Newt’s muscles burned, but he didn’t stop running. His bad leg, that damned one he once broke, felt lit on fire right down to the bone. But the pain in his body and lungs was marginal compared to the sickly black ache in his heart. The Runners were coming back, trickling in from all directions, but there was no sign of Alby and Minho. Newt ran from Door to Door, pausing at each one and barking out the same desperate question at the arriving Runners.
“Have you seen Minho and Alby?”
The boys simply shook their heads, their faces passing from puzzled to worried rapidly as they took in Newt's face, which had probably turned a lifeless, pale color. His eyes prickled with the promise of tears, but Newt refused to let them surface. Alby never cried in front of the Gladers.
Newt mustered up the strength of voice to send the Runners to dinner, refusing to wonder whether they obeyed him out of true deference to his authority or just out of pity for how stricken he looked. He didn’t eat dinner because he couldn’t. The thought of his best friends lying, bodies broken, somewhere in the Maze flushed any appetite away from his gut.
His heart pounded to the beat of the dreaded words.