Free Gregor And The Code Of Claw by Suzanne Collins

not even the faintest shaft of light leaked around its edges.
    Gregor felt his way around the cell. It was small, about ten feet by ten feet. If he stood up straight, the ceiling brushed his hair. There was nothing to be found in it. Not a bench to sit on. No food or water. No place to pee. No blanket to keep him warm, which was his most immediate concern, because it was cool in the cell and he was soaking wet from bathing the mice. He slumped down in the corner and pulled his arms inside his shirt to conserve body heat.
    Why had Solovet done this? Probably to punish him for running back to the Firelands. To show him that she was in charge and, if he disobeyed her, she could toss him in the dungeon anytime she wanted to. But that wasn't exactly the message Gregor was getting. If she had really been in charge she wouldn't have needed Horatio and Marcus to abduct him secretly and spirit him down to this cell. He had been arrested one other time, when he had placed the baby Bane in Ripred's care instead of killing him. But there had been an official, public arrest and a trial to follow. Gregor had an unsettling feeling that now no one but Solovet and a few of her soldiers knew where he was. Who else could know? Who would come to his aid or even notice he was gone? Dulcet had seen Horatio and Marcus take him away, but they could easily say they had escorted him to the hospital and then he'd slipped off again. If Dulcet even had time to think about it, because she definitely had her hands full in the nursery. Mareth usually kept an eye on him, but again, with the general confusion going on in the palace, it would be easy to think Gregor was in another place dealing with another problem. Even Boots would be too busy to miss him. His mother was sick, his dad back in New York City. Luxa and Howard were barely hanging on to life. Ares? No doubt Ares was expending every bit of energy he had helping to airlift the nibblers out of the Firelands and back to Regalia. A job like that could take days. That pretty much left Vikus. Would he realize Gregor had been imprisoned? With the war starting, he was probably working around the clock, too. And Gregor felt certain Solovet hadn't told him about this. They were married but they didn't always confide in each other. Take the development of the plague as a weapon. If Solovet had hidden that from Vikus, then concealing that she had locked up Gregor was nothing.
    Hours passed. Gregor huddled in the corner trying to stay warm. His clothes barely seemed to be drying at all. He was hungry and exhausted. The lack of light weighed on him. His thoughts turned to "The Prophecy of Time," to his death, to how he was meant to kill the Bane. He didn't see how he was going to get a chance to do that in here. What would happen if he didn't? And what was going on with that Code of Claw thing? Boots had been in the nursery, but wasn't the princess supposed to be working on that? The prophecy had mostly been about how important it was to break the Code of Claw. Gregor and the Bane's death had been rather minor points compared to that, at least to Sandwich.
    Eventually Gregor fell into a kind of stupor, not fully asleep but not quite awake, either. And in this state, visions of the battle he had just fought began to replay in his mind. The elation he had felt from fighting had completely dissipated. Now when he saw his sword slicing through the rats' flesh, their claws coming at him, he felt scared and weak. It was as if some other person had taken over his body for the duration of the battle. But that person had deserted him in the dungeon, leaving a kid who suddenly wanted nothing so much as to wake up in his bed in New York City and find his mom telling him to hurry up, it was time for breakfast.
    He finally went to sleep, curled up in a ball on the stone floor. Luxa wove in and out of his dreams, laughing on her bat, dancing in the arena, and then, as his dreams changed to nightmares, lying in a hospital bed