“He’s already had tons of treats,” Ester assures me. “The squid is for Socrates.”

“As long as it’s not for me,” Gem says.

“That was a joke,” Ester says, her expression deadly serious. “I get it.”

“This is wonderful,” I tell Ester. “Thank you.”

I throw the squid to Socrates, who snaps it up eagerly. I wish I could bring it down to him and feed him by hand, but we’re moving at a fast clip now, and so is he. I know he can easily keep pace with our boat, but I’m not sure whether he’ll follow us or not. Dolphins have their own priorities.

“He can rest on board if he gets tired,” Ester tells me.

It takes me a second to process that sentence. “What do you mean on board?”

“Have you seen the captain’s room?” she asks. “Harding-Pencroft has always had dolphin friends. It’s like Top.” She scratches his ear. “There’s always been a Top at Harding-Pencroft. I mean, before Harding-Pencroft was destroyed.”

I don’t quite understand what she means about Top and the dolphins always being at HP, but when she mentions the school’s destruction, she gets agitated again. She starts tapping her fingertips on her thighs. The volume of her voice goes up several notches.

“ANYWAY, I CAME TO GET YOU,” she says.

“I—Okay. What’s up?”

I’m not sure I want to know. It has been a very long day already.

“Dr. Hewett wants to see you two on the forward deck,” Ester tells us. “He’s not well. I’m not an expert, but I would say he has diabetes and probably an additional underlying condition.”

Gem and I glance at each other uneasily. The idea that Hewett is ill doesn’t surprise me. He has looked awful since…well, always. Ester doesn’t have much of a bedside manner, but I trust her instincts. She once announced loudly in the middle of lunch that my monthly cramps might not be so horrible if I increased my intake of vitamin B1. For the record, she was right.

“Okay,” I say. “Is that why he wants to see us? Because he’s ill?”

“No,” Ester says. “I just thought about it, so I said it. He wants to see you because the prisoner is starting to talk.” She looks at her palms. “Also, I have squid slime on me. I’m going to go wash my hands because that seems like the right thing to do.”

Caleb South is zip-tied to a metal folding chair. His wrists are bound behind him, his ankles fastened to the chair legs.

When I see him, my anger tries to harden into a suit of armor, but I’m so exhausted it’s more like a worn-out sleep shirt. It keeps falling away, stretching into an amorphous mass of grief and shock.

Caleb is still in his wetsuit. His mask and hood have been removed, revealing close-set brown eyes and a wedge of blond hair tinged green from chlorine. His broken nose is swelling up nicely. Blood has crusted on his upper lip.