Waiting with Lila, Theodore hears the noises behind the door, shuffling, tapping noises in the distance, and the sound of pattering feet with clacking claws following the tapping noises.
For a few moments, there's nothing, but then, as Theodore listened, he heard a tapping noise at the door once more, in morse, he heard that it's safe for him and Lila.
Grasping the handle with Lila behind him, Theodore braced himself as he slowly opened the door, seeing nothing but the darkness ahead, he didn't feel the threat of the shadowy dogs.
Slowly, with Lila clutching his back, Theodore walked out of the lit room into the darkness once more, this time without the threat.
Glancing around, Theodore didn't see the shadowy child, he attempted to call out to them, but he heard no form of response, and with his torch, he didn't see the child anywhere as he moved it while looking around the empty hallway.
Leaving them in their predicament, it gave Theodore time to ponder, while leading Lila through the empty hallways, no one there, but them.
The shadowy child claimed they didn't know where Johnathan Bradley went or how they even arrived.
Nothing in the research labs, but Theodore suspected there's another part of the building they haven't checked yet, somewhere that has their answers, and going through the darkness with the aid of his torch, he scoured for any rooms they haven't checked yet, something that pointed to where they're meant to go, while on his mind, what happened with his telepathy.
Could've it been the shadow that Lila saw?
They haven't seen other shadows since they began their adventure, but Theodore doubted that this adventure only dealt with a pair of shadowy dogs and two humanoid shaped shadows.
Perhaps the best course for them's turning on the lights in the entire building, if they find the breaker room, maybe they can work their magic, and enshroud themselves in the light, it'll give them a better idea of where everything's located.
Going along the hallway they haven't took, Theodore and Lila searched for anything that came first, a breaker room, Johnathan Bradley, or somewhere there's an explanation on how Johnathan Bradley invoked the shadows.
If they ever find an answer, it still wouldn't satiate the question on Theodore's mind.
Who did he speak with?
On edge, he turned his head numerous times during their search, expecting something slinking around the darkness, anything that looked like a threat, but nothing ever shown itself, and eventually, they came across the breaker room.
It's a mess inside, everything strewn around, the breaker boxes opened, some wiring ripped out, others remained intact, while there's a low hum coming from the live wires.
Carefully, the two went around the room, seeing the debris on the ground, looked like a frenzy broke out, destroying boxes worth of replacement parts for the breakers.
Theodore cautioned Lila as he saw piles of broken bulbs, crunched under several footprints, but there's no sign of blood.
Her chestnut eyes on the exposed breaker boxes, Lila sees how they're ripped open, the hinges on some broken, others completely off, hands torn the innards asunder, in a bid to enshroud the building in darkness.
With how it looked, it'd appear the shadows weren't affected by electricity, either, as the way the breaker boxes looked, whoever done it would've received more than enough electricity to change their outlook on life within moments of their hands touching the exposed wiring.
There's no shoe prints on the ground among the debris, the shadows themselves done this, well-aware that they are exposed while there's light in the building.
Likely, the shadows done this the moment they escaped from their confines, before turning their attention to Johnathan Bradley.
Whatever he done to create these shadows, they're none to happy with him, that Lila wouldn't be surprised if the shadows already killed him by the time they arrived.
How the shadows might've done that, Lila isn't open to interpretation.
Seeing the destruction, Theodore concluded that he couldn't even use his Sonic Screwdriver on it to gain some juice, much less rewire it, it's impossible, and the way the shadows destroyed it, it's a miracle the building hadn't caught fire.
Even going near a breaker box, Theodore felt the hum of the electricity as the wires remained exposed.
Seeing how there's light in the room they hid in, Theodore concluded that Johnathan Bradley knew better to put all eggs in his basket, and made sure he had separate breakers for his hiding spots from the shadows, wherever those are, Theodore wouldn't know.
His mind snapped back when he heard the all-too familiar sound echoing down the hallway from them, coming up, and immediately Theodore grabbed Lila, hunkering down in the corner of the breaker room, turning off his torch, and kept them in the darkness as they heard the blasting from a shotgun.
Guess they have their answer on where Johnathan Bradley went when everything went to hell in his building.
From the sound, Theodore's able to deduce that it's a double barrel shotgun, the bullets weren't buckshots or even salt.
It's coming close and Theodore held Lila close to him, while his mind went through a marathon of ideas on how they'll prevent themselves getting blasted by the shotgun.
In the darkness, Theodore sees the wall grate leading into the air duct adjacent of them and got an idea.
Remembering her knife, Theodore used Lila's knife to unscrew the the bolts from the large grate, Lila collecting the bolts as he pulled the grate off the wall, allowing them to enter the air duct.
Covering their tracks, Theodore follows Lila from behind as she's moving through the air duct, wide enough for them to barely move around, but not enough for them to sit for a moment.
Once they're further away from the breaker room, Theodore turned on the torch, using it to guide them until they come across another grate overlooking a different part of the building they hadn't gone before.
It took time, but the two managed to open the grate, with Theodore climbing down first, before he reached up, and carried Lila down from the opened air duct.
Looking around, the two see they're in a laboratory, something they're all-too familiar with, and though it's a laboratory, it looked like a film shoot with multiple cameras strewn around the area on tripods.
Patting down her pants after collecting God knows how much dust stuck to the air ducts, Lila's chestnut eyes glimpsed at the tables filled with papers, and if there's anything they learnt from their adventures, if there's a laboratory with papers, there's likely answers to their questions.
Going towards it, Lila went through the papers, but found they're nothing more than reports, Theodore looked at them, wanting to find something, and in the reports, Johnathan Bradley claimed to have found what he termed as the negative zone.
It's wedged between their world and reality.
Unseen to the naked eyes, Johnathan Bradley claimed that there's a world far beyond what they're aware of, but wasn't like their world.
A world where reality bends at will, that didn't interact with theirs, not directly, but the more Theodore read into it, he wasn't sure how much of this was hopeful wishing and madness.
Whatever the case, Johnathan Bradley believed in this so strongly, he went through the motions of developing a system where he can interact with the negative zone, and that negative zone he calls's where the shadow people originated from.
Copies, doppelgängers, whatever people wanted to call them, Johnathan Bradley theorized that they originated from the negative zone, but however they're never meant to exist in their world.
Sometimes there's accidents where they slip through worlds and enter the "positive zone" as Johnathan Bradley would describe their world, though that's quickly rectified with the reality ensuring that balance remains.
Why reality would want a negative zone to manipulate at will, Theodore sees this question on a sheet of paper, because there's no life in the negative zone, nothing to affect with the manipulation.
Johnathan Bradley went on to say that he calls it the negative zone, because at times reality will collapse it and rebuild it as it pleases.
He likened it to a child playing with toy blocks.
And artist with a blank slate.
Only, nobody should've witnesses this process, but Johnathan Bradley did, and managed to copy what he saw with his brief experience in the negative zone.
Dangerous, he knows, but his curiosity grew too much to bear, that he couldn't sleep without seeing the reality as they know create art in the void.
In comes the reasoning behind his cameras.
Johnathan Bradley deduced that opening the way into the negative zone proved dangerous, the unpredictable nature easily bled into the positive zone, it could have catastrophic consequences.
So, in light, he created a camera, one that wasn't something that people would buy off the shelf, it was something else entirely.
A direct way to see the negative zone without risking catastrophe.
This camera allowed Johnathan Bradley the ability to access the negative zone, though why he wouldn't have created a video camera to do the same thing without wasting film and time, was explained in scientific notes where Johnathan Bradley tried using video cameras to watch the negative zone, but he found that the cameras couldn't keep up with the way the negative zone worked.
The camera he invented worked because it took quick snaps of the negative zone, allowing him to see into it in spurts.
He noted it wasn't effective as he liked, but it was the only thing that worked for the time, and he used the camera to periodically se into the negative zone, until he made his breakthrough.
It took considerable time, but he managed to figure out the "layer" between their world and the negative zone, a film, if you will, that if peel just right, it could in theory allow whatever the reality created to slip through.
"I believe that the universe knows what I am doing, that in its eyes, I am a mere pervert trying to sneak glances at its private creations, but I must do what I set out to do, as I am a scientist at heart," wrote Johnathan Bradley in his notation.