Could you imagine having your best friend shot and killed?

Hard to picture right? Well what if you were blamed for shooting him

Well that’s what happens in the book Lockdown: Escape from Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith

One day while Alex’s neighbors were on vacation him and his friend Toby decided to rob their house. They were teenagers and wanted to do something mischievous. So they snuck into the house at night while the whole neighborhood was sleeping.

While they were inside the house Alex heard someone yell and heard a couple of banging noises. When he went downstairs he saw 10 guys in gasmasks in the living room with his friend Toby under one of their feet.

Alex knew they weren't cops but he didn’t know what they were. One of them said “you will pay for your crimes ” and all of a sudden shot Toby twice until he was dead.

They told him if he went to the cops he’d just be getting himself in trouble and that he could run as far as he wanted but they will find him. So not caring what they said he ran as fast and as far as he could into the night.

He ran into the elementary school playground to hide from the people in gasmasks.

After about five minutes he started to hear a police siren and see flashing lights all over. One of the cars put on the high beam and it pointed directly at him. He was forced to give himself up.

He was brought to the station to stay over night and they next day they took him to court.

When he saw his parents and tried to explain what happened they didn’t believe his side of the story and turned totally against him.

The court found him guilty of killing his friend and was sentenced to life in Furnace Penitentiary a prison for teenagers

When he arrived at the gates to the penitentiary a man In the same suit and gas mask as the people that killed Toby were in led him into an elevator

He's in the elevator for about 5 minutes which takes him 2 miles underground when he realizes that its no normal prison

After a few days in the prison he met some friends that helped him out and told him what and what not to do.

While in the prison he finds out that mostly everyone else in there was framed by the people running the prison

They all talk and try to put together a plan to escape from Furnace.

They think about sneaking into the elevator and get out through the emergency roof and climb up the shaft but there is a camera in the corner with an automatic machine gun setup that fire if it sees movement.

That wasn’t going to work so they had to think of another way to escape

One of the kids who works in the kitchen to serve lunches thinks about taking one of the propane tanks and putting it right near the wall and blow a hole in it

So the next day they all went to their assigned jobs like a normal day and during lunch the kid secretly took one of the propane tanks and put it on the floor next to the wall they were going to blow up.

Then quickly Alex gets his metal tray and smashes the guard in the face with it

The guard gets knocked out and Alex then quickly grabbed the guards gun and shot the propane tank and it exploded into flames

The whole prison goes into a riot. Everyone is screaming, hitting and some even killing each other.

Alex and all of his friends crawl into the hole away from the crazy prison.

They crawl for a little bit then they start to realize they’re in a sewer and set off into the darkness to find there way out.

Throughout this book Alex was a very strong determined character. He wasn’t perfect but no matter what people turned against him or what happened he stood up for what he thought was right.

Christopher Summers January 2013 Period: 6