The Network ( Book One of the Grounders Series )

32

Dedicated to SarahPerlmutter.

I wake up in the weirdest place yet. A cage, surprisingly.

But the weird part is, we are dangling form the roof of the cavern. Below is is a charred wasteland covered in ash, veined with many steams and tunnels of magma, flowing bright red and so hot I am sweating buckets from all the way up here.

The cage is made from wrought iron, dangling from the stone ceiling by chain links.

All our weapons and supplies are gone. We are all bound by thin black cords around our hands and feet. The metal bars at the bottom of the cage press hard into my butt. Let's just say the situation is not comfortable in any way whatsoever.

There was a door to our cage, but it led to nowhere. Above the cage is a square big enough for the cage to fit in perfectly. So from the looks of it the cage could be raised to get us to the steel door that led to whoever put us here. This was actually the best prison system I'd seen in my days in hell.

We only have five days left before Arosi breaks free. But something about the barren wasteland below and the flowing magma, told me that he was close.

We just needed a way out off this prison.

As if on cue, the chain links holding the cage started retracting into the ceiling. I was right. The cage fits perfectly into the square space, and the doors to the cage and the hole line up.

The steel door in kind of scary, studded with heavy duty bolts and all. There's no way we could escape this place.

But the. It opens. A a person steps out. The person has dark skin, and wears a loincloth that does nothing to hide his privates.

The steel door opens inwardly. He unlocks the cage from the threshold of the door and pushes open the cage.

He steps in, balancing across the bars along the bottom of the cage expertly with his bare feet. That has to burn. The metal is hot from the heat of the magma below.

The man grabs me by my shirt, which is soaked in sweat, and pulls me to my feet. My backside is thanking him for the relief of the bars, but my nose is not. This man reeks of body odor, like he hasn't discovered bathing.

He guides me across the bars to the threshold of the door and tosses me vigorously to the stone ground.

He locks the cage and then closes the door and locks that as well, separating me from Cicada, Jonah, and Joss.

Inside the door the temperature is much cooler, which is a relief. The room is tiny, with bare walls except for an identical steel doors directly across from one leading the the prison.

The man pulls me to my feet again and unlocks the other door. We emerge in a long narrow corridor.

"Who are you?" I ask as we walk. The man is dark skinned, with silky black hair braided all the way down to his butt, which is unfortunately exposed due to his poor clothing. I've never heard of people like this in the stories they told us in the Network as kids.

He is silent and passive. We walk steadily down the corridor until we reach another steel door.

He unlocks it and we emerge back into the hundred degree heat. A narrow plank covered the gap between this steel door and the next, with barren lava-lands below.

"Walk," he says, his voice rich with a foreign accent. He draws a dagger from his loincloth and slices the cords on my wrists and ankles.

I step onto the narrow piece of metal, balancing before I make my next move. If I fall, this is all over.