The First Glader | The Maze Runner || Newt x OC

Chapter 9: New Era

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A/N: It's time~~~ (Mariah Carey voice) 🎶

I'm so sorry for not being able to update the story!! As I mentioned before, I was absolutely drowning in studying for my midterms this week.

Then a water pipe broke in my apartment building on Thursday, my apartment flooded and some of my devices got wet. I had to move things out... anyway it was a whole mess. 😭
And of course, yesterday was Halloween! 🎃 Happy (late) Halloween!! I went out dressed as a plague doctor, wby? 👀

✩｡°⋆ Okay. Enjoy the chapter! :3⋆°｡✩

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Not even a month after Frypan's, Clint's, and Minho's arrival, another tragedy occurred, another cruel reminder that this place gave just enough hope only to take it away. Another soul was lost to the Maze.

After Marcus's disappearance a few months ago, everyone believed that kind of accident was behind them, especially after forbidding anyone from entering the Maze before the doors shut. But no one expected Stephen to quietly walk toward his doom. His death had happened only two days ago, and it hit even harder.

At first, they thought he had gone beyond the walls, he'd simply vanished. But no. He had gone into the Box, alone, trying to send himself back down, desperate to understand how it worked, maybe even to escape. They found him days later, lifeless, when the alarm blared and the Box returned with the weekly supplies. His body lay pale and crushed beneath twisted metal and shattered crates, his face still frozen in confusion.

The message was clear enough: the Box only ever brought things up. It never took anything back.

At least now they knew the Maze was the only way out.

Rowan and Alby did their best to pull everyone out of the dark cloud hanging over them. Together, they decided on a memorial, their names written on the stone wall by the Deadheads. It was the same wall where Rowan had first carved her name, and everyone had followed after her. But now, Marcus's and Stephen's names were crossed out by Gally's trembling hands, the Glader closest to Stephen. No speeches, no ceremony. Just quiet nods, hands on shoulders, and the sound of Frypan lighting a candle that refused to stay lit in the wind.

Two months passed. The Box sent up five more greenies, and with them, the Glade began to heal- though it never forgot. It just was growing too fast for anyone to manage alone. That was when Gally, of all people, suggested they needed more than just a few rules.

Surprisingly, Rowan and Alby needed no convincing. Together, they sat in the Map Room, scribbling ideas on scraps of paper by lantern light, Alby refuting most of Rowan's eccentric ideas, like her proposal for a weekly "no boys allowed" day, before finally agreeing on a plan.

By morning, they had built something solid: a system. Every job would have someone responsible, a sort of supervisor. "Supervisor" sounded too uptight, Rowan thought, so Alby, half-delirious from lack of sleep, suggested "Keeper."

It stuck.

The next day, they gathered everyone at the Box and voted.

No one questioned Rowan and Alby remaining as leadersthe Glade ran because of them. Alby kept order and structure; Rowan, surprisingly, kept everyone sane and reassured.

As for the other roles, Newt was made Second-in-Command, Alby and Rowan's right hand. Whenever fights broke out, he was the one who stepped in to calm everyone down, a natural mediator and the "voice of reason", as Rowan liked to call him.

Rowan was also elected Keeper of the Runners, unsurprisingly.
Zart took Track-Hoes.
Gally, the only Builder left, became Keeper of the Builders.
Winston took the Slicers.