Going through the beige halls, looking for anyone, all Theodore and Lila's greeted by's the silence, there's abandoned pushcarts lingering in the hallway they passed, untouched for who knows how long.
Some filled with packets of documents heading somewhere, presumably an office, some empty, some with equipment set for another part of the complex.
On the beige walls, there's motivational posters, posters for positions within the complex, the usual fares, they remained pristine for the most part.
No gunshot, burns, blood, nothing suggesting what might've happened here, and everything remained undisturbed, no chaos strewn halls filled with broken mugs, scattered papers, spoiled coffee.
Turning right at the corridor, they're in the dormitory section of the complex, rows of rooms for all the workers in Durham Industries.
Heading to the first door they came across, they attempted to open it normally, but couldn't.
Looking at the door closely, Theodore sees that it wasn't a standard door, a strange hybrid.
It physically looked like your standard door, complete with a disabled-friendly door knob, but the more Theodore's icy blue eyes looked, he sees it's electronically controlled.
Nobody would've noticed the way it's set up, everything Theodore saw, he paid close attention to details since he started as the Doctor.
Your average worker wouldn't notice anything wrong.
"Electronic door, but not?" Lila's baffled as he was about the door, there's not even a keypad on the side of the door or something to scan the worker's ID in the handle.
Nodding, Theodore tells her it's what he deduced, and it's their first big clue what's going on.
Nobody went through the effort creating a fake normal door that's controlled electronically without a reason.
Feeling the pine door with her hand, Lila didn't feel anything off, either, it felt like your standard door you'd find, didn't feel like the metallic cold one expected for a fake door, it felt and smelt like a standard pine door with varnish.
"Why would that be a thing?" Lila wondered the applications of such door and Theodore tells her that it'll be the first answer to their question.
These kinds of things didn't come from a quote by a carpenter, these were industrially made, all this, nobody would've gone the effort mimicking real doors like this unless they're intent on keeping up ruses.
What sort of ruse did the Durham Industries have, well, that's to be determined.
Lila's hand stopped when she felt something off and with her hand pried until she sees the slit in the centre of the door, which Theodore helped her open as it was stuck, and peering inside, they see the room encased in darkness.
Reaching into his deep pocket, Theodore brought out his Sonic Screwdriver and used it on the door, allowing them passage, and inside, he flipped the switch, encasing the room in a soft light.
It looked akin to a flat than a room, it had everything, a bedroom, a bathroom, even its own kitchen, complete with the necessities.
Roughly smaller than theirs, expected, but serviceable for only one person.
Breaking off, they searched around the room, looking through drawers, and Lila found the kitchen stocked with expired food, she didn't have to check the refrigerator, there's expired three-year-old apple juice in a jug on the counter, a good indication how long it's been there.
Something they noticed while poking around the room's that there's still power, the temperature's pleasant, and everything looked spiffy.
Nothing waterlogged, broken, everything's intact.
Checking the bedroom, there's nobody inside, no one in the bathroom, either, and while poking around, Lila finds there's a false wall hidden inside the medicine cabinet above the sink.
Pushing the wall inward, Lila sees there's a starchy white hallway behind it, and she informed Theodore of this as he found the name of the person living in the room on the filled pill bottle, Gerald Heinz, he was prescribed medication for insomnia.
Seeing the false wall and the hallway behind it, Theodore looked down to the pill bottle in his hand, the cogs in his head turning as he wondered where the entrance to the hidden hallway was and how many existed, and why it existed.
Resting the bottle on the side of the sink as Lila closes the false wall haphazardly, Theodore went with her out of the bathroom and left Gerald's room, with so many rooms, there's no time searching them all, and he continued down the hallway with Lila trailing behind him, passing by closed doors, on their path to the offices.
Maybe there's something there?
Walking, they passed by the large panel windows, showing the rows of red spruce trees with black barks, heavy fog cast in the area, and the tall grass a golden shade.
Passing by another set of rooms, Lila stopped when she noticed one of the slots opened on the door, and peered inside, it was dark like the other, and she called to Theodore as he rejoined her.
A push of a button, they're inside the room, Theodore turned on the light, and Lila jolted as she immediately clung to Theodore's arm.
On the bed, there's a man, dead, damn near skeletal with his flesh stretched over his bones.
Seeing him in his bed, Theodore deduced he died in his sleep, at least, he hoped that was the case, and Lila glimpsed around the room, seeing it's smaller than the previous.
The man's bed was in his living room as he didn't have a bedroom. His kitchen smaller than Lila and Theodore's accommodating the size difference.
Glimpsing around, Theodore spotted the badge with the man's name on it, Wilbur Sykes, one of the line sorters.
Lila found his schedule on his dresser and looked through it, seeing he worked 9-5 on the weekdays, and had the weekends off.
Looking towards the body lying in bed, Lila wondered how he died, and why nobody knew.
That's a good question, someone should've known, and seeing him this way, there's no way he could've gotten this way on his own.
He wasn't restrained to his bed, there's no bruises on his hands and feet, and Theodore went far as checking the kitchen.
Stocked with food, but all expired, Sykes ate from it, Theodore found rubbish in the bin, he was fond of TV dinners.
Going through his room, Theodore poked into Wilbur's bathroom, where he found another false wall behind the medicine cabinet.
Seemed Wilbur suffered from constant heartburn, there's medication for it, and some tums.
His icy blue eyes moved as he tried seeing into the hidden hallway, his neck stretched as far as he can, Theodore sees there's similar false walls on the opposite side.
Recoiling as he closed the medicine cabinet, Theodore left the bathroom, and rejoined Lila outside Sykes' room.
"What killed him?" Lila asked Theodore for his opinion on what happened to Wilbur and Theodore guessed that Sykes starved to death.
How could've Wilbur starved to death with food in his kitchen, Theodore couldn't say, but it's another clue, and it's his intent on solving this mystery.
They continued their trek through the empty hallway lined with doors, with numbers on them, until they found another room with the door ajar.
Going inside, this room's like the first room they entered, and it looked homey, compared to the previous two rooms.
There's a picture of a couple on the mantle and they wore similar clothes, which led Lila finding their schedules, denoting them as line sorters, too.
Couldn't find their badges, they must've taken them, and in their search, they found the desktop computer in the bedroom.
While Theodore sorted through the desktop, wanting to find clues, Lila went through the bedroom, looking for anything pinpointing what happened in the complex.
This room belonged to the man, John Eastland, dirty blond hair with curls at the end, and his girlfriend's Mary Campbell, with her light brown hair that she kept in a low ponytail while working in the line, their dark green and sandy eyes filled with happiness in all their pictures.
"Interesting," Theodore spoke up as he went through the desktop.
Joining his side, Lila asked what he found, and he showed her the multiple links in the browser bookmark.
They're all duplicates.
Interestingly, they've been bookmarked within the span of weeks.
"Why would they do that?" Lila wondered what's the purpose of bookmarking the same link repeatedly.
Pondering that himself and seeing the time displacement, Theodore stood up as he said that he doesn't know, but he thinks it's their latest clue.
He would've called into question why didn't anyone use the internet and contacting people that way, but he found while sleuthing, that there wasn't an internet connection.
Seeing how there's power in the complex, it didn't make sense for there being no internet connectivity, and from his deductions, there wasn't a wireless card or dongle installed in the desktop, meaning there's no wireless spots, and judging from the cord on the back, they're exclusively using an Ethernet cable.
Going off what he knows, Theodore suggested if there was an internet connection, it'd probably be restricted to some capacity.
"Like how Hammond had them restrict the sites," Lila mentioned how Hammond had the computers on their floor block certain websites because of older children causing problems and giving IT headaches.
Nodding his head, his wild hair bobbing, Theodore affirmed that it's like that, maybe more sophisticated than what library ITs did.
"Wouldn't make sense, wouldn't they have noticed?" Lila saw a flaw in Theodore's suggestion.
With that many people working in Durham Industries, someone was bound to find out they couldn't access a site or reach out to someone, and if life taught Lila anything, blocking people from accessing things they wanted wasn't going to deter everyone from working against it.
"Maybe they didn't know there were restrictions?" Theodore shrugged his wide shoulders, the stitched shawl attached to his brown coat crumpled as he gave his best guess that they didn't know about it.
The day's still young, they'll figure out what's going on for sure, Theodore reasoned.
Checking the bathroom, he found an empty container for birth control among the razors and the aftershave in the medicine cabinet.
Opening the false wall, Theodore didn't see anything different than before, until he spotted an abandoned pushcart near the opposite wall.
Stretching his neck, Theodore narrowed his icy blue eyes, and found it's a pushcart filled with medication.
Some looked like store brand, some looked like generics, and it raised questions for why they're distributing medicines like this.
It wasn't some sort of room service, that much's evident, they would've saw something about it.
The way it's hidden like this, further suggested the workers in the complex weren't aware of it happening.
Once he finished searching, he rejoined Lila, and they left the room, deciding to check the offices, see what they can find.
Maybe there's someone on the top of the corporate ladder who had something about this, maybe something indicating they knew that this was going on in the complex.
Following the map, they're going through the empty halls, filled with silence, the floors deafened their footsteps.
Reaching the offices didn't take long, they would've gotten to it sooner, but they weren't trusting with the lifts, couldn't be too careful, after all.
The cubicles empty, only the desktops and chairs remained, maybe one or two had decorated cubicles, the rest looked like standard office cubicles.
Nobody around, the office phones dead, and further silence.
Expired popcorn in the microwave, someone left their coffee mug on their desk, there's a floating green blob with a black ring in the centre.
The office break room stunk of expired food, left in the cabinets and the refrigerator, smelled so horrible, neither two wanted anywhere near there, that they passed over it, wanting to investigate the offices.
All the offices belonged to supervisors overseeing different parts of the complex, there wasn't any for those above the supervisors, not that they saw.
Going through the offices, Theodore and Lila didn't find anything of note, which shouldn't be surprising, but they're confused.
Every paperwork they found read like a standard operation, there's nothing in the papers saying anything hinting that there's something wrong going on in the complex.
Either they're blind to what's happening, complacent, or they're that ignorant, hard to tell which.
Checking a few more offices didn't turn up anything, either.
Nobody's in the offices, the paperwork didn't indicate problems, everything remained untouched.
The cafeteria, the dorm, now the offices, they've not seen anyone since they've arrived here, and if there were people here, they've either gotten out on their own, or still inside the complex somewhere.
Out of curiosity, Lila checked for the hidden hallways and found the office they're in had one hidden behind the liquor cabinet.
She checked one of the bottles when something caught her eye, it didn't catch it until she checked closely, before showing Theodore an opened bottle of cognac.
Theodore asked about it and Lila informed him that the cognac was tampered with, showing him that at the bottom of the glass bottle, there's white sediments pooling at the bottom.
The cognac itself wasn't faked, everything looked legitimate, but someone tampered the cognac by opening it and pouring something inside.
Lila guessed initially that sediment mixed with the cognac, but it's been too long, that the sediment formed at the bottom of the cognac.
Considering what they've witnessed thus far, it led Theodore into believing someone drugged the cognac in hopes whoever worked in this office would've drunk it completely before the sediment formed at the bottom.
What the point of doing this, remained unclear, but the hidden hallway wasn't helping them much, and without a clear way through there, they couldn't be sure what was in the hallway or where it led.
Without any acknowledgments from any of the supervisors they've gone through the offices of, it caused the two speculating that even they didn't know anything about it, either.
"I'm getting the sense that there's a conspiracy," Lila exhaled as she's getting a bad feeling, again, and Theodore affirmed that he believed there's a conspiracy afoot, but without finding who Al picked up in the phone call, they're in the dark.
Thinking, Lila tried to come up with an idea, and as she's leaned on the desk, she noticed the phone on the desk, and cogs turned in her head before she suggested that if there's someone still in the complex, maybe contacting them over the intercom's a good idea.
They'll know the complex better than they do and find their way to the offices.
Lila didn't see anything remotely dangerous and nothing suggesting danger, so in theory, they shouldn't face problems using the intercom.
Sudden voice blaring'll break the silence, that much Lila knows.
"Suppose that'll work," Theodore acknowledged Lila's idea and worked setting up the intercom for him to use, where he briefly caused minor feedback, before using the intercom.
Calling out to whoever's still in the complex, that they're requested in the office at this hour, and attendance's mandatory.
When he finished, he noticed a smirk on Lila's face.
"Don't say it," Theodore hissed at her as she giggled at him.
Teasingly, Lila mentioned for a moment, he sounded like Hammond.