The Network ( Book One of the Grounders Series )

Prologue

Dedicated to SarahPerlmutter for her great work with the Deathless Trilogy and the BLAST.

The Vonicans trudged down the tunnel, a heavy mood set over the crowd of sixty-thousand men and woman.

The tunnel was ancient. The walls and ceiling that were described as smooth once far back to when the Titans ruled. were now old, textured with fracture lines and chipped away in places. The floor is pockmarked with scars, covered in pebbles that scrape against the stone under the sandals of the crowd.

At the end of the tunnel is a dark hole, a black hole. So dark in fact that if you were to stand in front of it and stick your hand in the hole, it would look as if your arm had been cut in half. The cracks near the hole glowed bluish, a symbol that Alvus Constantine had not been lying of this place, or his power.

The crowd stopped about sixty paces form the black hole, letting Alvus Constantine step before them.

"You all know what happens when you step through this hole, you become part of something bigger then yourselves. War is raging between the nations above and the gods have shown me the future. You are the last shred of humanity and when the time is right, you will return above to rebuilt our world," Constantine says. "You all have the freedom to leave this tunnel and return to the world of power hungry savages, but should she gods strike you down the minute you reach the light for disrespecting their wishes. You are all part of something bigger than yourselves. A thousand years from now war will become more than just fists. It will be fire and blades and rock-hurtling machines, and it will only go from there. The gods have shown me what to do, now follow my lead and you'll restore the humans to our peaceful state.

"This is as far as I go. All the gods want from me is to bring you here. Now, please advance."

The six thousand men and women all began trudging down the tunnel in unison, the first rank disappearing in the black, and then the next and the next. They parted around Constantine, running their fingers across the divine blue marks on his arms and chest as they went, hoping the feel the divinity within him, hoping the grasp their old life.

Once they were gone, Constantine stood up to the darkness and recited the prophecy to the hole. One day, when this moment and the purpose of these tunnels are forgotten, the Prophecy will come to them and that's when the time is right.

Once he'd finished with the prophecy, he willed all of his divine power to come to him. The blue hue in the walls near the hole vanished as he pulled his power from them. His markings began to glow.

He untied his robes and let them fall to the stone. All over his body the markings were lighting up. As they did the hole began to heal.

He felt the stir of power in the depths of his being. He felt the gods and their blessing to him. Although the Vonicans had never reached out to such power before, desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if that means sacrificing the throne of the world to a group of otherworldly beings that aren't real.

The markings were lighting up, advancing toward the lyre of Phoebus in the center of his chest. The light shifted to gold, as bright and hot as the Sun, as it neared his torso.

The light radiating off his body filled the entire cavern with bright, fiery light, given to him by Phoebus, along with the power of Prophecy.

Then the marks of the lyre began to glow and Constantine's entire body was like a ball of sunshine, stolen straight from the sun above and put into his blood.

The hole is sealed, cut off by a wall of dimly glowing rock.

Then the moment came. Alvus Constantine's body began to dissolve into a gold current of light, that would become the light for the six thousand people within the tunnels.

Soon Constantine was gone, dissolved into the wall. The light was gone too. The ground had returned to its previous state of darkness.