I am beyond thrilled to participate in the Cover Reveal for Doomed by Tracy Deebs. Last month I went to an event at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego where Tracy Deebs was appearing. She was there for the release of her latest YA book Tempest Unleashed. There she shared her upcoming book Doomed. The excitement and enthusiasm Tracy had while describing her upcoming book makes me want to read it even more.
Here it is!!
Beat the Game, Save the World.
One Stuxnet type worm,
One Greek-themed MMO,
One real world scavenger hunt,
Three teenagers on the run
And a ten-day countdown to total nuclear annihilation .
Pandora’s Box isn’t just a myth anymore …
When
seventeen-year-old Pandora Walker opens an email attachment, she
uploads the most frightening worm ever invented—and in doing so, brings
about total technological Armageddon. Everything from the internet to
communications to utilities collapses and suddenly Pandora finds herself
on the run from Homeland Security, the FBI and every police department
in the country, all of whom blame her for the technological wasteland
sweeping across the U.S.. With the help of stepbrothers Eli and Theo,
her neighbors and the two hottest guys in school-- plus codes encrypted
in a world famous MMO-- she sets out on a real life scavenger hunt that
only she can solve. A scavenger hunt that pits her against one of the
most brilliant men in the world—the maker of the Pandora worm. Her
father. Only by unraveling the clues left by him in the MMO, and in
real-world places around the U.S., can they hope to beat the clock
ticking the days off until the entire planet is Doomed.
Doesn't that sound intriguing? I'm ready to read it NOW!!
Doomed will be released January 8th, 2013 by Walker Childrens. Until then we have this excerpt to tide us over.
Excerpt
“That’s
not the really puzzling part,” Agent Lessing finally continues.
“Especially if you insist on your innocence in this matter, how is it
that starting at seven-fifteen this morning, someone from this IP
address opened the twelve different sections of code that make up this
worm and uploaded them onto the internet, one by one?”
Emily
gasps and I want to protest. I want to tell the FBI agent that she’s
crazy. That I have no idea what she’s talking about. But the truth of
the matter is that suddenly I do. I know exactly what I was doing at
seven-fifteen this morning.
The
tentative fairy tale I’ve been building in my head all day—the one I
wasn’t even aware of until right now—collapses. I swear, I feel it
shatter and my stomach, though close to empty, chooses that moment to
revolt.
I spring up from my chair.
“Hey, you can’t go anywhere. Sit back down!” Lessing tells me firmly, reaching into her jacket and pulling out her gun.
I
don’t stop; I can’t. Even so, I barely make it to the trash can in
time. I don’t know how long I sit there, puking my guts up, but by the
time I finish, Lessing has put away her gun. Emily is looking at me in
dismay, while Mackaray and Lundstrom—who rushed in at Lessing’s alarmed
shout—are wearing identical expressions of smug triumph. Even Lessing
seems satisfied, and I know it’s because I’ve blown it big time.
It’s pretty hard to protest your innocence when you get so upset by what they’re telling you that you hurl.
I
don’t get up right away. Instead, I stay on the floor, my head resting
against the cool wood of a cabinet. I think about my laptop, stuffed
in my backpack, with all the incriminating evidence on it. I think
about what else is in the bag—namely the pictures from my father that
I’d shoved in there at the last minute. All twelve of them.
I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to figure out why me, and the
answer has been there all along. The psychopath who did this, the one
who chose me as this harbinger of destruction, is my father.
He did
this to me. Used my curiosity against me—and the world—and turned me
into a modern-day Pandora. Like my namesake before me, I’ve brought a
new kind of evil into the world and there’s no going back. Maybe
Emily’s dad and the others can fix it. Maybe they can’t. But either
way, I have a feeling that deep, dark hole they want to throw me in just
got a lot deeper and darker.
Every writing campaign I’ve ever partaken in for Amnesty International
flashes through my head. Letter after letter about Guantanamo Bay.
Sierra Leon. Somalia. Story after story of Americans taken to foreign
countries and tortured because they’re suspected of terrorism.
Even
as I tell myself I’m being silly, I hear the president saying the
United States doesn’t tolerate terrorists. That’s what I am, what my
father has turned me into with a few strokes of my keyboard, a few
picture downloads that I thought were to celebrate my seventeenth
birthday.
A cyber terrorist.
I reach for the trash can again as dry heaves shake my entire body.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What. Am. I. Going. To. Do?
Behind me, I hear movement and brace myself to be yanked to my feet.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Emily settles on the ground next to
me and hands me a bottle of water. I rinse my mouth out, drink a few
sips. Then she’s hugging me, stroking my hair. “It’s going to be okay,
Pandora,” she whispers to me. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
I open my mouth, plan on telling them everything and begging for mercy.
Instead, only four words come out. Four words I never thought I’d
say. “I want a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Mackaray’s eyes gleam with triumph as he crouches down
next to me. “Pandora, where you’re going, lawyers rank right up there
with fairies and unicorns as mythical creatures.”
“You can’t do that!” Emily protests. “She didn’t do anything wrong! My father—“
“Your father is one of an elite few who could pull off something of
this magnitude, Ms. Wood.” Lundstrom speaks up for the first time in a
long while. “So I suggest you close your mouth unless you want to bring
a lot of trouble down on him as well.”
Emily shuts up then, her eyes wide and frightened as she presses her
back against the cabinet, almost like she wants to shrink inside. The
arms wrapped around me start to tremble, but I barely notice since I’m
shaking just as hard.
“She didn’t do anything,” I tell them, wondering if I should just tell them everything?
If I should send them next door to retrieve my laptop from Eli and Theo and get them involved in this?
Do
I admit that my father is behind this and let them arrest him, lock him
up and throw away the key like they’re threatening to do to me? But if
I admit I had an unwitting part in this, are they going to believe me?
The looks on their faces say no, that they’ve already made up their
minds about my guilt. My best bet, then, is to wait for Mr. Wood. He’s
one of the best computer security guys in the country. He’ll know what
to do.
I
shut down then, refuse to say anything else. They keep asking me
questions, but I ignore them. Even when Mackaray grabs onto my arms and
lifts me into a standing position, I don’t protest. I’ll wait for Mr.
Wood, I tell myself. He’ll be able to fix this.
As
we wait, the house grows quiet around me. The front door opens and
closes numerous times and I hear the slam of car doors outside. The rev
of engines that mark the end of the search. Everyone else has done
their jobs and now I’m left alone with these three.
Mr.
Wood finally arrives, with a police escort. He’s all outrage and
concern as he wraps his arms around us, but it becomes clear very
quickly that he won’t be able to help me. He’s not my parent or
guardian and no matter how much he argues with the agents—he knows two
of them personally—they aren’t budging. But at least Emily seems safe,
and that’s something.
“I
have to go to the bathroom,” I say, after Mr. Wood’s been here about an
hour. They’ve told him both he and Emily are free to go, but he hasn’t
budged. I know it’s because he doesn’t want to leave me alone with
them.
“Tough,” Lundstrom tells me. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Jesus, Mike, she’s just a kid!” Mr. Wood exclaims.
“She unleashed cyber Armageddon—computer genius trumps kid every day of the week.”
“Please,”
I say. “I really need to use the restroom.” Even though I don’t. I
just want a couple of minutes alone to think, a couple of minutes where
they aren’t staring at me like a bug under a microscope.
“I’ll
take her,” Mackaray finally says, and I almost change my mind. I don’t
want to be alone with him, even for as long as it takes to walk to my
bathroom. But it’s not like I have a choice now, not after I made such a
big deal of having to go.
We
leave the kitchen together and when I try to head upstairs to my
bathroom, he grabs my elbow and directs me to the half-bath down the
hall. The one without any windows. I shake my head in disbelief. They
already think I’m some kind of genius hacker-- now they think I can
mastermind an escape from federal custody as well? Who the hell do
these people think I am?
“Leave the door open,” Mackaray tells me when we get there.
“What?” I stare at him incredulously.
“You heard me.” The face staring back at me is implacable.
“Where am I going to go? There’s no other way out of the bathroom!”
“Take
it or leave it.” Something moves in his eyes and I know he’s waiting
for me to leave it. But I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Does your wife know you get your kicks by listening to teenage girls pee?”
The
hand on my elbow gets tighter, his fingers digging into my flesh until I
start to see stars. He pulls me towards him and whispers, “You don’t
want to play games with me, little girl. I win every time.”
I’m
straining so hard in the other direction that when he finally lets me
go, I stumble, crack my funny bone hard against the door frame. He
laughs, at me and at the helpless tears of pain that spring to my eyes.
I go into the bathroom, leaving the door partially ajar. I turn on the faucet, splash water on my face, blink back the tears.
“Hurry up!” he says after a minute. “We don’t have all night.”
Before I can respond, the lights blink once, twice, then go out completely. My entire house is plunged into an inky blackness.
“What
the hell!” Mackaray says, slamming the bathroom door open all the way.
“Either get it done or not, kid. You’ve got one minute and then I’m
taking you back to the kitchen.”
I
barely hear him over the pounding of my own heart and the panic clawing
through me, trumping everything else. Even my fear of going to jail.
I hate the dark, hate it, hate it, hate it. Ever since I was five and
ended up getting trapped in my uncle’s storage shed, under a pile of
heavy boxes that fell when I was looking for my Christmas presents.
There’d been no lights, or windows, and I’d laid there in the dark for
hours, crying, convinced that no one was ever going to find me.
Curiosity had been my downfall then as well.
“Tom?” Lessing’s voice drifts through the hall.
“Yeah?”
“Just checking. It looks like the whole grid just went down.”
“I can see that.” Lessing must catch the sarcasm in his voice because she shuts up quickly.
“Pandora—“
In his voice is a warning and I know my time is up. But he stops
abruptly and there’s a muffled thump, followed by a slithering sound
that has me imagining a bunch of snakes sliding down my hallway. I
press myself back against the wall and try not to scream.
Something large moves in front of the doorway. “Pandora?”
“Theo?” I whisper incredulously.
He
leans forward, until his face is only centimeters from mine. “Let’s
go.” His voice is pitched so low that I have to strain to hear it even
this close.
“Go where?”
“Out of here. Come on, we’ve only got a couple of minutes before they come looking for you.”
“Looking for—you want me to break out of federal custody?”
“Would you rather I leave you here?”
“I
don’t know. I—“ My head is spinning. Of all the ways I envisioned
tonight ending, this wasn’t even in the top thousand. “Where’s
Mackaray?”
“I hit him. He’s out, but I don’t know for how long. Now are you coming or not?”
Am I? I look back at the kitchen, where Emily and her father wait with the other agents. I can’t leave her—
It’s like Theo can read my thoughts, because he says, “Emily will be fine. She’s not the one in trouble here.”
He’s
right; I know he is. But still. Can I do this? Bad enough to be a
federal suspect—but to be a fugitive? How is it even possible? They’ll
find us in minutes.
Except,
the electricity just went out. Communications are gone. No cameras to
catch us running by. No way to get out word of a widespread manhunt
(or in this case womanhunt). No way for them to track me when they’re
basically blind, deaf and dumb. It could work.
But still, do I really want to do this? Do I really want to go down this road?
Hell, yes, I do.
I
slip my hand into Theo’s, not bothering to ask how he knew I was in
trouble, and we glide as silently as possible through the hallway into
the living room. He seems to know exactly where he’s going and I wonder
how long he’s been here, prowling around the house, without anyone
knowing.
He
slides open the glass door that leads to the deck just enough that we
can slip out. As he silently closes the door behind us, I realize this
is it.
I really have reached the point of no return.
How it all started: My very first posts were reviews of The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells and Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine. Two reviews in one day. Wow, I was ambitious. I quickly learned that I couldn't keep up with that pace and now I post between 3 to 4 reviews a month (with some months with no reviews at all). For me, book blogging has been more than just reviewing, but sharing books that I love whether that was "spotlighting" them or hosting giveaways. And I love hosting giveaways!
