We do as she asks, though it’s difficult not to just float and admire the Nautilus.

She’s breathtaking from the outside: elegant and stately with her frills, barbs, and vine-like wiring. Her nemonium hull catches the 1 percent of sunlight able to filter down to this depth, turning her a dim purple color that matches her great domed eyes. Unlike the hatchet-shaped Aronnax, the Nautilus looks like she belongs here—a gentle giant, a queen of the deep. I wonder if that strange sheath along her belly really does scoop up krill like the mouth of a blue whale to keep her fed.

We find the damaged conduit with no problem. As near as we can figure, the Nautilus must have been lying against a rock at that spot while she was on the bottom of the lake. Her self-healing hull wasn’t able to do its job, so over the last 150 years she developed a kind of bedsore. I apply some thick healing paste to the area—a concoction the Cephalopods and Orcas came up with together—while Gem runs a new section of wiring to bypass the break.

“I am so sorry,” I tell the Nautilus. I don’t know if she can feel pain the way people do, but the longer I spend with the submarine, the worse I feel for her, having spent so much time alone, wounded, neglected. If humans had woken me up after all those years, I probably would have lashed out, too.

When we’re done with the repair, we float back to what we hope is a safe distance, about twenty meters.

“Okay, Nelinha,” I say. “You want to give it a try?”

“We’re going to run two tests,” she tells me. “First, we’re going to electrify the hull. Then, if it goes okay, we’ll try the Leidenfrost shield. Ready?”

The entire ship lights up like a carnival. The hull glows in a thousand different places—brilliant white, blue, and gold spots adding to the purple. Search beams arc through the water fore and aft, top and bottom.

One sweeps right across my face, momentarily blinding me.

“Gah!” I yelp. “Nelinha, is that supposed to be happening?”

“No!” she says. “Hang on…I don’t…Bridge, did somebody hit the wrong button? Are we having a grand opening nobody told me about? Electricity! Not floodlights!”

Next to me, Gem whistles appreciatively. “It is kind of beautiful.”

But something doesn’t feel right. This much brilliance in the dark…What is Nautilus doing?

“Guys,” I say over the comm. “I really think you should kill those lights.”

“We’re trying to!” Cooper Dunne says from the bridge. “I don’t get it. We didn’t even—”

The connection breaks into a garble of static and voices yelling at once.

“Contact on LOCUS!” Cooper yells.

Hairs rise on the back of my neck. “Where? A ship?”

“No, too big—Ana, Gem, you need to—” Cooper’s voice becomes a shriek. “Below!”

I look down and see a gargantuan shadow rising from the depths, unfolding like the wings of death.