'Nope.'

 Honestly, it's the only answer I can muster. 'You are not telling me that our school was destroyed, my brother was killed and Land Institute tried to kidnap me because I am descended from a fictional character.'

'Not fictional,' Hewett says again, his voice strained. 'Prince Dakkar was your fourth great-grandfather.'

'I agree with Lisa,' Jisoo says. 'This is crazy.' 

Hwasa sets her Leyden gun on the table. 'We've got evidence.'

Jennie waves off the gun, or maybe she's just waving off Hwasa. 'Your electroplated zapper thing is cool. That doesn't mean Jules Verne wrote non-fiction. I could reverse-engineer a Leyden gun if I had enough time.'

'Which is exactly what Harding-Pencroft did,' Dr. Hewett says. 'And Land Institute, unfortunately. But Nemo's greatest innovations –'

'Wait.' I raise my hands like I'm trying to hold all of this new information together, but I'm failing badly. 'You've reverse-engineered super Taser-guns. You've got dynamic camouflage and radar blocking that's better than military-grade. This is all from a guy who lived a hundred and fifty years ago.' 

Hewett gives me the sort of expectant nod he uses in his classroom, as if telling me Go on. You are not entirely stupid.

'Then what do you need us for?' 

Hewett winces. I get the feeling he wishes he didn't need me and Jisoo. 

'Miss – Prefect Manoban,' he says, seeing the intensity of my scowl, 'in the last one hundred and fifty years, we have succeeded in re-creating only a few of your ancestor's scientific advances. We have been like children playing dress-up in the great man's clothes. Most of his work, I'm sorry to say, is still beyond our reach.'

'And you think we can change that?' Jisoo laughs, though there is nothing funny about it. Behind me, Socrates chatters in response. 'Professor, we don't have any family secrets.' 

'No,' he agrees. 'That was part of Nemo's plan.'

Hwasa sits down next to me, between me and Jisoo. Her hand curls around the barrel of the Leyden gun. 'Nemo's plan?'

Hewett inhales, as if preparing himself for his final lecture. 'Only two times did outsiders meet captain Nemo and live to tell the tale. The first time –

'Was Land and Aronnax,' Roseanne cuts in. 'The bad guys.'

Hewett musters a weary smile. 'Yes, Miss Harding. They would not, of course, call themselves bad guys. They fled from Nemo's sub, the Nautilus, convinced that they had barely escaped the world's most dangerous madman.'

'An outlaw,' I remember. 'Caleb said we were protecting the legacy of an outlaw.'

 'Yes,' Hewett says. 'And Nemo was a bitter, dangerous outlaw. He hated the great colonial powers. He sank their ships across the globe, hoping to wreck their trade and bring them to their knees.'

Jisoo frowns. 'So ... nice guy.'

'A brilliant scientist,' Hewett counters, 'who had personal reasons to hate imperialism.' He hesitates, as if weighing whether or not he wants to tell us about yet another family tragedy. 'During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Prince Dakkar stood up against the British. In response, the British destroyed his principality and killed his wife and elder son. After that, Dakkar went into hiding, eventually becoming Captain Nemo. But the younger son escaped. He hid on a ship, which was on its way to a new land, which would later be called Korea. You two are descended from his younger son, his only living heir.' 

Nobody says anything for a minute. Even though the tragedy happened generations ago, I feel a familiar aching emptiness inside me, as if Nemo's wife and child were two more people I lost when HP crumbled into the sea. 

Finally, Jennie mutters an unkind comment in Korean about where imperialists can shove their flags

As far as I know, Dr. Hewett doesn't speak Korean, but he seems to understand the sentiment. He nods in sympathy.

'At any rate,' he says, 'when Ned Land and Pierre Aronnax escaped the Nautilus, they were terrified by the captain's rage and power. They made it their lives' work to save the reigning world order from his agenda. They decided they could only do that by re-creating or stealing Nemo's technology by whatever means necessary, claiming his power for themselves.

Jisoo studies her nails, chipped from a hard day's work braining enemies with her socket wrench. 'So that's where Land Institute came from. Like Jennie said, the bad guys. They want to save the world order. What does that make us – the good-guy outlaws?' She arches her eyebrows. 'For the record, I'm okay with that.'

'I'm so glad,' Hewett says dryly. 'As Prefect Kim deduced, our school was founded by the second group who encountered Nemo – the one led by Cyrus Harding and Bonaventure Pencroft. They had the good fortune of becoming stranded on an island that happened to be one of the captain's secret bases. He helped them survive and eventually escape.'

'He had a lot of secret bases?' Hwasa asks, like she's always wanted one.

'A dozen that we know of,' Hewett says. 'Perhaps more. Anyway, by the time Harding andPencroft met Nemo, he was a different man. His personal tragedies had left him broken and disillusioned. Despite being a genius, despite possessing the most powerful submarine ever built, he had failed to make any real change in the world ... Or so he believed.'

'He died in his sub.' I didn't realize how much I remembered about The Mysterious Island. I guess it feels different now, knowing that this guy shared my blood as well as my name. 'Nemo helped the castaways escape. Then he sank the Nautilus in a subterranean lagoon or something, right before the island went up in a big volcanic explosion. The sub was his tomb.'

I can see the goosebumps ripple across Rosie's arms. For a genius engineer, she is pretty superstitious. Ghosts, dead guys, tombs – that stuff totally freaks her out. She grips my hand.'There wasn't anything in that book about Harding and Pencroft starting a school,' she says.

'Of course not,' Hewett says. 'The only reason Harding and Pencroft spoke to Jules Verne was to change the public narrative. For our purposes, if anyone did begin to suspect that Captain Nemo was real, it was much better if they never saw him as a threat. By the end of his life, Nemo had given up his quest for vengeance. And, yes, he did die aboard the Nautilus, which was supposedly demolished in the destruction of his island.'

'Our purposes,' Jennie raises an eyebrow. 'What are those?'

Hewett gestures at the map. 'Just before Nemo died, he pulled Cyrus Harding aside and had some final words with him. It says that much in Verne's book. What it does not say is that Nemo gave Harding a treasure chest of pearls and also entrusted him with a mission: to make sure his technology was never used by the world powers or stolen by Land Institute. We were to safeguard Nemo'slegacy, to reveal his advances only a little at a time, when we decided the world was ready for them. Most importantly –' He looks at us – 'we were to safeguard his descendants until the time was right.' 

I don't want to ask, but I do anyway. 'Right for what?'

Again, Dr. Hewett simply watches me, waiting for the hints to fall into place.

'This map leads to one of Nemo's bases,' I say, getting goosebumps worse than Rosie's. 'Not just any base. The island where Nemo died. It wasn't completely destroyed in the eruption, was it?'

Hewett gives me his rarest classroom gesture. He simply points at me to say Correct. 'Two years ago, your parents gave their lives to find this island. Your brother was being prepared to take charge of operations there once he graduated college. Since we discovered it, the island has become a field lab and underwater archaeology site staffed by HP faculty. It holds our most advanced technology. And ... artifacts.'

Hwasa rubs her forehead. 'That's what Land Institute wants. Access to this island. And you ... you used to work for LI.' She sounds personally hurt, as if Hewett has broken a promise. 

Hewett stares at the nautical map. 'That's true, Ms. Hyejin. When I was younger, I graduated from HP – House Shark, like you and Kim Taehyung Dakkar. Nevertheless, I always had a grudging admiration for Land Institute. They favor action over caution, offense over defense. That was alluring to me. In some ways, they are a school made entirely of Sharks. That's why I accepted a job there, and why I spent years designing specs for a submarine that could rival the Nautilus. It took me a long time to see the ugly, brutal side of LI, to realize what they would do with such power ...'

If I wasn't so shocked, I might be tempted to laugh. I can't imagine two people less alike than Tae and Dr. Hewett. It's hard to envision Hewett as a Shark, or young, or anything other than our professor. But it makes me wonder what Taehyung might have accomplished when he got older. Would he have gone on to command his own ship and then his own fleet as he'd always dreamed? Or is it possible he would have ended up a frustrated, dejected teacher like Hewett? That idea is almost as sad as knowing that, now, Tae will never get the chance to have any future at all. 

Hewett sighs, as if thinking the same thoughts. 'At any rate ... when your parents found Nemo'sbase, Land Institute feared it would give HP an unstoppable advantage. As I said, Nemo's most important work could only be operated by his descendants. And, unlike Land Institute, we have ...good relations with the Dakkar family.'

I get the uncomfortable sense that Hewett almost said we have control of the Dakkar family. He doesn't seem to notice the change in the atmosphere. Roseanne scoffs softly.

'The island is completely off the grid,' he says, some color coming back into his face. 'It is cut off from all outside communication. Its location is unknown even to me. The only way to find it –' 

'Are either of us.' I look at the coppery paperweight thing. 

'Exactly, my dear. The base is our only hope. The staff there won't know about HP's destruction. We must warn them. We can regroup there, rearm ourselves, protect –'

'We could just go to the authorities,' I say. 'We have been attacked. Our school has been destroyed. We tell –'

 'Who?' Hewett demands. 'The police? The FBI? The military? Best-case scenario, they write us off as lunatics. Worst-case scenario, they believe us. Are you prepared to be whisked off to a secret government site and spend the rest of your days being interrogated? Land Institute and Harding-Pencroft agree on almost nothing. But we do agree on one thing. Turning Nemo's technology over to the world's governments or, worse, the world's corporations would be disastrous. We must –

Hewett slumps forward like he's been punched. He took out his handkerchief and coughed violently into it.

Hwasa shoots to her feet. 'Professor?' 

'I'm fine,' he wheezes. 'Just overtaxed myself.'

I exchange a glance with Roseanne. Yeah, that's a total lie. 

'Prefect,' Hewett gasps, 'some assistance, please.'

Hwasa seems relieved to have something to do. She grabs Hewett's arm and helps him up.

'I'll leave you two for now, Prefects,' Hewett says. 'Take some time to think. Our course of action will be up to you two. We will follow your orders.' 

I stare at him. Follow our orders? The idea terrifies me. 

'But ... you're leaving?' Jisoo stammers. 'This is your cabin.' 

'Oh, no,' Hewett says. 'It's your and your sister's. I did say you two were the most important people on the planet, so suffice it to say you two are also the most important people on this ship. We will talk again in the morning. Ms. Hyejin, if you will help me to the bridge ...'

Before they reach the door, I call, 'Sir.'

Hewett turns.

'You mentioned artifacts...' I don't want to continue, but I force myself to. 'You said Nemo's sub was supposedly demolished. What my parents died trying to find –'

'They succeeded,' he tells me, his voice wistful, like he's talking about Santa Claus. 'After four generations of fruitless searching, your parents succeeded. They discovered the wreck of the Nautilus.'

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A/N Sorry for the delay in the update, Wattpad bugged lol.  A little more theoretical than most chapters, but in case you didn't notice yet, this is going to be a slow burner. Enjoy!

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