Jelo broke the silence that had fallen between them by asking a direct question, his voice cutting through the ambient hum of machinery and flickering lights. "What experiments do you even do?"
The scientist paused his work immediately, his hands freezing mid-motion over whatever device he'd been tinkering with at one of the cluttered workstations.
He turned slowly to face Jelo, his wild eyes blinking several times in rapid succession as if he needed to process that he'd actually been asked something. The expression on his disheveled face was clearly one of genuine surprise.
"Well, well, well!" he exclaimed, abandoning his work entirely and moving closer to the cage with renewed interest. "I didn't expect that question to come first! Not at all! Most surprising!" He tilted his head at an odd angle, studying Jelo like he was a particularly interesting specimen. "You're full of surprises, aren't you, cage boy?"
