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.

I take another, painstakingly slow step. The flimsy metal bends slightly beneath my weight. Only about ten more feet to go.

I take another ginger step, the metal caving even more. I lose my footing this time and slip off the narrow plank with a loud scream.

I manage to grab hold of the plank before its out of reach and barely hang on while the hot metal blisters my flesh.

"Help me!" I scream at the man who stands unfazed in the threshold of the first door.

I turn as the next door opens and an identical looking man appears. He holds a length of black rope in his hands.

"Help me!" I scream again.

He tosses the rope out to my and I manage to grab it with my free hand. Then he kicks the metal plank from the threshold of the door and I am sent swinging toward death below as the plank falls. I scream as I fall after the plank only until I stop falling and remember that I'm holding onto a rope, and I'm being pulled away from the charred lands below.

Ash floats thickly this low to the ground. I spin around on the rope and spot the cage holding my friends has been lowered so it's dangling like it was earlier.

When the man finally manages to pull my back to the door, I cling to the ledge of the threshold because my life does depend on it. The door I came from is closed.

Once I'm back in a cool room, the new man, who's disturbingly identical to the last, closed and locks to door, blocking out the heat.

The room is nearly identical to the one right out of the cage, except instead of a door across the room, there's a narrow staircase.

I lose count of the time after a hundred and fifty three seconds of climbing the stairs, but not much later we come to another steel door.

The next door emerges into a wide cavern. We are standing on a raised section of the cavern next to a large throne. Down the many narrow steps is what looks like a city, with squat buildings that are just beneath the ceiling of the cavern.

In the throne sits a man who looks similar to the other two except he's built bigger.

"At last we meet, Alaric Constantine," he says, his voice higher pitched than I'd expected. "My name of Jez, Lord of the Firepeople. King Arosi has been anticipating you're arrival for a long time," the man in the throne says.

"You know Arosi?" I say.

"I am his prophet, I rule the Firepeople with his will. He told me you'd come and he gave me specific instructions for when you did." The man pulls a small black piece of glass from beneath him on the throne. On the glass of video footage of my friends lying unconscious in their prison.

How is this technology possible?

"Only two people in that cage will be leaving. Arosi told me that you'd love to chose which ones you'd want to survive."

What? Is he asking me to choose which on of those three will die.

"I can't pick to kill my friends," I say, although my mind flicks over Joss's name as I say it.

"Either you pick which two leave that cell," Jez says, "our all four of you die right now."

I can't. I cannot say Joss's name right now. It's on the tip of my tongue but I can't do it. I can't tell these people to kill him. Regardless of our recent head-butting, I don't want him to die. He still stuck with us throughout this whole journey.

"In life, Alaric, you'll be forced to make tough decisions. Arosi told me that you were too soft to kill any of those people. Well it's either one life or four, your choice."

How do I do this? How do I say Joss's name? I have to. I have to but I can't. Cicada will die if I don't.

"Jo-." I stop myself. I can't seriously be doing this.

"What was that?" Jez asks.

"Joss," I say, forcing the words off my tongue. I cannot believe I just did that.

The door open and the same guy who took me out of the cage appears in the video. He tosses Cicada and Jonah into the room and leaves Joss in the cage.

"Do not fret, Mr. Constantine, he will die quickly."

Tears spring to my eyes as the cage is lowered. Joss is asleep and defenseless and sinking to his death. I need to stop this.

"Stop!" I scream, but the cage keeps sinking toward the red hot magma. "Stop!"

This time it does. The chain freezes. Relief floods my body but I celebrate too soon. I notice hinges on the bottom of the cage and my heart sinks.

This was all my fault. The hinges open and the bottom of the cage swings out from under Joss, and he plummets to the wastelands below.

The footage cuts there as I realize I'm sobbing, screaming and thrashing at Jez while the other man holds me back.

"You made your choice, Alaric. That was the first punishment you get for daring to go on this quest." Jez turns to his guard. "Tie him up downstairs with his friends. They'll be suffering together next time."