Error | The Maze Runner / Newt ² ✓

{0.8}

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"Please, Tommy. Please."

Thomas finally gave Newt the wifi password so he would stop begging for it.

-✼-

My eyes, brimming with tears, followed Winston's body as it thunked down the stairs. I couldn't control my stomach. It was doing flips and flops inside of me in the most uncomfortable of fashions. The ball sunk down Winston's head; it began to close around his ears as he screamed and tried his best to pry it off of him.

"What do we do?" I managed to ask in a strangely choked gasp. My chin was wobbling; it was a horrible sight to see Winston fighting for his life against some metal thing.

"Leave him," Minho muttered so lowly that I could barely hear him over Winston's helpless cries. His expression held a certain kind of sadness as he watched his friend die right before his eyes, but it masked over and he commanded louder, "Leave him."

"What?" Thomas barked, swiveling his head around to gaze up at Minho with squinted eyes. "Are you crazy?"

"Thomas, if you go back for him, I will have no choice but to..." Minho trailed off and squeezed his eyes shut as Winston's screams grew louder. They echoed in the stairwell and dug into every crevice of our ears. "Never mind. Point is, leave him. We can't help him."

Thomas's mouth was slightly agape as he stared at Minho in shock for a few seconds. He turned to Winston, who was thrashing around at the bottom of the steps, limbs flailing wildly all over the place. His body rattled against the concrete floor as his hands groped blindly at the metal ball that was almost covering his mouth. In a matter of seconds, his screams cut off. All of us turned away and averted our gazes- we knew what was coming next.

Minho was releasing labored breaths out of his mouth like he was trying to calm himself down. His fists were clenched at his sides, biceps tense in the line of light that was shining just in front of him. Slowly, he stuck out an outstretched palm toward the outside and held it into the sun.

After a few seconds, he pulled his hand back like he had touched a stove. "That's hot. Definitely hot." He turned back to Newt and I. "If we're gonna do this, we better have something wrapped around us or we'll have second-degree sunburns in five minutes."

"Let's empty out our packs," Newt suggested as he took his off of his shoulder. "Wear these sheets as buggin' robes as we check things out. If it works well enough, we can stuff the food and water into half our sheets and use the other half for protection."

Thomas lumbered up the stairs with a grumpy expression on his pale face- he was clearly still upset about the decision not to help Winston. He already had his sheet clenched in his right hand. "We'll look like ghosts– scare away any bad guys out there."

"Yeah, we'll scare away any possible Cranks for sure," I grumbled, then instantly felt a prick of guilt for saying something insensitive, especially when we had just watched someone die. The grief was fresh on my mind and swirled my thoughts around; it was hard to filter between my thoughts and the words that came out of my mouth.

Minho upended his pack and let everything drop to the floor. The Gladers closest to us scrambled to make sure nothing bounced down the steps. "I don't see how anyone could just be hanging out in that heat, he commented. "Hopefully there'll be trees or some kind of shelter."

"I don't know," Newt sighed. "Then they might be hiding, bloody waitin' for us or something."

Thomas' hands were basically twitching at his sides. It didn't take our twin power for me to know that he was itching to check out the place; I had no clue why, considering it was scorching hot. I could already feel a line of sweat building up on my brow.