"Are we related?" I ask, dumbfounded by even the remote possibility that the girl who I first met a few months ago could be my—what—sister?

She looks just as repulsed by this thought as I feel. Pointing to the wall, she finally finds her voice. "I've never seen that man before in my life," Nelly says right before Dad chimes in from across the divider.

"You're absolutely not related," he yells, and I would give anything to see Ray's face right about now. There is never any drama on Vanguard and of course the one time there is, it's happening to me and I can't even get the benefit of seeing my best friend's undoubtedly amused reaction.

"Then how can you have the same name as Nelly's father?" I yell back.

Silence.

"Dad?" I ask, leaning against the wall. I can't see him on the other side, but I feel his presence. The tension between us weighs on me like the crush of a whole world's worth of oceans above me. "What aren't you telling me?" I plead for an answer with increasing desperation.

"Oh, shit," Ray answers instead, and now I really know that it can't be good.

"Dad!" I exclaim to get him to talk. Who knows what will really happen to us—Lamer could still just be lying about banishing us to the surface—and I need to know as much as possible, now!

"I lied, Will," Dad finally says, the usually confident voice now broken.

I take a deep breath, and Nelly puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. When I glance at her, she nods. "It's okay," she whispers, and I guess she suspects it'll be something bad, too.

"What about?" I ask, squeezing my eyes shut. If only I could rewind time and never pursue that damn Bluefin, I would. Then none of this would have happened. Ray and I would have never found O-town. Ellen would have never been captured. Lamer would never have had a reason to lock us up. Dad could have kept whatever secret he's been hiding. Things were fine before. Now I've messed everything up.

"I lied about everything," Dad says.

Everything? My heart sinks. "Go on," I urge, looking up again at the shiny metal wall as if it could give me some solace. It doesn't.

There's another pause, but I don't rush it. Once the truth is out, there will be no way of going back. These last few seconds are my own personal 'ignorance is bliss.'

"Darren Scott was a brilliant engineer who helped the space program retrofit this base we're on right now, and as much as I've tried to fill his shoes, I'm not him," he says.

This seems unreal, yet the seriousness in Dad's tone means that it very much is true. He's not who he's said he was, which means that I'm not who I thought I was. And while I should probably be asking how he's been able to get away with such a huge deception for so long, his—and in effect, my own—identity is what concerns me the most right now. "Then who—"

"My name is Chris Jacobson," Dad answers with a renewed confidence even before the whole question leaves my lips, as if a valve has been opened and now it can't be plugged. "I worked closely with Darren—who I guess is your friend's father—as part of his research team. He taught me everything I know. And most importantly, I had access to all of his prototypes and designs."

"So you just stole his identity?" Nelly asks bitterly.

I'm expecting a rebuttal of the blunt accusation, but even across the physical barrier between us, I can hear a deep sigh. "More or less, yes," he admits.

Tears flood the girl's eyes. Stepping closer, she pokes me in the chest. "It should have been me and my family who were saved. You took what was ours." Her voice is choked with emotion.

"I'm sorry," I whisper the apology even though it's not mine to give. I know she needs someone to blame and I'm the closest target, but there's no way she can expect me to take responsibility for a decision that was made years before either of us had even been born.

Nelly shakes her head, wipes her wet cheek with the back of her hand and turns away. "Screw you," she mumbles before walking to the farthest corner of our cell.

There's nothing I can say to her right now that can make this better. Instead, I focus on the man who got us all into this situation. I have so many other questions, but one is at the top of the list. "Did Mom know?" I ask.

"No," he says without missing a beat. "You know that we didn't meet until we got here. She came straight out of Tulane Med Center's trauma residency and had never even set foot in Florida before getting selected for the Vanguard program."

"But then someone else did know," I say, drawing the conclusion from what has remained unsaid. Plus, there's no way he could have pulled this scam off alone. Too many people must've worked personally with the real Dr. Scott on the ground not to recognize an impostor.

"Yes, there were a few senior scientists who are now long dead, but Darren was never very social. He preferred to work with a small, dedicated research crew and did most of his interactions with others virtually," he says. "There was so much fear and confusion at the time of the evacuations that no one questioned anyone in authority as long as they were part of the select group to have a chance at surviving this catastrophe."

I'm getting angrier by the second at how simple it was for him to steal someone's life, but one word in his explanation sticks out: authority. "Someone high up helped you get away with it?" I ask.

"Commander Christiansen made sure to alter the databases so all of Darren's personal information was replaced with mine," he says.

"But she hated you," I say, remembering the clearly antagonistic relationship between Elise Christiansen, the first leader of Vanguard before Lamer took over, and my father.

"And why do you think that was?" he asks. "Darren reported to Christiansen even before Vanguard was put into operation and she knew how valuable he was. When she saw that I'd taken his ID and snuck on board, she was furious."

If she felt only a fraction of the anger that I do now, I can relate. "So why didn't she kick you off and bring him here instead?" I ask.

"The base had already been lowered onto the seabed. The only way off was by the Skippers or a ferry, but the official word had been given that it was too dangerous to go topside. If anyone found out that they could still travel back and forth between the base and land, chaos could have broken out. It was a scary time back then, Will. Claustrophobia, homesickness, and even plain old guilt at leaving loved ones behind ate away at those who got refuge here. If they had known that they had the option to leave, many would have certainly taken advantage of it."

From a logical point-of-view, this makes sense. But from a humanitarian angle . . .? "So she sacrificed what would have been the best choice for one person for the greater good?" I ask, looking at Nelly. She'd turned back toward me again, but had her arms crossed as she leaned against the wall.

"Yes," he says.

Nelly purses her lips in defiance. I know she doesn't like to be proven wrong, but she can't argue with the former commander's thinking. Greater good is what the girl had advocated for earlier, after all.

"If Christiansen knew, then does Lamer?" I ask.

"Yes," Dad repeats the affirmation.

"Then why—"

"This is a great game of twenty questions and all, but can we focus on the problem at hand and deal with the Scott family saga later?" Ray interrupts.

I had nearly forgotten that my friend is also locked up with us, but he makes a good point.

"Sorry, man," I yell to him across the divider, even though I'm tempted to ask what he'd done to get thrown in here. Instead, I throw out a more leading question. "Any ideas?"

Ray chuckles. "I'm a sailor, not a techie. We still got a better shot with Dr. Pants-on-Fire here," he says before quickly adding, "No offense, doc."

Dad has always liked Ray, so I'm not surprised the childish insult doesn't faze him. "I suppose I deserve that, but I'm afraid I can't be much help, either. The security software is on a different platform from the rest of the systems, and I've never had much input in its development or maintenance."

I'm about to literally butt my head against the wall in frustration when the door to the brig opens with a whoosh and Dunstan enters.

"Good thing you got me, then," he says with a grin, walking to Dad's cell. In his hand, he's carrying a tablet computer with a cord running to an earpiece tucked under his unruly mop of russet hair. As he shakily taps a code into the control panel on the wall, I catch a glimpse of his digital screen. Half of the display is filled with a live feed of us in the brig, while the other half is full of differing telemetric readouts. If I had to guess, I'd say my mechanic has been secretly tracking our every move through a backchannel Lamer obviously left vulnerable. He's tapped into Vanguard's various systems to gain access, and he's about to set us free.

"Good thing, indeed," Dad says after his cell's door pops open. "But what's the plan? Do we capture the commander and force him to tell everyone the truth? Would it even make sense to let the people decide whether they want to take their chances up there and let those in O-town take their place down here? We have no idea how long the surface could stay survivable, and we know that Vanguard will fail sooner or later."

"Governor Bradford—that's the name of the leader of Nelly's community—is planning something. A move up the east coast, maybe to Canada, we think," I say while Dunstan works to unlock our cell. "We should at least hear him out."

The glass door unlocks with a snap, and I push it open. Dad is waiting on the other side and he pulls me into an embrace. "How does this Bradford want to take his people north?" he asks before letting go.

I glance at my shoes. There's no way to achieve both O-town and Vanguard's objectives, and while I've always just wanted to do what's right, I have to now convince everyone to take a chance on a nebulous plan that could possibly be all or nothing.

"He needs our ferries," I mumble before looking up.

"Is that why you came back? To steal them?" Dad asks with a look of haughty judgment.

That's quite rich coming from a man who's been lying for over half of his adult life, so I pull myself to my full height—making me taller than everyone in the room except Ray—and cross my arms.

"That's right," I say with more conviction than I truly feel.

"But that would strand thousands of people down here for good," he says.

"They've been down here for over twenty years, letting Lamer—and Christiansen before him—lie to them!" I exclaim, unable to hold in my frustration any longer. "Don't they deserve to know the truth? That there's another choice for them? If they're scared, let them stay here. They can live out their lives as they have been doing. But their decision shouldn't affect whether those above the surface can try to find a better place for themselves. And to go there, they need our ferries."

By now, I'm the one who's shaking, but unlike Dunstan, my tremors aren't caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Rather, they're the result of knowing that if I fail to convince my father to trust me on this, I've basically robbed two groups of thousands of people their last chance to truly live, not just merely survive.

"Not to rush such an important decision, but if you have a preference as to how to proceed, I'd suggest you make it now because we're running out of time," Dunstan says, tapping his tablet.

Dad tears his disapproving glare away from me and turns to the mechanic. "Until what? Is Lamer on his way back?"

A shrill sound rings through the room, repeating in short, loud bursts as emergency lights also begin flashing in an ominous red.

Dunstan nods upward. "No. That. I rigged the fire alarm to cause a distraction. You can either do your kidnapping now or head to the docking bays. Just tell me which one, and I'll remotely grant you full access to any of the Skippers."

I shake my head. "We're not leaving you. The commander will know for sure who helped us escape."

"Why would he care? Isn't that what he wants?" Dunstan asks. "To get rid of ya?"

I grab him by the wrist and pull him toward the exit. "Yes, but he also doesn't want witnesses. Why do you think Dad and Ray ended up in here, too?"

My burly mechanic digs in his heels, forcing me to stop. "There's too many of us. Two is the most any of those craft can carry, and you and Ray are the only ones who can operate them. I can fix them, not pilot 'em."

I hit the door release button to allow our exit from the brig. "So what you're saying is that we have no choice, but to take a ferry." I grin at the others, but the look on the men's faces is as serious as food poisoning from a week-old kelp smoothie.