"Children…" Nozzaire muttered under his breath as he thumbed through Penny's dossier. His face hardened as he came across the Polaroids Professor. Slickstein had recovered during the operation that saved Penny's life. The images were worse than anything he could have imagined. "This… this is beyond anything I expected, Inspector," he said, his voice tight with restrained anger.
The room fell into a tense, companionable silence, broken only by a soft sound—too quiet to discern if it was a sigh or a muffled sob. Nozzaire paused, his attention drawn to the noise, and glanced up.
"Inspector," he said cautiously, his eyes shifting from the open folder to Chief Quimby, and finally to Gadget. The Inspector sat motionless, his grey fedora obscuring his eyes, his face unreadable. "Inspector Gadget, what's wrong?"
After a long pause, Gadget finally spoke, his voice low and strained. "Dr. Claw… those pictures…"
"Pictures?" Nozzaire stammered, fumbling to keep his composure. "Gadget, if this is about Penny, you have to tell me."
Nozzaire's gaze lingered on Gadget, trying to read the man's usually impenetrable demeanor. Gadget's breaths were shallow and unsteady, his shoulders rigid. It was a rare moment when even the Colonel couldn't anticipate what he might say next.
Then Gadget's voice broke, trembling under the weight of suppressed anguish. "Penny…"
Nozzaire froze, unsure of how to respond. Quimby tentatively approached, his expression clouded with concern, but it was Gadget who shattered the silence.
"I already know," Gadget whispered, his voice trembling. "I know exactly how much it hurts." His hands gripped the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. Tears streamed down his cheeks as his voice cracked, spilling over with raw, unrestrained grief. "I felt it—the fire in my veins, the way the machines took over everything I was. And now… Penny… my little girl…"
His words trailed off into broken sobs. His head bowed, his shoulders trembling as the weight of the memories consumed him. Gadget didn't respond further. He stared at his shaking hands—the very hands that had once clawed at his own body in desperate rejection of what he'd become. The parallels were too much, too cruel. He knew what Penny was enduring, and it was that knowledge—the visceral, unbearable reality of it—that broke him completely.
Nozzaire's expression hardened, though his hands clenched at his sides. "Gadget," he said, his tone firm but quiet, "I may not understand the pain you've been through after your own operation, but any man who uses children to further his goals is weak. Cowardly. Desperate."
Quimby, standing nearby, didn't respond. His distant gaze betrayed a mixture of exhaustion and sorrow as if the weight of what he had seen in the photographs had stripped him of words.
The silence between them felt suffocating. Nozzaire glanced back at the open folder, and the grim reality hit him. He had read the reports on Gadget's transformation, but only now did he fully grasp the price the Inspector paid with his own life. The photos of Penny's mutilation and Gadget's unfiltered grief laid bare the nightmare in excruciating clarity.
"No child should endure the suffering I felt," Gadget finally said, his voice cracking under the strain. "Not Penny."
Grief swelled in his chest, threatening to choke him as he spoke. Across the room, Quimby's hand faltered as he turned to the third photograph. His face paled as the image revealed Penny's torso, faintly gleaming with embedded bionics. The implants were grotesquely symmetrical to the plates and circuits Slickstein had grafted onto Gadget's chest years ago.
Quimby closed the folder abruptly, his hands trembling. He remembered the screams—John's screams—when he had first awakened, clawing at his own body in horror as he realized what he had become. And now, Penny—a child—was bearing that same unbearable burden.
"I promised myself I'd never let anyone go through what you did," Quimby murmured, his voice thick with regret. "And now… I failed her. I failed you."