by Nic Stone
“Whoa,” Riri suddenly says.
“What?” Shuri’s heart rate kicks up. “Did something happen?”
“Uhhh … not yet? But something will if we fail this mission. With you connected to the network, I was able to crack into a file I’m sure Lady N wouldn’t want anyone to see.”
A drone zips over Shuri’s head, and she has to duck. “What’s in it?”
“Her … plans. I won’t go into detail because you need to stay focused. But the long and short of it is that she has zero intention of ever allowing these girls to return to their families. In super-basic-villain fashion, she’s creating an army.”
There is definitely some sort of mind-control juice in the air. “To what end, though?”
“Pause. You’re approaching the math-and-technology sector now, which wraps around the Hive.” Shuri notices that as she gets closer to said sector, the jumpsuits shift from orange to red. “At the dead end, bank right, and then left. The room is shaped like a—”
“Hexagon, I know,” Shuri says, following the directions. Most of the girls she passes are so immersed in their respective work, Shuri doubts they’d notice her even if she strutted through in a neon pink leotard with a feathered crown singing “I Will Survive” at the top of her lungs. “Can we get back to Lady N’s plans?”
“Seems to be your classic I was scorned and now I hate everyone vendetta. There’s a journal entry where she mentions the pain of being sidelined for men even though she was the better candidate for like jobs and stuff.”
Shuri tries to ignore the pinch in her chest.
“Honestly, her reason for being low-key evil isn’t super far-fetched. The world isn’t super kind to nerd girls like us. But despite being all about girl power myself, I personally can’t rock with kidnapping and brainwashing people.”
“Fair point,” Shuri says.
“There should be a Hive entrance in a wall to your left.”
Shuri sees it … but also sees the number pad where a passcode has to be entered.
“Drat!” Shuri says. “The door is code-protected.”
“Oh,” Riri replies. “Probably should’ve expected that.”
“You didn’t happen to get control of the doors yet, did you?”
“Nope.”
With a huff, Shuri looks around. She has ONE chance to get this right. Her eyes land on a light-brown-skinned girl, bent over a notebook and scribbling furiously. Shuri steps closer and looks over the girl’s shoulder. The most complex math problem the princess has ever seen unfurls across the page.
A memory pops into Shuri’s head: K’Marah walking over to Shuri’s digital safe, inputting the correct passcode, and having her way with Shuri’s stash of sweets. “How did you do that?” the princess had asked. And K’Marah shrugged. “You flat-out told me the password while working on one of your experiments. I asked, and you answered.”
Shuri swallows nervously, then presses the button she added to the suit’s right wrist so that her silencer will turn off temporarily. She leans down near the girl’s ear. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I forgot the passcode to the Hive—”
“Nine-three-seven-eight-six,” the girl says without breaking her concentration.
Quick as she can, Shuri zips back to the door, and inputs the numbers.
When the door parts down the center, she exhales.
And then she slips inside.
* * *
Which is when everything begins to go terribly wrong. Because as soon as the door has shut behind Shuri, she can hear a strange buzzing sound just ahead. She’s in a short passageway with a frosted glass door at the opposite end. There’s a dark shape beyond it, but Shuri can’t make it out. “Riri? You picking up on that noise?”
“Vaguely,” the other girl says in Shuri’s ear. “It’s probably just the hum of all the fans in the mainframe. I’m sure you know how intense supercomputers can be. Go ahead and try to plant the chip before someone comes.”
“Fine,” Shuri says, swallowing down her sense of foreboding. “The coast is clear?”
“As rubbing alcohol.”
Pulling the chip from the flapped breast pocket she added to the suit, Shuri shoves through the second door.
And stops dead in her tracks. Because there at the center of the Hive is the largest literal hive the princess has ever seen: Sheets of honeycomb hang from the paneled ceiling like swaths of dripping paint, each one completely covered in honeybees. Who have definitely come to realize there’s an intruder and gotten louder. “Oh my GODS!” Shuri says, feeling behind her for the door handle so she can go out the same way she came in.
Except there isn’t one.
“Riri, how do I get out of here? This ‘hive’ is full of bees that sting when agitated, and I am ONE HUNDRED percent sure they’re agitated!”
“Oh WOW! Definitely didn’t see that com—”
“RIRI!”
“Okay, okay! I’m looking!”
Shuri begins to slide to the right along the wall. Yes, her suit can withstand the type of radiation levels that cause genetic mutations, but will the material hold up if attacked by the stingers of thousands of honeybees?
She certainly doesn’t want to find out.
“Move to the left!” Riri says. (Of course the princess went the wrong way. Of COURSE!) “After you feel yourself shift over the second angle in the hexagon, there will be a door in the center of the wall. There’s a padlock symbol over it on this digital schematic just like there was over the door you used to enter, so I’m guessing—hoping, really—there’s a keypad where you’ll enter the same code. It leads to a corridor with an exit that’ll spit you out at the back of the VR space.”
“Okay,” Shuri says, whispering now.
“We need to get you outta there. Regroup. This is proving more difficult than I anticipated.”
“YEP!” Shuri says, inching closer as the bees whip about in front of her. One lands on the back of her (thankfully gloved) hand, and she freezes.
It flies away, Bast be praised.
“Just so you know: There are a lot of girls congregated in the space you have to go through. I’m sure the ones who aren’t immersed in whatever they’re doing will notice when the door opens, so just move fast. Head back to the main hallway—”
“And go straight across and down the hall to the emergency exit on the biology wing—”
“No, actually,” Riri says. “That will set off an alarm. Which we don’t need.”
“Umm … okay?”
“There’s an additional exit to the right of the elevator that will put you in a stairwell. It connects to the main entry room. That’s the way you’ll go.”
Shuri has reached the keypad, and after a deep breath, she spins around, punches in the code, and the moment the door hisses open, she goes through it and shoves it shut behind her as fast as she can. Two rogue bees manage to slip through, but she can’t think about that right now.
“All right, I’m approaching the second door.”
“Okay. There’s a trio of girls standing not too far beyond it, so be careful.”
“Noted.”
Shuri readies herself to make a break for it, thankful to see what looks like a sensor above the door that will cause it to open automatically. Then she steps forward.
The wall parts, and the bees slip out (oops), but Shuri is on the move.
Until she’s not.
Because the sight of the three girls Riri mentioned makes Shuri feel as if she’s slammed into a brick wall. There are two in orange and one in gray, all examining what looks like a prosthetic leg and chattering away in French.
Which instantly stops when they notice the open door.
The girl in gray’s eyes widen and dart around. As if she knows something’s afoot.
Shuri’s mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. Then she locks eyes with the girl (or so it seems).
And Shuri is absolutely certain the girl knows that Shuri is there.
It’s K’M
arah.
And then someone screams.
“BEEEE!”
“Oh my gosh, where?!”
“We have to get OUT of here!”
“Why does Lady N even keep those things?”
“Well, she mentioned the creation of a paralysis serum made from the toxin in a honeybee’s venom sac—”
“It was rhetorical, Celeste!”
As the fleeing frenzy catches on, the whole room is thrown into chaos. Different girls continue to voice their complaints as they duck and dodge and swipe at the air in their rush toward the exit into the main hallway.
It serves as both blessing and curse.
On the one hand, if the room empties out, it’ll be easy for Shuri to walk through unnoticed.
On the other: Now there’s a clump of girls trying to get into the hall. Thereby blocking her way to freedom.
“Shuri, what’s happening?” Riri says. “All the floating dots in the room have converged.”
“Yep,” Shuri replies. “A couple of bees got out of the hive, and everyone panicked and is trying to exit.”
“Ah.”
“So … plan B?”
“I mean, there really isn’t one. Stay close to the crowd, I guess, and we’ll hope that if you accidentally bump somebody, it’ll be ignored in the shuffle.”
Shuri reluctantly complies, getting as close as she can to the group—there are maybe twenty-five girls—and as they move, the princess’s gaze hooks onto the back of K’Marah’s head and won’t let go.
How can Shuri reach her friend? Will she be able to get the young Dora trainee to see sense? Because, by Bast, K’Marah is still going to be to Shuri what Okoye is to T’Challa. The princess won’t have it any other way.
How will Shuri get her friend’s head cleared of the hypnotic gas she’s inhaled? Based on how clearheaded Shuri is when not breathing the air, the princess is now sure—
“WHO RUN THE WORLD?”
Everyone freezes.
Shuri curses under her breath and backs away from the others as she tries to silence her blaring Kimoyo card within her pocket.
K’Marah whips around.
“What was that?” someone else says, all desire to escape the room evidently forgotten.
“WHO RUN THE WORLD?”
“What’s that awful stench?” another girl says, sniffing at the air.
Shuri fumbles with the device—blasted gloves—unable to remove it: Music coming from seemingly nowhere is a smidge different from a smartphone-style device floating in midair.
“Shuri, what’s going on?”
“It would appear that my mother is calling,” the princess hisses. “I’m trying to turn it off—”
All the girls gasp.
“Oh boy,” K’Marah says, looking at Shuri.
Who looks down. And instead of seeing nothing, sees a torso, legs, and feet clad in neon purple polyethylene.
The Kimoyo card stops ringing. (Because of course it does.)
Nobody speaks. Shuri doesn’t even breathe.
The girls do, though. She knows because some of their faces change. “Sheesh, does it reek in here, or is it just me?” one girl says, waving her hand in front of her nose.
“Definitely not just you.” This girl is pinching her nose shut.
“It does stink,” a third girl says. Shuri’s eyes widen with recognition: Xiang Yeh. A Chinese Jamaican girl Shuri’s age known for her work using virtual reality to create new neurological connections in people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. The princess is in awe just looking at her.
And Xiang is staring right back. “But it certainly didn’t stink a minute ago.”
The girls begin to murmur to one another, and Xiang runs her eyes over the walls and ceiling before fixing them on Shuri again … and then coming toward her.
The princess couldn’t move if her life depended on it.
“Hey! It’s starting to smell better!” says a girl with big, curly hair.
More of them inhale.
And it might be a trick of the light, but Shuri could swear she sees some of their eyes glaze over as they do.
“Wait, why is there someone in a hazmat suit in the engineering wing?”
“Yeah … who’s she?”
“Hold on a sec,” Xiang says, putting a hand up to silence the girls behind her.
To Shuri’s shock, they all comply.
Now Xiang is right in front of her. Shuri wishes the suit had a “vaporization” option.
But then the other girl, who is a similar height and build as the princess, says something Shuri isn’t expecting:
“Will you turn that song back on?”
Shuri opens her mouth to reply, but thinks better of it. “Shuri?” comes Riri’s voice in her ear. “Are you all right?”
Without a word, Shuri removes a glove and swipes at the screen of her device. The song comes pouring out again—from the top this time—and she watches in amazement as the girls’ expressions shift from that bizarrely blissed-out state to confusion. With slack jaws and furrowed brows, they glance at one another, then begin to look around.
“What even is this place?” one of them says.
“And what are we doing here?”
“Why does it smell like that?”
“I think there’s something wrong,” Xiang says, looking over her shoulder at her friends.
“Not to sound like a little kid,” comes the voice of a girl with an Australian accent, “but I sort of want me mum.”
Xiang turns back to Shuri as the song continues to blare. “Who exactly are—”
But that’s all Shuri hears. Because at that moment she feels a tingle behind her left ear, and instinctively leans to the right. Something whizzes past her neck from behind, embedding itself in Xiang’s shoulder.
Shuri and Xiang look down at it simultaneously—some sort of dart—before Xiang’s limbs go slack and she collapses.
“Oh, mon dieu!” says one of the French cousins beside K’Marah.
Shuri whirls around just as a brown-skinned woman (with kind of an epic Mohawk) levels the dart gun she’s holding to fire another shot at the princess of Wakanda.
“Shuri, I think Lady N might be behind you!” Riri says.
“Oh, really, now?”
“Ah, so you already knew. Great! My work here is done!”
Shuri dodges another dart and hears the fwump of another girl genius going down. Then someone cries, “Why is Lady N shooting tranq-darts at us?”
Shuri pushes the button on her wrist again to turn her silencer off. “You girls are in danger,” she says aloud, squeezing her remaining gloved hand into a fist to power up the photon blaster she embedded in the palm. “This woman does not have your best interests at heart—”
Another dart whizzes by.
“Don’t listen to this intruder,” Lady N (more like “Lady N-O”) says to the group. “She is no one. You are my protégés. The world’s best and brightest. And I have a grand purpose for you.”
“And what is that purpose?” Shuri says, hoping to keep the woman talking. The song is still playing, which means the girls’ minds should be clear enough for the truth about Lady N’s grand plans to ring through whatever crap she’s about to feed them.
“These girls have more intelligence in their pinkie fingers than the collective sum in the heads of all the world’s male leaders. I have more intelligence than ninety-seven percent of the men who were chosen or promoted in my stead. I will not permit that to be the case for them.”
“Sounds legit to me,” a girl in red says.
This certainly isn’t going the way Shuri anticipated …
Good thing her blaster is ready.
“Now, as for this interloper …” The woman fires a final shot, and once Shuri rebounds from dodging it, she shoves her hand forward, palm out. The burst of purple light catches the woman in the right shoulder, and her arm goes limp.
“You need to let these girls go, Nightshade—”
; “It’s Nirvana.” And the woman—who isn’t that much bigger than Shuri, but still—lunges at the princess.
After an incredibly nimble kick-fake that Shuri moves to dodge, the woman swings out with the arm that should still be temporarily paralyzed … Which catches Shuri off guard.
“What the … ?” the princess says, leaning back just in time and barely dodging the blow to the face. She stumbles backward, and the woman kicks out. The princess catches her foot and twists just like M’Shindi taught her, but instead of the woman flipping wildly and landing incapacitated on her side, she manages to use the force of Shuri’s defensive move to increase her own momentum. Her other foot flies around and pegs Shuri in her unguarded side. The princess goes down.
“You should show some respect, girl,” Nightshade/Nirvana/whatever says, standing over her.
Shuri fires off another photon blast from the floor, and it hits the woman in the hip. She staggers as her leg goes numb … but then quickly recovers.
“Riri, how is she doing that?” Shuri says, scrambling back to her feet and getting as far out of the woman’s reach as possible. Her Kimoyo card has fallen out of her pocket. “Those blasts should render her limbs useless for a minimum of five minutes!”
“I’m looking, I’m looking!” Riri says.
The woman smiles, pulling on a pair of gloves as she approaches Shuri, who is struggling to find her nerve. She can still hear the spell-cracking girl-power song playing, but it’s nearing the end.
“You just don’t get it, sweetheart,” Nirvana says. “I know everything about you. All those gifts you have. Wasting away in service to your thickheaded, talentless hack of a brother? You’re on the wrong side, dear.”
Shuri creeps backward as Lady N advances.
“Aha!” Riri says into Shuri’s ear. “There’s a report here that says she’s like a super genius in both genetics and biochemistry and is known for creating chemical cocktails that can alter human physiology at the cellular level. She probably drinks some sort of self-healing serum in place of a daily multivitamin or something. And apparently once created an army of … werewolves?”
