The Vanished

by Nic Stone

  When Shuri does manage to drift off into fitful bouts of half sleep, her dreams are dreadful and disjointed. Though a couple involve the Garden and images of her name blurring off that list, the majority are more foreboding. There’s one where a man with a metal hand infiltrates the vault of relics and steals the world’s most dangerous chunk of Vibranium. One where all the girls at the Garden have been turned into mindless, red-eyed shells of themselves and are planning a global takeover.

  One where there’s an ambush awaiting T’Challa at that conclave, and Shuri doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. One where a haggard old woman Shuri recognizes as a well-known seer in the marketplace grows and grows in front of Shuri’s eyes before shouting,“Sisindisiwe!” and disintegrating.

  It’s this word and its meaning—Save us!—clanging around in Shuri’s head when she jolts awake (again).

  And realizes she’s overslept. Which is definitely not good: Her Global Diplomacy examination is set to begin in twelve minutes.

  It’s all downhill from there: She accidentally puts pimple cream on her toothbrush (blegh). She collides with a guard while attempting to run out of the palace and catches a gnarly elbow to the ribs. She gets caught in the seat belt while trying to exit Nakia’s hovercraft and goes sprawling. And when she stumbles into Scholar M’Walimu’s classroom, the (prehistoric) man gives her a once-over before the corners of his mouth turn down. “Tardy and unpresentable.” Which is when Shuri looks and sees that she’s still in her pajama trousers, and is wearing two different shoes.

  For the first time in her life—though the sickly smug fossil of a professor makes it clear that “it certainly won’t be the last”—Shuri fails an exam.

  Thinking it will help clear her head, the princess decides to walk back to the palace. Reacquaint herself with the city she calls home in hopes that it will pull her to center. It takes some convincing, but Nakia agrees to fly overhead so the princess can walk alone.

  And it does help. As the princess roams the streets of Birnin Zana, taking in the loud noises and bright colors, admiring the lines and curves of what she knows is some of the most amazing architecture in the world, and looking into the beautiful faces of her fellow Wakandans—with her favorite song about girls running the world flowing into her ears—she begins to remember how much her home means to her.

  How much she wants her legacy to be tied to protecting it and the people who live here.

  But then she turns down an alleyway that will spit her out near the back gate to the palace, and Nakia’s voice cuts through her music. “You’re being trailed, Your Majesty,” she says. “Elderly woman with a walking staff. I’m certain she is harmless, and if not, I’ve no doubt you can handle yourself. But I thought you should know.”

  On instinct, Shuri looks over her shoulder.

  And finds herself looking into the face of the old seer woman from her dream.

  Shuri freezes, and she and the woman lock eyes as the princess’s stomach tumbles into her socks. The last time a person she saw in a dream appeared in real life, it was bad news: Princess Zanda of Narobia, who was out to decimate the heart-shaped herb and destroy Wakanda. The dream this older woman appeared in wasn’t too foreboding, but still.

  They’re far enough apart for the princess to make a run for it, but she can’t seem to move.

  The woman opens her mouth and barely breathes out a word … but the princess hears it as though it was spoken right into her ear at full volume:

  Sisindisiwe.

  Save us.

  Shuri’s entire body goes ice-cold.

  And then an alarm rings out.

  At the sound, Shuri breaks into a sprint in the direction of the palace.

  “Shuri—!”

  “I know!” the princess shouts in response to Nakia’s voice in her ear. Not that the Dora can hear her. Shuri just hopes her escort sees her running and gets the message: NO TIME TO TALK JUST GET TO THE PALACE.

  Because that alarm? It’s a nationwide one. The nationwide one. The one that denotes an incoming invasion or natural disaster.

  Shuri is fully focused now.

  She just saw the woman from one of her recent dreams … could a different one also be coming true? Has the colonizer-complected man with the metal hand—Baba’s killer, Klaw, she now realizes—breeched their borders and somehow made his way underground to the vault? Have all those bright and brilliant minds gone rogue, and now there’s an army of girl geniuses on the verge of launching an attack? Whoever’s behind the Garden’s operation obviously knows of Wakanda’s existence if Shuri’s name was on that list … what if Shuri’s dream about her name being blotted off that list was actually a sign that Lady N (or whoever) wants her—Princess Shuri of Wakanda—blotted out of existence?

  Shuri flies down the rear driveway to the palace and up the marble steps to the back doors that will deposit her in the kitchens.

  It’s mayhem inside the large space. Aproned—and some vibrantly chef-hatted—staff members pushing, shoving, and shouting as they flow into the hallway and head toward the nearest stairwell that will lead down to the palace’s bunker. Shuri weaves her way through the bodies and runs in the opposite direction of the foot traffic.

  She zips past the main ballroom and hangs left at the back of the grand foyer, then jets straight up a long marble hallway and across the formal dining hall lined with portraits of Wakanda’s kings. If Shuri didn’t know better, she’d swear the one of Baba is watching her.

  She shoulders through the secret panel beneath her great-great-grandfather’s beaming face, and stumbles into the low-lit concrete passageway that leads to the palace’s security center. As Shuri approaches the small room, she sees a cadre of guards clumped around the open entrance. Which infuriates her.

  Why are they all just standing there? Do they not realize that particular alarm signals a certified national state of emergency?

  “Umm … guys?” Shuri says as she approaches.

  The one propped up against the wall with his arms crossed—as though he’s watching a particularly boring game of cricket, Shuri thinks—looks in her direction and snaps to attention. “Princess Shuri!” he says, sparking similar posture-perfecting reactions from the other men scattered about. “What … uhhhh …” He looks around at the others, clearly hoping for some sort of assistance.

  None comes.

  There are six of them loitering around down here while who knows what is happening to the beloved nation they all took an oath to protect with their lives, and they part to give Shuri access to the security room itself.

  What she discovers inside makes her want to fire the whole lot of uniformed men posthaste. One guard sits at the central computer barking out erratic orders to four others who are moving around the room flipping different switches and pushing buttons. There’s even a guy on his hands and knees poking around beneath the main desk.

  “What on earth is going on here?” Shuri says.

  The guy in the middle looks over his shoulder at her, then turns back to—whatever it is he’s doing. “Princess Shuri!” he says. “What are you doing here, miss?”

  Shuri huffs. “I mean you no disrespect, sir, but I am of the mind to ask you the same question,” she says. “Shouldn’t you all be headed to your assigned posts at the border?”

  “Huh?” he says, turning to her again, a look of utter bewilderment etched into his bushy eyebrows.

  “Your posts?” Shuri says more pointedly. “At the border.”

  “OWW!” the one on the floor exclaims as he tries to get out from beneath the desk but fails to clear the edge. He rubs the back of his head as he sits up on his knees. “I don’t think she knows, sir,” he says to the guard at the desk.

  “Oh.” And the lead guard turns away from the princess to return to his task. “Balu, try flipping up the third switch on the left at the same time you flip down the second from the right, and then Idizi will push the button above the third monitor—”

  “What are you all doing?�
� Shuri says, throwing her hands in the air this time.

  “She definitely doesn’t know,” comes the voice of a guard who has poked his head in the door.

  “What do I not know?!”

  Now the head guard sighs. Heavily.

  And Shuri instantly feels like exactly what she knows they think she is: a hysterical little girl very much out of her depth.

  “It’s a false alarm, Your Majesty,” he says. “We are trying—as instructed by the king and queen—to turn the thing off.”

  “Huh?” It’s out of Shuri’s mouth before she can catch it, and she instantly wishes she could take it back—how utterly silly she must seem to these men! However, she needs more information.

  “There is no impending attack or national emergency, dear,” the one on the left—Balu—says. “Oy, I forget myself! Your Majesty,” he corrects with a small bow.

  Shuri clenches her jaw to keep from rolling her eyes.

  “The alarm was triggered from within,” he continues.

  Now Shuri’s brow furrows. “But that would mean—”

  “Someone pulled it,” the head guard says impatiently. “Now, if there is nothing else we can do for you, it is imperative that we get back to—”

  Shuri shoves past him, taps around on the touchscreen of the control panel, and, when a dialogue box pops up, shifts her hands to the keyboard, types the phrase Wakanda over Everyone!, and hits the enter key with more force than is expressly necessary.

  The alarm shuts off.

  “You’re welcome,” she says to the guards.

  Then she turns on her heel and exits, tapping a Kimoyo bead on her arm to shut the light off in the room, leaving the men in the dark on her way out.

  * * *

  Shuri plans to hole up in her quarters, where she can bury her sorrows in a reread of her favorite Advanced Quantum Physics textbook.

  In fact, the moment she steps into the space, she makes a beeline for the bookcase, plucks the well-worn tome from the third shelf, and plops herself down in the cushioned nook.

  Which is when she notices a different textbook—her Global Diplomacy one (that she admittedly would like to burn at this moment)—on the floor. Open.

  With the pages facedown.

  The most cardinal of book sins … (Well … other than dog-earing.)

  It’s something Shuri would never do.

  A chill creeps over her skin as her eyes roam the room. At first glance, the changes are subtle: The digital clock on her bedside table is slightly out of place, and one of the drawers is cracked open. There’s a pillow at the foot of the bed that Shuri is certain she left at the head, and the T-shirt she slept in is on the floor instead of hanging off the headboard where she tossed it.

  And the light in her dressing chamber is on. Which … well, after years of listening to her mother’s lectures about not taking solar power for granted, Shuri knows is something she isn’t responsible for.

  Someone was here in her room.

  And could very well still be.

  Slowly, quietly, Shuri reaches into the secret compartment at the back of her bedside table and pulls out the mini sound cannon she keeps there. While it doesn’t seem like much to the naked eye, the princess knows its power.

  Then she sneaks across the space to the brightly lit doorway.

  “Who’s there?” she says, whipping around the corner with the little cannon extended. And while the princess is relieved to see that there’s no one inside, she’s none too thrilled about the rest of her discovery.

  The whole place has been ransacked. There are clothes and shoes scattered about every which way, and what’s worse, her miniature lab station is wide open (and she knows she didn’t leave it that way because she keeps it “hidden” from her mother despite the fact that the queen knows it’s there). Shuri rushes over and quickly discovers that in addition to a few broken flasks and vials, there are items missing: a sound cannon like the one Shuri is presently holding, a small Panther gauntlet that shoots a purple-toned mini electromagnetic pulse, a pair of CatEyez, and a pair of very sharp throwing stars.

  The princess can’t form a coherent thought, let alone decipher what she’s feeling or put together sounds to make words. She turns away from the slaughtered station to do a bit of deep breathing. Collect herself …

  But then she notices the sheet of paper on the pullout desk and her mouth goes dry.

  It’s a list. The phrase Bright Futures is scrawled across the top, and beside the number three is a smudge where it’s clear someone failed to fully erase the name that was there before—Princess Shuri of Wakanda. But scrawled over the botched erase job is a new name. The same one she failed to make out in her dream, but can read clear as ethylene glycol now.

  Shuri gasps and snatches the paper up to examine it more closely. And while there’s nothing additional to see on that sheet, she does unearth something else: a small envelope with her name on it in familiar loopy scrawl.

  That’s when the princess knows:

  K’Marah’s gone.

  *Archived Document*

  Type: Letter

  Format: Handwritten

  Date: [unknown]

  DEAR SHURI,

  I AM SURE THIS LETTER WILL COME AS A SURPRISE CONSIDERING OUR MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER. I WAS IN A NOT-GREAT HEADSPACE WHEN YOU LAST SAW ME, PARTIALLY DUE TO MY BEING UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU WOULD BE LEAVING ME FOR THE GARDEN FAIRLY IMMINENTLY. IT SEEMED THE PERFECT PLACE FOR YOU, AND SEEING YOUR NAME ON LADY NIRVANA’S LIST OF “BRIGHT FUTURES” REALLY DID A NUMBER ON ME.

  SPEAKING OF SAID LIST—AND OF LADY NIRVANA (THAT’S WHAT THE “N” IS FOR, BY THE WAY)—SHORTLY AFTER YOU LEFT MY HOUSE YESTERDAY, I RECEIVED A MESSAGE ON MY KIMOYO CARD INFORMING ME THAT I, IN FACT, HAD BEEN CHOSEN AS THE “NEXT RECRUIT FOR PLANTING IN THE GARDEN.” DON’T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY, BUT DURING THE BRIEF VIDEO CHAT I HAD WITH LADY NIRVANA (WHO IS QUITE PRETTY AND STYLISH, BY THE WAY!), SHE TOLD ME THAT WHILE THEY INITIALLY WERE THINKING ABOUT INVITING YOU TO JOIN THEIR RANKS (I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT PART, AS YOU CAN SEE), AFTER FURTHER CONSIDERATION, IT WAS DECIDED THAT I WOULD BE THE BETTER CHOICE. “WE HAVE MANY INVENTORS AND TECHNOLOGICAL SAVANTS, BUT NO RECRUITS WHO ARE SKILLED IN TACTICAL STRATEGY AND HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT,” SHE SAID.

  I HAVEN’T TOLD YOU THIS BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT YOU TRYING TO *FIX* ANYTHING ON MY BEHALF, BUT A FEW WEEKS AGO, I GOT INTO SOME TROUBLE WITH OKOYE OVER SOMETHING I GENUINELY DIDN’T DO. IN A NUTSHELL, THE GENERAL IS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT I WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT CONCLAVE YOUR BROTHER IS ATTENDING. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE SHE GOT THAT IDEA BUT IT HAS CAUSED HER TO WATCH ME MORE CLOSELY AND SHARE LESS INFORMATION. IN OTHER WORDS, DORA TRAINING ISN’T AS … LIFE-GIVING, AS YOU WOULD SAY, AS IT USED TO BE.

  RECEIVING THAT MESSAGE AND CALL MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS GETTING A CHANCE AT SOMETHING NEW. IN THE SPIRIT OF HONESTY HERE, I WILL CONFESS TO YOU THAT WHILE I DEFINITELY ENJOY BEING YOUR BEST FRIEND, SEEING YOUR NAME ON THAT LIST, ESPECIALLY AFTER MY FALSE-ACCUSATION INCIDENT, REALLY MADE ME FEEL … WELL, NOT VERY GOOD ABOUT MYSELF AND MY “PLACE,” IF YOU WILL, IN WAKANDA.

  THERE IS JUST SO MUCH PRESSURE AND SO MANY EXPECTATIONS, AS I’M SURE YOU KNOW. IT’S JUST … THINGS ARE DIFFERENT FOR ME THAN THEY ARE FOR YOU. YOU’RE THE PRINCESS. IN MANY WAYS, YOU CAN DO NO WRONG. IF YOU MESS UP, PEOPLE WILL COVER FOR YOU. I WILL COVER FOR YOU EVEN. IF I MESS UP, I BRING SHAME UPON THE DORA MILAJE AND MY ENTIRE FAMILY. BOTH OF WHICH ARE SUBJECTED TO YOU AND YOURS.

  I DON’T MEAN FOR ANY OF THIS TO SOUND PERSONAL, I JUST … WELL, RECEIVING THAT INVITATION TO THE GARDEN DID A LOT FOR ME. I WOULDN’T HAVE ADMITTED IT BEFORE BECAUSE I JUST KNEW THERE WAS ZERO CHANCE OF A GIRL LIKE ME GETTING INVITED TO A PLACE LIKE THE GARDEN—MY “SMARTS” ARE MORE “STREET” THAN “BOOK,” AS THEY SAY IN AMERICA. BUT BEING IN THAT FACILITY WAS … I MEAN, YOU WERE THERE. YOU KNOW HOW AMAZING IT WAS. EVER SINCE WE GOT BACK, I’VE FELT THIS … LOSS.

  ANYWAY. THIS IS GETTING LONG.

  WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: BY THE TIME YOU READ T
HIS, I WILL BE GONE. I TRIGGERED THE EMERGENCY ALERT. (SORRY. IT WAS THE ONLY BIG-ENOUGH DIVERSION I COULD THINK OF FOR GETTING TO MY RENDEZVOUS POINT WITH LADY NIRVANA UNNOTICED.) ALSO, I TOOK A FEW OF YOUR GADGETY THINGS. I’D LOVE TO SAY “BORROWED,” BUT I’M NOT SURE I’LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET THEM BACK TO YOU. AGAIN: SORRY.

  LASTLY, IF YOU WIND UP GOING TO THAT CONCLAVE THING I WAS ACCUSED OF TELLING YOU ABOUT, I’LL LIKELY SEE YOU THERE.

  THAT’S THE COOLEST PART OF ALL THIS: LADY NIRVANA HAS A PLAN TO MAKE THE WORLD A MORE WELCOMING PLACE FOR YOUNG GIRLS. NO MORE LIFE ON THE FRINGES! PHASE ONE OF HER PLAN WILL KICK OFF AT THAT CONCLAVE. WHO KNOWS: PERHAPS YOU’LL BE SO IMPRESSED WITH WHAT WE’RE DOING, YOU’LL DECIDE TO LEAVE WITH US INSTEAD OF RETURNING TO WAKANDA WITH YOUR BROTHER.

  LASTLY, I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT IF YOU DIDN’T TELL MY MOTHER OR GRANDMOTHER ANYTHING. MOTHER IS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT I AM PARTICIPATING IN SOME EXTENDED DORA MILAJE TRAINING AND WILL BE GONE FOR AT LEAST A WEEK. I’LL FIGURE SOMETHING OUT BEYOND THAT.

  YOU REALLY HAVE BEEN AN EXCELLENT FRIEND (FOR THE MOST PART). I’LL MISS YOU.

  SINCERELY,

  K’MARAH

  This is all my fault.

  The words ring over and over in Shuri’s head as she bolts from her quarters and heads to the roof. Without waiting for permission or an escort, she summons the Predator and heads straight for the lab. “Hey, S.H.U.R.I., call Riri Williams,” she says as the sleek black vessel shoots off in the direction of the sacred mound.

  This is all my fault.

  The puzzle pieces slide together in Shuri’s mind, and she shakes her head. She is the reason K’Marah got into trouble. She told her mother and T’Challa that K’Marah had spilled the beans about the conclave. She lied.

  And look what has happened.

  “Hello?” comes a shockingly gruff voice through the Predator’s speakers.

  “Uhhh … hello? May I … speak to Riri?”

  “This is Riri.” The person groans.