The Archivist turned, shifting his blind gaze to the rose garden next to which they had stopped. He picked up a pair of shears from the ground and, with one clean cut, severed a rose. Nico felt a shiver run down his spine; another followed. With measured movements, the man continued to cut a dozen roses, one after the other, and Nico received them all in his hands, one at a time, while a subtle tension gripped his stomach.

  Finally, the Archivist stopped. They were near a small lake, a pool of water reflecting the sun, with scattered trees casting patches of shade where they could shelter from the heat.

  With an elegant movement, the Archivist held out his hands to Nico and, after a moment's hesitation, Nico realized he wanted the roses. He handed them over carefully; the Archivist took them delicately and then clenched them in his fists. Nico saw the roses: first red, fluffy, and bright, crack under the man's grip; a shiver ran down his spine and his hands clenched involuntarily. When the Archivist threw them into the lake, his breath caught in his throat without him understanding why.

  Nico, his eyes wide, watched the flowers, stripped of their beauty, try to stay afloat. Then, one by one, they sank, and only one remained floating.

  “Do you understand what I mean, subject N_01?” said the Archivist, his voice calm and low.

  Nico stared at him, swallowed hard to try to get rid of the lump in his throat, then shook his head.

  “This is your mind,” the man began, pointing to the lake, “the roses are your memories crushed by the power of Erebos.”

  Nico nodded in a rush of realization, but the lump in his throat did not ease, and a shiver ran through his body.

  “The sunken roses are the lost memories.”

  “So that one rose floating is the memories Nico still has in his head?” Leo exclaimed, curious. Then he added, “Holy salami, that doesn't seem like much...”

  The Archivist turned his face to Leo, an expressionless mask, milky eyes fixed on him. Kiah squeezed Leo's arm, and the boy, realizing his exclamation, curled up on himself, trying to disappear. Nico's lips curled, but he too thought that what his friend had said was true: it wasn't much, he had little left to remember.

  “Your friend is quite right. Those are the memories you have left,” continued the Archivist.

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  Nico frowned: “With all due respect, I don't think I have so few memories... I mean, I remember my childhood, I remember my school years...”

  The Archivist raised a hand to silence him: “Careful, subject N_01. I'm not referring to all your memories, I'm referring to the memories that Erebos had access to.”

  Nico nodded, staring at the single rose still floating in the middle of the pond.

  “When you arrived here, brought by your friends, I had to work with what I had. No backup copy, I didn't have time to look for it. I worked in another way. I had to do a data integrity check.”

  “What?” said Nico, puzzled.

  “Of course. With a data integrity check, he was able to detect and isolate the damaged data, allowing the rest of the memory to remain intact,” said Kiah, bursting with excitement at her understanding.

  The Archivist turned to her, expressionless. Kiah lowered her gaze and hunched her shoulders.

  The Archivist continued, turning his gaze back to Nico: “This approach avoids total loss and preserves uncompromised data.”

  Nico clenched his fists, staring at the single rose floating in the lake.

  “So... everything I lost... is gone?” he murmured.

  “Only what Erebos had access to,” replied the Archivist, with his impenetrable calm.

  Nico inhaled slowly, trying to gather his courage. “But... how do I know what I've lost?” His voice trembled slightly.

  “I isolated what was damaged, preserving the rest,” explained the Archivist. “What was corrupted has been eliminated,” he concluded, clinically.

  “What about the headaches? Every time I try to remember...” he said, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  The Archivist nodded. “They'll pass. It's part of the ‘healing’ process, if we want to call it that. Subject N_01, you are a human subject who has been infected with a computer virus. This has never happened before.”

  Nico stiffened; through clenched teeth, he hissed angrily, “Why am I Subject N_01?”

  “It's your system designation.”

  Nico clenched his fists again, staring at the floating rose with a mixture of anger and helplessness. He heard someone approaching: hesitant, shuffling footsteps on the cobblestones behind him. That slight movement in his direction annoyed him, as if the mere presence of others amplified the emptiness he felt inside. Someone else murmured words of comfort, muffled; they barely touched him, like a distant echo.

  Frustration crept into him. Then something changed: small flashes, scattered memories came to his mind, without pain. Laughter, tension, warmth came.

  He turned, trying to hide the tremor in his voice, his fists still clenched, and said, “There is much you must tell me.”