“Not for sure.” She’s still addressing Top. “Not because I’m a Harding or anything. If Dr. Hewett wanted us dead, there are easier ways than sending us to a make-believe island in the middle of the ocean. If Dr. Hewett is a spy, it’s more likely he was using us to find this base. He would need Ana for that. Then he could sell us out to LI. Then they could kill us.”

That cheerful idea hangs in the warm, wet air. The sea churns under our feet. Again, everyone is looking at me for answers.

I want to kick an LI upperclassman. I’m a week shy of fifteen years old. Why do I have to be handling this crisis? I want to scream, This isn’t fair! But I’ve been screaming that internally ever since my parents died, and it’s done me no good. I’ve learned that the world doesn’t care what is right for me. I have to make it care.

“Searching for the base is a risk,” I admit. I’m amazed my voice doesn’t break. “Our other option is to turn back. That’s a risk, too. The Aronnax is somewhere in these waters, and we saw what it did to the school. We had a lot of…a lot of friends on campus.”

More than friends. I think of Dev’s crooked grin. His early birthday gift to me, my mother’s black pearl, hangs heavily around my neck. I look at Kay Ramsay, whose sister was a sophomore. Kay’s watery red eyes are glaring a hole in the deck boards. Brigid Salter, who had a brother in the junior class, trembles as she leans against her housemate Rhys for support.

Yesterday was about shock, uncertainty, fear. Our world was shattered. Today, we have to figure out how to reassemble ourselves from the broken pieces.

Some of us were literally shattered. Eloise McManus’s left shoulder is wrapped in gauze, her arm in a sling so she can’t hold a rifle. For a Shark, that must be infuriating. Meadow Newman stands stiff and pale. Her shirt hides her bandages, but I remember the silver barb that hit her in the shoulder.

Her fellow Cephalopod Robbie Barr leans on a crutch, his right leg in a gel cast from his encounter with a Leyden harpoon. He wipes his nose with a cloth handkerchief. He’s not crying, he’s just famous for his many allergies. Even on the open sea, he can find something that makes him sneeze.

“This alt-tech…” Robbie squints sideways at me. “You’re saying it was HP’s mission all along to safeguard this stuff. And none of us were told. Not even you?”

“Not even me,” I confirm. “Until yesterday, I knew nothing.”

I try not to let my eyes drift to Ester. I’m pretty sure she knew more than she was allowed to say, but I don’t want to put her on the spot in front of everybody.

Cooper Dunne hefts his new Leyden pistol. “And there are more surprises like this at the secret base?”