Separated from Lila, Theodore struggles locating her as he's traveling through the disjointed areas of the museum. He's unable to communicate with her via telepathy, for some reason, there's a block, he can't get past it, and there's no reason to suggest it was Lila's doing.
Something's doing it and he can't break through it, that he reached out to Al, hoping the AI had better luck.
Hearing what's happening, Al tried his hand, but he couldn't break through the block, causing Theodore to question if it's the machines, which Al responded that he wasn't sure, but with it acting the way it did, it wouldn't surprise him.
"Al, there has to be something!" Theodore begged Al to find a way, but the AI said his hands were already tied, Theodore needed to find Samuels Argyle or what remained of him and get the override key.
It's hard, Al knows, but it's the only way, and they couldn't spend any more time talking about it, causing Theodore to begrudgingly agree, as he's forced to concede, with Al pointing him to the last known direction of Samuels Argyle.
While Theodore's on his way, Al's working his magic.
Going through the unusually projected hallways, the winding corridors, Theodore's scouring for any sign of Samuels Argyle.
Al couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but Theodore's prepared for the worst, and ready to "enlighten" Samuels Argyle if he didn't listen to reason when he's found.
In the back of his mind, the fears and doubts, failing to save the guests in time, Lila, it troubled him greatly, that he's struggling to keep his composure.
He ended up creating multiple rifts to close distance between him and where he thinks Samuels Argyle could've been, but every time Theodore left, he found the whole area's different than before.
Stopping for a moment, Theodore saw someone in the distance, slender, looking his way, but he couldn't discern what they looked like.
Stretching his neck out, Theodore still couldn't discern the figure ahead, but as he recoiled, he swore he saw the figure move their mouth, talking.
However, he couldn't hear the words, no matter how much he tried to listen.
When the figure finished, Theodore saw pastel walls appear in front of him, preventing him from going near the figure.
Looking around, Theodore sees the pastel walls seemingly boxed him in and forced him to go through the only path available to him.
Goose stepping, Theodore made his way through the path, behind him the path he took closed off, preventing him from turning back.
Even considering opening another rift's impossible, Theodore felt the energy around the area dissipating, the rifts he opened prior closing, to the point he can't even begin trying to scrounge for the needed energy.
Forced, Theodore took the path until he came to the end of the path with a door, opening it, it led into Samuels Argyle's office, and when Theodore entered, he sees everything looked normal.
In the corner, Theodore sees Samuels Argyle slumped, before he immediately went towards the man, hellbent on forcing him to turn over the override key.
Upon reaching him, Theodore found that Samuels Argyle's muttering incoherent words to himself, failing to register the aloof giant wanting his attention.
Trying to gain it, Theodore sees that Samuels Argyle's eyes remained unfocused, he's muttering to himself, rambling, that only by reaching out and grabbing his shoulders, did Theodore get a response from him.
"He's here! He's here!" Samuels Argyle shouted. "He's come back!"
Shaking his shoulders, Theodore talked with Samuels Argyle, wanting the override key for the machines, and the man's unfocused eyes barely glimpsed at Theodore before he sputtered.
"He's here! He's come back! He's here!" Samuels Argyle swore as he mumbled incoherently, causing Theodore having to try and wrangle the desperate man as he's panicked.
Took him what felt like an eon, but eventually, Theodore wrangled Samuels Argyle to his desk chair, searching the man's pockets, nearly turned him upside down, but he didn't have the override key on him.
Desperate, Theodore demanded to know where it was, but Samuels Argyle was too out of it to register Theodore's verbal threats.
"Damn it! Where is it!?" Theodore shouted at the bedeviled man, time ticking away, fearing the worst.
He heard Samuels Argyle say, "He came back! He came back!"
Gritting his teeth as his blood rose in temperature, Theodore started tearing apart the desk, emptying drawers, throwing them against the wall, turning them into splinters as he's desperately searching for the override key.
Stirring from his desk chair, Samuels Argyle muttered under his breathe that the "man from the other side, took it."
Stopping in his tracks as he tore apart the desk looking for secret compartments, Theodore sharply inquired more about the man from the other side, but Samuels Argyle went back to the mantra prior, ignoring Theodore's threats.
Muttering under his own breath as he's trying to come up with something, Theodore sharply asked if it's Almar, and it finally gotten through to Samuels Argyle, that he turned his head towards Theodore.
His unfocused eyes, drool coming from the side of his mouth, Samuels Argyle said that Almar was the name of the two machines.
Project Almar.
Someone once had that name and the company that worked on the machines used it. The machines were meant to covertly interrogate people initially, but the programming went haywire, becoming increasingly impossible for people to discern they're in the real world, the machines starting to project their fears to the point they couldn't tell it apart from the real thing, that the project was cancelled, but not before Samuels Argyle gotten word of its existence.
He was convinced by his business partner that with work, the machines couldn't harm anyone, just give them a good scare.
His business partner, intentionally drew him to those machines, he wasn't in for the money, he wanted to see the machines functioning.
"What does it have to do with the Doctor?" Theodore struggled as he's thinking of ways of keeping Samuels Argyle lucid, trying to know what was Almar and what it had to do with the Doctor.
Hearing the noun almost made Samuels Argyle cry out in fear, muttering incoherently once more about the man from the other side, nothing that Theodore done would've made him coherent again.
"Al!" Theodore cried out to the AI. "Al, Samuels Argyle doesn't have the override key and I've torn apart everything that's in his office, but it's not here!"
His voice rattled as he's unable to keep his composure, hearing Al answer promptly did little to quell the anxiety.
Al says that something's going on with the machines, he's able to get back inside, someone must've had the key and knew what they're doing, because they're changing the simulations.
The guests are pouring out of the exhibits, all fine, by the way, Al gotten into the camera footage, where he sees them, all accounted for, scared, but still among them.
"Lee, what about Lee?" Theodore frantically asked about Lila, but Al said that he can't find her on the cameras, causing Theodore to run towards the door, opening it, and finding that outside's changed completely.
There's a brick wall in front of the door, when Theodore turned his head, there's a brick wall behind him, and when he looked up, he's looking down on the office, with Samuels Argyle sitting in the chair, cradling himself.
Chewing on his inner lip, Theodore blinked several times as he's forced into following the unknown path, while communicating with Al through telepathy, and the AI's unable to find out who's at the machines.
Obviously not the guests and Lila, but the cameras weren't working.
Following the only direction he can go, Theodore's forced to walk on the ceiling of the hallway, the sensors under his feet, and when the path prevented him from going forward, he turned his head, seeing there's a door at the end.
Under Theodore's feet, he noticed that the sensors are starting to waver, and he rushed towards the door, opening it, entering inside, and finding he's in a small room.
Turning around, there isn't a door anymore, when he turned back, he saw Lila falling backwards through the wall, her hand becoming stuck in the wall, keeping her from falling on the ground as she barely registered what happened.
Her feet firmly on the ground, she struggled as she yanked on her hand, disoriented, Theodore coming to her aid, grabbing her, and trying to pull on her.
As he's trying to help her, he felt something tugging on the other end, forceful, until there's a noise something fierce, a loud boom, enough to shake the entire museum down to the foundation.
The moment the noise passed, Theodore stumbled backwards, clutching Lila, as they fell backwards, onto the solid ground, the sensors starting to fail in droves, everything going back to normal, with Al appearing before them, eyes widened.
"Holy Toledo, did you hear that?" Al asks them as Theodore helped himself and Lila up from the ground, before telling him that they heard it.
Gesturing, Al says that several bolts lighting shot through the building, hitting the machines within seconds of each other and destroyed them.
They're nothing but smoldering melted metal, now.
Confused, Theodore thought it was Al's doing, but Al said that he couldn't get anything in his plans to work, something prevented him from doing it.
Groaning as he rubbed his eyes, Theodore turned his attention to Lila, clenching her wrist, her face trying to hide the subdue pain she felt.
"Lee, what's wrong?" Theodore immediately asks her what bothered her, reaching out and gently taking her hand into his, seeing there's heavy bruising on her wrist.
He comforted her the moment he noticed the discomfort and he asked what happened.
"I don't know… I was looking for you, but for some reason, I just got turned around," Lila tells him that she can't remember much about what happened.
For some reason, there's a huge blank in her mind, but Al suggested it was because of the simulations.
Theodore asks Al's opinion on the bruises and he suggested that the walls were starting to shift, becoming solid again, and with Lila's hand getting stuck, basically nearly crushed her wrist.
In his medical opinion, Al says that Lila's fine, the bruises will take time to heal, but nothing serious.
He pointed behind them, showing that the handheld cannon that Theodore made's on the ground, reminding Theodore not to forget it, and he went to retrieve it.
Upon retrieving it, Theodore sees it was destroyed, snapped apart, almost, and the way he saw, it was in the hand that gotten bruised.
Deducing it must've gotten broken by the restructuring, Theodore sighs as he went ahead and dissembled the handheld cannon for disposal.
Afterwards, his mind focused on ensuring that the guests were fine, which they were, Al went ahead and did his thing, drawing attention to the project and what it was about, making sure the company behind it couldn't escape the backlash.
"What does "Almar" have to do with you?" Lila wondered what the word had to do with the Doctor, before Theodore tells her that he couldn't know for sure, Samuels Argyle went over the cuckoo nest and eventually, Al returned from ensuring there's media attention to the nightmare.
He says that for some reason he gotten ahold of some details about the titular Almar that strangely appeared in his index, despite not being there before.
"Basically, he was so obsessed with fear that he collected it like people do with stamps. Apparently, he was stopped, but something happened, and then he wasn't," Al summed that the real Almar escaped justice due to something happening with time, something common to look out for, and because he was never stopped, he continued his tendencies until the private sector gotten into contact with him.
"What about the beef with the Doctor?" Lila inquired more about what happened and the AI tells her that in the original timeline, a Doctor stops him, but because something changed, the Doctor doesn't stop him.
However, he still had the memories and probably wanted to get rid of the Doctor before he could stop him, again.
"Enough about that stuff, kid, do your thing," Al tells Theodore that he needed to converse with the proper authorities that began pouring into the museum.
Nodding, Theodore agreed to explain what happened, as he's done before, but not before asking Lila if she needed anything, but she declined, and Theodore had her wait for him near the doors leading out of the museum while he went to speak with the officers.
Al disappeared among the crowd while Lila waited for Theodore.
Wincing as she lightly touched her wrist, the purple bruises briefly receded before coming back in full, Lila exhaled sharply as their nightmares were over, the guests safe, Samuels Argyle no more than a blubbering idiot being taken away in a straitjacket, the company behind the machines got their hands full with the help of Al's meddling, and the machines no longer functioned, having become destroyed by not by Al like they thought, but an unknown force that neither could've explained.
Al professed he wanted to strike the machines with lighting, but not in the vein of what happened, that wasn't coincidence, something that Al would've done due to the risks associated, an act of God, that kind of thing, Al couldn't put it into words that Theodore and Lila could understand.
It just wasn't possible.
Whatever the case may been, at least it's over, the machines destroyed, the museum and everything in it's going to the dumps, and the company can't hide as much as it'll try, with Al making sure it can't even change a vowel without someone knowing about it.
Waiting for Theodore by the doors, watching people coming and going, bedeviled looks on their faces, after their experiences tonight.
Leaning against the pastel white wall, it's an actual wall, not another simulated wall, where she'd fall on the ground when it shifted and her mind caught up to her, but it felt nice knowing that it was real this time, however.
Briefly closing her weary eyes, Lila couldn't wait to go home, take a long bath, and forget her troubles for a couple of hours.
She'll have to cover up the bruises, that'll be fun, must come up with a story in case Bill finds out, and hope they go away before anyone sees them. With dad about ready to be transferred to the UK full-time, lord knows Lila didn't want him seeing the bruises.
The last thing she wants is him thinking someone roughed her up and wanting to deal with them personally.
As Lila opened her chestnut eyes, she caught sight of someone looking at her in the distance among the crowd of officers, as her chestnut eyes narrowed, it wasn't Theodore or Al.
People passed by like he wasn't there as he stood motionlessly.
Faintly, Lila sees his eyes, they're practically glowing under the bright lights above, and it hit her.
It's him.
The man she saw that day looking up at her from below the grated flooring.
He was standing there, wearing a pressed navy-blue suit with a red tie, looking at her, and the more she stared, she saw his mouth move, but heard nothing coming from it.
It almost looked like he's telling her… that she's welcomed.
When did she thank him?
Why was he welcoming her?
As he appeared, the man with the glowing eyes disappeared, like that, as an group of people walked by him.
For a moment, Lila's eyes felt heavy and forcibly closed, when they opened again, she felt hazy, looking around, could've sworn that just a moment ago, something happened, but now she can't think of it.
Moved her wrist the wrong way jolted her mind awake, the purple bruising slowly receded, and when Lila looked at it closing, the bruises looked like a handprint that wrapped around her wrist completely.
Shaking her head, her chestnut hair jostled from the whole thing, barely moved as it stuck out of her loose bun, Lila muttered to herself that it's one of those days, and finally, Theodore returned from conversing with authorities.
"For once, dear brother's antics proved useful for once," Theodore sighed as he ran his large hand through his wild hair, before joining Lila's side, his large hand gently taking hers as he studied her bruises.
He's mystified how Lila ended up with the bruising, but confident it'll go away within a timely matter, before anyone notices.
"Are you alright? Theodore worryingly asked Lila how she felt after her ordeal and she affirmed that she felt better now that she's out of the simulation and in the real world.
Took a bit getting her bearing, but she's better than before, as Theodore gingerly held her hand, looking at the bruising.
He's as baffled as she was about her receiving the bruising from the simulation, but with the machines and Samuels Argyle tampering with them, he's just glad that Lila still had her hand.
"Let me know if something changes, hm?" Theodore gave her his famous pearly whites as he gently rubbed her back, before Lila modestly assured him that she's fine, before feeling Theodore's warm embrace as he exhaled sharply, thankful that she's fine, before leading her out of the museum, back to the TARDIS, where they left.
"You… won't… get… away…" an echoing voice echoed in the corridor, distorted by the guests and authorities mingling.
THE END