Escape From Furnace: Bonus Chapters

Hope

There's only one thing that will truly keep you alive in Furnace.

You think I'm talking about force? Sure, a good right hook will help you if a skirmish breaks out. Knowing what strike points will take a man down, where to hit him if you don't ever want him to get up again, maybe that will keep the gangs off your back for a bit, for a few days at least.

Want to carve a shank, a blade, from anything you can fin— a wooden spoon, a splinter of rock, a human bone—to keep you safe? Don't bother. It's only a matter of time until somebody takes it off you in a fight, somebody who knows how to use it a hell of a lot better than you do.

Never underestimate the importance of speed. Because when things kick off in here, if the Skulls come after you, or if there's a lockdown and the dogs are unleashed, you need to run, fast. It won't keep you alive forever, but it might let you hear one more wake-up siren.

No, these things won't save you, not when you're buried a mile beneath the earth in a prison full of monsters.

What about the ability to blend in, to be invisible? Some would say that's the most important thing to remember down here if you want to stay alive. If you steer clear of the blacksuits, the guards with their silver eyes and shotguns, then you're less likely to be splattered over the walls. But keeping your head down and your mouth shut won't help you when the blood watch come, it won't help you when the wheezers mark your cell with filth, when you're dragged screaming into the tunnels beneath the prison.

Friends, then? Maybe, if you're lucky enough to make them in Furnace. It's one of the first things you learn here, that friendship—I mean real friendship, the kind of friend who would risk his own life to save yours—is rare, so rare that most don't even think it exists. I'm one of the lucky ones, I've got Zee, my best mate, and Donovan too. I'm pretty sure they'd die for me, and that I'd give up my life for them too.

Or am I? Because when you're really scared—and I mean true terror, the kind that can drive you insane, the kind you feel when they bring the beasts up from below, the freaks that tear their way through the prison, hungry for blood—then nothing is as important as your own life. When push comes to shove, as it often does in here, it's every man for himself.

No, none of these things will help you. There's only one thing, one simple little thing, that can keep you alive.

Hope.

It may not seem like much, just a word. How can hope help you when you're on the ground being pummelled? How can hope help you when you're on the edge of death, hunger and thirst making you delirious? How can hope help you when the warden appears from his lair, watching you with eyes that belong to the devil?

Because hope is what Furnace hates more than anything, it's the one force that makes the warden and his army powerless.

Why? Because Furnace Penitentiary is the world's most secure prison, and it has an arsenal of weapons to keep us locked up—machine guns on the walls, armed guards, mutant dogs that will tear you to pieces just for being out of your cell. But its greatest weapon is fear. Fear pins you down, it crushes you, it kills you slowly but surely. When the fear becomes too great, then all hope is lost. When you're too scared to move, to breathe, to talk, then you're too scared to make friends, to think about the outside world, to plan an escape, to fight back.

But hope is what sets you free. As long as you have hope then the warden hasn't won, Furnace can't beat you. As long as you have hope you can find a way to break the prison before it breaks you. As long as you have hope then the fear can't claim you. As long as you have hope you will never truly be a prisoner.

And as long as you have hope, there is always a way out.

I have hope.

I have a plan.

AndI will get out of here.