Prologue

If I stopped running I was dead.

My lungs burned, my heart pumped acid, every muscle in my body ready to give in. I couldn't even tell where I was running anymore, my vision giving in just like my body was threatening too. If the deafening siren hadn't been hammering in my ears, then I'd have been able to hear my own ragged and desperate breaths, unable to pull in enough oxygen to keep me going.

Just one more flight of stairs, one more and I might make it.

I pushed myself to run faster, the metal staircase rattling under my klutzy steps. Everywhere around me other kids were panicking doing the same as I was and bolting for their cells, where they were safe. I didn't dare look behind me to see what was behind us. I didn't need to. I could picture it all too vividly, it's demon muzzle and face, silver eyes that glint in the darkness, and those teeth- sharp like razors, kinda like how a T-rex's teeth would look.

Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I lost my balance and stumbled over the railing. For a moment I saw the yard five stories beneath me and I almost let myself drop. Better this way than to be devoured, right? The creature shrieked, through its wet throat and I took off running again before I even realized it.

I heard the rattling of the cell doors, they were starting to close. If I got caught out here than I'd be nothing but a lump of meat real soon. I leapt up the last few steps, sprinting down the narrow landing. Other inmates jeered from the safety of their cells, shouting for me to die. Some even stuck their arms and legs out to trip me, and it almost worked. I staggered tripping over a leg and lurched forward, falling.

Somehow I made it, swinging through the door a fraction of a second before it slammed shut, the mechanism locking tight behind me. The beast howled, the sound similar to a banshee's wail that made your skin crawl. I took the risk and looked back through the bars, saw it's huge bulking figure bounding past my cell, no skin to hide its grotesque muscles. A scream rang out as it found another victim. It didn't matter to me. I was safe.

For now.

"That was close," came a voice from behind me. "You're getting goods ats this." (Just a note this character is supposed to talk like this. It's not a grammar error, how ever if those are seen please point them out so I may fix them)

I didn't answer, just stared out across the prison. Six floors of cells beneath me and only God knew how many more above me, all buried deep underground. I suddenly felt as though the weight of the world was pushing down on me and it suddenly felt hard to breathe (like it wasn't already?), like I'd been buried alive, which in a way I have been and the panic began to set in. I closed my eyes and fell on my back, sucking in hot, stale air, or at least as much of it as I could with my scrawny lungs. I tried to picture the ocean, the outside world, the warm sun, my family.

All things I would never see again.

"Yup," said the voice again, my cellmate. "Bet it's startings to feels like homes already."

I opened my eyes and the prison was still there with me inside it. Dark Furnace Detention Center. The place they send you to forget about you, to punish you for your crimes, even if you didn't commit them. Only one way in and no way out. Yep, this was my home now, and it would be until I died.

That wouldn't be long. No way, not with the gangs that eyeballed me through the bars of their cells. Not with the blacksuits, the guards who weren't the size of a normal person with shotguns to match. Not with those terrifying creatures, fury and rage in their eyes and blood on their breath and teeth.

There were worse things in Furnace, oh much much worse. Maybe tonight the blood watch would come, drag me from my cell to the depths of this hell hole to strip me of my humanity. Maybe tonight they'd change me into a monster.

I curled up into a ball, cradling my head in my hands, my hair going into my face. There had to be a way out of here, a way to escape. I tried to think of one in the storm of thoughts whirling through my head, trying to come up with a plan. But all I could think of was how I came to be here, how I went from being a normal kid, who had a somewhat normal life, to becoming an inmate in probably the worst hellhole on the planet.

How I ended up in Dark Furnace.