“And Captain Nemo…” I say. “That wasn’t his real name. It was Prince Dakkar. An Indian noble. From Bundelkhand.”

“Yes, Miss Dakkar,” Hewett agrees. “As of today, you are his only surviving direct descendant. This makes you quite literally the most important person in the world.”

“Nope.”

Honestly, it’s the only answer I can muster. “You are not telling me that our school was destroyed, my brother was killed, and Land Institute tried to kidnap me because I am descended from a fictional character.”

“Not fictional,” Hewett says again, his voice strained. “Prince Dakkar was your fourth great-grandfather.”

“I agree with Ana,” Nelinha says. “This is crazy.”

Gem sets his Leyden gun on the table. “We’ve got evidence.”

Nelinha waves off the gun, or maybe she’s just waving off Gem. “Your electroplated zapper is cool. That doesn’t mean Jules Verne wrote nonfiction. I could reverse-engineer a Leyden gun if I had enough time.”

“Which is exactly what Harding-Pencroft did,” Dr. Hewett says. “And Land Institute, unfortunately. But Nemo’s greatest innovations—”

“Wait.” I raise my hands like I’m trying to hold all of this new information together, but I’m failing badly. “You’ve reverse-engineered super Taser-guns. You’ve got dynamic camouflage and radar blocking that’s better than military-grade. This is all from a guy who lived a hundred and fifty years ago.”

Hewett gives me the sort of expectant nod he uses in his classroom, as if telling me Go on. You are not entirely stupid.

“Then what do you need me for?”

Hewett winces. I get the feeling he wishes he didn’t need me.

“Miss—Prefect Dakkar,” he says, seeing the intensity of my scowl, “in the last one hundred and fifty years, we have succeeded in re-creating only a few of your ancestor’s scientific advances. We have been like children playing dress-up in the great man’s clothes. Most of his work, I’m sorry to say, is still beyond our reach.”

“And you think I can change that?” I laugh, though there is nothing funny about it. Behind me, Socrates chatters in response. “Professor, I don’t have any family secrets.”

“No,” he agrees. “That was part of Nemo’s plan.”

Gem sits down next to me. His hand curls around the barrel of the Leyden gun. “Nemo’s plan?”

Hewett inhales, as if preparing himself for his final lecture. “Only two times did outsiders meet Captain Nemo and live to tell the tale. The first time—”

“Was Land and Aronnax,” Nelinha says. “The bad guys.”

Hewett musters a weary smile. “Yes, Miss da Silva. They would not, of course, call themselves bad guys. They fled from Nemo’s sub, the Nautilus, convinced that they had barely escaped the world’s most dangerous madman.”

“An outlaw,” I remember. “Caleb said we were protecting the legacy of an outlaw.”

“Yes,” Hewett says. “And Nemo was a bitter, dangerous outlaw. He hated the great colonial powers. He sank their ships across the globe, hoping to wreck their trade and bring them to their knees.”