Daughter of the Deep

People in scuba suits burst out of the sea. The HP students fight back while Gem guards Ana. The attackers appear to be students, and Ana does not understand why they are attacking. She uses her Dolphin skills to think through their strategy and realizes that this attack is a feint: “LI planned this assault carefully. Their movements were synchronized” and planned to distract (53). Before she can do anything, an LI student catches her in a chokehold and pulls her over the edge before she can be rescued.

When Ana and her captor surface, she sees Gem and Hewett looking at them over the edge of the Varuna. Hewett recognizes her captor, a student from LI named Caleb. Caleb brings Ana aboard the LI ship, but Ana disables it by shooting the motor. Hewett tries to talk Caleb down, but Caleb claims that Hewett’s lectures were nonsense and that their submarine, the Aronnax, is now operational. Ana is confused by all of this. She thinks, “I don’t know what the Aronnax is. The name alone makes me shiver” (57). Despite the confusion, she manages to escape from Caleb and jump into the sea, where Socrates rescues her.

The HP students tie up their LI attackers. The Orca prefect, Franklin, wants Ana to go to sick bay, but Ana thinks, “I need open air and the sea,” so she stays outside (62). The Varuna camouflages again and sets off while Ana thanks Socrates for his help. Gem apologizes to Ana for not adequately protecting her, and Ana considers, “I don’t know much about him” (63). Ester finds Ana, gives her a treat for Socrates, and tells her that Hewett requests her presence.

Caleb, now a captive, wakes up. Linzi, an Orca, watches Hewett and Caleb while they talk to ensure Hewett proceeds ethically. According to Ana, “an Orca is supposed to be present at all important negotiations” (67). Although the HP students have dressed Caleb in childish floaties as a joke, they have not treated him poorly. Caleb admits that the Aronnax is coming for the Varuna, planning to shoot to kill. He claims that HP coddles their students by hiding the truth from them. He even reveals that Hewett used to work at the LI and was behind the original idea for the Aronnax. In response to this, Ana thinks, “Hewett had the idea for the Aronnax. He helped create the weapon that destroyed our school and killed my brother” (70). Instead of killing Caleb, as Caleb dares the HP students to, they throw Caleb overboard, safe with his floaties. Hewett has Ana come with him to learn the truth.

Ana brings Nelinha to the captain’s cabin with Hewett and Gem, and they find Socrates there in a small tank connected to the ocean. Hewett, who also begins to look sick, explains that “HP has cultivated friendships with many of his family over the years” (73). He also explains that Verne interviewed the real Pierre Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil for his novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and later Cyrus Harding and Bonaventure Pencroft for The Mysterious Island. Ester, as Ana realizes, is descended from Cyrus Harding, while Ana is descended from Captain Nemo, whose real name was Prince Dakkar. Since Nemo’s technology was tied to his DNA, this makes Ana the last person remaining who can access it, making her “quite literally the most important person in the world” (77).

Ana asks why they do not just reengineer Nemo’s technology, but Hewett explains that it is far too advanced for that. Nemo had a plan regarding his alt-tech—when he first met outsiders (Land and Aronnax), they became his enemies. Nemo hated the colonial powers after “the British destroyed his principality and killed his wife and elder son during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (80). Land and Aronnax then attempted to recreate Nemo’s technology to save the world from him. However, an older and kinder Nemo later met Harding and Pencroft and entrusted his technology to them. Hewett tells Ana that her parents actually died discovering the Nautilus, Nemo’s submarine. Hewett himself is an HP alumnus who briefly lost his way and taught at the LI, but later returned to HP Academy when he realized how dangerous they were.