Vodka and Cyrus reunited with the others, having found a map of the power plant, and nothing else. Having searched the opposite side of the main floor, they've come up with nothing but office supplies, left untouched.
Undeterred, Cyrus wanted to check other areas of the power plant, believing that if there's anything here, it's hidden somewhere in the deeper parts of the power plant, where nobody thought looking around.
He pushed them onward and they followed, wanting to check the first floor, and only the sound of their boots clanking against the grey flooring as they went up the winding staircase up to the first floor, where there's softly sickly pale light illuminating the grey hallway, the darkened office doors closed.
On Cyrus' command the group split up taking sections of the first floor with Theodore and Lila going towards the end of the opposite side of the first floor.
Enshrouded by the sickly pale light, gave everything almost a monochrome shade, with the drab vest Lila borrowed from Rasputin turning a dark shade of gray.
Rattling every doorknob as they walked down opposite sides of the hallway with the men up ahead checking the doorknobs on the other end, the two struggled finding a door that opened with ease, if they can't find doors that opened, they'll have to pick open every door.
Vodka joked they could've taken a direct approach, but Theodore respectfully declined, joke or not.
He seen enough horror movies with Lila that doing anything of the sort's resulting in bad consequences that resulted in things happening that he would very much appreciate not happening.
Rattling every doorknob possible, the two found nothing opened, up until the end near the second staircase leading down to the main floor when Lila managed to open one, flashing her flashlight into the darkened door way.
Inside, an ordinary office, untouched, not even a speck of dust, everything tidy, and the sight made Theodore and Lila look at each other with wearied looks, before Theodore unhappily tells her that they needed to check the room, they're in this to the end.
in perfect condition.
In the air, they smelled the distinct smell of a lit cigarette, fresh, and they ended up going inside the office, finding nobody inside, and there's no furniture big enough to hide anyone. Not even the desk's capable of hiding anybody, they're easily able to see under it, nobody hiding behind it.
It didn't look like anyone's been in the office for years, nothing out of place, and it's unsettling the two seeing how pristine the office looked compared to the ruins outside, with the smell of the cigarette still fresh on their noses.
The two broke off as they searched the office in corners, never too far from each other, as they walked around the office with furniture from roughly the late seventies, early eighties in their respected places.
On the Georgian peach colored desk, there's an unlit cigarette on the edge of the empty blue ceramic ashtray, bits of the tip burnt, but the rest intact, and yet there's no ash at the bottom of the ashtray. The cigarette having gone out before the broke down to that point.
Looking at the dark navy colored desk chair, it looked barely unused, remaining where it's placed since, and the only thing left on top the desk that they're able to see from a glance's the desk lamp, grey mat, and a black phone.
It's as though someone lit a cigarette and left it on the ashtray, without sitting down, without even staying in the office long, and it's curios that the formerly lit cigarette didn't burn through the cartridge. It wasn't stamped out, the long cigarette remained perfect, just a lightly burnt tip.
Drawn to this, Theodore looked at it with confusion as he studied the cigarette, it didn't make any sense to him and Lila wearily looked at him with a concerned look as they're standing in an empty office with no way for anyone to sneakily hide from the two.
Looking it up and down, there isn't any way out of the office except through the door they came through, and the window remained locked from the inside, no way for anyone to sneak out and lock it from the outside with the way the lock's installed.
Don't think anyone could if they tried, there's no ledge outside the window, and they needed strength of a gorilla to hold onto the little edge of windowsill there is before attempting to drop from that height to the ground without someone hearing it.
Lightly touching the cigarette with two of his fingers, Theodore feels it bitterly cold, despite Lila's protest he even touched the tip of the cigarette, but it's not even warm, felt as cold as the rest. Pulling his fingers away, there's not even a trace of soot on the tip of his fingers.
Lila immediately jumped and grabbed his arm the moment the silence's broken by the sound of the phone on the desk ringing.
Recoiling as he's taken aback, Theodore narrowed his icy blue eyes on the telephone as it rung on the desk, Lila looking up at him as she warns him against doing whatever he's thinking.
"Theo, whatever you're thinking about, don't do it," Lila gently squeezed his long arm as she clung to it. "Nothing ever good comes from answering a telephone call in a post-apocalyptic world."
Not only a post-apocalyptic world, one filled with strange and bizarre occurrences on top of mutated animals and potential humans!
The telephone kept ringing as the two stared at it, Lila strongly advised against answering it, believing that it'll not only terrify them, but cause something terrible, as proven with phone calls in horror movies.
"Dare I forget that telephones don't exactly work in these scenarios?" Lila pointed out that, obviously with what they've witnessed during their time here, telephones wouldn't work.
No reason to think otherwise and any reasonable person would've agreed with Lila's point that they're better off leaving the phone to ring all its lonesome while they B-lined the hell out of the office without turning back, but this was Theodore, the aloof giant who inherited his father's elective nature.
Lila watched in horror as he casually picked it up and answered, already Lila's planning out scenarios where she's telling Hammond that Theodore answered a cursed phone call, now he's got about seven days before he expires horribly.
Already, Hammond's cutting her hours and demoting her as far as he's legally capable, before he almost tears off her ears as he bent them to shout in her ear holes about letting Theodore answer the cursed phone call in the first place.
As Lila watched in horror while he answered the phone call, Theodore called out to whoever called on the other end, waiting for a response.
He waited and as he did, he finally gotten a response by whoever called the telephone, soft, whispery, and he heard a rattling soft, indistinct, voice call out, "… Watching… Watching… Youuuuuu…"
Furrowing his brow, Theodore inquired more about what the caller's telling him and he heard a raspy response, "…the… purple…"
The line went dead soon after before the caller finished their sentence, leaving Theodore holding the receiver, hearing nothing but silence on the other end as he's baffled by the raspy voice telling him little.
Resting the receiver on the holder, Theodore turned around as Lila winced, he told her what happened, but she remained unconvinced, asking if a woman told him, he had seven days.
"I'm fine," Theodore lightly touched his chest as Lila crossed her arms with a look on her face before she responded with an insincere, "Seven days!"
Though the call's brief, Theodore didn't know what to make of it and Lila asks more about it, but he told her that he said's all that he gotten from the short phone call.
Something about something or someone watching him, something to do with the colour purple. Couldn't make heads or tails what the call's about, but he asserts that he's not cursed like what Lila's insinuating as she stood away from the phone.
That said, it's an odd occurrence considering the circumstances they're in, that he couldn't deny it's unusual. Lila added that it's unusual that he casually picked up a phone without considering the origins of the phone call.
"I've seen and lived enough horror movies to recognize the signs, Lee," Theodore looked at her as she held the look on her face while he rejoined her side.
Lila remarked as she followed him closely out of the office, "What signs do you have to recognize for you not to answer a disconnected phone call?"
As he walked, Theodore thoughtfully responded with, "Well, if the line's dead, I suppose."
Letting out an exasperated exhale, Lila shook her head as she couldn't find a response to counter, she hoped he's right about not having a curse put over him, maybe the sight of an angry Hammond would've warded off, but Lila didn't want to try her luck. It's already tried enough, she's lucky that it didn't abandon her and move to Vegas.
While walking out of the office, the two grasped each other as they felt a sudden cold air pass through them, so frightfully cold, that it took their breaths away, and Theodore gripped Lila tightly as he felt his wild hair pushed forward by the cold air as it slammed into them from behind, before passing out of the office.
Pushed ahead, they fumbled away from the opened doorway, before hearing the door suddenly slam shut behind them.
Briefly dazed, they recoiled and recovered, before looking at the door in front of them, when Theodore tried to open it, he found that it wouldn't open.
"What's going on?" They turned their heads as they see the men walking down the hallway, having checked the opposite side of the floor, baffled as they heard the two fumbling out of the office.
Rubbing the sides of her arms, Lila told them what happened in the office, and hearing this, the men didn't act surprised at all, having witnessed things that people in their own universes wouldn't imagine, that these men weren't affected by what Lila said.
"Anomalies come and go, big and small," said Vodka as he explained to them that it's probable, they encountered a small anomaly, an echo, if they will, and when asked about the chances of something happening with the phone call, he shrugged as he answered that he's known people having phone calls come out of nowhere, leading to nothing but a near heart attack.
"So, nothing crawling out of broken television sets?" Lila gestures and Vodka looked at her baffled before answering that he never heard a story about such things happening, but he reminded her that there's people everywhere in the Ruins, and each with their own variant of a ghost story or account, it's possible that it might've been brought up.
However, in their instance, he doesn't think they're at risk.
Good to know, though it didn't help ease Lila's concerns, but at least she doesn't have to worry about Theodore inadvertently dying by the hands of a ghost.
She asked if the men found anything and Boris responded they found something of note, a set of keys, from an admin's office. There's keys for the restricted parts of the power plant and Cyrus wanted them checking those parts for anything of value.
Slowly nodding, Theodore and Lila walked with them away from the office they previously entered, and as they did, the group's alerted when they started hearing low whispers, nearly inaudible to their ears, coming from all corners of the hallway.
The audible parts sounded like conversations before turning into screams of horror, then silence, leaving the group in the hallway frightened by what happened.
Spooked, Lila asked aloud what they experienced and Cyrus noted that he heard rumors that there's instances of echoes haunting locations.
Echoes of life before the bombs dropped, etched into the fabric of their universe by the bombs, forced to replay for as long as their universe exists.
These echoes sounded like office workers going about their days at the power plant, but they're suddenly cut short, as they see the mushroom clouds outside the office windows, their frantic screams echoed throughout the hallways until they perished by the exposure from the radiation.
Moving on, having recovered from the echoes, the group made their way downstairs, where Cyrus consulted the map, figuring where they should start first once they go through the locked doors leading into the plant itself.
Telepathically, Lila asked Theodore what'll happen if there's nothing in the power plant at all, nothing but these echoes and occurrences, to which Theodore pondered before answering that the best-case scenario, Cyrus' mistaken.
Lila wondered about the worst-case scenario as they followed Cyrus' lead towards the locked double doors leading into the restricted parts of the power plant.