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The old laptop sitting on the ground wheezed, as if breathing from rusted lungs.
But the sound of it wasn’t enough to cancel the audio playing from its speakers, warped, twisted by age and static. Disturbing.
Beneath the hiss, all Thomas could hear was a child.
A young child’s voice — a scream, failing underwater, trapped in a place where sorrow and agony dripped from the exasperation in their voice. Garbled by the press of liquid and terror.
Gurgling shouts; rising, cutting, swallowed.
The voice felt familiar. More than one from a friend. From someone closer.
Thomas had no doubt that the scream coming from the computer recording had escaped his own lips and lungs, many years ago.
He couldn’t prove it. His memory was faltering, a thin thread that threatened to tear every time he just tried to grasp it, to remember something. But he knew it. He knew on his skin, on his own lungs, that the recording was from him.
Horror crept into his bones, the hair on his arm stood, alert. He looked around, at the faces of his friends. No one seemed to react to the screams like him. It only made Thomas believe even further that the audio was his, was personal.
The child’s cry broke again — desperate, bubbling, a sharp gasp.
There was a glitch in the recording. Static.
Then silence.
Apart only from the whir of the dying fan inside the laptop.
The flickering bulb of poor light on the ceiling of the old classroom cast trembling shadows across the face of every person who sat in the circle, around the screen. Some leaned in, pale in fright, drawn tightly by the fading shouts, still fresh in their ears and in the air. Dust hung around them, frozen, fighting against the seabreeze that was present no matter where they were, undisturbed but watching.
They all stared at the faltering screen of the computer, motionless.
No one dared to speak yet. The weight of what the recording meant still fresh, sinking in each of them.
Thomas was the first to break that silence.
“That was me,” he offered to the others, not really looking at anyone and voice incredibly weak. “The voice… I know it. It’s mine.”
All the eyes in the room fell onto him.
A warm hand was placed on his shoulder. Easy, comforting. Familiar.
“You can’t know for sure, Tommy,” Newt, who sat closer to him as he usually did, said — whispered, actually, his voice soft but grounding and low, filled with his natural British accent. The soft spark in his caramel eyes behind the lenses of his glasses, ever so soothing, sent a wave of warmth into Thomas, despite the weight of what they talked about. And the blond’s hand on his shoulder squeezed carefully. “Maybe it’s not even one of us. Memory’s a tricky bastard.”
Thomas wanted to argue. Hell, he knew his own voice, despite anyone’s attempt to erase his memory. And not only that.
That was the same voice that had been haunting him recently. Creeping into his nightmares during the cold nights. The child’s voice had somehow always been there; first only as a background noise, something forgettable, that could be easily ignored. Now, it had become more vivid.
Just as the taste of salty water on his tongue when he woke up screaming.
And the feeling he had been drowning in his mattress.
How his hands gripped the sheets, and it felt like holding onto cold metal.
But how could he say it? How could he begin to explain?
How could he admit that wasn’t all?
“It’s not memory. It’s muscle. I felt it in my skin, that scream,” he looked right into the caramel irises of his partner that stared back.
Somehow, now, seeing the subtle shift in Newt’s eyes, — how they softened at the edges, — Thomas understood Newt believed him.
Another voice broke their string.
“This file was timestamped twelve years ago,” Sonya, Newt’s younger sister, said as she leaned over the screen of the computer that now faced her. Her pale-blond braid fell over her shoulder, merely brushing the laptop’s keyboard. In her hand, she held a pen she chewed on. “It matches the time we all were supposedly on the experimental trials,” then, her eyes fell on Thomas again, uncertain. “But it also would mean…”
She trailed off.
Teresa, sitting on Thomas’ other side — his major partner, his closest friend — connected the dots. Her blue eyes heavy.
“…If that’s actually Tom… He went through this when he was six years old.”
Silence fell over them again.
Thomas felt suffocated.
The idea of having someone playing with his mind for a long time had been something he had to grow used to. But now this… Knowing he had been an experiment, a lab rat since such a young age… It melted something ugly inside his gut; something near rage.
Except, they now all knew who that someone was.
WICKED Coastal University. The Whitmore Institute for Cognitive and Experimental Discovery. An elite research center and college that was financed by many governments from all around the globe and, as a result, had some of the best and most qualified students from all continents.
The place stood with all its grandiosity over the East Coast, a dark castle in a green field so vast it could be mistaken for a small town, with a view to the magnificent foggy coastline and the Atlantic Ocean. Built centuries ago, it was located far away from the nearest city or any form of civilization. Excluded from the outside world and deprived of any forms of communication; a place neatly focused on studies and self-knowing.
Any teenager’s dream. Thomas’ dream.
He had pictured himself going to WICKED since… Well, since he had learned what going to college was. The idea of frequenting the prestigious university and majoring in Medicine there had not only been a desire of his since Middle school; it had been a goal.
One that, now, Thomas had learned was nothing more than a mistake. An illusion.
His first semester had been nearly perfect. At least to what he expected to be his college experience. Mornings and afternoons of classes where everything seemed pretty normal, — apart from the fact it was definitely not normal to see teenagers and young adults without smartphones in their hands, — with the best teachers in the world, high technology exclusively for academic use and research, all tracked and secure under many codes to the university’s safety.
Except things got different during the nights. When the fog felt too dark and the air too dense. When the dormitory hallways felt strangely quiet, empty.
But, still, Thomas had made friends. Connections with people from all around the world he never would have imagined to meet. All who were drawn by the same ideals WICKED intrigued Thomas with; the best education in the world, no distractions, close relation to nature.
All a lie. All just a façade to cover up their true intentions, to drag innocent young people into their obscure experiments.
Because, when Aris, a quiet kid who shared classes of Marine Biology with Sonya, also the girl’s and her girlfriend’s, Harriet, best friend, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of a normal and boring week of classes, the two girls were the first to act. And to uncover the truth.
It didn’t take them long to find a way to steal one of the university’s old computers that was no longer in use. Nor did it take much time for Brenda and Minho, — Thomas’ friends who took classes for Computer Science together and who seemed full of themselves when the idea to help dig up for something dirty appeared, — to hack into WICKED’s private data system.
What they found was much more than dirty.
Years of abandoned research (now brought back to life again) had appeared right in front of their eyes. A project designed to remold and upgrade the human race, to keep it alive after a definite ending had been predicted by NASA; something called Sunflares. What had never been published to the world to see stood in the mere old computer the girls had hacked into; the news that Earth had a due date, and many governments from the richest countries in the world had been searching for an out — through trials on innocent children.
The main solution WICKED tried to achieve was human water resistance and the ability to see, to breathe — to live — underwater, in the ocean. The goal was to build a society into the depths of the sea before the Sunflares occurred and burned away all existing civilization. And apparently, the clock was ticking fast. And the necessity for the project to be reborn was desperate.
And yet, this wasn’t the end: each and every student of the university (that was ultimately a showcase for the institution's true intentions) had been handpicked since birth to participate in the trials.
Picked from their homes at a young age, they were all put through tests of IQ, water resistance, and physical integrity. Their blood pressure studied, searched for a pattern, a common limit of resistance. Their own will violated and abused, their memories erased right after their quick visit to the institution. Apart from one thing: their dream to study there when older, which was planted in their brains, a way WICKED had found to make sure each of their subjects would come back eventually.
Thomas found out his goal to be accepted by the university was nothing but a lie. An illusion.
He had always been in. Even without his knowledge.
Now, there was no way to escape. No communication with the outside world. His parents.
And the worst was: he had thought this had been the future he chose for himself.
The folders with those detailed information weren’t the only thing the two had found on the old, hacked database. They had also found recordings, data logs with dates, files of each subject — their files, maps to abandoned underwater facilities from the old WICKED Marine Sciences Division.
It was all there. All the information needed to expose anything they wanted.
When Sonya, Harriet, Brenda and Minho shared the new information with the rest of their closest group, shock and horror were the first reactions. Disbelief. Even fights in between them.
Now, they were all focused on the same goal: Escaping WICKED, and burning it to the ground.
They were all motivated, their eyes sparkling, seeking the taste of revenge, of justice.
All, except Thomas, who had just heard the recordings of his own participation in the old trials.
Who had a new voice on the back of his mind telling him there was more to it. That he had more to all of this.
Because there was a part of the story that didn’t match; even with his memory from the time he was a child in the trials erased, he still felt like there was a gap in the story. Thomas could tell he felt a connection to all of this, more than the others seemed to.
The new information didn’t feel so new to him.
The odd familiarity of his to all of this tried to warn him that maybe he had been behind something worse. Something his friends weren’t.
Like the person watching from behind the screens.
Still, it didn’t make sense. He was a victim. He had heard his own scream. It didn’t match.
But the voice was still there. Hammering against his brain. And it hurt.
“We need to invade the source of this, the marine division,” Harriet declared, calling everyone’s attention again. Leaning over her girlfriend’s shoulder, she caught the pen Sonya chewed on to sketch a quick and messy map of the abandoned underwater facility, copying the image they had opened on the laptop. The girl, ever so devoted to everything she studied and investigated, had the habit of putting everything down in her small notebook. “There might be more information outside of what was catalogued online. Maybe data on paper.”
“Are you insane?” Gally asked, his usual sneer crawling his expression. He had learned not to use that bickering tone for free but, sharing his Engineering classes with Harriet, Thomas believed they had grown into a closer friendship. It was the only reason he could see why the girl let him talk to her like that, at least. “You want to play explorer underwater in a facility we don’t even know if it stands?”
The girl rolled her eyes, pulling a thin braid of her dark hair behind her ear.
“You have a better idea? We already know everything we have up here. Maybe down there… There’s more we could use.”
“She’s right,” it was Minho’s turn to talk, — Gally’s roommate and, for all that Thomas knew, best friend. Thomas knew the boy enough to guess he would always be the one to argue with Gally. Even if there was something much more different than hatred behind their mild arguments. Minho put a handful of chips inside his mouth, and continued to speak as naturally as someone discussing the weather: “We could steal a submarine, divide the group so some stay here on land and make sure we’re not caught.”
Thomas saw a long scoff being formed in Gally’s throat, ready to point out how absurd the idea was, but Brenda, who had her head back against Teresa’s shoulder, spoke first:
“I can try to invade the cameras, make sure we’re not seen. And change the submarine settings so it looks like none are missing.”
She took a lit cigarette that sat in her hand to her red lips after the last words, scented smoke leaving the parted lips, swirling in the air around her and her girlfriend. Brenda then shared the cig with Teresa, who wrapped her thin, pale fingers around it with grace.
Harriet, from the other side of the circle, looked at Brenda.
“You know how to do that?”
Brenda shrugged inside Teresa’s embrace.
“If I don’t, then our teachers taught us wrong.” A smile bloomed on her lips as she leaned over to high-five Minho, her Computer Science partner, her ‘hacker duo’, as they called themselves since the beginning of all of this, trying to find the slight glimpse of fun in their miserable situation, their miserable lives.
Gally rolled his eyes at them, face crumpled. Minho grinned at his roommate then, eyes playful, and bumped their shoulders together.
Sonya’s voice caught Thomas’ attention — who had been watching the whole scene from afar, his mind distant.
“Thomas, if this is too much for you—”
“No,” the boy interrupted her immediately, his mind defiant and set on the one and only goal. The recording of his own scream was still echoing inside his lungs, yet Thomas had to find out everything he could. He had to follow through with his friends.
And, if there was something more to it, if he had been a bigger piece on WICKED’s plans, he had to know himself.
“I need to know everything,” he continued a bit softer, noticing all eyes had fallen on him once again, “and if you guys are going, I’m in.” He couldn’t be seen as the only victim, the only weak person in the room just because the recording had been his. All his friends had gone through the same. Maybe worse.
And so many questions were still unanswered. Why did WICKED still need them, years later, now in their late teenage years? What were the next trials? Where? Why did they take Aris, and where was he now? Was he the only victim, or would they take more students, one by one?
“We all deserve to know what happened to us.”
The hand on his shoulder made itself present again.
Thomas had been so distracted, he had forgotten about its casual weight against him. An anchor.
“And whatever we find, we’ll be right here for each other.” Newt’s words were for all of them. But still, his soft and warm eyes never left Thomas’.
Thomas leaned into it. Naturally. He rested close to Newt. His source of light in all of this.
The rest of the group fell back into their excessive planning; tracking out every detail about the facilities and equipment they could, trying to preview any obstacles they could run into. They divided each person’s tasks and mission. They made lists. Pack gear. Test flashlights. Print the old maps.
On the laptop, Brenda and Minho already found routes on how to hack WICKED’s operational system in real time, followed closely by Harriet, who wrote everything down. Numbers and data streams scrolled across the old screen as they explored every code, the computer’s fan humming even louder the more it worked.
The others spoke away ideas, exploring the recent maps of the university, marking escape routes, contingency plans, meeting points if anything went badly.
In two hours, everything was done. Everyone knew what to do when the time came. They were all ready. Some more than others — but the goal was the same.
“So, we’re all really breaking into a half-sunken lab in three nights.” Gally breathed. Not a question, an affirmation, maybe to convince himself of the crazy idea.
Minho patted his back.
“College experience, right?”
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
When they all say goodbye — Brenda taking the laptop with her, Harriet with the main notes, each with a personal list with preparations, — they leave the old classroom; a place that had been their distraction place for so long, to study, to chat and kill time in between classes, was now their meeting spot for something much more secret.
Thomas watched his friends disperse into the dark corridor, then the outside doors, into the night, on their way to the dormitories. Each followed their own path, escaping from cameras and the poor lights that illuminated the campus even in such a late hour.
He, however, turned in the opposite direction.
Thomas followed the old and rocky path down to the harbor, the easy and chilly sea breeze hitting his cheeks and eyes with every step closer. The boy walked through a small mop of trees, then grass that quickly turned into sand. After a few minutes of silent walk, he reached the docks.
The view from up there was breathtaking; always had been, always would be, even if so late at night.
The ocean below the docks of the harbor was a troubled mass, a vast black veil that met the dark sky of the night on the horizon. Its waves smashed against the stone pilings, sending up bursts of cold, salty spray that stung Thoma’s face like needles. Each crash echoed like a warning through the wind. The docks groaned under his foot.
And out past the docks, the WICKED lighthouse pulsed in the distance, its beam cutting clean across the dark cliffs. The beach below vanished into the roar of the night mist.
Behind him, looming high above it all, the medieval castle that was the university still stood — its towers poorly lit. The stone walls glistened with dampness.
It all felt so vast, terrifying. Yet still so beautiful.
Thomas let the silence around him and the mere sounds of nature consume him. He welcomed the silence like an old friend. Sometimes spending too much time around the group could be too chaotic.
He shut his eyes, letting everything he had just heard and seen sink into him like a rock too hard to swallow. The sounds of his own screams echoed against the wind that cut through his ears, fierce and sharp. Being this close to the water again, Thomas could almost feel it filling his lungs, trapping him.
His whole life seemed to fly over his eyes. Thomas thought of the trials, their mission. Of his doubts about his part in all of this. His classes and exams, which felt so unimportant now. His bed and sleeping, which he knew he couldn’t.
Of Newt; of the last conversation they had — or were about to have — right before Minho stormed into their dorm room, telling them there was something urgent he and Brenda had to share with everybody, just earlier in that same evening.
“You’re not going back?”
The voice, natural and familiar, approached Thomas from behind. He heard footsteps with a limp sound against the wood, each one closer than the other. It was like he had summoned him, Thomas thought, and a weak smile found his lips.
“Don’t think I can sleep right now,” was all he answered, eyes still locked on the ocean under him. Still, Thomas felt Newt’s welcoming scent of coffee and the faint trace of his cologne fill his nostrils when warm arms embraced him from behind. A simple gesture. Still, it took all the tension building up on his shoulders away. “The water’s louder tonight.”
He felt Newt’s eyes scan his face from the side, felt the blond’s chin barely resting against his shoulder.
“You got that storm face on.”
Thomas finally stole a look back. The blond’s eyes were soft, easy on him. Dark brown against the void that was the night sky. His lips curled up in a mere smile.
“Storm face?” Thomas asked.
“Yeah,” Newt kissed the crook of his neck, the action sending a shiver down the brunet’s spine, “it’s the look you have on when your mind can’t rest.”
Thomas would always be amazed at how easily Newt could read him. Now, the two alone, he let himself be completely held by Newt.
“Maybe that’s just because I’m a mess.”
“You’re not a mess, Tommy.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore, Newt.”
Now completely facing Newt, still inside his arms, Thomas could clearly see the hint of confusion in the blond’s eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Thomas didn’t know how to explain everything, how to phrase his worries and nightmares without losing himself to the words. But he did know he could trust Newt; that he was the one person he could confess anything to. Always had been.
He breathed in, he bit his lip. He thought of how to say it.
“I have this… Weird feeling. That there’s more to me and this whole WICKED experiment. Like a memory I still can’t see, but it tells me I’m not a victim. Like I’ve been carrying something horrible and just pretended it wasn’t here.” Thomas paused, drinking in all the doubt and understanding and plain warmth in Newt’s eyes. He watched the golden hair play around with the wind, Newt’s face sparkling with the spray of salt water. “What if we go down there in three days and find out something bad? That I… Helped them with the trials?”
Thomas bit the inside of his cheek as soon as that last question left him, nervous.
But Newt made sure not to worry him, answering almost immediately:
“Then you’d still be a victim, Tommy. You were just a kid. If this is true, you didn’t know any better.”
Thomas’ eyes fell to the ocean again.
“The others might not think like you.”
But Newt caught his attention, fingers on Thomas’ chin to make him look up.
“I can promise you, no one will turn against you,” there was acknowledgment in Newt’s whisper, in his eyes. Reassurance studying Thomas. Care. “And even if they do, you’ll always have me. You’re not alone in this.”
The brunet offered him the weakest of smiles. Newt’s hands, loosely holding his back, were feather-light, warm and soft. His lingering gaze lovesick. Thomas felt undeserving of such.
“You’ve always been patient with me. With… Everything.” He thought of their previous conversation from earlier again, in which the only witnesses were their stuffed pillows and quiet promises that lingered in the still air of their room. He thought of Newt’s eyes, understanding and loving, holding his gaze like he worshiped Thomas. “Even when I can’t give you what people are supposed to give in relationships.”
The silent affirmation of what those words meant lingered between them, louder than the waves breaking on the shore.
Yet Newt’s expression changed to a lighter one, contrasting Thomas’.
“So we’re still at this?” The blond chuckled, but Thomas didn’t catch the joke. “Is that what you really think?”
Thomas raised a brow.
“Is it not what you think?” He muttered.
“No, Thomas,” Newt’s voice was low, but still ever so caring. His hand slid down, resting on the small of the brunet’s back, grounding. “I didn’t fall for you because I expected something out of you. I fell for you the way you look at the world like you don’t trust it, but still hope it might surprise you. For the way you laugh at stupid jokes about human anatomy, for how you wake me up every day with a pillow to the face. I fell for you.”
It felt like a confession; words used with so much more depth than any they had ever shared. They were wrapped in a sweetness that made Thomas’ heart skip. And the unexpected tenderness in the blond’s tone caught him completely off guard, melting the weight of his sorrow in an instant.
“If anyone ever taught you you need to give anything you can’t or don’t want into a relationship, they’re terribly wrong,” Newt’s lips curved up into a smile. “And an idiot.”
“I know, it's just... Sometimes I wish I was different. That I could be... Easier.”
Newt kissed the top of his head, lips lightly touching the mop of messy dark brown hair that fell onto his forehead.
“You don't have to be easier. You just have to be you. And I love you for who you are.”
Thomas genuinely smiled at that, feeling his body float in a bliss of love, brighter than the shy stars painting the dark sky of midnight. And, this time, he was the one to kiss Newt.
He grabbed his boyfriend’s neck from behind and slightly pulled him down, their lips meeting in a soft, slow crash — because they had all the time in the world for each other.
Kissing Newt felt like being bathed in honey and sunlight. Feeling him close felt like being wrapped in the most comfortable blanket. And Thomas would never get sick of how sweet Newt was.
The kiss lasted all about what it took for another wave to hit the docks, the tide bringing them back to reality in seconds.
The weight of the world around them — and the mission and horrors waiting to be uncovered at the depths of the sea — was still there, in the back of Thomas’ mind, never at rest. But having Newt next to him made everything a little bit more bearable.
The blond kept his eyes stuck on Thomas as soon as they broke apart, his fingers softly pulling away the damp hair on Thomas’ forehead, his other hand still holding him.
“Now c'mon, I wanna cuddle you until we have to go down into that bloody hellhole.” Newt grabbed his hand.
Thomas followed him back to their room.