The TARDIS materialized in a gloomy room somewhere in a nondescript building, on the edges of possibly, the world, out of the way, unseen, unheard.
Al picked up on a distress signal, that he called to Theodore for guidance, and intrigued, Theodore went with Lila in tow to the building that hadn't seen anyone in who knows how long, with it discreetly hidden, unless someone knew about its existence, won't realize it's there.
Perturbed why a distress signal gone out from a building that's intentionally hidden away, Theodore couldn't help himself wanting to satiate the curiosity.
Stepping out of the TARDIS first, wearing his brown-stitched long coat as he tugged on it, Theodore glanced around, looking at their new surroundings, seeing the gloomy room with hardly any light, from the look of things, they're in a storage closet.
Moving to the side, he sees Lila stepping out after him, glancing around the storage closet, curious as she sees it dimly lit.
"A storage closet, what will they think of next?" Lila poked fun the times they've ended up in storage closets during their myriad of adventures.
Shrugging his wide shoulders, Theodore responded that it's one of those things, and no one really checks the storage closets for the Doctor.
"You jinxed yourself," Lila warned him that it wasn't wise saying that aloud, he jinxed himself, and now he risks of the latest enemy looking in a storage closet for him.
As he sighs, Theodore commented it's their luck, anyhow, before going towards the door of the storage closet, opening with ease as Lila closed the TARDIS door behind her, before she joined him, and they stare at the dimly lit hallway in front of them, lined with closed doors, darkness in both directions.
Pondering their options, Theodore picked a direction for them to start with first, using a torchlight he borrowed from Lila, guiding them through the darker parts of the hallway, silence, their footsteps muddled by the laminated floors underneath, barely a sheen from the dim lights.
Al didn't find anything on the building, its purpose, or who even came to it, it's all in the wind, for the time being, though he's certain the distress signal came from here.
"What's the odds?" Lila asked Theodore what they're experiencing on this week's X-Files, with Theodore deducing they dealt with a mad scientist the other week, royalty snafus, Daleks, Cybermen, and so far, there isn't any sign this is a detention centre run by aliens that make the Judoon look reasonable, could still be a doozy, though.
"However, too early to tell, come, come," Theodore gestures as he walked with Lila as they went through the darkened hallway ahead, from the look of things, it seems that the building suffered from an outage and much of the building doesn't have full-power.
Doesn't appear like a short, burnt-out bulbs, someone not paying the electric bill, again, but odd, indeed.
Came across a research lab, doesn't appear like someone who's researching gene splicing, this time, but it wasn't a lab that pertained to science, well, the science that Theodore and Lila were known to recognize.
This one, it's unusual, and that's saying something!
It looked like a room for photography, complete with the trays of liquids, hanging photographs, but with whiteboards strewn everywhere, there's charts on some of them, denoting something that someone's keeping track.
His large hands in his stitched pockets, Theodore went over to the hanging photographs, curious what's on them, finding that they all depicted similar things, black and white photos with exposure terrible, he couldn't see the people this researcher or scientist, whoever, took of, they're black as the night in all of them.
Terrible waste of resources, if Theodore had any comment on the matter, should've gone back to the photography school and retake the course, or perhaps, find a new one, as that one's terrible.
Searching through the researcher's lab, Lila came across sets of footprints on the ground, shown by the powdery substance piled on the ground.
Carefully, she looked closer, finding it's… flour… just your basic AP flour, and it's everywhere in the lab, but with it dimly lit, with parts darker than others, no wonder they didn't see it on the first glance.
Don't recall AP flour being used in photography, before, but there's always something to learn in these adventures of theirs.
"What's with the flour?" Lila wondered as she sees multiple footprints, some big, some small, some looked like someone wore shoes, but the rest looked barefoot.
It's hard for her to tell how many people were in the room, with the way the footprints were, that if Lila had to guess, it's at least thirty people were in this room.
Seeing the footsteps on the ground as he carefully walked around them, Theodore's miffed as well, seeing all the flour pooled on the ground with the footsteps sporadically going around the room, looking like the one with the shoes struggled with the other twenty-nine people, before getting away.
He's searching with his icy blue eyes, but found nothing pertaining to who was in the room, but found a broken camera on the ground near one of the trays, empty of the liquid used to pronounce the photographs, with one stuck the bottom of the tray.
"I don't know," Theodore concluded that he couldn't find the reason for the flour, why it would be in the room.
There's obviously no cooking apparatus, mixing bowls, no use for the flour in photography, using it for spills, wouldn't work, it's baffling.
Going over to the empty tray, the liquid in it dissipating from lack of oversight, carefully Theodore retrieved the photograph stuck to the bottom, but found it's been overly saturated that it's ruined.
Most peculiar.
Moving on to the whiteboards, Theodore looked at them with inquisitiveness, seeing the writing done in different coloured markers, denoting what each were for, however, Theodore couldn't figure out what the whiteboards were for, either, the writing smudged from contact.
Anything leftover, he couldn't figure out what the context was, and he's forced to continue with his search.
He went over to the broken camera, smashed, in his head, Theodore deduced that someone held it, dropped it, and the ensuring struggle resulted in it smashed by footsteps, before scouring it for clues, finding it wasn't the atypical camera that he and Lila knew, something older, hardly a camera at all, but it was something important to warrant its place in the research lab, however it's completely broken that even Theodore couldn't produce a miracle.
Whatever the camera was for, had something to do with the photographs, and that's about it.
Their search didn't turn up with anything of note, other than someone set up a lab with making photographs in it, the broken camera, that they moved on from the research lab, continuing to look for clues as they wandered through the darkened hallways.
Checking every door, they found them locked, however, they couldn't spend time looking through all the rooms, so they narrowed their searches for any room that looked important or might've had clues.
With his torchlight shining their way, Theodore studied every plaque near the locked doors, seeing different labs, but they all were like the one they found prior.
Searching for offices, Theodore gently glided the torchlight around the hallway, looking for even an administration office, something that'll put them on the right course.
Following behind him, Lila kept an eye out for something that'll denote the offices, but mostly they're labs and storages, nothing of interest.
The jolt from the sudden door creaking opening behind them's enough to grab Theodore's arm as she turned back, looking down the hall they walked up from, with Theodore turning around with his flashlight pointing down the hallway with a quizzical look.
One of the doors opened outward, one of the doors Theodore checked, he was sure it was locked.
"Tell me we're not going in that room," Lila looked up to him as she clutched his free arm, before Theodore tells her, that unfortunately, their lot in life involved doing things innately, even if they knew it was foolish or suicidal.
Tensing up, they went back down to the hall, going towards the opened door, in normal situations, they would run away, but as Theodore said, it's their lot in life.
Exhaling sharply, Theodore braced himself as he held the torchlight outward, shining light into the opened room, finding it contained nothing but boxes, food rations from the look of things, but there's nothing in the room, and he doubled back with Lila close to him.
As they turned away from the doorway, they saw more doors opened down the hall where they walked up.
None of them creaked open like this one.
"It's one of those adventures, isn't it?" Lila glanced at Theodore as he sees the doors they passed and couldn't open, suddenly opened, as he chewed his inner lip before replying.
As he sighs, Theodore replied with, "It would seem so, my dear Watson."