I just pretend it isn't real;
❛ POISONOUS CURE ❜
❝ I watched twenty-three Greenies arrive in the box and I watched more than half of them die ❞

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Things were changing.

Cleo hated change.

Correction, she was afraid of change. How could she not be? In a place like the Glade, it was like time stood still. In the morning, runners would go into the maze and the rest of the Gladers would eat breakfast which Frypan cooked with the help of Julius and Alex. Then, they would work during the morning and eat their lunch. After that, they would work most of the afternoon, eat dinner (after the runners would come back), and then they could all go to sleep.

Cleo had no idea how they managed to squeeze in someone being stung in the middle of the day.

She was even more terrified because Ben was the one who got stung. He was not the most open or happy boy but he was hard-working and smart. He was her friend. He didn't deserve to die the way she knew he was going to die. Nobody deserved that.

Cleo was not exactly first in line to see how they managed to get him off of Thomas but hearing his pleas was enough for her.

"Please help me. Please..."

She shook her head and swallowed her nerves as she stared down at his unconscious body on the table in the med-shack.

"Cleo, we have to get him to the slammer before he wakes up." Newt told her gently. He placed a hand on his shoulder but she didn't move and never looked away from the blood all over Ben's face.

"There has to be something we can do." Cleo shook her head and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the towel next to her. "This is Ben, Newt. Let us..." She huffed, "Let's at least wait for Minho to get back before we decide to banish him. He's the Keeper of the runners. He gets a vote in this too."

Newt's eyes softened at the desperation on her face. She cared too much and that was why he had such a soft spot for the girl. She held herself together and always fought to protect everyone despite it being an impossible mission.

"Look, I'll talk to Alby about it." He promised her. The boys standing in the doorway next to Gally raised their eyebrows and stiffened when Clint glared at them. Newt ignored them and continued, "But we have to get him into the slammer first. Minho is not coming back in another hour."

Minho must have been worried sick. He and Ben were running partners and who knows what he thought when Ben just disappeared. Cleo's eyes widened. What if Minho got stung too?

"We have to get someone to go get Minho." She told Newt with wide eyes. "What if the same happened to him?"

Newt's eyes became darker and his jaw clenched. He looked down at the ground before he said, "One, we have no one to send in, and, no, I am not sending you. Two, if he also got stung then there is no point of getting him out if we are just going to send him back inside."

His words were harsh but they were true, Cleo just didn't want to admit it. The Changing was deeply disturbing and Cleo would be traumatized if she saw someone she loved going through it. So, she stayed quiet. Newt nodded to himself when he realized she had no argument that time and told the three builders to carry Ben to the slammer.

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"Hey, blondie. What the shuck is up with everyone's mood today?" Minho asked before he even fully entered the med-shack. "Newt told me to ask you if──"

Cleo cut him off by wrapping her arms around his neck out of nowhere. Her eyes were wide and frantic when she pulled away from him before he even had the chance to process the fact that she was hugging him. She scanned his face and his body. "Do you have any scratches on you? Are you okay? Do you feel sick?"

"I'm fine." Minho told her, confusion in his eyes. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He didn't know. Her heart sank at the realization that she had to be the one to tell him what happened to their friend.

"Ben got stung." She looked down, avoiding his gaze because she didn't want to cry after seeing his reaction. She was already sad enough as it was.

He gaped at her in shock. "What? In the middle of the day?"

"Yeah." Cleo nodded and swallowed nervously. "He chased Thomas around the woods for a bit and almost killed the poor guy. Alby and Newt managed to knock him out and get him here so I could see if there was anything we could do." She cleared her throat when she felt her voice crack. "I had no such luck."

"So, we have a while until the banishment, right?" Minho asked her in a monotone voice that sent shivers through her body. He ignored her surprised look and raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged numbly. "It's probably in an hour or so."

"I'm gonna go wash up and take a jog around the Glade." He said. "I'll see you later."

Cleo watched him leave, frozen in shock. Minho rarely showed his emotions. He was sarcastic and unbothered by most things. She did not expect him to be so afraid to show sadness, or at least anger, after the death of one of his closest friends.

When she thought about it, she was the only one who openly cried. She knew that it wasn't because she was a girl. The boys were pretty open about their grief when George died a few months prior.

Maybe they all just lost hope after that. It would not surprise her. They all thought that George would be the one who got them out of there. He was the best leader they could ask for. (Not that Alby wasn't trying his best. But he was just too worried about being perfect that he sometimes forgot that they all had feelings.) Cleo thought that their hope died with George.

She shook her head. She did not even want to think back on the day Alby had to kill their leader to save her life. They lost far too many people because of The Changing. The bastards who put them in there were already torturing them enough without that.

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It was dusk and all of the keepers stood in front of the entrance to the maze next to Alby while Minho brought Ben toward them.

Cleo gripped the stick in her head and had to force herself to look away from the wild look in Ben's eyes. He was muttering something to Minho that the rest of them could not hear. Minho was the Keeper of the runners and Ben was a runner which was why Minho was the one who had to carry him. It was what made the situation even more painful for everyone.

Cleo looked at Minho and saw tears of anger in his eyes as he and Ben brushed past the keepers and toward the entrance to the maze.

Tears blurred her vision and she bit her lower lip so hard that it hurt while Ben kept struggling against Minho's hold. Minho lowered Ben to his knees and untied his bound hands. Ben fell further down and rested his forehead against the ground. He sobbed into the grass and started throwing up black blood.

Minho stood in front of him with a bag in his hand and did nothing other than stare at him. Ben rapidly shook his head and pleaded.

"No, please. Please, don't. Please, don't. Please, don't do it."

Minho looked at Alby for confirmation and their leader nodded. With a heavy heart, Minho threw the bag into the space between the two walls which were going to start closing any minute. Just then, the wind started blowing and that was the sign that it was time to let Ben go.

"Poles!" Alby yelled.

Cleo's heart sank when Ben turned around and instantly met her eyes. She could not imagine a crueler death than that one. Losing your mind and barely being able to control your actions was something Cleo could not wish on her worst enemy (except for the people who put them there). Ben's eyes were distant but there was still a desperate look in them.

The keepers and a couple of other Gladers raised their poles and pointed them at Ben. Minho moved away from the doors and they all gathered into a hole-less half-circle around Ben. Alby ordered. "Move in." They pushed him toward the doors with their poles. He had no way out.

Ben's screams and desperate pleas echoed through the otherwise quiet Glade. He assured them he would get better but all of them (even him) knew that it was a lie. They tried to get people to survive getting stung for ages and they never managed. They would keep the boys locked in the slammer. They would either break out and cause some unfixable damage or they would go crazy in there.

The doors around Ben closed as they pushed him further into the maze. They moved the poles away and he pushed the doors so they wouldn't crush him. That was impossible so he had no choice but to walk further into the maze. The last thing that Cleo saw before the maze closed completely was Ben's desperate face.

Once the doors closed, everyone refused to move. They cast their eyes down and no one dared to break the silence until Alby spoke up.

"He belongs to the maze now."

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Cleo, Winston, and Gally went to the wall after dinner (which barely anybody ate) to cross Ben's name off. Cleo had no idea why she felt the need to always tag along with whoever crossed names off.

She was the one who suggested that idea when she arrived at the Glade because she saw George's name carved into the wall. She thought that it would be symbolic if everyone did it. When they lost their first boy after her arrival, she suggested crossing his name off. She saw it as closure.

She knew that she was not going to get any sleep that night. She never could after a banishment. So, she walked around the Glade and ended up sitting on the small wooden building.

There were plenty of stars to look at there. That was one of the reasons why she was sure the Glade was placed in the middle of nowhere like a true prison. They were isolated from the rest of the world but still close enough that they received a new boy every month.

She did not even notice that she had company until she heard somebody clear his throat behind her. Cleo jumped in surprised and gripped the railing above her head. She sat on the edge of the small building and turned her head to look behind her,

"Can I sit with you?" Thomas asked her, nervously.

"Sure." She shrugged and watched him sit next to her on the edge. When he was seated, she asked, "Are you okay? Most Greenies freak out after seeing a banishment for the first time."

Thomas narrowed his eyes. "The rest of you don't look any more relaxed if I'm being honest."

"You're always being too honest." Cleo rolled her eyes. "Your big mouth and empty head are going to get you killed. You can't be reckless in here, Tommy. Even the most careful ones have died because of a simple slip-up."

She thought that he was going to ask more questions, but instead, he just muttered, "Tommy?"

Cleo froze. She did not realize that the nickname slipped past her lips until he repeated it. She felt her face grow hot. "Sorry."

"I don't mind." He gave her a small sheepish smile that had her smiling back despite what a terrible day she had. "It's cute."

Was he flirting with her? She wondered with furrowed eyebrows. Why didn't she hate it? He was a reckless idiot so how come she didn't hate him as much as she expected she would.

The two sat in comfortable silence for a while before he broke it with another one of his stupid questions.

"Do you think he might make it?"

"No." Cleo said without missing a beat. "Ben might know the maze like the back of his hand but no one ever survives a night in the maze. The grievers don't let anyone they see live. No one ever forgets their first banishment but you have to try."

"Who was the first person you saw get banished?"

"Leon." She immediately answered him, keeping her eyes glued to the walls of the maze. "He got stung during the first three months I was here. That was such a long time ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday."

Thomas stared at the side of her face and asked, "How long have you been here?"

"Two years," Cleo said. "Exactly two years yesterday. I watched twenty-three Greenies arrive in the box and I watched more than half of them die. So, take my advice when I tell you that worrying about the dead is not going to make a difference. Accept your losses and start helping out around here. We need discipline, but most of all, we need hope. That's something that we have been lacking recently."

"Hope for what?"

Cleo narrowed her eyes at him in disbelief. "That we will find a way out of here. For what else? It's the only thing that keeps us going."