Page 48 of Daughter of the Deep

My head buzzes, and it’s not just from the caffeine.

I try to imagine what it would have been like if Dev and I had spent the last two years on this island. I never would have met Nelinha or Ester. I wouldn’t be a Dolphin prefect. I would’ve had more time with Dev, but we would have spent it in this subterranean base, in the middle of nowhere, where our parents died.

I can’t blame Luca and Ophelia for not wanting that. Still, a fist-size lump of anger burns in my chest. Dev and I weren’t given the choice. If this base is our family’s inheritance, if the alt-tech isours, what right did Harding-Pencroft have to hide it from us? Why do they get to control our lives?

I remember what Caleb South said about Harding-Pencroft keeping secrets:How many world problems could you cowards have solved if you justshared?

I wonder if Caleb had a point. Is Harding-Pencroft really so much better than Land Institute?

Ophelia seems to read my thoughts. ‘You have no reason to trust us, but we will trust you, Ana. You are the last Dakkar. Theodosius clearly thought you were capable, and you did manage to bring your crew safely to Lincoln Base.’

Luca gives his wife a troubled glance. ‘Are you suggesting …?’

‘Yes,’ Ophelia says. ‘We will show Ana everything. Let her decide.’

Gem’s chair creaks as he sits forward. ‘What exactly iseverything?’

He does a pretty good job keeping the excitement out of his voice. Still, like any good Shark, he is probably dreaming of shiny new weapons.

Ophelia’s gaze stays on me. ‘You understand that the alt-tech devices you have seen so far – the Leyden guns, the dynamic camouflage – are only pale imitations of Nemo’s technology. Over the last century and a half, both HP and Land Institute have tried to re-create what Nemo did. We’ve had a few other successes: the microwave, fibre-optics, lasers, nuclear fission.’

‘The microwave?’ Nelinha looks stunned. I can’t imagine her surviving without the microwave oven in our rec room at HP. She does love her popcorn.

Ophelia musters a faint smile. ‘Yes. One of Nemo’s lessdangerous inventions. By the late 1940s, we felt it was safe to leak that technology to the general public.’

‘Hold on,’ Gem says. ‘Nuclear fission? You’re telling us Captain Nemo had atomic bombs?’

Ophelia smirks. ‘Of course not. He would never have created such crass, clumsy weapons. But he did pioneer nuclear physics. During World War II, Land Institute decided they could “improve” the world by leaking some of Nemo’s knowledge to help along the Manhattan Project. They still maintain they did a good thing, even though the subsequent Cold War arms race came close to destroying the world half a dozen times.’

‘Okay …’ Gem says slowly. ‘But that tech also led to nuclear power, cancer treatments and long-range space exploration, right? Tech can be goodandbad.’

Luca puts his hand over Ophelia’s wrist, as if he’s afraid she might jump over the table and strangle Gem.

‘My boy,’ Luca says, ‘every time an alt-tech advance is leaked to the rest of the world, it is incredibly destabilizing. Nuclear fission is just one example. Can you imagine if we told the world that Nemo knew the secret to cold fusion?’

Nelinha takes a sharp breath.

I’m not as much of a hard-science expert, but evenIunderstand how big a deal that would be. Fission breaks apart heavy atoms to make energy, but it also creates a bunch of nasty radioactive waste. Fusion is the opposite. It combines atoms. It’s the force that powers the sun. If humans could learn to harness that process at room temperature, ‘cold’ fusion, they could make unlimited energy and produce nothing but harmless gases for exhaust.

‘Why would you not share that information?’ I ask. ‘It would revolutionize the world.’

‘Ordestroythe world,’ Ophelia counters. ‘Imagine a world government monopolizing that power. Even worse, a corporation.’

That sends a shiver down my back. ‘You’re saying the secret to cold fusion is here on this base.’

‘That secret,’ Luca agrees, ‘and many others. But we cannot unlock them or study them, much less reproduce them, because Nemo keyed his masterpiece to his own family’s blood –yourblood.’

The ball of anger in my chest begins to cool and shrink, creating its own little cold-fusion reaction. ‘Nemo’s masterpiece …’ I say. ‘You don’t mean the base. You mean theNautilus.’

Luca and Ophelia remain silent.

I shake my head in disbelief. ‘But it’s a wreck.’

I think about photos I’ve seen from the resting place of theTitanic: a broken metal shell covered with rusticles, slowly crumbling to dust. Andthatship went down something like fifty years after theNautilus.‘There can’t be much left. It was sitting on the bottom of the ocean for a century and a half.’

‘No, my dear.’ Luca sounds melancholy, like this news is even worse than the destruction of Harding-Pencroft. ‘Your parents found theNautilusintact. Tomorrow, we will introduce you.’

How to make twenty freshmen hyperactive:

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