Seeing the row of opened doors as they carefully walked through the hallway, Theodore and Lila, on edge, as they carefully searched for any signs of whoever's lurking around the corner, the thought that there were people hiding behind the closed doors without them realizing, but neither heard them walking out.
Recalling the flour on the ground, it led them questioning if the people hiding behind the locked doors are the same ones that were in the lab, scuffling with the researcher.
Further leading into more questions on what happened to the others and what they were doing with these people, the photographs, so forth.
Light shining brightly from the torchlight, Theodore glances around, seeing into the empty rooms as they passed by them, inside some were labs, like the one they went into, storage, something peculiar, indeed.
Whatever purpose these research labs served, the only thing in common they have, revolved around photography.
Photography of an unusual sort.
Theodore ended up taking a photograph from one of the opened labs, holding light to it, seeing nothing but a blackened person in the corner of a four-walled room, cowering, even if he couldn't see the person clearly as the overexposure rendered the person nothing but a black void, he still saw the fear in the posture.
This person cowered as the photographer took a picture of them, even without the expression, the fear still conveyed through the body language.
Looking at the room closely in the picture, Theodore spots no cot on the ground, no window, nothing.
Relaying this to Lila, Theodore then reached out to Al, asking him to look for any disappearances, kidnapping, anything of that nature, which Al immediately replied that he's looking into it, while Theodore walked with Lila towards a different part of the building.
It's completely dark and from cursory glances, Theodore sees only one office, no other doors, and with Lila close to him, they walked towards it, finding that the door opened, and inside, chaos.
Papers strewn on the ground, desk overturned, broken potted plants with dirt covering the laminated floor, glass in areas near broken picture frames, and filing cabinets decimated, some looked like the Hulk squeezed them.
Carefully entering the office, the two scoured for clues, mindful of the broken glass, going through papers on the ground, sorting them, they find records, reports, but the ink smudged, and the pages ruined by something spilled, likely alcohol that was in a bottle on the desk.
Lila managed to salvage the desk plaque, broken in halves with a name on it, Johnathan Bradley.
Whoever he was, ended up in a scuffle, where they're uncertain if he survived his encounters, as there's no blood on the ground, any indicator he'd been wounded during it.
With the ruined papers, there isn't much to go on, and Al came back with news for Theodore.
As of now, there aren't people missing that fit the profile, Al triple checked.
"Did you find where the building's located?" Theodore inquired if Al found anything on that and the AI tells him that it's off-grid, that much he knows. All paid in bills, never on plastic, whoever did it played by the hilt, making sure no one found the building or what they've been doing.
"Johnathan Bradley, what about him?" Theodore relayed the discovery to Al and it took a mere minute before Al tells him that Johnathan Bradley was a formerly renowned researcher for Cambridge, but his descent into pseudoscience ended up destroying his reputation.
Cambridge disowned him, he never turned up again, that was that, the only time Al recalled someone losing their tenure.
Curious, Theodore asked more about the controversy, and Al informed him that, while the articles he pulled up exaggerate the story, they all mentioned Johnathan Bradley becoming increasingly interested in the idea of the paranormal.
"Ghosts?" Theodore guessed what the man could've lost his reputation over and Al responded that he's close, but, no, it wasn't ghosts.
Believe it or not, Johnathan Bradley began studying the idea of the existence of shadow people.
Baffled, Theodore remarked, "Shadow people?"
Al affirmed this as he mentioned that it's not an uncommon phenomenon that millions on earth likely experienced at some point in their lives.
It's a debate whether shadow people existed or a mere symptom of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
For Al, the simplest explanation isn't the most exciting, to him, at least.
There are shadow people, not necessary the paranormal kind that people excite themselves over, but something of a rare occurrence.
Sometimes, the universes experience an event that can cause a type of echo, heavily localized in areas which causes the beliefs in the first place, one that isn't "complete" and void due to the circumstances of the event, that they're often confused as the paranormal variant by the untrained eye.
Like ghosts, they're echoes, of either the past or another universe, and generally cannot harm people, sometimes that happens when the belief held becomes too strong, that in their delusions, people accidentally hurt themselves.
Of course, Theodore's talking to a machine that's based on science that can easily become construed as pseudoscience to the untrained eye, itself.
"In honesty, the events like this happen once a blue moon, most encounters are just faked photographs, and people having untreated episodes," Al summed his reasoning.
Intrigued, Theodore tells him about the first lab they found and the office, the photographs, and Al affirmed that shadow people, as the community calls them, cannot interact with people nor cause bodily harm.
For photographs, well, there have been instances of people photographing what they suspect as the phenomenon, however, their legitimacy often treated with suspicion, as with most, but for the photographs that Theodore and Lila found, that's different.
Unfortunately, they don't have much for them to go on, so it could very well be overexposed photographs that someone took with an old camera.
When asked, Al says that there's isn't a chance that Johnathan Bradley created a scenario where the phenomenon happens in a controlled environment like this, no human or machine has the power to do it, it's one of those things that's out of Al's hands, and he's capable of many feats!
"Can you tell me anything, if there's any disturbances, something?" Theodore inquired more from the AI.
A moment and Al said he didn't detect any disturbances, new or old, he believed there weren't machines capable of that within the building or this universe.
"Al, is there any way for you to track Johnathan Bradley's finances and what he did after he left Cambridge?" Theodore asked Al to look for more detail on Johnathan Bradley after his denouncement from Cambridge and the AI replied that he only found standard bank records, nothing out of the ordinary, however, employment records after Cambridge were nonexistent.
It didn't appear that Johnathan Bradley did much after he left Cambridge, not even a book, although that raises confusion on Al's part, due to the bank records showing that he's receiving some form of payments, in cash, it seems, and in small amounts.
"Help from friends, family?" Theodore suggested that Johnathan Bradley's receiving money from people in his lives, though Al squashed that idea, saying that the denounced researcher's far from the life of the party.
Not even a college prank, dull as glue, didn't have a group photo in the yearbook, either.
As for family, they've been distant since the day Johnathan Bradley left for school and haven't been in contact, not even a holiday card, he spent many holidays at the dormitories, and stayed until graduation.
"Someone's giving him money, Al," Theodore reasoned that even if Johnathan Bradley didn't have anyone in his life, someone clearly gave him money, if he wasn't stealing it in small amounts outright.
Al went through the works, finding no police records, anything showing that Johnathan Bradley so much as panhandled, giving few clues as to where he's getting his money, if not through the conventional illegal ways.
"I'll work on it, you two, careful, holler if you need anything," Al summed that he'll continue his searching while the two did theirs, cautioning them, before disappearing from Theodore's head, and he relayed the information to Lila.
She's flummoxed at the thought of a formerly renounced researcher for Cambridge gotten into his head that pseudoscience's a better option, more that he studied shadow people.
Aside from the things they've encountered, Lila's heard about the phenomenon before, often in stories told around the campfire or the internet about people spotting shadow people in the corner of their eyes or whatever the flavor was for the evening.
She never gave it much stock, believing it only a trick of the mind, a person wanting so hard to believe it existed, it becomes real in their eyes.
That was then, of course, and this is now, which she's learnt so much, now she isn't sure about the phenomenon.
"Why would this guy blow his whole career for it?" Lila found it impossible that the myth was that alluring that it drove a man to destroy his own career to follow it into pseudoscience.
Which, what did it have to do with shadow people?
"Very good question, my dear Watson," Theodore frowns as they continued their search through the office, finding nothing of value, with the chaos, anything of note didn't survive the initial scuffle resulting in the broken alcohol bottles.
With no sign of Johnathan Bradley or if he's still alive, they're forced to vacate the office, moving forward with their search for their answers.