When fourteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, he becomes an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary, where brutal inmates and sadistic guards reign, boys who disappear in the middle of the night sometimes return weirdly altered, and escape might just be possible.

After his failed attempt to escape from Furnace Penitentiary, Alex struggles to survive the bloodstained laboratories beneath where monsters are manufactured, with a death sentence--or worse--hanging over his head.

Alex Sawyer has escaped his underground nightmare to discover that the whole world has become a horrible prison run by his nemesis, Alfred Furnace. Now, only Alex can stop him, but he must decide how far he will go -- and what he will sacrifice -- to stop his foe.