In the hole, Alex begins to hallucinate images of people in his past, his teacher, his grandparents, his own parents and Toby (his school friend) and others, all who berate him for being a criminal and a horrible person. After being secured in place, Alex tries to call out to Zee but to no avail. After narrowly being eaten by the dogs again, the boys haul their asses into their cells: literally a hole in the ground. The blacksuits give Alex and Zee a five second head start to run into their cells in solitary, else be hunted down by the dogs. Here the Warden sentences Zee and Alex to one month in solitary while Gary is taken to the infirmary. The Warden proceeds to congratulate the trio for their attempt at their escape, and that he was able to find them due to the rats trails. Gary has already gotten there first, severely injured and held down by a blacksuit. Reaching the end of the tunnel, Alex and Zee realize they only made it right back to the Warden’s path.Īlex and Zee are confronted by the Warden after their false exit route.

He catches up to Zee and they make their way into a passage that leads to a distant light. Alex is urged to run, before getting shoved in the direction of safety by his saviour, who leaves before Alex can figure out their identity. Before he could get killed, the creature is fought off of Alex by something else.

They all begin to run away, but Alex trips in his escape and is attacked. Alex stops the group upon hearing a strange noise, then realizes they're being followed by some sort of beast. Alex, Zee and Gary are then in pursuit of the Warden's dogs, forced to go deeper into the underground labyrinth.Īfter getting lost once more, the trio is motivated into moving by incoming wheezer calls from a cavern above. It's also revealed they haven't actually escaped, only gone deeper into the prison.

Zee reveals he pulled Alex out of the river and that Toby hadn’t made it. He then wakes up to Gary and Zee arguing about ditching him. The plot picks right up where the last book ends, Alex is struggling to stay alive in the river, and blacks out vaguely between consciousness and unconsciousness.

The book starts off with Alex's confession about stealing from his family, specifically about his grandmother's locket before going into a quick recount of the details of the story so far. Because if we don’t escape soon they will turn us into freaks – like them. But we should have known there was no way out of Furnace.Īll we did was slip deeper into the guts of the prison: into solitary confinement, where the real nightmares live – the warden, the Wheezers, and something much, much worse. We thought we’d made it, we thought we were free.

Furnace lockdown