He never played the disc again. He put it back in the box, taped it shut, and wrote on it in black marker: "NOT JUNK."

The disc had been pristine then. A perfect ring of reflective data, a silver mirror holding the ghost of Olympus.

A long pause. Then a low, rumbling chuckle. The first real laugh he'd heard from the man in years.

He reached the Labyrinth on a Tuesday night, three weeks later. The basement was cold. A single pizza box sat on the floor. He hadn't shaved in days. He looked like Kratos, if Kratos had a software engineering job and high cholesterol.

He started a new game. The hardest difficulty.

He'd never beaten God of War III . He and his dad had gotten to the Labyrinth, just before the final fight with Zeus. Then life had intervened. A move. A new school. His dad's hours getting longer. The disc had been shelved, and the save file was long since deleted, a ghost in a dead console's hard drive.