Jisoo POV

On the way, I grab Jennie and drag her along.

I need a friend at my side, even if she has to coexist with Hwasa for a while. I'm still reeling from ...well, everything. I didn't like Caleb's warnings. I don't understand why Dr. Hewett thinks I'm the one who should decide our course heading. Why does he keep singling me and Lisa out like this? He's the one with all the secrets. And I'm still not sure I trust Hwasa to have my back.

At the end of the corridor, Hewett opens the door to the captain's cabin. I've never been inside before. The place is massive: a full-size bed against the port wall, windows overlooking the bow, a big conference table, and on the starboard side ... 

'Socrates!'

The entire starboard side of the room is an open saltwater tank. The Plexiglas wall is maybe twelve feet long, five feet high, curved inwards at the top to prevent the water from sloshing out when the ship moves. The tank isn't big enough for the dolphin to live in, but there's enough room for him to splash around, turn and float comfortably. On either side is an underwater metal flap that reminds me of a giant pet door. I don't quite understand how the tank was engineered, but the chutes must connect to the open sea, allowing Socrates to come and go as he pleases.

Socrates pokes his head over the lip of the Plexiglas. This puts him at eye level with me. He chatters happily. I give him a hug and kiss him right on the beak. I realize I'm smiling for the first time since the school's destruction.

'I don't understand,' I say. 'How did you even find us?'

 Hewett answers for him. 'Your dolphin friend knows this boat well. HP has cultivated friendships with many of his family over the years. Socrates, did you call him?'

'I ... Yes.' I was about to explain that Tae, Lisa, and I dive with Socrates every morning, but remembering that ritual is like walking barefoot over broken glass.

'An appropriate name,' says Hewett. 'Well, Socrates knows he always has a berth on the Varunaif he wants to travel with us. Now come here, Miss Dakkar. Look at this.'

 Lisa scoffs from her seat at the table. Again with the Miss. This is how they wear you down: they just keep making the same 'oopsie', hoping that you'll eventually get tired of calling them on it.

'Prefect,' I grumble, but Hewett has already turned his attention to the conference table, where Hwasa and Jennie have joined him. Roseanne waggles her fingers.

I guess they don't consider the bottlenose dolphin in the stateroom a big deal. Reluctantly, I go and sit down with my fellow humans.

Spread across the table is a nautical map of the Pacific. In some respects, it's old-fashioned. The names are in fancy calligraphy. The compass rose is elaborately colored. Illustrated sea monsters writhe in the corners.

However, the map is made of a material I've never seen before. It's light grey, almost translucent, and perfectly smooth like it's never been folded. The ink shimmers. If I look at it sideways, all the markings seem to disappear. I don't want to think this with Socrates in the room, but the map reminds me of dolphin skin. Maybe, like the calcium carbonate of the Leyden projectiles, it has been organically 'secreted' in a lab somehow.

Oh, great. My thought process is spiraling down the alt-tech rabbit hole.

 Sitting on top of the map is a coppery dome-shaped paperweight thingy. At least, in a normal world, it would be a paperweight. Its curved surface is laced with intricate wires. At the apex is a smooth, round indentation. It looks like the eye of a steampunk robot. I really hope it doesn't open and stare at me.

Hewett eases himself into the chair across the table. He mops his brow with a handkerchief. I remember what Roseanne said: Diabetes. Underlying condition. Hewett has never been my favorite teacher. I don't trust him. Still, I'm worried about his health. He is literally the only adult in the room, and the only one who might be able to give me answers.

Jennie stands on my right, Hwasa on my left. They studiously avoid looking at each other. Socrates chatters and splashes in his tank. I'm grateful for Jennie by my side. Don't get me wrong, Lisa and Roseanne are great. But Jennie understands me the most. I love Lisa, but it doesn't change the fact she's my baby sister. I feel some sort of authority over Lisa and Roseanne, kind of like a mom, even though that would be weird, seeing as Lisa has the biggest crush on Roseanne. And that's where Jennie comes in. We're both more or less the same age, that's why I feel like I can trust her the more.

Hewett picks up the paperweight. He leans across the table and sets it in the center of the map, like he's calling my bet in a poker game.

 'I won't ask you to do this until you feel comfortable,' he says. 'But it is the only way forward.'

I look more closely at the object. That indentation at the top ...

'It's a thumbprint reader,' Lisa guesses. 'Either of us put our thumb on it and ... what? It shows us a location on the map?'

Hewett smiles faintly. 'It's a genetic reader, actually. Keyed to your family's DNA. But, yes, you have deduced its purpose.'

 I'm starting to deduce my purpose, too – why Hewett and Caleb South both talk about me like a commodity. I'm putting together the broken pieces of this horrible day, and I don't like what its showing me.

I try to pick around the edges of my real question. 'So, Jules Verne ... You say he interviewed actual people.'

 Hewett nods. '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Mysterious Island. The foundational texts are based on real events.'

'Foundational texts ...' Roseanne shook her head. ' You make them sound sacred.' 

'Hardly,' Hewett scoffs. 'They are novelizations. Misrepresentations. But at their core they contain truths. Ned Land was a real Canadian master harpooner. Professor Pierre Aronnax was a French marine biologist. You of all people would know that, Ms. Harding.'

Roseanne blushed.  I didn't like the way Hewett was putting Roseanne under the bus like that. Lisa narrowed her eyes. I wanted to ask Roseanne more about that comment, but I didn't want to make her feel more terrible than already.

'Ned Land ... Land Institute,' Jennie frowns.

'And Aronnax,' Yeji chimes in. 'That's the name of the sub.'

Hewett is silent long enough to tap each of his fingertips against the map. 'Yes. Land and Aronnax, along with the professor's manservant, Consiel, were the only survivors of a doomed naval expedition. In the 1860s, they joined the search for a supposed sea monster ... a creature that was sinking ships across the globe. Their expeditionary vessel, the Abraham Lincoln, was lost somewhere in the Pacific. Over a year later, Land, Aronnax, and Consiel were found, inexplicably, in a small lifeboat off the coast of Norway.'

I find myself leaning forward. I know the plot of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But now it seems more like a prophecy ... one that predicts an apocalypse. I don't like apocalypses. 

'No one believed the story they told about their lost year,' Hewett continues. 'They were dismissed as madmen. I doubt even Jules Verne believed them, but he did listen. Several years later, after Verne's novel became famous, he was approached by a different group of men. These were former castaways who had survived on a desert island in the Pacific. They claimed they'd had an encounter similar to the one described in 20,000 Leagues. They wanted to correct what they called inaccuracies in Verne's account. Verne's subsequent novel, The Mysterious Island, was based on his interviews with those men.'

'Cyrus Harding and Bonaventure Pencroft.' My mind is racing, connecting dots I do not want connected. 'The founders of our school. Just like Ned Land founded Land Institute.'

Jennie raises one eyebrow at Hewett. It's the same expression she uses when she wants to tell  Lisa and Roseanne to stop annoying her or else they'd get a butt whipping.

'If all that's true,' she says, 'you're telling us the main dude was real, too. Nemo.'

 'That's correct, Miss Kim.'

'And we're not talking about the cartoon fish,' Lisa adds.

Well, somebody had to say it. 

Hewett rubs his face. 'No, Prefect Manoban. The main dude was not a cartoon fish. Nor was he the fictional character from Jules Verne's books after whom that fish was named. Captain Nemo was a real nineteenth-century person – a genius who created marine technologies generations ahead of their time. The most important and powerful advances were keyed to Nemo's own body chemistry ... what we today call DNA. He and his descendants were the only ones who could operate his greatest inventions.'

That's it. I sit down. I don't trust my legs to hold me any longer.

 'Roseanne is descended from Cyrus Harding,' I say.

Hewett stares at me, waiting. His expression is a mixture of sympathy and cold analytical interest, like a TV-show cop in a morgue, about to uncover the murder victim for the next-of-kin to identify.

'And Captain Nemo ...' I say. 'That wasn't his real name. It was Prince Dakkar. An Indian noble.From Bundelkhand.'

'Yes, Miss Dakkar-Kim,' Hewett agrees. 'As of today, you two are his only surviving direct descendants. This makes you two quite literally the most important people in the world.'