A/N: Hi! This chapter is the longest yet, so yay if you like that. I hope you enjoy reading it; it was probably my favorite to write so far.

Reviews are welcome and appreciated! I'll do my best to take constructive criticism into account as I continue to write this story. Also, I've been wondering if I'm using enough Glade slang, or should I use more? Or am I using it incorrectly? (I don't think proper grammar matters much as far as Glade slang goes, but I know it would bother me if I thought someone had used the word shuck wrong. *sigh* I'm such a perfectionist.)

"I call this Gathering to order. I call this-is anybody listening?" Alby looked around the shoddy meeting room as the crowd of chattering boys. Why they would try to hear more rumors from their friends now that they could ask questions of the people who actually knew the answers was beyond him, but for whatever reason, nobody seemed inclined to listen to him. He filled his lungs and tried again. "I shucking call this shucking Gathering to ORDER!"

The din in the room barely quieted. Gally, the Keeper of the Builders, suddenly boomed, "THE GATHERING IS STARTING WITH OR WITHOUT YOU SHANKS SO SLIM IT!" That did the trick. The Gladers quieted. The only sounds left in the Glade were a complaining goat and Gally muttering something about shucking slintheads and klunk between your ears.

Alby nodded at him. "Thank you, Gally. I call this Gathering to order." Finally. "As I'm sure you've all heard by now, Calvin, Keeper of the Runners, is dead. His body was found today in the Maze." He kept his eyes on the doorway in the back, so they wouldn't stray to the row of Runners in the front. He'd checked earlier to make sure Minho had shown up and accidentally glimpsed Ben's tear-streaked face. He had no intention of making that mistake twice.

He'd expected the Gladers to ask questions until Gally had to shout them down again, but there was silence. He cleared his throat and continued speaking. "Obviously, we need a new Keeper. And…" He wasn't sure how to say the next bit. His eyes slipped down to Newt, who nodded, slow and deliberate. "Calvin's been an unspoken leader all year. Now that he's gone, we need to decide on a new leader together. Preferably not a Runner," he added, allowing himself a half-smile at them before gluing his gaze back to the doorway. "Those are the two items we will discuss. Does anyone have anything to add right now?"

Buzz stood up in the second-to-last row. He was the Keeper of the Slicers. Alby didn't talk to him much, but he remembered when Buzz first arrived. His hair had been so long that it was always getting in his eyes. Buzz had cut it off, leaving the back of his head full and hairy and the front of his head covered in uneven scratches and patches of hair. One kid had made fun of him for it and got a fist in the mouth in return. Buzz had spent the night in the Slammer, and in the morning, his friend had shaved the rest of his hair with significantly more skill. When the friend had gone into the Maze—nobody knew why, and Alby had gotten too many headaches guessing—and gotten stung, Buzz had replaced him as Keeper, but anyone could tell he'd never gotten over it.

"I'd like to add something," Buzz said mildly. He didn't go on.

Alby waited, but it seemed Buzz wanted to be prompted. "Okay. What's up?"

He frowned. "You won't like it, but we should talk about it anyway."

"I don't like any of this, so what is it?" Alby resisted the urge to check his watch. He wanted to get this over with.

Buzz folded his arms. "I'm beginning to wonder if we should send Runners into the Maze at all."

Silence survived for two full seconds. Then the Gathering exploded. Some boys shouted him down, others applauded the statement. Several were out of their seats. It seemed some were hollering nonsense just for the sake of having something to say. The few who were quiet had hunkered down, plugging their ears to wait out the storm.

But Alby didn't have that kind of patience. He stood on a log that served as a chair and roared, "ONE AT A TIME!" Eventually, the Keepers got everyone to sit down, and Alby could talk again. But he wasn't sure what he should say. They needed the Runners to run. Considering not running the Maze seemed dangerous, but now that the question had been raised, it could be riskier to ignore it. The seed had been planted. He had little choice but to discredit the idea now before it got bigger and grew teeth. "Alright then. We'll discuss this, but only one person speaks at a time. Good that?" A chorus of assent went mumbling around the room. "Right. Buzz, I suppose you'd better begin this." He stepped aside and sat next to Newt. Calvin used to sit there, while Alby was with the gardeners.

Buzz came down through the crowd of Gladers until he was at the front of the room. When they quieted down, he spoke. "Buzz, Keeper of the Slicers," he introduced himself. "We all know that Calvin was the best Runner we had. That's why he was the Keeper. If he couldn't survive the night, then the grievers are more dangerous than we can imagine. The Runners risk their lives every day when they go out there, and we don't even have proof that there's an exit."

"There is an exit!" The shout came from a younger Glader in the very back. "We've gotta go home!"

"It's my turn to talk," Buzz snapped. The kid sat down at a nod from Alby, and Buzz went on. "We have no proof that there's an exit. It's a shucking lie, that's all it is! Why should anyone else get hurt?" He stood off to the side, indicating that he had finished speaking but silently declaring that he'd defend his opinion when someone inevitably challenged him. Fantastic. Alby grimaced.

Immediately the other Gladers began clamoring for the chance to speak next, and Alby had to quiet them down again. "One at a time," he repeated through gritted teeth. "We'll be here all night if you keep yapping every time someone sits down, so sit down and raise your hands. We'll get to everyone." Grumbling, they sat down, and almost every hand shot up. Alby amended his statement. "We'll get to everyone, but only talk if you have something to say that hasn't already been said." A few hands went down, but Alby suspected there would be lots of repeating anyway. With an inward sigh, he resigned himself to picking the next person to talk. His gaze fell on Ben, hand raised barely above his head, unshed tears welling in his eyes. Their eyes met and Alby nodded to him, returning to sit down beside Newt.

Ben shuffled to the front, taking as long as Buzz despite only having to travel a fraction of the distance. "Ben," he whispered when he got there. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Ben. I'm a Runner." He glanced around the room, at all the expectant faces that met him. "I volunteered to be a Runner when I first got here because I believed we could escape." This wasn't strictly true. He'd volunteered because he wanted to be with Calvin. When he'd first come up, he was so scared he wouldn't get out of the Box. it had been Calvin's day off, and he'd promised to look after him. That had finally given Ben the courage to get out and face the strange new world he had found himself in, and he had stayed by Calvin's side like velcro ever since. But that didn't matter anymore. "I believed there was a way we could get home. I still believe that. And I'll keep going out there because we have to try. If there's any chance at all, we have to try." He swallowed hard, turning to address Buzz. "You said we can't prove that there's an exit. That's true. But it's also true that you can't prove that there isn't one. That means we still have a chance. I'm going to take it." He hesitated, not sure if he should say what he was thinking, but it slipped out anyway. "I know Calvin wouldn't want us to stop."

"Look where it got him," one of the Slicers called.

Alby scowled in the voice's direction before saying, "Is that all, Ben?" The Runner nodded, staring at his shoes. "Thank you, please sit. Anyone else who wants to speak, raise your hand," he added before they could start bickering amongst themselves again.

The Gathering stretched on and on. Some boys sided with Buzz, retelling horror stories of the Maze. Many Slicers spoke their piece, disregarding the make-original-arguments rule. The only one who didn't was Winston, who was fairly new and looked like he'd rather eat griever stew than be in the Gathering a moment longer. Alby couldn't say he blamed him. Others expressed their wish to go home or shared new ideas of how to escape without going through the Maze, most of which had already been tried. Greenie—or Siggy, or Frypan, or whoever he was—gave a speech on wanting to go home, unaware that everyone had felt like he did when they were new. Gally surprised him by supporting the Runners; Alby was never sure what Gally was thinking. Some comments prompted an uproar, and each time, Alby's fraying temper shortened.

Eventually, only two hands were left. Alby called Zach up, then said that Newt could go on his own once Zach was done; he had been saving the Runners for last, as this was ultimately their choice, and he knew Newt was the sort to listen before speaking. It had surprised him when Newt's hand had gone up from the start, but he hadn't wanted to be accused of favoritism by calling on his friend first.

Zach shuffled to the front, introduced himself, and promptly made his case. "I've been looking up to Calvin for as long as I can remember," he said. "I always believed there was nothing he couldn't do. And now this-" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, looking down. "Calvin's dead. The Maze killed him. I don't care what you decide, I'm not going back out there. What we need outweighs what we want. What we need is to be safe. We're safe in the Glade, but the Maze?" He shook his head. "No, man. No. I quit. If there's an exit, it's not worth this." He went to sit back down.

Newt stood up and was at the front before Zach had sat down. There, he paused. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say. No, that wasn't true. He knew what needed to be said. He was just afraid that he didn't have the strength to say it. He looked up at the other Gladers. Alby was leaning forward, waiting. Minho's eyes were fixed to the ground; he hadn't said a word since they'd gotten back. Normally the silence would've been wonderful, but this wasn't normal. He didn't want to get used to this.

"I'll admit it," Newt said, so softly that some of the kids in the back had to strain their ears to listen. The room was pin-drop quiet. "When I first got here, I was thinking like Buzz. The Maze isn't small, and every wall looks the same as the last." He looked at Alby. His eyebrows had furrowed, his forehead creased. Then he turned to Buzz. "I asked Calvin what you're asking. Why search for an exit that might not even be there if the bloody Maze is so dangerous?"

Buzz raised his eyebrows. "And? What did he say?"

"That we're living for that hope. Why are we doing all of this, if not to get home someday? Besides, Calvin's said over and over that there's a way out, and not like he was trying to convince anybody. He believed in that. I believe in that. There is an exit, and it's worth everything." He looked back at Zach, sitting with the other Runners. "Frankly, I don't care what you decide either. In the end, this is the Runners' decision, and I'm going back out there. I'm going home." He sat down between Alby and Ben.

Alby stood and went to the front of the room, pacing back and forth for a moment. "Newt's right. This is the Runners' decision. They're the ones in danger out there." He looked back to the Runners' bench. Only seven sat there, not the usual eight. How long will it take? How long until I'm used to this? "Well? Who's running, and who's quitting?"

Zach stood and went over to stand beside Buzz, shaking his head. Two other Runners, who had been sitting on either side of him, exchanged a glance and followed Zach.

Newt stood, folding his arms. "I'm running," he said. Ben stood beside him. Minho rose slowly and joined them.

That left Ethan. He was still sitting, looking back and forth between them. He hadn't spoken at the Gathering. Zach took a step forward. "Ethan, please…"

Ethan stood slowly, like an ancient man waking from a nap, and joined Newt, Minho, and Ben. "I'm sorry, Zach," he sighed. "I have to try."

"Even if it kills you?" Buzz inquired.

Ethan didn't respond.

Before the tension in the room exploded, Alby clapped his hands together. "That concludes item one of the Gathering. We can figure out the rest of this klunk tomorrow. All in favor, go eat dinner."

Within five minutes, the Gathering room was empty.