T+6 Hours

The Erebus didn’t look like a cruise ship. Not from the inside at least. It looked like someone’s impossible fantasy of a palace.

From the table where Brianna McDavid sat—wearing a pale pink dress that hit above her knees and gold heels—she could see the entire length of Helios, the deck restaurant on Floor 14. It sometimes doubled as a lounge area for the pool, or it could be rented out as a restaurant in the evening. Floor-to-ceiling doors wrapped the upper deck in a semicircle of black ocean and night from the breeze, but the ceiling was open. Every table was draped in white linen, littered with blue-glass plates, gold flatware, and actual oil lamps. It looked like an ancient Greek festival. There were plates of charred lamb, bowls of olives glistening like aquarium pebbles, platters of grape leaves curled tight as scrolls. Salt and rosemary hung thick in the air. The ocean smell was brine and ozone, so fresh it could only be piped in as a flex.

Eighty-six seniors from Veritas International Academy, VIA, were arranged in concentric arcs radiating from the dais, and every single one of them was overdressed. The Gold and Diamond tiers had treated “Greek formal” as a challenge—gowns constructed of nothing but netting and sequins, tuxes in improbable shades of champagne and, in one case, holographic rose. The girls at the neighboring table had clearly coordinated, each with her own theme: sapphire, citrine, fire-opal. Together they reflected enough light to jumpstart the sun.

Bri’s dress was the color of ballet slippers and maybe a third as expensive as the next cheapest outfit in the room. It was also the only thing she owned that didn’t make her feel like she was wearing a disguise. She kept her hands in her lap, twisting the keyband around her wrist. The staff had called the luminous gold cuff a “universal access key,” but it felt more like a tracker. It was warm against her skin, the stamped Erebus sigil pressing a faint pattern into her.

On the dais, Anri Ishikawa, the class president, rose to his full height and tapped his glass with a knife. He did not do this as a joke, or with a smirk, but with perfect confidence that the whole room would go silent. And it did. His seat next to me sat empty.

Anri looked like the model they would use for the concept art of a prince, then scale up by fifteen percent. Black hair, gold eyes, and the kind of athlete’s frame that made suits and tonight’s black tux with a black tie looked like the default setting for his body. He raised his champagne flute with effortless grace. His smile hit the whole room at once.

“I want to thank the Captain, the staff, and everyone who made this amazing trip possible,” he said, with a light French accent. “I would like to propose a toast, for those who can legally join me, to a voyage that will go down in VIA history. To us.”

Laughter and the sipping from champagne flutes echoed around the room. Then the ripple of applause. Bri clapped along, her jaw locked so tight it hurt.

The rocking of the boat was a physical violence. A low, grinding motion that churned everything inside her. She did her breathing exercises behind a napkin, but it was no use. More meds? No, not on top of the cocktail she’d built to survive the flight—an anti-anxiety pill for the takeoff, her usual antidepressant to dull the edges, and finally, a sleeping pill when the turbulence got too bad. A desperate swallow, and then… nothing. At least for a little while.

Now her stomach was a centrifuge, and the lights around the perimeter of the restaurant seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat. She wanted to be anywhere else. Maybe she could just cut out?

As the laughter and chatter returned to normal, Bri made herself stand. She put both palms flat on the table for leverage, careful to keep her dress from riding up, and excused herself in a voice she did not recognize.

Gregori nodded but didn’t look up from his phone. Her other neighbor, Mimi, just ignored her.

As Bri stepped away from the table, a scent so powerful it made her eyes sting—grilled meat, lemon, and something floral beneath it, maybe lilies in the table arrangements—immediately blindsided her. Too much. She wove past a waiter carrying a whole roasted fish, narrowly missed a trailing stiletto, and started for the exit.

She was halfway across the carpet when her heel caught in the rug. She pitched forward, arms pinwheeling, then managed to snag the back of a chair and right herself. Every eye at the table she’d almost collided with was on her.

Bri smiled, part sheepishly—the nonchalant, happens-all-the-time kind—then broke for the door.

The laughter and music that had filled the room began to fragment as she moved. It sounded less like a party and more like a soundtrack of itself, a laugh track that had been clipped and looped too many times. Every step made her more aware of the tightness in her chest. She pressed her hand flat against her sternum, the way the school nurse had shown her, and counted her breaths. It didn’t help.

At the glass doors, she glanced back. In the thick of the crowd, Anri was standing with his usual fan club—Victoria, Queen B, and their retinue. He was mid-laugh, but as she watched, the sound seemed to catch in his throat. He looked directly toward the doors, his smile tightening at the edges.

She shoved through the doors and into the corridor beyond, leaving the white linen and gold light behind her.

The hallway was cooler, quieter, at least at first. Bri stopped just outside, braced her hands on the stainless steel railing, and inhaled deeply. The air tasted different here. Not just cleaner, but charged, like the way the sky smells before a storm.

A low, constant hum vibrated through the deck under her feet—a reminder that the entire ship was moving, even if the designers had done everything to hide it. The lights along the ceiling flickered in a slow, deliberate pattern, blue and gold alternating with each pulse.

A student couple walked past her, barely glancing up. The girl was in a dress that looked like it had been constructed from shredded aluminum; both had their heads down. The guy was a few inches shorter than her and trailed behind, face buried in his phone. Only the slight rise in their voices as they argued about something—not even glancing at each other—marked them as real people and not runway zombies.

She started walking, her pace quickening as she distanced herself from the restaurant and its social gravity. Her shoes made a quiet click against the ship’s synthetic wood floor, and the echo followed her down the hall.

Everywhere, the cruise line’s branding: white-blue-and-gold banners, abstract waves curling around the Erebus logo, a glass case containing a model of the ship mid-journey, every deck and window perfectly rendered. There was even a mural—classical Greek heroes rendered in mosaic, except the faces looked suspiciously like VIA’s student council, Anri front and center, toga-clad and beaming.

She was three corridors away from Helios before the nausea really kicked in.

Bri ducked into the nearest women’s restroom, slammed the door, and prayed she could make it to a toilet in time.

For a moment, the ship felt like it was holding its breath with her.

Dark walnut paneled every wall, so glossy it looked wet. Gold-veined marble cut into enormous, unnecessary slabs made up the counters, the floors, and even the toilet stalls. The amber sconces cast a glow fit for an old-money cocktail lounge, but the faint, underlying smell of a clinical cleaning solution stung her nose.

Bri made it two steps inside before the nausea punched up from her gut and doubled her over.

She staggered to the first open stall, braced herself on the marble divider, and fell to her knees in front of the toilet. The surface was so clean she could see her own reflection in the bowl, hair a red haze over her glasses, eyes already starting to water. She gripped the toilet seat with both hands and waited for her body to decide what came next. The sounds echoed through the marble and walnut.