The Vanished Page 3

  “I can leave and not return to train here if you’d prefer,” she says (despite knowing she probably can’t).

  K’Marah sighs and shakes her head. “It’s not that.”

  “So what is it—?”

  Shuri stops speaking as she watches K’Marah’s face morph into a mask of determined confidence. Which is when the princess realizes the presiding Dora is headed in their direction. “Excellent job today, Your Majesty,” the woman says.

  Shuri’s face goes hot. “Thank you.”

  “K’Marah,” the woman goes on, “I expect that whatever has broken your focus will be resolved before your arrival to this building tomorrow morning?”

  K’Marah nods, resolute. “Yes, madam. My apologies.”

  “You ladies have a restful evening.”

  She walks away, and the girls continue toward the exit, in silence this time. Shuri can’t bring herself to say anything else. Especially knowing that admonition likely hit her friend much harder than she’s letting on. K’Marah has told Shuri before that she often struggles in Dora training because many of the others think her too frivolous and distractible. Now the princess has seen that hint of disdain from the others with her own eyes.

  As they head back to the palace on foot, K’Marah takes occasional peeks over her shoulder. And it doesn’t escape the princess’s notice that her friend visibly relaxes the second they can no longer see Upanga.

  After a few meters more, K’Marah stops completely.

  And bursts into tears.

  “Oh, Shuri!” she says, dropping her face into her hands.

  Oh boy, the princess thinks.

  “It’s awful, Shuri.”

  “What is?”

  K’Marah takes a steadying breath and then launches into … quite the tale: “Okay, so I have this friend, Josephine. She’s French. I met her some time ago at this Global Summit on Advanced Tech your brother attended as the guest of the prime minister of Uganda. She did this super-cool presentation on some prototype for these ‘smart’ prosthetic things that somehow regrow whatever limb they’re being used to replace—”

  “Wait … really??”

  “Yes, but don’t interrupt. I haven’t gotten to the important part,” K’Marah says. “Josephine’s partner on the project was her cousin, Celeste. I’ve video-chatted with her a few times while talking to Jo, and she’s really great, but Celeste wasn’t at the summit because she got invited to some other tech thingy in Germany. Anyway … Josephine called me this morning and told me that Celeste is missing!”

  Shuri’s ears really perk up then. “Come again?”

  “Jo hasn’t been able to reach her in days! And they usually talk at least three to four times during each twenty-four-hour period. Jo said that the last time she spoke to Celeste, Celeste mentioned getting invited to something else, but she wouldn’t tell Josephine precisely what or where. It caused quite the rift between them. Anyway, the grown-ups keep brushing Jo off about the whole thing, but she’s sure something is wrong, and I believe her.”

  “Yasha is missing, too,” Shuri says before she can think better of it.

  And she instantly regrets it.

  “You mean that snooty girl we met in Kenya?” K’Marah says. “Holy Bast! They have to be connected!”

  “Honestly, they don’t,” Shuri says, beginning to walk again. This conversation is making her feel like tiny, multi-legged creatures are crawling all over her. “I’m sure I spoke too soon,” she calls back over her shoulder. “It’s possible—likely even—that Yasha is merely ill.”

  “But what if she isn’t, Shuri?” K’Marah says as she catches up and falls into step beside the princess.

  Shuri shakes her head. “Even if she isn’t, the statistical probability of there being a connection between two ‘missing’ girls from countries that are thousands of kilometers apart and don’t share an official language is close to zero.”

  “But, Shuri—”

  “They’re not connected, K’Marah,” Shuri says, ignoring a flash in her mind of her nightmare. Yasha eating people and the sudden bloom of dread behind her navel. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s cousin, but there’s not a whole lot we can do, is there?”

  K’Marah sighs again. “No. I guess there isn’t.”

  “Right. So let’s get back to business. I have assessments to ace, and you need to refocus so that one instructor doesn’t bite your head off again.”

  “Speaking of which,” K’Marah says, “I totally let you win that match. Couldn’t have the others thinking you’re some weakling.” She nudges Shuri with an elbow.

  “Oh, how benevolent of you.” Shuri rolls her eyes—maybe a little disappointed—and shoves her friend back.

  And they continue on to the palace without exchanging another word.

  Shuri talks K’Marah into practicing some hand-and-foot drills once they reach her chambers, and neither girl says anything more about their “missing” acquaintances.

  But Shuri can’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard she tries.

  A paragraph on dictatorships in her Global Political Systems textbook triggers highly disconcerting thoughts of Yasha being kidnapped, held hostage, and used to create some kind of environmental weapon of mass destruction. Which does it for the princess: She decides to go to the one place she knows she can focus—her lab.

  In truth, it’s been a while since she’s spent any time there. Having a grown-up hovering nearby around the clock can really put a damper on a girl’s sense of wonder and will to experiment.

  Tonight, though, Shuri is desperate for a real distraction. So she grabs some study materials, and she and Nakia (Ayo has the night off) make their way to what the princess hopes is still her Zen zone.

  And, thank Bast, it works. When her palm lands on the cool surface of the security scanner, she feels like lightning has shot through her veins. It makes her downright giddy. She bounces on her toes as the glass door slides open and the automated greeting fills the small cavern that serves as an entryway, then bursts into the foyer-like central space, drops to her knees, and presses her forehead to the gleaming floor. It sends a blissful chill over her neck, shoulders, and back.

  Nakia’s delighted laugher rings out behind the princess. “Guessing you missed this place?” she says.

  “You have no idea,” Shuri replies without lifting her head.

  “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it. Ninety minutes sound okay?”

  Wait …

  Shuri sits up and looks over her shoulder at the uniform-clad guard. There’s a conspiratorial spark in her eyes. “Leave me to it?” the princess says.

  At this, Nakia smiles, and Shuri can see why T’Challa is smitten—Shuri used this fact against him to buy herself some time to leave the country when trying to save the heart-shaped herb, though he won’t shoot his shot, the coward. “I will have a word with the queen mother. She’ll understand.”

  And with a wink and a small bow, the Dora—who is officially Shuri’s favorite now—turns around and takes her leave.

  * * *

  There’s an alarm going off.

  Shuri bolts upright, and something heavy falls from her lap without making a sound.

  She jumps to her feet in a panic, trying to get her bearings, and there’s a thud and CRASH behind her that make her whip around and land in Kocha M’Shindi’s signature fighting stance: hands fisted and arms up, one guarding the face and ready to strike, the other guarding the body and ready to block; legs shoulder-width apart, with the dominant foot slightly behind the plant foot, and knees soft and ready to spring.

  Her eyes land on an overturned little lab table, its former contents—a microscope slide holder, box of gears, and two conical flasks—scattered across the floor (by some miracle, only one of the flasks is broken).

  And there’s the wheeled chair that knocked the table over. It’s the same chair Shuri plopped down into when she came into this lab station. On the floor at her feet? The mango-size and -shaped hunk
of raw Vibranium she was examining while she studied a list of known properties.

  She smacks her forehead. No idea when or how much time has elapsed since, but the princess clearly fell asleep.

  And that annoying alarm is still going.

  She looks around for the source of the slightly muffled noise. Her Kimoyo card is faceup on the desk at the back of this particular lab station, but the screen is black.

  Shuri walks out into the open space of the foyer, and the sound gets louder. It’s coming from the lab station to her right, and as she gets closer, she realizes that there’s also a mechanized voice. “Warning: intruder alert,” says a robot-sounding woman every few seconds. It’s coming from Shuri’s desktop computer, which is perched on a steel table at the opposite end of the station, and faced away from her.

  “Warning: intruder alert …”

  She approaches slowly, gripped by the same sense of foreboding she felt when her Kimoyo card alerted her to that P.R.O.W.L. network ping yesterday afternoon. Except the closer she gets to her computer, the more the bad feeling intensifies … an alert on a system she designed to alert her to things is way different from a—

  “Warning: intruder alert …”

  Once she gets around to where she can see the screen, Shuri gasps. The cursor is moving around and things are clicking and windows are opening and words are appearing in search bars and results are populating—

  Shuri is being hacked. For the span of a loooooong beat, she just stands there. Staring. Because she can’t believe it. Being hacked would mean someone managed to get through the complex system of firewalls, two-factor authentications, and encryptions the princess built with her own fingertips. And it has to be a someone—there’s not an AI on earth who could override her cyber defenses.

  “Warning: intruder alert …”

  “Impossible …” she breathes into the air.

  But it clearly is possible. Because as Shuri stands there agape, the transcript about Yasha’s absence from the lab in Kenya appears on the screen, scrolls of its own accord, then zooms and latches on to the phrase no call, no show.

  The virtual intruder has accessed the P.R.O.W.L. network.

  Shuri leaps into action. After disabling the alarm (so annoying, that noise and voice), she decides the only viable course of action is to … hack back. Yes, she could cut her Internet connection to kick the interloper out, but the princess knows that if they got in once, they’ll get in again.

  Also: This isn’t just about her now. Sensitive information from other nations, including the one run by Ororo—weather goddess, mistress of the elements, and all-around mutant super heroine—is now vulnerable. Which makes Shuri feel a mixture of furious and petrified. She is sure she had the surveillance network locked down tighter than that polygon place in America that holds all the nation’s secrets. Managing to break into it would mean that the intruder has tech skills far above and beyond even the princess’s. In the wrong hands, information acquired through P.R.O.W.L. could be used to wreak havoc of international proportions.

  Shuri has to find out who this hacker is before they can cause Wakandan allies—or Wakanda itself—any harm.

  She runs back to the other lab station to grab her laptop and quickly hops onto the network. The hack back is much easier than the princess anticipates: Whoever broke through left their own network wide open (which seems amateurish?).

  Shuri slips right in.

  And she has to move fast. There’s a good chance that the moment Shuri’s presence is detected, her intruder will pull the plug and end the connection.

  As quickly as she can, Shuri activates the trespasser’s webcam (again: rookie move leaving it uncovered; this hacker is either wildly overconfident or not nearly as stealthy as a good hacker should be).

  And instantly draws back.

  It’s a girl. Maybe Shuri’s age, but certainly no older. Brown-skinned with short, curly hair cut sort of asymmetrically. She’s so focused on the stuff she’s poking through on Shuri’s other computer, she hasn’t realized she’s literally being watched.

  This girl needs a lesson in snooping.

  While she continues opening windows and scanning through what she finds—curly girl is now combing through a bunch of French newspapers (is this girl French?)—Shuri decides to do some digging of her own.

  What she discovers? In addition to being a similar age—she’s a twelve-year-old high schooler (which Shuri didn’t realize was possible) in the American city of Chicago—similar complexion, and similarly computer savvy, the hacker extraordinaire also has a name that ends in “ri”: Riri. Surname “Williams.”

  And despite the fact that Riri’s a total stranger, Shuri relaxes the slightest bit. Based on what she’s seen in the girl’s own files, most of which are related to schoolwork, it’s highly unlikely that this Riri’s hacking motives are malicious.

  There are a few strange schematics for what looks like some sort of metal super suit, but if the girl is anything like Shuri—and the princess suspects that she is—it’s nothing more than a fun side experiment. So what is she after?

  “Guess there’s one way to find out …” Shuri says before taking a deep breath and establishing a web call.

  She leaves her camera off at first. “Umm, hello?” she says once she can hear Riri muttering under her breath. “Riri, is it?”

  The girl jolts so forcefully, her chair topples backward. She disappears from the frame, crashing to the floor with a yelp. After a few seconds, the top of her head comes into view, and then her eyes. Which look like they’ve seen the undead and aren’t sure if she’s still alive to tell about it.

  “Ahh … yes. I am the owner of the network you’ve infiltrated,” Shuri continues. How strange it must be to hear some disembodied voice who knows your name coming out of your computer. “Explain yourself, young lady.”

  Shuri watches Riri’s eyes flick left, then come back.

  She’s about to unplug.

  “Wait! Don’t disconnect! I’m—” Just like you, Shuri wants to say but doesn’t. Someone with harmful intentions could say the same thing. Shuri certainly wouldn’t believe it if it were said to her.

  She huffs. There’s only one thing to do.

  After a quick glance in the thick-paned glass of the wall behind her to make sure her hair looks okay, Shuri launches her own webcam.

  “Hi,” she says to Riri with a wave.

  Riri’s eyebrows rise before she does, but when Shuri doesn’t vanish—or morph into some many-headed monster—the younger girl rights her chair and replants herself in front of her computer screen. Mouth agape.

  It makes Shuri giggle. “I felt the same way when I first saw you,” she says.

  “Who are you?” Riri replies, awe dancing all over her face. It makes Shuri feel … like she really matters. (Does T’Challa get to feel this way all the time?)

  But also: How should she respond? Admitting to being the princess of a hidden nation in Africa doesn’t seem the way to go no matter how young and innocent this Riri looks. “Well …” Shuri says, deciding to take the “bad cop” route, “I don’t really think you’re at liberty to ask me that question. Who are you, and why did you hack me?”

  “Uhhh …” Riri’s eyes dart around as though seeking an escape route.

  “And don’t even think about lying,” Shuri continues. “I have pinned your location and will alert the authorities to your activities.” This isn’t the least bit true, but this Riri character couldn’t possibly know that.

  Or could she? “Hmm …” Riri’s eyes narrow and her head cocks to one side. “Not to burst your bubble or anything, but based on stuff I found on your network, I’d say you’d be the one in trouble with the ‘authorities.’ In, like … eleven different countries. That surveillance network you built is epic, but also, like, super illegal. I was expecting you to be some world-domination-plotting white dude who lives in his mom’s basement with a stockpile of weapons.”

  Shuri can’t help but laugh. Sh
e kind of likes this Riri. “Fine,” she says, deciding on a different tactic. “Tell me why you infiltrated my network or I’ll wipe your entire system, and you’ll have to spend hours retrieving it all from backups. Which, if you’re anything like me, are all on external hard drives.”

  Riri gasps. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, I most certainly would. Especially considering how much you’ve seen.”

  For the space of a few seconds, neither girl speaks.

  Then Riri deflates. “My friend is missing,” she says. “I only found you because I’m looking for her.”

  THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT IS A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWELVE-YEAR-OLD RIRI WILLIAMS (WHO MANAGED TO HACK MY NETWORK DESPITE IT SURELY BEING ONE OF THE MOST SECURE ON THE PLANET, NOT TO TOOT MY OWN HORN) OF CHICAGO, USA, AND ME.

  Full disclosure: I began recording just after she shared that a girl she knows has gone missing … and no one seems to notice but Riri.

  ME: … OKAY, I’M BACK. CAN YOU REPEAT THAT?

  RIRI: I SAID, I ONLY FOUND YOU—WELL, FOUND YOUR NETWORK—BECAUSE I WAS LOOKING FOR HER.

  ME: TELL ME MORE.

  RIRI: (AUDIBLE PAUSE) FINE, BUT WILL YOU HEAR ME OUT ALL THE WAY BEFORE YOU RESPOND?

  ME: I CAN AGREE TO THAT.

  RIRI: OKAY. THANK YOU. (AUDIBLE SIGH) THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT IS THAT I HAVE THIS … ACQUAINTANCE. I WOULDN’T CALL US FRIENDS, PER SE. I DON’T REALLY HAVE MANY OF THOSE SINCE MY BEST FRIEND, NATALIE, WAS—(AUDIBLE PAUSE) NEVER MIND. ANYWAY, THIS GIRL’S NAME IS CICI, AND PEOPLE WOULD CONSTANTLY GET US CONFUSED BECAUSE OUR NAMES RHYME AND WE WERE THE ONLY TWO BLACK GIRLS IN THIS SUMMER ROBOTICS PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY HERE. SHE’S SUPER SMART LIKE ME, BUT A FEW YEARS OLDER. AND SHE LIVES DOWN THE ROAD, SO I SEE HER ALL THE TIME ON THE WAY TO AND FROM SCHOOL EVEN THOUGH WE DON’T REALLY TALK. SHE DOESN’T HAVE FRIENDS, EITHER, BUT WE MAKE EYE CONTACT SOMETIMES, AND I FEEL LIKE SHE SORTA LOOKS OUT FOR ME? HARD BEING A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD HIGH SCHOOLER, LEMME TELL YA. SHE’S LIKE THIS PSEUDO BIG SISTER.

  WHICH IS WHY I KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG. I HAVEN’T SEEN HER IN FOUR DAYS. AND I HAVE THIS … HUNCH, I GUESS. THAT SHE’S IN TROUBLE. THAT SHE’S MISSING IN THE FOUL-PLAY SENSE OF THE WORD?