Something heavy was sitting on his chest.

It was suffocating him, squeezing his lungs so tight he couldn't breathe, wrapping thorns around his heart. Newt pressed a hand hard against his chest, as if the physical discomfort could outweigh the emotional turmoil.

It didn't work.

That feeling of guilt was overwhelming, and it drowned him.

"Newt," a familiar voice asked from his left, and he turned his head to see Thomas staring at him with a small frown from his own bunk, three rows away. "Newt, you alright?"

He nodded, lowering his head, severing the eye contact. It was getting harder and harder by the day to talk to Thomas, no matter how close the two of them had been upon arrival. Thomas had been at the facility before Newt arrived, he wasn't sure for how long,  but in the recent months he'd been called away more frequently to the lab rooms. He had thought, initially, that they were doing more tests on him, and had felt nothing but pity. He had been subjected to those experiments a thousand times, each more painful than the last.

The discovery that Thomas was the one doing the testing on other people felt like a betrayal he hadn't quite been able to shake. Logically, Newt was well aware that saying no to the lab techs wasn't possible. If the people in the white coats wanted you to do something, you had very little choice in the matter. But that didn't stop the cold that settled in his stomach every time he looked at his friend.

"Yeah," Newt's voice cracked around the word. "I'm fine."

Thomas cocked his head to the side, dark hair spilling across his forehead, and stood up. The others were fast asleep, had been for a while, the only sounds their light snoring as they rolled in their bunks. Newt didn't protest as Thomas made his way over to him, perching on the end of his bed, fingers toying with the scratchy material of the blanket. "You sure? You don't look so good. What are you still doing here, anyway? Thought you'd have snuck out to see Ada by now."

Something on his face must have given away how Newt's heart lurched unpleasantly.

"What is it?" Thomas frowned. "Why does your face look like that? I won't tell anyone, you know. I know you and I have had our differences recently, but I'm still your friend. Hers too. I won't tell."

"She's gone, Thomas." The words felt like ash in his mouth.

"What? Gone where?"

"Up. They sent her up."

Thomas's face went white with shock. "What? No, that's not possible. She's not meant to be sent up there."

"Well she is." Newt spat. "I saw it myself. She's up there, and she's hurt, and Luke's already dead-"

"Luke's dead?" Thomas's voice was barely more than a shocked whisper.

"He got trapped. Overnight. One of those monsters got him."

"No, that's not-"

Newt's hand clamped over Thomas's wrist, dragging the other boy to his feet.

"Where are we going?" Thomas asked, voice barely more than a hiss as they weaved their way between beds, towards the door at the end of the hall.

"To the monitors. You need to see this."