Chapter Text
Viktor hunched uncomfortably over his laptop, papers and charts spilling off the edge of his desk and onto the floor. The darkened office, while spacious, was pulled tight and close around his frame in the intensity of his focus. A large whiteboard to his left was scrawled with hastily written calculations, barely readable in the dim light of the desk lamp.
He looked between his laptop screen and the board, and back again, the action fraught with even more unease than usual.
‘No, no…’ His quiet voice trailed off slowly. ‘Surely?’
With rapid movements he typed satellite data from a nearby chart into an advanced weather prediction program of his own design, before exhaling a little in a wry expression of humour. He typed again and refreshed the program. And again. And again.
The blood drained from his already pale face. This was an impossibility. He leant back stiffly in his chair, using the handle of his cane to drag the whiteboard closer, paper bunching at the wheels.
His eyes scanned keenly over the information, searching, pleading for a mistake.
‘Fuck.’
He snapped back forward and resumed typing, desperately trying to condense his findings into an email in a way that would make sense, and also sound sane. Groaning aloud in frustration, he deleted and redrafted before cc-ing a dozen or so of his fellow meteorological academics. His cursor hovered momentarily over the send button as he considered the impact to his reputation if he had indeed made an asinine mistake somewhere in his process, but sleep-deprived and panicked, dismissed the risk.
He closed his eyes and leant his head back, suddenly consumed with nausea, and did not notice that he had drifted off until he was startled awake by the muted buzzing of a phone on his desk.
‘Hello, Professor,’ Viktor answered sluggishly as he picked up, reaching forward to take a mouthful of old water from a glass nearby.
‘Viktor…’
Viktor could hear the chiding tone of Professor Heimerdinger oozing from the first syllable, and pinched the bridge of his nose in effort to stave off the tension headache wrapping around his eyes.
‘The email you sent is quite concerning, my boy, quite concerning indeed.’
‘Yes, Professor. I am in need of your assistance in reviewing my data, if my findings are correct, there is a distinct possibility that–’
‘Viktor,’ the Professor cut him off. ‘I’m not talking about the data, my boy. What is concerning to me is that, after not hearing from you in multiple weeks, you come to me with a rambling email about– hah!’ The Professor exclaimed, ‘A prediction of an EF7 rated tornado! I’m sure you know that the theoretical wind speeds required to rate something like an EF7 aren't even possible on Earth!’
Viktor had expected this sort of reaction from his mentor of the last six years, but his frustration rose with each flippant word regardless.
‘Yes, Professor, I understand the statistical improbability of an event of this severity. But–’
‘To say it is a statistical improbability is an understatement! This is quite preposterous. It is all well and good to make predictions, but you mustn't bring these sorts of things to light without the proper scientific method. You simply don't have enough evidence, lad!’
Viktor's head began to pound.
‘Professor, I have the evidence, please– if you could just look at what I’ve sent to you. I have carefully constructed my predictions based on decades of data. My models clearly show a consistent rise in the occurrence of severe meteorological events. The trends for this year are already cause for alarm…’
‘I’ve looked, my boy, and my findings are that you might think about taking a little rest. Recuperate a bit. You are one of my brightest students, but the star that burns the brightest, also burns the quickest! I assure you, there is no need to preach the rapture just yet.’ The Professor spoke with a self-satisfaction that set Viktor’s teeth on edge. It was clear that the severity of his findings had been willfully neglected by the small and eccentric man. Which in turn did not bode well for the rest of the scientific community, who were unfortunately inclined to hang off of his every word.
‘Yes, Professor.’ Viktor somehow managed to hold back the tremble of anger in his voice. ‘Thank you for your insight.’
‘Happy to help, my boy!’
Viktor hung up the call, knuckles gripped white around the phone. He threw the cursed object back onto the desk, where it bounced and clattered, sliding off the far end and landing with a decided thunk onto the hardwood floor. He groaned deeply, the action deflating his body as he sank forward, head heavy in his hands.
There had to be something he could do. He had checked everything, multiple times. He mulled the calculations over in his head– of course the chances of a weather event of this magnitude were incredibly slim; even a tornado severe enough to garner an EF5 rating had only a 0.05 percent chance of coming to fruition. But, in Viktor’s experience, numbers seldom lied. Even if the chance was only one in one billion, a meteorological event like this, with possible windspeeds of up to 400mph? It had to be made known.
Viktor fought down a heave as his body processed the implications of such a cataclysmic tornado. It would be horror beyond description.
If Heimerdinger was to be of no use, perhaps one of his fellows would be able to weigh in. With some difficulty, he stretched out his good leg in search of the phone that had fallen irritatingly far behind his desk, the pain radiating through his hip an unwelcome reminder of how long he had been sitting in this damned chair.
He manoeuvred the phone to a position where he could grab it, and, turning it over to reveal a freshly cracked screen, briefly considered giving up entirely.
With the help of his cane, he hoisted himself to his feet, pushing the chair back and groaning once more as the weight settled into his aching joints. He took a few shuffled half steps around it before making his way to the small sleeping area set up at the back of his office. He sat tenderly on the side of the bed, using his arms to swing his right leg up onto the mattress, before finally laying back and dissolving into the brushed cotton sheets.
He scrolled intently through the now many notifications, sure that he would be taken seriously by at least a few of his peers… only to be met by an alarming lack of concern. Email after email asking if he was well, or discussing the possibility of such an event as though it were purely hypothetical. The conspiratorial side of Viktor's psyche murmured that Heimerdinger must have gotten to everyone before they’d had the chance to be objective. And the anger he thought he had been too tired to hold onto reared its head with fresh enthusiasm.
This was bad. Very bad. A hopeless ache settled into the pit of Viktor's stomach and his thoughts began to spiral.
A banner notification intruded upon his internal panic as it was nearing boiling point. The name snapped him out of it and he exhaled humourlessly despite himself.
The notification was for a YouTube channel that Viktor indulged in hate-watching more regularly than he would admit – Jayce Talis, a reckless and debonair content creator, who went out of his way to chase the most dangerous and destructive tornadoes he could find. His content was sensationalist, thoughtless, and seriously lacking in any of the respect or caution that Viktor felt tornadoes demanded.
However, to Viktor’s unending frustration, the man had an almost supernatural ability to capture even the most violent storms in perfect detail, always seeming to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. His lack of hesitation and unhealthy obsession with staring down the barrel of the gun made his content – however distasteful Viktor might find it – the highest quality and most scientifically valuable documentation he had ever come across, academically or otherwise. It was for this reason alone, Viktor frequently reminded himself, that he watched this content so religiously.
Opening the video, he was immediately confronted with a high octane opening sequence; multiple fast-paced clips of incredibly powerful tornadoes ripping through landscapes, people's homes, people's lives – all set to a blaring dubstep backing track. A swirling text bounced into frame, showcasing the channel name ‘StormChaseJayce’. It had been ‘StormLegendJayce’ a few years ago, and every time Viktor saw this new name, he thought that Jayce had probably been ecstatic when he finally came up with the rhyming version.
Viktor found himself annoyed by the intro, as usual, but something about the ridiculousness of it actually made him feel a little better. The video opened to Jayce sitting in the front seat of his car, enthusiastically summarising the details of the video. He was currently in Kansas, an area in the infamous ‘Tornado Alley’ – a loosely defined region in the central US prone to some of the strongest and most frequent storms in the country. He turned the volume up on the video just as Jayce’s introduction was coming to an end.
‘So, guys– don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and hit the bell icon to get notified every time I upload. Let's get into this killer storm chase!’
Viktor absently scrolled through the comments as the video played – multiple expressions of awe, and a fair few congratulations on the size of Jayce’s balls for getting close enough to touch an EF1 rated tornado dancing over the flat plains of central Kansas.
Viktor liked a comment about how stupid Jayce was. Yes, he was utterly ridiculous, and surely wouldn't live to see his thirties with this level of risk-taking behaviour.
‘WOAHOOOO! That’s so fucking sick you guys, look at that!’
His eyes flicked back up to the video at an exclamation from the aforementioned stupid man with his stupidly big balls.
Viktor's brow furrowed. The storm had quite quickly transformed from a weak singular funnel to a massive multivortex tornado. Viktor could count at least three subvortices in rotation around the larger tornado, indicating an intense and unusual escalation in the storm's severity.
He pulled himself up against the headrest and grabbed a laptop from his bedside table. Thankfully, Jayce always included the date and coordinates of the tornadoes he recorded – another helpful metric – showing that it had occurred just this morning. Viktor set the satellite data in the GEOS program to a few hours before the tornado had formed, noting a cluster of storms creating a Mesoscale Convective System, expelling cool, wet air into the plains. This created a mini cold front that pushed down into Northeast Kansas, meeting with a hot dry air mass that once sat over the high plateau of Northern Mexico.
Despite this, the Storm Relative Helicity was low, reading at around 30, meaning there was little to no chance for any significant rotations to form. This was a recipe for some pretty hefty thunderstorms, but definitely not tornadoes. So far, so normal, Viktor thought as he sped through the next few hours of imagery to the time that Jayce had documented the tornado.
Now it had begun to get a little more interesting, multiple small storm clusters moved in from from the Southeast and West, this, combined with the already established MCS, created an unusual pinch point. The cold front was now overtaking the dryline, causing massive amounts of surface air to rise rapidly as the two boundaries performed a zipper merge.
Viktor leant closer towards the screen. The resulting updraft was incredible. The conflicting winds of the southeasterly and easterly storm clusters provided the wind shear, and the storm's potential for rotation jumped from nonexistent to incredibly high within a matter of moments.
This was a very unpredictable outcome to have come from so many moving parts, the advance notice for a tornado like this would have been pretty much reliant on the first visual sighting. And it had been no insignificant event. Watching through the rest of Jayce’s video, Viktor was relieved to see that it had happened almost exclusively over open grassland, with the only victim being a few unoccupied outbuildings. Just as well, Viktor thought, as he reckoned the windspeed to be anywhere from 160 to 200mph, judging by the level of debarking on the trees and earth stripped from the tornado's path.
It was all in all, a freak event. And it was enough to reinforce Viktor’s belief that something horrific was looming just out of sight.
If he wanted any chance of getting through to Heimerdinger, and the greater meteorological community, he desperately needed more data. Before thinking better of it, Viktor picked up his phone and hastily typed a comment. He was sure Jayce would see it. He replied to everyone.
***
‘So, what did you want to talk to me about so bad, Doc?’
A few hours had passed, and Jayce's happy-go-lucky energy spilled from the screen as he reclined in the video call that he had insisted upon, and Viktor had reluctantly agreed to.
‘I am not a Doctor yet,’ Viktor corrected superfluously, for some reason wondering if ‘StormChaseJayce’ had even bothered to wear pants for this meeting.
‘Oh, okay– just Vik, then?’ Jayce countered as he lounged in a tight white tank top, lifting an arm to bring even more attention to his well-defined muscles.
Viktor sighed lightly, still not sure if this was at all an avenue he really wanted to go down. How could Jayce be acting this familiar already? After two DMs they were already facetiming, and now nicknames? Viktor had had boyfriends that didn’t move this fast.
‘Vik is…fine.’
‘Cool, man, cool. So, anyway, what's all this you’re saying about some mega tornado? They can get pretty big anyway y’know.’
Gods, had it really come to this? Was he really going to consult this Tornado Alley bronco on something that had the capacity to be so devastating?
‘Yes, I am aware that tornadoes can get pretty big, Mr Talis. What I am predicting is a freak meteorological event, the likes of which have a near impossibility of occurrence on Earth. A tornadic storm with the ability to produce a tornado of EF7 strength, almost certainly alongside multiple other severe tornadoes.’
‘EF…7?’ Jayce hesitated and Viktor frowned as the man's handsome features curved with humour. ‘Dude, you can’t get tornadoes like that – the Enhanced Fujita scale only goes up to 5, I mean there's been some I would have taken a chance on at being a 6, Bridge Creek-Moore of ‘99 comes to mind but, a 7? No way.’
Viktor pinched his brow in frustration. This day was testing him to the point that it felt masochistic to continue.
‘Yes, I am aware that it is unheard of, but I’ve scrutinised over 50 years of data, and closely monitored the trends of the last ten personally. With global warming reaching a point of no return, extreme weather events are becoming commonplace. The satellite data is already highly erratic for this point in the season. I strongly believe that this is not a matter of if, but when.’
‘Damn, for real?’
For– for real? Viktor’s cursor hovered over the end call icon.
‘So, what are we talking in terms of windspeed on that sort of thing?’ Jayce continued, unaware. ‘270, 300?’
‘I estimate anywhere from 350 to 400 miles per hour,’ Viktor replied, his body once again holding back a physical reaction at the thought.
‘Oh.’ Jayce stilled, humour instantly dropping from his face as it seemed that Viktor had finally gotten through to him. The implications of a storm anywhere near that strength settled onto both of them, and the two sat in silence for a few moments.
‘So… what do you need my help with?’ Jayce's voice was quieter now, but earnest. His hazel eyes swam with a curious mix of emotions that Viktor could not decipher.
‘I need to collect as much data from local storms as possible. On the ground. And I will need to get close for accurate readings. I need your assistance in acquiring this data.’
‘You want to ride with me?’ Jayce seemed surprised. Viktor must not have been hiding his facial expressions as well as he thought; he was quite exhausted.
Yes, I want to ride you. Viktor cleared his throat uncomfortably, a flash of heat colouring his pale cheeks at the thought. Fuck. Why did this have to be a video call?
‘Yes, I want to ride with you,’ he said carefully.
‘Well, okay then!’ Jayce beamed, thankfully oblivious.
‘I'll need to bring quite a lot of equipment, and you'll have to drive a modified truck. I haven't run this by the University yet, so I'm not sure what I'll be able to get under so little notice. I admit, I am usually a lot more thorough with these things…’ Viktor trailed off, suddenly concerned of the logistics of this endeavour.
‘Nah, I got it.’ Jayce cut Viktor off, his excessive confidence back at its usual level.
‘You got it?’ Viktor questioned, snapped out of his thoughts.
‘You gotta meet my baby.’ Jayce grinned ear to ear, and the sight inexplicably caught the breath in Viktor’s throat.