I find our giant friend Romeo tucked away in a cozy abyss just south of the island. He comes up to say hello when I play my keytar. I do my best to convey our gratitude. I also try asking if he wants us to give him a ride back to where we met him, but he seems content to stay with us.

Over the next few days, whenever Ester and Top take a walk around what’s left of the atoll, Romeo surfaces and watches them, while Top barks happily and goes into his “play bow.” I have nightmares about Romeo learning to play fetch with the dog, throwing a ball all the way to Fiji, and Top trying to swim after it.

As for Socrates, he doesn’t seem sure what to make of the giant octopus. Socrates likes his cephalopods small and tasty, not big enough to eat him. He and the rest of his adopted dolphin family give Romeo a wide berth, but otherwise they seem happy. I feed them many delicious squid and thank them for their help in the battle.

When Socrates asks about my brother—doing a little flick of his fin that I’ve learned to translate as Dev—I don’t know what to tell him. At least underwater I can cry as much as I want. The ocean doesn’t care about a few more drops of salt water.

Once the Nautilus is back up and running, Tia Romero oversees our recovery efforts on the wreckage of the Aronnax. It will take weeks to complete, but we need to understand how far Land Institute has come in their research. Also, we don’t want all that junk littering the ocean floor on our front lawn.

On the fifth day, we set our prisoners free—all of them except Dev. It’s not a popular decision. They’re still our enemies, with too much blood on their hands, but we aren’t set up to run a prison camp indefinitely, and there’s no easy way to bring Land Institute to justice or to prove what they’ve done in any court of law. The best bad choice I have is to let them go, knowing that we may face them again in the future. I give them the Varuna, though it hurts me to do so. We stock the boat with enough food, water, and fuel to make it to the California coast. We strip the ship of anything dangerous or valuable—weapons, LOCUS, dynamic camouflage. We even remove the books from the library.

Honestly, our hostages shouldn’t complain. We’ve been treating them well and feeding them Jupiter’s baked delicacies. They’ve all put on a few pounds. They’d never admit it, but I suspect they will miss the gâteau mille-feuille d’orang-outan.