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  Books by P. J. Hoover

  Game of the Gods Series

  A Broken Truce

  A Ruined Land

  A Buried Spark (June 2019)

  The Dying Earth Series

  Solstice

  The Demigod Chronicles

  Furiously Awesome

  Tut: My Immortal Life Series

  Tut: The Story of My Immortal Life

  Tut: My Epic Battle to Save the World

  The Forgotten Worlds Trilogy

  The Emerald Tablet

  The Navel of the World

  The Necropolis

  Camp Hercules Series

  The Curse of Hera

  A RUINED LAND

  GAME OF THE GODS BOOK 2

  P. J. HOOVER

  Roots in Myth, Austin, TX

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A RUINED LAND

  Game of the Gods Book 2

  Copyright © 2019 by Patricia Jedrziewski Hoover

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by KimGDesign

  A Roots in Myth Book

  Austin, TX

  For more information, write

  [email protected]

  www.pjhoover.com

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express permission of the

  copyright holder.

  ISBN: 978-1-949717-11-2 (trade paperback)

  ASIN: B07NSF3LCG (Kindle ebook)

  First Trade Paperback Edition: March 2019

  For Zachary, for always acting interested

  Table of Contents

  ESCAPE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  HARD RESET

  VI

  VII

  SEARCH

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  DEBUG

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  TERMINATE

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  ESCAPE

  I

  The world shatters around us. Everything—the throne, Nails, my owl—flickers and blinks away.

  Everything except the compass and the pieces of golden apple. They’re still there, held in our hands. We risked our lives for this apple. We watched friends die for it. We’ve rightfully earned it. It is the power of the gods, and it’s ours to use.

  Together we lift the pieces up, a symbol of our victory. A future that we control. Then we devour them.

  Juice drips down my chin. I wipe it with the sleeve of my jacket.

  “How do you feel?” I ask Cole. I look for some sign that everything has changed. I grasp for the power that Iva had hinted at before, wanting to feel it again. But there is nothing.

  Cole gives a small shake of his head.

  Nothing has changed.

  “Maybe we aren’t supposed to feel any different,” Cole says. His eyes darken, and he scans the room.

  No, not room. Void. We’re in a void of white with nothing around. No throne. No dead god. Zachary Gomez and Iva are long gone. It’s only Cole and I.

  “Maybe,” I say. But I’m not convinced. After everything we’ve been through, this may be one more trick. A deception of the old gods.

  But maybe . . . if the apple is the power of the old gods, it could give us the ability to do . . . something. But what?

  But nothing. Nothing is different, and we’ve been used once again.

  I fight the frustration that runs through me. It must be all over my face because Cole reaches over and brushes my cheek with the back of his hand. Warmth radiates from the spot. It will be okay. We survived. We got out of the labyrinth. That has to mean something.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say.

  Cole smiles, a half smile, not because of the scar that runs down his face, but because he’s not convinced. “Yeah, we will.”

  I take a step back so I can take in my surroundings better.

  “Is this it?” Cole asks. “Are we back in the real world?”

  I glance down. He’s still got a prosthetic from the knee down on the left side. I still wear my jacket. But we’d had these items when we’d escaped from our virtual reality pods. I bite my lip and try to piece it out. We were in the labyrinth, a virtual reality simulation. But before that we were in another simulation. Maybe another before that. I tried to break the illusion, but with the layers of reality, it wasn’t enough.

  Zone Omega. That’s where we were. We made it to the final zone, came through the door. If we can find that door again, we can get out of here.

  “I don’t know what the real world is.” I squat down and press my hand to the floor. The second I do, the void of white flashes away and is replaced by a black expanse of sky with electrical pulses running throughout. Beneath our feet, a giant compass rose lit up in neon colors extends in eight different directions. It’s alive, like the sky, with electrical circuits running through it. In the center of it are two symbols I know well: the Alpha and the Omega.

  “It’s like the compass rose—” I start.

  “—from the garden,” Cole finishes.

  I nod. The other compass rose had been outside the gates of the garden, back in the real world. Or not in the real world because that’s when so much had changed. But what I thought was the real world at the time.

  We stand at the center. Slowly I spin, looking for . . . I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Something different. Anything to distinguish one way from the next. It’s huge, stretching far beyond where I can see. It’s like the same compass rose that had been painted on the desert floor has been placed here. When we’d crossed it before, we’d reached the garden. We could get back to the garden if we take the right path. And from the garden, we can find the dome from my vision.

  I close my eyes and try to replay the vision I’d had earlier. Cole and I walk down an empty road, away from the garden. A dome is ahead, waiting for us. It glows bright orange against a backdrop of gray. The road seems to shrink and the dome to grow. It draws us toward it. I run as we get closer. There’s something inside. Something we need to find. It could be my parents. But unless I know how to find it, I’ll never get there.

  I focus on the dome and look for more details. The sky is gray. The ground is sand, like it’s in a desert. A holographic sign hangs above it in the air. In my vision, I step closer so I can read it. Control substation.

  That’s it. That’s why we need to find it. From there, we can get control and truly find a way out.

  “The dome,” I say to Cole. “Did yo
u see it in a vision?”

  His eyes widen. “I forgot about it. But yeah, there was a dome. I tried to get in. There wasn’t a door.”

  “We need to find it.” The dome will have the answers we need. I flip open the cover on my compass with the Alpha and Omega symbols. The needle inside spins in a circle, never stopping. I close it and try again, but it’s not working. It won’t tell me which way to go.

  I need to think. Back at the volcano, at the other compass rose, the sun had been rising . . . from the west. On our left. And we’d gone forward, toward the garden. That would be south.

  I pick one of the two longest paths, hoping it’s south, and I run down it, toward one of the ends of the compass rose.

  “Wait, Edie,” Cole says, rushing to catch up. The sky is alive with purple and orange and green streaks like shooting stars except not stars at all. We’re still inside a simulation, even if we’re not in stasis pods. That much I’m sure of.

  The point of the compass rose is far away, but we cover the distance, and the end comes in sight.

  “Stay with me,” I say, and I reach for Cole’s hand.

  My fingers come up empty.

  “Cole?”

  He’s not there. One second he is, and the next he’s gone.

  II

  The simulated background of the world blinks away, and I’m on the deck of a ship. Water slaps against the side, coming over the railing and covering the deck. People run back and forth, trying to secure anything that isn’t bolted down.

  No, not just any people. Painted on the cabin wall is USS Arcadia. This is my parents’ ship.

  “Mom?” I say, rushing over to her. She’s raising some kind of equipment with a thick wire cable that hangs over the side, but she’s having some sort of trouble with the automated system and is trying to crank it by hand.

  “Edie?” Mom’s eyes go wide when she sees me. “What are you doing here?” Confusion clouds her face.

  “Mom, I . . .” I can’t find the right words. Mom and Dad have been missing for weeks. Months. I have no idea how long it’s been.

  “Edie, we dug too deep,” Mom says. “We’re in trouble. You can’t be here.” She looks out to the raging sea.

  Then it’s like I’m over the side and looking down through the dark water, all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor.

  The hook on the end of the piece of wire cable is latched onto something smooth and black and curved, like a giant eggshell buried in the silt. Etched in shades of dark gray on the shell is a symbol of a dot with a circle around it. Where the hook is attached, a huge crack has formed, growing wider every second, almost to the symbol. And in that moment I realize that the symbol is some kind of barrier. Some layer that separates two worlds that should never coexist.

  I pull my eyes from the growing crack and back up through the water, back to the deck of the ship.

  “Edie, you need to leave,” Mom says.

  I shake my head. I’m not really here. Except I am here. She sees me. Is talking to me. And I remember the last words I said to her, telling her to leave me alone.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching for her, wanting her to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. Except nothing is going to be okay. This is the moment it starts. This is when everything changes.

  “Edie, you can’t be here,” Mom says. Then Dad rushes over and tries to help her with the equipment. They aren’t going to be able to free it. I’d seen it embedded in the shell.

  “You guys need to get out of here,” I say. “Forget the hook. Cut it loose.”

  Mom looks from me to the thick wire cable then starts fumbling with the screws and bolts. But her fingers are wet, and they slip. I look around the deck for some kind of bolt cutters, but then a keening wail fills the air. It’s too late.

  I don’t see it, but I feel the crack grow. It reaches the symbol. The barrier between the worlds shatters completely, sucking the ocean water inside. Everything in its path is doomed, and the USS Arcadia begins to spin as it goes down. A heavy board breaks off, hitting Dad in the head, knocking him overboard. I reach for him, but he disappears beneath the black surface. Then the entire ship lifts and turns on its side. Darkness fills in the spaces that disappear. Darkness that will take over the world. The boat begins to rip apart as it’s pulled toward the water. Mom is still on board, clinging to the railing.

  “No, Mom!” I shout. “Grab my hand!”

  I shove my hand out, and our fingers barely touch. I try to grab onto her, but everything is so wet. Her hand slips away, and she’s pulled into the dark place. The crack swallows her, the USS Arcadia, everything. The world is calm for only a second. Then lava springs to the surface, and the volcano begins to grow.

  I step back, and I’m once again on the compass rose. I stumble backward, trying to grasp what I’ve seen. Cole is next to me.

  “Mom is alive,” I say. “I’m sure of it. Dad . . . I don’t know. But Mom . . . It swallowed her. She’s trapped.” I’m breathing hard. My fingers are wet from the ocean water. My eyes sting from the salt.

  “I saw everyone,” Cole says, shaking his head. “They were all there. They all saw what happened when the crypt door opened.”

  Cole isn’t listening. I need to make him understand.

  “My parents. They dug too deep,” I say. “That’s what started this entire thing. They broke the barrier, or . . .” I don’t know how to put into words what happened. It’s like the world of the gods was held back behind that barrier. The gods were contained. But when my parents came upon it, they released it, and everything in our world began to change.

  “That’s not what started it,” Cole says. “I saw them before. My parents. Your parents. They were all there. They were together. In New Orleans. They were at the cemetery. And it’s impossible, but Iva was there.”

  I try to make sense of his words. All of us born on the same day, New Year’s Day. A plan of Iva from the very start. Except how could Iva have known sixteen years ago what would happen in the ocean on my parents’ research ship? It’s impossible, and yet somehow, it is exactly what happened. Like time is not a real thing but only an illusion attempting to tie events together logically. An attempt to keep the world sane.

  “I have to save them,” I say. “I have to go back.”

  Cole grabs for my hand, but I yank it away. Then I run back to the edge. Back to the ship.

  The scene replays, nearly the same as before. But this time I’m prepared. As I rush to Mom, I grab an oar from a lifeboat. Immediately I try to pry the screws free. But the oar slips before I can free it, and once again, I watch Dad die and Mom get sucked into the nether.

  No sooner am I back on the compass rose next to Cole, I return to the ship. I immediately try to convince my parents to get on a lifeboat. To get away from here. But it doesn’t work. Again and again, I run through the past, but it’s like a simulation with no other possible ending. After my tenth attempt, I collapse on the floor.

  Cole sinks down next to me.

  “I tried to help them,” I say, going over in my mind what I could have done differently. But there is nothing. Like it was programmed that way from the start.

  “I’m sorry, Edie,” Cole says. He wraps his arm around me, pulling me close.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think it was really happening.” I go over the logic in my mind. “I think it’s like a recording of the past. Like a program that I can interact with but can’t change. Video footage stored from a security camera and then later turned into a simulation.”

  “I saw something different,” Cole says.

  “A different simulation?”

  He shrugs as if he can’t quite accept this. “I guess. It was at a cemetery. My dad was giving a tour. Your parents were there. I mean, I’ve never seen them, but I knew them. And Taylor and Adam’s parents. And Hudson’s. They were a
ll there. My dad led them to a crypt. I don’t remember ever seeing it before. It was dark out, but the crypt started glowing. Then the door opened, and inside it was a bunch of computer equipment. Nobody wanted to go in, but then Iva came to the door, and everyone followed her inside.”

  “Iva?”

  “I know. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Except it does. Iva is timeless, either the power of the gods or a god herself, placed in the body of a child.

  “I can’t back again,” I say. “We need to pick a different direction.” As much as I want to save my parents, reliving their last moments isn’t the way to do it.

  Cole looks out across the compass rose. It’s so vast that I can’t see anything beyond the flickering sky and the faint outline of lines on the ground. “So each direction is a different simulation?”

  Each direction is a different simulation.

  “That’s got to be exactly it,” I say, getting to my feet. “And the one we just saw . . . that must have been some defining moment from the past. What we each saw was different, but both were important.”

  Mom had done so much research, always searching for something I never understood. It was no coincidence that she and Dad had picked that location in the ocean to dig. They’d chosen it specifically, based on Mom’s research of what could potentially be there. It maybe have always been their destiny. Or maybe it only became their destiny after their meeting with Iva in New Orleans. I can’t spend any more time there. I have to find the dome. We have to get out of the simulation and return to the real world.

  Cole and I hurry back to the center of the compass rose. I should be exhausted, but new energy fills me. So many possibilities. And certainly a way out of here. A way to find my parents wherever they are. A way to end this game of the gods.