Game Over Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR ANDREW KLAVAN

  “Fast paced action and creative world building make this an engaging read beyond the teen market.”

  —WORLD MAGAZINE ON HOSTAGE RUN

  “While MindWar was very good, Hostage Run is even better. Character development, nail-biting suspense, and action keep readers on the edge of their seats, and the ending? You will have to read and see!”

  —REDEEMEDREADER.COM

  “Edgar Award–winning Klavan’s well-orchestrated fantasy thriller features . . . an imaginative mix of gaming action with real-life stakes. With just the right cliff-hanger ending, this trilogy opener shows promise.”

  —BOOKLIST ON MINDWAR

  “. . . the focus is on action, and there’s just enough left unresolved to tempt readers onward.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS ON MINDWAR

  “A fantastic read. Fast-paced and wildly imaginative, MindWar is a cinematic cyber thriller with more twists than a circuit board.”

  —JOHN DIXON, AUTHOR OF PHOENIX ISLAND (INSPIRATION FOR THE CBS TV SHOW INTELLIGENCE)

  “Klavan retains his James Patterson–like gift for keeping pages turning, and the mystery behind it all . . . is a juicy one, and well handled.”

  —BOOKLIST ON NIGHTMARE CITY

  “This book will appeal to anyone who is looking for a fast-paced adventure story in which teens must do some fast thinking to survive.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL ON IF WE SURVIVE

  “Klavan turns up the heat for YA fiction . . .”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ON IF WE SURVIVE

  “The original plot is full of twists and turns and unexpected treasures. Klavan’s writing is quick, tight, exciting, and intense. The adrenaline-charged action will keep you totally immersed.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4½ STARS ON CRAZY DANGEROUS

  “A thriller that reads like a teenage version of 24 . . . an adrenaline-pumping adventure.”

  —THEDAILYBEAST.COM ON THE LAST THING I REMEMBER

  “Action sequences that never let up . . . wrung for every possible drop of nervous sweat.”

  —BOOKLIST ON THE LONG WAY HOME

  “[Klavan] is a solid storyteller with a keen eye for detail and vivid descriptive power . . . The Long Way Home is something like ‘The Hardy Boys’ crossed with the ‘My Teacher Is an Alien’ series.”

  —WASHINGTON TIMES

  “I’m buying everything Klavan is selling, from the excellent first person narrative, to the gut-punching action; to the perfect doses of humor and wit . . . it’s all working for me.”

  —JAKE CHISM, FICTIONADDICT.COM

  “Through it all, Charlie teaches lessons in Christian decency and patriotism, not by talking about those things, or even thinking about them much, but through practicing them . . . Well done, Andrew Klavan.”

  —THE AMERICAN CULTURE ON THE HOMELANDERS SERIES

  OTHER BOOKS BY ANDREW KLAVAN

  THE MINDWAR TRILOGY

  MindWar

  Hostage Run

  Game Over

  Nightmare City

  If We Survive

  Crazy Dangerous

  THE HOMELANDERS SERIES

  The Last Thing I Remember

  The Long Way Home

  The Truth of the Matter

  The Final Hour

  Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Klavan

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations are taken from The KING JAMES VERSION and The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781401688998 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Klavan, Andrew, author.

  Title: Game over / Andrew Klavan.

  Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Thomas Nelson, [2015] | Series: The MindWar trilogy ; book 3 | Summary: "Rick emerged victorious from The Realm twice. Is his luck about to run out?"-- Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015028782 | ISBN 9781401688981 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Virtual reality--Fiction. | Video games--Fiction. | Terrorism--Fiction. | Paralysis--Fiction. | People with disabilities--Fiction. | Christian life--Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K67823 Gam 2015 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028782

  16 17 18 19 20 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  LEVEL ONE: BAD DREAMS

  1. EVIL DEAD

  2. THE AWAKENED

  3. ARCANE HEARTS

  4. MARS

  5. GLASS TOWER

  LEVEL TWO: BABA YAGA'S TABLE

  6. CONTRACT KILLER

  7. MOONLIT GROVE

  8. FEAR EFFECT

  9. BLAST 'EM

  10. WITCH'S WORKSHOP

  11. THE OFFICE

  12. TRACE MEMORY

  13. EMERGENCY

  14. DEAD SPACE

  15. BETRAYAL

  LEVEL THREE: THE DEAD ATTACK

  16. MINDJACK

  17. SPY HUNTER

  18. THE GATE

  19. INVASION

  20. BREAKOUT

  21. BATTLEFIELD

  22. LONE SOLDIER

  23. RESCUE QUEST

  24. HIGH TREASON

  25. MISSION CRITICAL

  26. DOORS OF THE MIND

  BOSS LEVEL: THE KING OF THE DEAD

  27. WITCH'S WISH

  28. KILLER PLANTS FROM OUTER SPACE

  29. ARMORED CORE

  30. A TRAITOR'S LEGACY

  31. MYST

  32. CITY OF FOG

  33. MORTAL COMBAT

  EPILOGUE: GAME OVER

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LEVEL ONE:

  BAD DREAMS

  1. EVIL DEAD

  THE CITY WAS empty except for the dead, but the dead were everywhere. Rick saw them staring at him through darkened windows, their jaws slack, their eyes open but lifeless. He saw their bodies lying in the gutters. He saw them sitting slumped at the tables in the outdoor taverns, or lying crumpled in the shop doorways, as if death had found them going out or coming in. He saw the soldiers propped against the courtyard walls, their swords still gripped in their hands, their mouths twisted in an eerie rictus—that fixed grin of slow decay.

  Where am I? he thought. His heart was pounding. His head was spinning. Am I back in the Realm? What part? I’ve never seen this place before. How did I get here?

  His stare moved over the lifeless forms all around him. These weren’t human bodies, not entirely human, anyway. Some were the corpses of those weird half-Boar creatures he had done battle with before, gigantic, tusked pigs that stood on two legs and wielded their weapons with strangely shortened arms that were covered in bristling thick, spiky hair. Others were the dead Cobra Guar
ds; he’d battled them, too, on Kurodar’s WarCraft: enormous snakes that could drop from their stunted legs onto their bellies and slither after you with lightning speed and dagger-sharp fangs. And there were some forms, some corpses, he did not recognize. Horrible, human-size bats with the hideous gray faces of ancient crones, wild, wiry hair, and claws like razor blades. They looked like the Harpies he’d seen in books about Greek mythology.

  Rick felt confusion rising up inside him, filling him like a kind of fog.

  What is this place? How did I get here?

  And still he stood staring, staring at the dead. Some of the cadavers had practically rotted to skeletons. Some were worse than that, more horrible, part skeleton, still part flesh. And some were nearly whole. They seemed to have stopped breathing only a moment ago. But wherever he looked, the dead were looking back at him, grinning back at him. It made Rick’s stomach sour with disgust.

  He began to move down the street. A city street. What city? Where? Was it a dream? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt all too real.

  He stopped at an intersection of two broad highways. He slowly turned his head, passing his eyes over the scene, squinting in the bright morning light.

  Quiet. The whole city was so quiet. Flies buzzing somewhere—he didn’t want to know where or around what. And now and then there came a faint breath of wind that carried the foul stench of rotting meat with it. There was no sun visible in the weirdly yellow sky, and yet the sky seemed to radiate heat. It occurred to Rick that even the fresh bodies would not stay fresh for long.

  He wanted to get out of here. Fast. Now. But which way? Where to? The fog of confusion filled his mind.

  Now he lifted his gaze to the buildings all around him. This was—it had once been—a great city. Golden spires, skyscrapers, domes, and arches soaring into the air. As his eyes traveled over the rising walls of the buildings, his ears slowly became attuned to a different kind of sound, soft within the silence, a steady spatter suggestive of life.

  A fountain.

  Even in his confusion, his heart rose, his hopes rose. He thought, She travels by water.

  With that, he lowered his eyes from the building tops—and he saw the corpse standing right in front of him.

  His breath caught. It was so close, only a few feet away. One of the Boar Soldiers. And dead—dead most definitely. The pig face and part of the barrel-shaped chest and belly had started to decay. Some of its bones were visible through the ragged flesh. It wasn’t breathing. Its eyes were glassy. It was staring and smiling that eerie rigid smile like the others. Definitely dead.

  And it was holding a sword.

  Stunned, so confused, Rick could only stand there, staring at the thing. It stared back at him.

  Then, before he could recover from his shock, it lifted the sword and swung the blade in a vicious arc toward his throat.

  It was a killing blow, meant to sweep his head clean off. The dead Boar Soldier sent up a ghostly echoing squeal as it swung, and Rick screamed, too, in surprise and fear. At the same time, he reacted, moving on pure instinct. Despite the injuries that had ended his football career, he still had the reflexes of a star athlete. He squatted—fast—and the deadly blade swept over him, so close he could feel the breeze of its passing stir his hair.

  The instant the sword was past, Rick sprang up straight and—still acting on instinct—stepped in to block the Boar’s return stroke. He shoved the beast, both hands hitting its shoulder hard. Being dead, the Boar Soldier did not have much strength or substance—none at all really. The moment Rick touched it, the beast staggered back and fell to the pavement.

  Rick turned to run and the second corpse grabbed him, its dead fingers wrapping around his wrist as its grinning, skeletal face leaned in close to him, its mouth wide as if to rip Rick’s throat out with its teeth.

  Rick let out another cry, a high-pitched cry of animal terror. He tore his wrist free of the dead thing’s grip, feeling the claws scrape painfully over his skin.

  Then he was running, running fast, his breath coming in panting sobs of panic.

  Where was he? What was happening? Was this MindWar? Was it a dream?

  Confused, terrified, he could form only one clear thought in his mind, the last thought he’d had before the creatures attacked him:

  She travels by water.

  He kept thinking the same thing over and over again. He had to find that fountain.

  But now all the city’s dead were waking. Rising from the seats in the taverns. Grabbing hold of the doorframes for support and slithering to their feet. The Boar Soldiers were picking up their swords. The Cobra Guards—now mostly skeletal snake remains like something you might see in a natural history museum—were slithering toward him over the ground, sluggishly at first, then with increasing speed. Those flying bat-things with the faces of women—the dead, rotten faces of screaming women—lifted into the air and began circling toward him. In whatever direction Rick looked, they were there, coming to life, coming to get him.

  He ran to the corner. Dared to stop there for a second. He couldn’t hear the fountain over the sound of his own desperate breathing, but the noise had not been far off. It had to be somewhere around here.

  He turned to the left—and sure enough he saw it. In an open plaza at the end of the next street, there was a large round basin of rose marble full of silver water. A circle of small geysers flared up out of the water, dancing around a central geyser that shot high into the air. On the far side of the fountain there stood a fanciful building, something out of a fairy tale: half a dozen red spires capped with onion-shaped domes of various designs, some striped red and white, others with diamond ridges of yellow and green, others pure gold.

  The plaza was swarming with dead things, walking, slithering, flying. They all seemed to spot Rick at the same moment. And they all came after him.

  Rick thought to turn and run, but the dead were behind him, too, slithering over the ground and running toward him and flying at him through the air with hoarse, echoic shrieks of rage. In another moment they would be all over him—their swords, their bared fangs, their sweeping claws. They would tear him to pieces.

  He had only one hope. Mariel. And she traveled by water.

  He charged toward the fountain. He was sick with fear. He could feel it coursing all through him like a sort of liquid electricity: lightning flashes in the fog of his confusion. But as fearful as he was, he knew he was somehow beyond fear too. Something had happened to him in these months since he had first entered the MindWar Realm. Something had returned to him, in slow stages at first, and then all at once. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it felt like a sort of pulsing power at the core of him, a pulsing light that radiated out from his center. Whenever the fear threatened to overwhelm him with its darkness, that power, that light, beat it back and he pushed on.

  It was not a new thing. He had always had that power and light inside him when he had stepped onto the football field in the old days. He lost them for a while after the truck had crashed into his car and shattered his legs. He had retreated to his room, locked the door, drawn the curtains, and played video games hour after hour. But the power and light had returned to him almost fully now; he could feel it. His mother, he knew, would have called it faith. Well, faith was as good a word as any. Whatever it was, it pushed the fear back, beat by beat, and kept it from taking him over. It gave him strength even as the dead surrounded him.

  Using that strength, conquering his fear with it, he ran right into the thick of the attack.

  In a few steps the dead were all around him. The ground was alive with them. The sky was dark with them. They besieged him on every side.

  Rick plunged through them like a quarterback with the ball, hitting one hard with his shoulder, straight-arming another in the face. Whenever he touched them, they collapsed to the ground. Wherever they fell, a passage of daylight opened before him.

>   Dodging the flashing swords, the lunging Cobras, the swiping claws of the flying Harpies, he faked left, and charged right, and ran down the corridor of daylight as fast as he could.

  He neared the fountain. And, yes, she rose up before him! A thrilling sight. She always was. Beautiful and majestic, queenly and yet warmly kind, Mariel’s figure took shape in the silver water and sprang up from the heart of the geyser itself. Instantly, she stretched out her hand to him, and the hand burbled out like mercury until a gleaming sword grew from her fingertips. It was the same sword she had given him before, its graceful hilt ending in a model of her own lovely face.

  Rick shouldered another Boar Soldier aside. He cried out and kicked back the head of a Cobra. He straight-armed a Harpy as she screamed down at him. He reached out and grabbed the sword.

  The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, he felt a new surge of strength and courage blossoming inside him. It was as if Mariel, in handing him the weapon, had somehow added her unshakable faith to his own.

  “Rick! Over here!”

  A new voice. He looked up—and there was the sparkling blue form of Favian, his other MindWar friend. The flashing blue sprite was standing in the doorway of the fanciful building. The door was open behind him, and as so often in the past, Favian was beckoning him with a glittery hand: “This way! Come on!”

  A Harpy shrieked down at Rick out of the sky, its face half rotten. Rick swung Mariel’s blade with all his might, and the face was gone—the head was gone—and the body of the beast came crashing down. A huge skeletal Cobra rose up off the earth, baring its fangs, ready to strike. Rick didn’t even pause from the last blow but continued the motion, sweeping the blade back at the Cobra. The sword struck hard, scattering the Cobra’s bones in a dozen different directions.

  And still the dead came on. Rick had to jump up onto the edge of the fountain’s basin to get away from their reaching claws and fangs. Balancing on the slippery marble, he ran around the basin’s arc, then leapt off it and onto the building’s steps. Another moment and he raced up to where Favian was standing—Favian with his features twisted in anxiety as he stared fearfully at the charging dead. Favian was more of a worrier than a warrior. He had never had much courage. He said so himself. And yet he had somehow always been able to come through when Rick needed him most. He stood his ground now until Rick was beside him.