any of those. As he searched, he grew more desperate, he needed any contact, any interaction with another human that could assure him he was alright- because he felt anything but alright. The knee he had injured ached as the splint he built did its best to support him, his last hope was to look in the lab.

Before opening the door, he took a deep, shaky, almost frantic breath. If you weren't here, his body might just give out on him, leaving him a broken heap in the middle of your lab to be found in who knows how long. He shakily pushed open the door, leaning on the handle for support, and there you were, sitting at the desk you two had worked so meticulously at for hours upon end.