Chapter Fourteen
Block B Bastarz – Zero for Conduct
Oh. Fuck.
Two sentences, with just enough time in between them for Rose to make up her mind. Her feet were already moving. The second her toe hit the floor of the Maze, a gust of foul-smelling wind, like the breath of the Grim Reaper himself, rushed over her face.
"Rosalind…"
Oh, fuck.
One sentence this time was all she needed to drive her feet at maximum speed.
Behind her, the Gladers shouted—pleaded—anything to get her to turn around. Ahead of her, Minho yelled at her, too. "No, you shuck-face!"
Rose ignored them all; she had to. It wasn't a far run, but she threw everything she had into it because she knew that invisible clock would never stop ticking. She reached Minho's side, panting more like a dog than a human.
Minho was less grateful and more aggravated than anything else. He leaned against the wall, releasing a pathetic cough. "How dumb are you, woman? This is what it wants."
"I don't care what it wants, what you want, or what they want. What I want right now is to save your stupid ass."
Rose frowned, brushing aside the Runner's hands from his hip so she could assess the damage. Minho's faded blue shirt was stained cherry around a long slash in the fabric that clung tenaciously to his skin. She tried to peel it back, but he swatted her away.
"It's just a cut," he insisted.
"How much time do we have left?"
Minho glanced up at the patchwork blue sky and squinted. "I'd say five minutes, but what the hell do I know. My watch is busted."
"Plenty of time," Rose assured, and with a protesting grunt from the Runner, she put his arm around her shoulder and let her speed drive his legs faster. But it wasn't fast enough.
"I thought you were the best of the best," she prodded. "Why are you so slow?"
"Oh, I don't know," Minho snarked, "maybe it's the giant hole in me."
"That's no excuse. Move your legs, grandpa."
Rose knew she was driving him hard, but they only had a few minutes to reach the Doors and—
The Doors were closing. They were already fucking closing. No way it had been five minutes. Rose could hear the gears grinding and watched in horror as the metal rods emerged from their shelters in the concrete to web across the entrance in slow motion.
"Shuck," growled Minho. "Shuck! Shuck! Shuck! I told you, woman. You never listen."
The Runner's right knee buckled as the last of his strength fizzled out with his hope. Rose grunted as she propped Minho's body along the length of her back, hoping she had enough left in her tank to get the two of them across the finish line. His feet dragged on the ground even as she hunched over, but it was enough. Minho was nothing but heavy muscle and dead weight by this point, but Rose could manage it for a few more feet—she had to. Every second, the Doors inched closer to locking them inside, maybe forever, and while Rose was ready to accept that fate for herself, she was not willing to sacrifice another, even if it was Minho.
The bars were about to sheathe into the opposing doors when Rose reached the grinding behemoths. She dropped Minho and shoved him through without preamble. Gally finally relinquished Thomas, and the Runner darted in to drag out his Keeper by his arms. Dozens of hands waited on the other side to help as they lay Minho in the sun-soaked grass.
But the rods were in place now, and the Doors were only a few feet from closing.
"You can do it, Rose!"
"Come on, you've got this!"
"Hurry the shuck up!"
Chants of encouragement reverberated off the walls of the Maze, but fear had cemented Rose's feet, and the sudden approaching whir-click-tap behind her only made it worse. She had a sinking feeling that she could never leave, and if she tried… Well, the memory of the Doors snapping shut in front of her had never left her.
A shrinking concrete window framed Thomas' face. His eyes were desperate, and every muscle was taut. He reached a hand through the steel bars. "Rose, don't give up. Please come back—to me. Please!"
Rose shifted on her feet. She felt the weight of her bag over her shoulder. She was prepared to make it through the night—she probably could, too—but looking at the desperate faces of her friends, she didn't want to. She wanted to stay with them.
Willing adrenaline to pump into every last capillary, Rose backed up a few feet and charged. She pushed off the ground and launched herself up, her hands gripping for purchase around one of the steel rods as she swung herself forward like a pendulum. Rose pitched her legs between the hurdles of the lower rods and catapulted through the Doors. Thomas caught her waist, and they tumbled backward into the yard as the dull thunk of concrete resonated behind them.
"I'm alive," she cackled in astonishment. "I'm alive!"
Rose looked down at Thomas before she gripped his cheeks between her hands and pressed her lips to his.
No sooner had she come up for air than two pairs of hands encircled her biceps and wrenched her off. She glanced to hersides and saw Billy and Fen peeling her back. "What the hell, guys?"
Alby stood beside them, wiping sweat and frustration from his face with the palm of his hand. "You know the rules, Rose. I gotta put you in the Slammer until we decide what to do with you."
But Rose shook the boys off. "Not yet. Where's Minho?"
The Baggers reached for her again, but Rose juked until she found the crumpled form of the Keeper of the Runners half-conscious on his side. Clint and Jeff knelt on either side of him, but neither had a medical bag. Jeff offered his shirt as a staunch for the wound, but until they could properly close it, Minho's life was in the worst danger, especially if they didn't clean it immediately.
Rose bullied her way between them and removed Jeff's shirt so she could ease Minho's away from the wound. The fabric was so saturated with blood that it was hard to tell what was skin and what was clothing. The wound itself was precise and deep, made by a sharp blade swiping lightning fast. Minho's muscles quivered beneath his flesh as her fingers tenderly probed its edges, but there was no time to be grossed out.
"Somebody keep him talking," Rose commanded, and Newt knelt beside his friend.
"Said nobody ever, right, ya bloody loudmouth?" the blonde joked to Minho with a rather bleak expression. "Are you stung?"
Minho's eyes squeezed tighter as he grunted out a "no."
"What happened?"
"What's it shuckin' look like, numb nuts? Griever sliced me."
Newt laughed as he announced to the others, "He's all right. Bloody shuck-head hasn't been stung."
A collective sigh of relief rang out, and though Rose had heard stories of the horrors a Griever sting could inflict, if the others could see Minho's injury, they wouldn't have been celebrating.
So much blood. She needed a stitch kit—she hadn't had the foresight to bring that—so for the moment, she had to settle for cleaning and packing the wound until they could get him back to the Med-hut. Rose dumped out her bag until she found the bandages and a tincture she had pilfered.
"You just bring the whole pharmacy with you?" Clint asked aghast.
Rose huffed. "Can't anyone here just shut up and be grateful for a minute?"
To Minho, she squeezed his waist to grab his attention and said, "Try not to hate me for this."
"You mean any more than I already do?" he wheezed.
"Okay, now I'm just going to enjoy this," Rose muttered under her breath.
After she nodded to Clint and Jeff, the two Med-jacks pinned the Runner's arms against the ground and the circle fell silent. Rose uncorked a small jar, the bitter smell of salt and garlic punching her in the nose. She tipped the cruet forward until pale yellow liquid spilled into the angry red trench below. The effect was immediate.
Minho's screams pierced Rose's heart as herbs and salt bubbled in the fleshy chasm and seared away infection. His cries were mind-altering. Even in his death throes, Cat had suffered in eerie silence, lending a preternatural tranquility to the world of healing as Rose had known it. Minho had shattered that image as emphatically as a hammer against a snow globe.
She was causing him pain, and she cursed herself for making a joke about it. She didn't enjoy this. It was the worst sound she'd ever heard, and without even realizing it, Rose was crying. Her tears dripped down onto the bare patch of Minho's stomach, pooling alongside the blood and the medicine.
Rose ran a hand along his bare ribs as much to hold him down as to offer him some kind of comfort. As the fizzing in the wound subsided, so did his screams, and Clint and Jeff removed their hands. Rose wasn't yet ready to remove hers. She stroked one rib with her hand until that fierce spark that had always charged Minho's eyes finally returned; it may have spluttered like an empty lighter trying to ignite, but at least it was still there.
He lolled his head toward her, a ghost of a dimple teasing the edge of his mouth. "That wasn't so bad," he managed weakly. "That all you got, Dr. Shuckette?"
Rose lightly pinched the skin along his abdomen. "Real tough guy, huh?"
Minho winced, but it was mostly for show. It certainly didn't seem to dampen his spirits. "Someone once called me the best of the best."
"Sounds like a real moron."
"I thought you kissed all your patients," the Keeper mumbled, each word fading into the last as he fought to stay awake.
"Oh god, you're delirious," Rose retorted, but Minho's body was already giving in to its exhaustion. His eyes fluttered shut, that damn dimple still plaguing his cheek.
She motioned for the other Med-jacks to carry the patient back to the Homestead, and as soon as they had secured him to a makeshift stretcher, hands closed around Rose's wrists again. She glanced to her sides to see Billy and Fen again, both wearing matching masks of apology as they hoisted her to her feet.
Thomas shuffled in front of them, arms spread wide as he tried to bar their way. "Where are you taking her?"
"Where she belongs," Alby answered coolly. "The Slammer. You should know. All this feels familiar, don't it, Thomas?"
Thomas' eyes were wide as he stepped closer to Rose. He stroked her face, but for the first time, the tingles were an afterthought—there but no longer overwhelming.
"This is my fault," he said. "If I'd just gone back in for Minho, they wouldn't be locking you up."
"I think we both know this was bound to happen," Rose replied, hanging her head in his hands.
"It'll be okay, Rose," Thomas reassured, but she wasn't so sure.
The Maze now had a taste of her, and it would be wanting her back. If the other Gladers had their way, it would be permanently.
It was dark inside the Slammer but not dark enough.
Rose recognized the tell-tale clotted stickiness before she could see it. She didn't know how she remembered it, but it was a feeling that had never left her no matter how vehemently her memory had been scrubbed. She looked at her hands.
Cherry red turned black in the dark.
"No, no, no."
Rose whimpered the word so many times it became a dark, melodic theme song.
She rubbed her hands furiously on her pants but the blood clung, rubbed and rubbed until her skin burned from the friction, and yet it wouldn't wipe away.
"Get it off. Get it off!"
Rose scraped her hands against the dirt floor, grinding the meat of her palms on the stones. It was still there—dirty blood that would never come off, as filthy as her soul. Rose crawled to the door and beat mercilessly against it. She dragged her hands down its splintery length, but nothing was abrasive enough to remove the nightmare on her skin.
She had no idea how long she been screaming because she didn't even realize she was screaming until her voice withered and died on her dry lips. Even then, Rose's body released disturbing gurgles and wheezes as her fists continued to bang on the door. She would scream until somebody finally listened, until somebody finally helped her—if anybody could help her.
At last, the door to the Slammer flew open, and Rose tumbled onto Clint and Newt's feet. She clawed feebly at their laces and cried, "Please. Please get it off."
"What in the bloody hell?" Newt said, taking a step back.
Clint knelt in front of her and Rose scrambled forward, palms up. "You have to help me. It won't come off. Make it come off."
"What the hell have you done to yourself?" the Med-jack asked as he studied the carnage on her hands. It was hard to tell what was Minho's blood, what was hers, and what was everything ground into it. It was grisly chaos.
"It's touching me. It's not mine. It's everyone's. I don't want it. Take it away, please! It hurts."
"Of course, it hurts. Look what you've done, Rose," Clint gasped. His fingers plumbed the tender horrors of her palms, plucking rocks and splinters as long as toothpicks from her skin. "Why would you do this?"
"It's touching me. It's not mine," she repeated as though she hadn't heard him at all.
Clint shook his head. "I don't understand. Blood never bothered you when you were cleaning wounds. You didn't even flinch."
Rose shook her head furiously. "It's not the blood, it's the blood on me."
"It's just her blood," Clint whispered to Newt.
He was wrong. Rose could feel it squirming under her own blood, as though it was spurting directly from severed arteries onto her. "It won't come off. It won't come off. I can't stop it. I can't stop any of it."
"She's going 'round the bend," Newt said, his brows pinched tightly together.
The blonde crouched beside Rose and grasped her cheeks between his hands, his thumbs stroking the tense swells beneath her eyes. He leveled his honeyed eyes onto her and coaxed her back to him. "Rose, it's your friend, Newt. Do you hear me? I need you to listen to me, please listen. Look at me, Rose, look at me."
A taut wire in her brain snapped, and she collapsed onto Newt's lap in a heap. His fingers worked through her knotted curls as he soothed her addled brain.
"There's no more blood, Rose," he assured, "no more."
Rose was coming back to herself slowly. She could see the ebony silhouettes of trees and the lights of the Homestead struggling through them. She could hear voices in the distance and her own racing heartbeat. She could smell soil and vegetables and sunshine on Newt's knees. She could taste the thick coating of stale horror in her mouth and chalky dust on her teeth. And she could still feel the syrupy ooze of foreign blood on her skin.
"I know you think I'm crazy, and maybe I am, but it's still there. It won't come off. I couldn't save any of them, and it won't come off."
Newt ran a hand down her spine and back up. "You saved Minho."
She shook her head. "Minho is right, I'm dangerous. You should just throw me in the Maze and let the Doors close on me."
Rose would have cried if she didn't feel so shriveled. She was a husk.
Newt did not stop the reassuring flourishes of his fingers in her curls, even tucking willful strands behind her ears. "We're not going to do that because you're not crazy. I know what it feels like to believe that. It's easier to believe that you're broken beyond repair than it is to believe that others can help put you back together."
Clint brought a canteen of water over and poured it gently over her hands. Rose couldn't even find the energy to wince at the sting. The Med-jack stripped off his shirt and used it to dab off the detritus that flecked her damaged skin.
"You don't understand," Rose said. "I hurt people."
Newt tucked the same stubborn curl back again. "Do you want to hurt Clint?"
"No."
His hand paused. "Do you want to hurt me?"
"No," she breathed. "Never."
"Do you want to hurt Minho?"
"A little."
Newt issued a gentle laugh and glanced to Clint. "She's coming back to us."
Clint smiled and stole one furtive rub of her fingertips. He swirled his dampened shirt around the perimeter of her palms, and once they were clean, he brought his lantern closer and plucked the last of the shrapnel from her explosive breakdown.
Newt rested a hand on Rose's bicep. "What happened today wasn't your fault."
"Everything feels like my fault," she whispered back, squeezing her eyes shut to combat the barrage of misery that suddenly burst through. Cat, Minho, the metallic murmur of her name from behind the Walls, the message "3 days".
"I promise you, it's not. The others will see that soon, too. Now come on, let's get you out of here."
Newt's hand urged Rose upward to a sitting position while Clint's eyes brimmed with concern. "They're not ready for her yet."
But the blonde just shrugged one shoulder. "She's ready."
"Alby will be—"
"He'll be fine, Clint. Leave me deal with him," Newt snapped. He looked over at Rose and said, "Shall we?"
Reluctantly, Rose nodded. She flexed and curled her fingers and felt her blood well up onto the bandages Clint had just wrapped around her palms. Her hands throbbed, but at least they weren't sticky anymore—it was her blood, just hers now.
"Where are we going?"
Newt quirked a brow. "Council Hall, of course."
Rose ran a hand over her face and groaned. "You always take me on the worst dates."
"Good to see you have your wit back," Newt said with a soft smile.
"You're going to need it," Clint added, and everyone's face fell.
The closer they got to the Council Hall, the grimmer things felt. The last two Gatherings hadn't been picnics by any means, but this felt more like an execution than a trial. The only thing Rose had going for her was that her fear reserves had been exhausted. Whatever punishment the Council could mete out would feel like nothing in comparison to the sheer terror that had just quaked her bones.
The moment they entered the Council Hall, the voices inside quieted. A now customary sight, all of the Keepers except Minho dotted the room, their bodies frozen in mid-argument. Alby, as always, towered at the head of the hall, but this time Frypan and Ender stood toe-to-toe in the center, the hairy behemoth with one thick digit pointed in the rotund kid's face.
Anil lurked in one of the corners, looking every bit the afterthought he usually was in a room stuffed full of egos, but Rose knew the man well enough by now to recognize an odd approving look in his eyes.
Thomas had been pacing along the back of the room, but he shot to her side the moment he laid eyes on her. He gripped her wrist and slid his hand down to hers only to find the soft cotton of bandages. He lifted her palms up as he examined them with a worried expression. "What happened?"
"I'm okay," Rose deflected. She allowed herself to melt into his shoulder as she drew strength from the safety his arms offered.
"We're not done here yet," the Keeper of the Sloppers objected as he leveled his dark eyes on Rose's red mop.
"Nobody cares, Ender," Newt snapped.
"You really think it's a good idea to bring her in here already?" Zart asked as his eyes roved over Rose's taxed face, finally settling on the zipper of her crop-top.
Winston made a loop-di-loop with his finger beside his head. "Yeah, the crazy shankette made half the Glade piss themselves thinking she was being torn limb from limb."
Rose narrowed her eyes as she sagged onto one of the benches. "I'm sorry my panic attack scared you, Winston."
"Not me—" he started to argue, but Alby waved him off.
Though their leader tried to keep his voice low as he addressed his second-in-command, Rose heard Alby say, "You sure 'bout this? Other shanks are pretty freaked."
But Newt didn't bother to whisper his response. "Trust me, Rose is fine. Might make all this bloody tomfoolery go a lot faster if she can just speak for herself."
Alby gave a tentative nod, but as usual, caution bobbed in his coffee eyes. "All right, you shanks, let's get this show on the road. We all know why we're here—"
Ender's scowl puffed his beefy cheeks forward like he was being slowly inflated with helium, and his bottom lip ballooned like a fat, bloodless worm. "I may as well just set up my hammock here, turn this into another bedroom for how much time we spend talking about one stupid girl."
"Slim it, Ender. You know how we do things here," Alby said and then directed his attention to Rose.
He motioned for her to stand in the center of the room, and with the last of her strength, she heaved herself up, tired from more than just her breakdown, tired from all the bullshit. She rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder, as if this were an everyday routine in the Glade—hell, it was beginning to feel like it; about that, Ender wasn't totally wrong.
"Rose, you stand here accused of breaking the most sacred rule in the Glade," Alby continued, "Rule Three: entering the Maze as a non-Runner. Before the Council votes, you can state your case."
Rose watched the boys twitch as they waited for her answer, and the corner of her mouth quirked up. "My case? Come on, I barely went anywhere—you could literally see me the whole time! And I saved a man's life. Isn't that the only thing that matters?"
Gally squinted at her. "You know there are rules."
"Yeah, but who makes rules that cost lives, not save them? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't regret saving Minho, and I won't apologize for it. You should all be ashamed of even asking me to. You, most of all, Gally, considering you could have let Thomas go back for him, but you're so busy with your pissing contest you can't even see that."
The Builder's face reddened as his eyes darted around the room. His mouth opened, but whatever he had to say, he thought better of it and snapped it shut.
Rose sighed. "We wouldn't even be arguing this if you'd just let me be a Runner like I'd asked. I told you we wouldn't get a choice about this, and I was right. Three days, the Creators said. Day three, and guess what? The Maze got what it wanted. It's not going to stop until I make it stop."
"She's right," Ender said, surprising all of them. He walked toward Rose, looking at her for the first time she could really remember. The Slopper had spent so much of his time giving her directives through other people, badmouthing her to other people, she wasn't sure he could even pick her out of a line up, excepting her conspicuous adornment of a pair of breasts. His gaze was cold and sharper than the business end of Anil's chisel. "Let's give them both what they want. Toss her in the Maze and be done with the whole thing. Then we can all go back to the way things were."
"I don't want to go back," Thomas shouted. "Do any of you really want to go back? Before Rose got here, we'd given up. We've all just been carrying out the motions. We run the Maze, we do our jobs, we live our lives, and nothing else. We've stopped trying. The Creators are telling us that's not good enough. Rose is our best chance of moving forward, of getting the hell out of this damn place."
"I don't remember anyone electing you Keeper of klunk, slinthead," Ender snapped back. "Just cuz Newt and Minho are sweet enough on you to let you sit in on these Council meetings don't mean you get a vote."
Thomas took a step toward Ender, but Alby stamped his boot. "Shut it. Rose, you have anything more to say?"
She crossed her arms and shook her head. She had seen enough to map out the trajectory—no point in wasting any more of their time.
"Ender, we know your vote," Alby said and turned to his right. "Gally?"
The Builder's red face had tempered to its usual sun-warmed tan, and his shock had melted into something more like regret. "I'm sorry, Rose. I like you—I actually do—even if you have shuck taste in men, but I gotta follow rules. Everything we got now is cuz we follow them. I vote same as I did for Thomas. I vote banishment."
Rose would be lying to herself if she didn't admit Gally's vote hurt. They weren't exactly friends, but he had spent weeks looking out for her at the showers, taught her how to swing an axe, treated her respectfully in the dark orbit of the bonfire, but she guessed none of that mattered in the end. She rubbed her scar.
Alby looked to his left. "Newt?"
"I stand by what I said before. Rose should be a Runner, plain and simple."
She fought the urge to kiss him again since she didn't need to shift any remaining allies to the opposition. Instead, she offered him a grateful smile, and her hand dropped from her throat.
Alby continued his tally. "Anil?"
The Bagger appraised her with the same cool eyes he always did. "She is a Runner already. I see no reason to change that."
"Winston?"
"Banishment."
"Preston?"
"Banishment."
"Zart?"
He turned his doleful eyes toward her and shrugged one shoulder, as if this was all no big deal and nothing personal. "Sorry, Rose. I vote banishment."
Rose felt fingers questing for her hand. Thomas gripped her tightly as the vote had begun to tip heavily in favor of banishment. One more vote would do her in.
Thomas leaned toward her ear, his breath coiling inside its shell. "I'll never let you go again. They'll have to banish both of us."
She caught his gaze and finally found the support she had so desperately needed from him. In spite of everything, Rose felt warm. "Thomas…" she breathed.
"Frypan?"
Rose glanced to the burly Cook. She knew he was a stickler for rules, especially in his Kitchen, so she didn't have much hope. She squeezed Thomas' hand.
"She's a shuck Cook," the Keeper of the Cooks groused. "She'd make a better Runner anyway."
Rose hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until it came out in a forceful stream.
Alby turned to Clint and repeated his question, and Rose inhaled again slowly, as though she would need every last ounce of breath to survive her mentor's answer. Spending the last few days working for the man had shown Rose how much he deserved his role as Keeper of the Med-jacks, and she realized that whatever his answer was, it would directly shape her view of herself. Clint's opinion mattered to her because she looked up to him. If he didn't find worth in her, what the shuck good was she?
"I need her," Clint said directly to her. "Rose could have folded today, could have given up on Minho like the rest of us shuckheads. She didn't. She's a Med-jack. She's my Med-jack."
In spite of her pledge not to cry, Rose allowed a tear to overflow the dam in her eyes. She remembered his scathing words to her that very morning, remembered the heavy weight of disappointment lacing his tone. She had earned back his trust. Whatever else this vote would bring, she had one good thing from it.
The rest of the Council turned toward their leader, the last one in the room who had a vote to be tallied. Ender looked smug; Newt looked strangely calm. For Alby's part, he looked the same unreadably stoic man he always was.
"Your vote, Alby?" Newt said slowly.
Alby stepped forward and circled Rose. He appraised every inch of her as though his eyes could measure her worth as easily as a scale could measure her weight.
"Me? I don't want you to be a Runner, but that really ain't my call to make. Truth is, she's right. If Gally hadn't held back Thomas, this slinthead here wouldn't've gone in the Maze neither. She made the wrong call for the right reasons, and I can't banish her for that."
Ender threw his hands in the air. "What the hell is going on in here? I don't understand, it's simple: you break Rule Three, you're banished. What are we still talking about?"
"You didn't banish me," Thomas said.
"Not for lack of trying," Gally grunted.
Ender pinched the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a headache. "One vote left, and you all know what Minho would pick. You can count him for banishment. Tie broken."
"She saved his bloody life," Newt countered. "Don't be so quick to put words in his mouth—you know he hates that."
"Besides," Frypan added, "he made Thomas a Runner last time. Voted him Keeper, in fact."
Ender let out a ragged puff of air between his pale lips. "Yeah, difference is Minho hates this bitch almost as much as I do."
It happened simultaneously. Newt and Thomas punched the Slopper in his face, one fist of each landing on both of the Keeper's cheeks and squashing his face like a sandwich.
"Don't be rude," Newt scolded as he pulled back his hand and flexed it.
"Your vote's been tallied. You can leave now, Ender," Alby ordered, his stern brow betraying his perfect indifference for the first time all night.
The boy's face was scarlet with rage, and he shook his head furiously, jiggling his injured cheeks with an audible flap. His hands were in fists at his sides, and Alby eyed him carefully as he held out one flat palm to hold Anil back.
"I don't understand any of you shucking shanks anymore," Ender slobbered. "She's got you so twisted up, you don't know which way is up. One broad gets all tarted up in her little sex suit, and you all just fall all over her hoping to get laid. It's pathetic."
"One more word, and you'll spend the night in the Slammer," Alby warned.
It wasn't over—Rose knew it wasn't over—but the Keeper of the Sloppers stormed out of the Hall all the same, slamming the door so hard the planks rattled against their nails.
After a minute, Newt finally ventured, "Doesn't it matter if we kicked him out or not, the vote is still tied."
"The other Gladers will expect a decision come morning. We can't put it off," Alby said. He approached Rose, and with one long look, he grabbed her wrist and urged her toward the door. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"We need Minho's vote. Newt's right, we can't cast it for him, or I'd never hear the end of it."
"I don't want to," Rose said, trying to jerk her arm away.
Fear, she felt fear again. It was different than what she had felt in the Slammer when she was drowning in blood. And it wasn't exactly fear of banishment either—just this morning she had been ready to meet that challenge without a formal vote to go on. What then? Fear of something much more paralyzing than a labyrinth of monsters or faceless Creators.
Fear of rejection.
It was the only thing she could think of, but why Minho's approval mattered, Rose couldn't say. She just couldn't face him, especially when deep down she believed Ender was right—that Minho harbored some kind of hatred for her, or, at the very least, the Before Rose. She didn't want to see him, to hear him put the nail in her coffin.
Alby grunted. "I didn't ask you if you wanted to. You need to hear it."
Reluctantly, Thomas let her other hand go, and Rose felt the deep chill of the night settle under her skin.
"I'll be right here when you get back," he called after her.
Alby and Rose headed further along the rambling Homestead, and right before they reached the door to the Med-hut, he stopped. "You still want to follow me?"
"Huh?"
"I used to have total control here, before you, Rose," he said, his eyes on the toe of his boot now scuffing the threshold before the door. "I let a little of it up tonight."
Her words to him a few days ago surged back. I respect you, Alby, and how much you care about all of us, I really do, but if you want to be a leader of anybody, you'd know that doesn't come from total control. People have to want to follow you.
Alby had let a little of it up. For her.
"I'd follow a leader like that anywhere," she said.
It could have been a trick of the light, but Alby might have smiled. "Good that. Now can you do something for me?"
"Anything."
"Try not to piss off the guy who could feed you to the Grievers."
She was doomed.
A/N: I will warn you ahead of time, the next chapter has the first of the smut—yeah, there's lots coming because I'm a ho like that. As such, in order to comply with this site's strict rules about mature content, I will only post part of the chapter, and you will have to read the rest on my Wattpad account (remaining chapters will continue to be posted here unless they are also smutty). You can find the story under the same name as this one, and I suggest you bookmark it. Things are about to get a lot darker and a LOT sexier, so buckle up.
Thank you to all my readers. You've been so supportive! I hope I continue to live up to your expectations.