Victoria was not joking about how little contact Hellbender would have with people other than herself. Nor was she merely dangling the promise of his final upgrade before him in an attempt to sway him to her side. Once the worm is settled into her very private and very secure workspace beneath Kao-Nic Technology's main research facility in Detroit, Victoria dives right into the work.

She is still reserved, as Shockwave was, still formal. Yet, there is something different. She can't quite hide that she is happy for Hellbender's presence, happy to be working for hours upon end upon his systems. She does not rush the work, at times being as critical and exacting as Hook. As she works, she sometimes talks, telling Hellbender some aspect of her time-displaced journey. One might think she has been starved for an equal (or a near approximation thereof) with which to interact, evidenced perhaps by her tendency to merely distance Hellbender's consciousnesses from his body, rather than take him fully offline for the work.

At the moment, she is tweaking the worm's entire subspace array, and telling Hellbender of her time spent in the gentle care of Sector Seven's laboratory.

"In truth, I've little memory of most of the period. Sometimes, like in a dream where one almost reaches the edge of wakefulness awareness would almost penetrate... I know from the information I recovered after my awakening that I was their captive for almost a century."

Her lips twitch, "I enjoy sending them on various wild chases from time to time."