Nico and Peter had retrieved them without asking any questions. Kiah was tense, her eyes constantly moving toward the game table, as if she missed it. Together they had gone first to Nadia and then to Gareth, and, looking for a place that seemed safe, they had ended up outside on the deck.

  The code scrolled beneath the ship's hull, lines of symbols moving like a continuous stream. Around them, nothing. The landscape was black as a blank screen.

  Peter spoke first. “The ship is off the map.”

  Nadia took a shallow breath, then said, “I see,” without any surprise.

  Gareth, on the other hand, raised an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly to one side, listening.

  Kiah stiffened. “Off the map in what sense?”

  “In the literal sense,” said Nico. “It doesn't appear anywhere. It's as if it doesn't exist.”

  Gareth crossed his arms. “And what does that mean?”

  Nico sighed. “That Io, Kiah, and Leo could be logged out at any moment without knowing where we'll end up.”

  Peter added, “Well, we don't know if the system is already looking for them to log them out, or if it has already lost them and so nothing will happen, they just won't disconnect. And that's the best-case scenario: they could remain connected as ghosts, neither in nor out of the game... Let's hope the system doesn't find them, right?”

  Kiah swallowed. “Wait. If we're off the map... then the safety rules...” He paused, then continued more quickly. “The automatic procedures might not activate. Which means no recovery.” He ran a hand through his hair. "This is a disaster... I have to get out of here.

  Mom and Dad don't know that I play at night without really sleeping. They don't know about the headset. If they knew, I..."

  Then Nico blurted out, “Leo's gone.”

  There was immediate silence.

  “What do you mean, gone?” asked Nadia.

  “He's not at the table anymore. He's not in the room anymore. We can't find him.”

  Kiah stared at Nico with eyes as big as saucers and began pacing frantically along the bridge. “Do you think he's been logged out? If so, why are you and I still here?”

  Nico shook his head: “No. The game will try to log us out at noon, they haven't served lunch yet, so...”

  Peter added, “Besides, the logout problem isn't the most pressing issue right now.”

  Nico nodded.

  “What else is going on?” roared Gareth.

  “The ship is under some kind of spell. We don't know how it's possible, but we've all fallen victim to it, some more than others, repeating the same behaviors over and over again. The spell enticed us all to gamble away our coins.”

  Kiah's eyes widened: “Is that why you were worried about my empty coin cup?”

  Nico nodded: “We believe Leo was taken to a different area of the ship, but we don't know why.”

  Peter added: “We've seen it happen to others, one guy was taken away right in front of us.”

  Gareth narrowed his eyes: “Did you see where they took them?”

  Nico and Peter nodded.

  “Well, let's go get him and end this,” Gareth roared.

  Nadia shook her head: “Not so fast, we need evidence.”

  Kiah, who was pacing nervously along the deck, stopped, took a deep breath, then nodded in agreement. “We have to check. We have to ask around. Waiters, gamblers, someone must have seen him.”

  They returned together, perhaps too close, but neither wanted to move away.

  They asked the waiters, receiving only vague answers: “No, I'm sorry, I haven't seen anyone matching that description. Would you like to sit down for a game of dice?” "Freckles? No, sir, I haven't seen any young men with freckles; are you sure he came on board? Would you like to play the slot machines? Maybe you should calm down a bit, you seem agitated.“ ”I'm sorry, miss, I don't know how to help you, but if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask for our help. Enjoy your stay on board."

  They also tried asking the players, but the result was even more disappointing, as they were addicted to the Captain's spell: “Was he here? No, I don't think so.” “Never seen him.” “Maybe you're confused, kid. Have you had a few too many drinks?”

  While Nico was talking to a player at the card table, he saw two waiters moving together out of the corner of his eye. Nico saw them approach a pale woman standing in front of a slot machine, her fingers clenched around an empty glass. Two figures approached her: the usual waiters, with fake smiles and gentle movements.

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  The woman's gaze passed over everything, without stopping on anything. Then one of the two bent down and spoke to her in a low voice. Nico saw her shoulders stiffen for a moment, then the woman's face changed: her eyes lit up and her lips curved into an incredulous smile.

  She stood up without saying a word as the waiters guided her toward the small door, always the same one. Nico watched the scene until the heavy red curtain closed behind them.

  He felt his stomach tighten.

  Keily appeared beside them as if she had always been there. “You're asking too many uncomfortable questions.”

  Nico turned abruptly. “You know something.”

  She lowered her voice, a friendly, fake smile on her suddenly tired face. “I have information. But not here. And not now.”

  “When?” Kiah asked, too quickly.

  “I'm on break soon.”

  Keily was leaning against the sink, a lit cigarette between her fingers. The smoke hung low, wafting in front of her face.

  Peter approached and inhaled a puff; Nico noticed the gesture and the annoyance in Keily's eyes immediately afterwards.

  Keily looked him up and down, her eyebrows raised. “Want one?” she asked, indicating the cigarette with a slight nod of her head.

  Peter shook his head. “No, thank you. You're kind, but no. It's just that this smell that hangs over this ship is so annoying... it reminds me of something, but I don't know what. Yet it does.”

  “It's all on purpose.”

  Nico turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  Keily smiled, a bitter smile, then sighed. “My handsome sailor,” she said softly. Nico felt the heat rise to his face. “They're common herbs, no spell. They burn them with the coal in the boilers, so the steam carries the smell through the pipes and spreads it everywhere.”

  She paused for a moment to take a drag on her cigarette. “It's used to stun and addict the passengers, to push them to gamble again and again. All they need is for the air to remain saturated.”

  She shook her head slowly. "You feel it, don't you? That feeling of dizziness, the heavy head. Then you get used to it. Without realizing it, people start to depend on this air, to feel worse when it's missing. That's why many come back, even if they don't have anywhere to go. There are people who have lost entire buildings in here."

  “What is it?” asked Peter, his eyes reduced to two slits.

  “Absinthe and belladonna...” murmured Keily.

  Peter clapped his hands, his eyes suddenly lit up with understanding. “I knew it. So that's why Malaspina was coming to Clarissa's.”

  Keily frowned. Nico made a vague gesture with his hand, as if to dismiss the thought, even though he now understood. Now he knew how Clarissa and Peter knew Captain Malaspina: the man got the herbs he needed to stun his passengers from them.

  Keily looked at the door, her eyes darting quickly from one of them to the other. “Listen, there's not much time,” she whispered. "No one on this ship is free. We're all prisoners. We used to be travelers, now we're slaves."

  Nico's eyes widened. “You too?”

  Keily nodded. “This isn't a normal ship, as you've noticed. I don't know how it works, but it's famous throughout the kingdom. Thanks to this ship, travel times can be cut down: a week, a month... in just one day you can reach your destination.”

  Peter nodded. “Yes, I knew something about it.”

  “A month in a day?” asked Kiah, puzzled.

  Keily took a drag on her cigarette; the tip lit up. “Yes, but the price is high.”

  “What do you mean?” roared Gareth.

  The girl sighed. Her tense, hardened face suddenly made her look older, marked by pain. "I was the lady-in-waiting to my aunt, a cruel, very wealthy woman. I was a girl of humble origins: my parents sent me to live in her house when I was eight years old. I spent years serving her. One day, out of nowhere, a chasm opened up in the middle of the living room, and huge creatures entered, with shadow faces and deformed expressions."

  “Nerakth,” Nico muttered under his breath.

  Keily nodded. “Now I know what they are, but at the time it was one of the first attacks.”

  “What happened?” asked Kiah, her face tense.

  “I ran away. Other servants weren't as lucky as me. My aunt was also hit, grazed. We fled, we saved ourselves, but shortly after, she began to show strange symptoms...”

  “She didn't remember,” Nico interrupted, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  Keily looked at him, her head tilted to one side. “How do you know that?”

  Nico lifted his jacket. “Did her wound look like this?”

  Keily's eyes grew as big as saucers, then filled with tears. “You too...”

  Nico nodded.

  “And then? What happened? How did you become Captain Malaspina's slave?”

  “My aunt tried every kind of treatment: injections, leeches, sweat tents, ice baths... everything. But nothing stopped the spread of those hideous branches, and her memory got worse and worse. A healer advised her to go to Narbras: he said that the best healing surgeons in the kingdom were there.”

  “Well, in a way...” Peter muttered, with his crooked smile and bright eyes.

  Nico frowned and motioned for Keily to continue.

  "To make a long story short: the journey from where I came from would have taken two weeks. Then I don't know who told my aunt about this ship. When I boarded the Passific, the lights, the sounds, the festive atmosphere won me over. When I was given coins, my first coins to spend, to gamble with, and they were mine alone, ‘personal,’ said the captain — I felt like the happiest girl in the world. I thought I could win a fortune and free myself from my aunt's clutches."

  Keily paused. “Instead, I lost everything. The captain offered my aunt the chance to redeem me, in exchange for money, I imagine. But she refused.” She sighed. “I've been here ever since.”

  “But that's horrible,” Kiah murmured, her eyes streaked with tears. Then she pulled herself together, her eyes wide and her face tense.

  “What about Leo?”

  Keily exhaled slowly. “If he's lost everything... I know where he is.”

  Nico sighed. Getting off that ship was going to be much harder than they had thought.

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