“Just be careful inside,” she says. “I think it would help if you talk to it first.”

I’m not sure I understand her. One of the problems with being multilingual is that sometimes you second-guess yourself about the meanings of words. Did Ester say talk to it? Isn’t it a neutral pronoun in English? Isn’t that the language we’re speaking?

I start to say, “Talk to—?”

“Ana,” Ophelia interrupts. “Would you do the honors?”

She gestures to the vault door. It has a massive round gear plate in the middle, with pistons radiating outward like the spokes of a ship’s wheel. In the center of the gear plate, where the wheel’s spindle hole would be, is a hemisphere of nemonium, the same size as the DNA-reader I used on Dr. Hewett’s nautical map.

“Me?” I ask, as if she might be talking to some other Ana.

“Well, I could do it.” From her pocket, Ophelia fishes what looks like a metal security card. “We were able to jury-rig the lock after your father first opened it. But since it’s already keyed to your DNA…”

She waits. I don’t know if she’s testing me or letting me test myself. I think about the unpleasantly warm electrical current that went up my arm the last time I touched a Nemo DNA-reader. Then I think about my dream of drowning—the hopeless feeling of terror as Dev reached out for me and seawater filled my lungs. I am the last Dakkar.

I press my hand against the spindle-wheel lock. The metal doesn’t shock me. The central plate rotates. Pistons retract. Air hisses around the edges of the door like I’ve broken a vacuum seal. The door itself doesn’t move, but I suspect that if I pushed it now, it would swing open easily.

Ophelia raises her hand in caution. “Before we proceed…Please remain calm when we get inside. It’s best to avoid sudden movements and loud noises. Especially you, Ana. Approaching the Nautilus should be quite safe. Luca and I are in and out of this cavern on a daily basis, and we’ve had no mishaps.”

Mishaps. The term seems like quite an egregious understatement, considering my parents died because of the Nautilus.

“But you’re still worried,” I note. “Because I’m the first Dakkar to approach the sub since…since the accident.”

Ophelia’s barbed-wire braids glisten in the dim light. “We’ve been working for two years to clean and repair the submarine’s systems as best we could.”

“Hold on,” Nelinha says. “You’ve been on board? It’s still got systems left to clean?”

“It’s easiest to show you,” Ophelia says. “Most of the sub’s higher functions are dormant because…well, operating them requires a living Dakkar. What happened with Tarun and Sita was most likely a malfunction, a misunderstanding. Still, we can’t be sure—”