“No, elementary. No, basic. No, comical. No, illegible.”

“Viktor, not _all_ of these texts can be useless. There must be—”, with a thump Jayce tossed another tome onto another pile raising another poof of dust, “_something_ here we can use.”

Was Viktor missing something? Gods, he realized, they had been going at it for hours. Yet if the solution could be out there, existing already, it might be anywhere in here for him to find.

He grumbled impatiently to himself, “There will never be one like it again.”

Jayce looked around exacerbated, threw up his hands, and at that Viktor knew he was tired. “I don’t know what it is you saw, but it isn’t going to be in the public library, clearly.”

Viktor swiveled back towards the stack that somehow grew in size two-fold over the last hour.

Cut to half an our later, and the piles grew bigger, wholly undisturbed, because they were all but empty, useless. And then there was Viktor, useless too, vaguely aware of Jayce lightly snoring behind him.

He felt the mountain of his own creation loom over his head in paper form. One shove to knock it all over would put a satisfying end to their research. He crumpled his hair in his hands, ready to give in.

Satisfaction was not going to give him the same high as an answer.

“I’ve got it!” Viktor burst out —he didn’t even think. “Jayce!” He cried aloud, like Jayce wasn’t already asleep, and in a library, “Get the car!”