The Vanished Page 4

  ME: SO—

  RIRI: I’M NOT DONE! GIMME, LIKE, ONE MORE MINUTE. THE OTHER THING IS THAT A WEEK AND A HALF AGO, THIS STRANGE WOMAN WEARING A SKIRT SUIT AND CARRYING A CLIPBOARD TRIED TO TALK TO ME AS I WALKED HOME FROM THE BUS STOP. THE STRANGER-DANGER VIBES WERE STRONG, SO I SKEDADDLED. ANYONE WHO CAN STAND, LET ALONE WALK, IN THE POINTY-TOE, SKY-HIGH HEELS SHE WAS WEARING HAS TO BE UP TO NO GOOD, AM I RIGHT?

  ME: I WOU—

  RIRI: WELL, FIVE DAYS AGO, I SAW CICI TALKING TO THAT SAME LADY. AND I HAVEN’T SEEN HER—THEM: CICI OR THE LADY—SINCE. I EVEN WENT TO HER HOUSE TODAY AND NO ONE ANSWERED THE DOOR. THERE WAS A LIGHT ON INSIDE, SO I KNOW SOMEONE WAS IN THERE …

  ME: HOL—

  RIRI: WE DON’T JUST LEAVE LIGHTS ON AROUND HERE. “THESE BILLS DON’T PAY THEMSELVES,” AS MY MOM CONSTANTLY REMINDS ME, AND—

  ME: RIRI!

  RIRI: HUH?

  ME: I DON’T MEAN TO RUSH YOU, BUT DO YOU THINK YOU COULD GET TO THE PART WHERE YOU DECIDED TO HACK ME?

  RIRI: OH. YEAH, OKAY. WELL, I WAS ON THE WEB TRYING TO FIND OUT IF ANYONE HAS REPORTED CICI MISSING—NO ONE HAS … THOUGH THAT’S SADLY NOT UNCOMMON WHEN IT COMES TO GIRLS LIKE US AROUND HERE. SO THEN I STARTED LOOKING INTO OTHER MISSING-GIRLS CASES THAT HAVE BEEN REPORTED WITHIN THE PAST MONTH, AND THAT LED ME TO A “GIRLS IN STEM” MESSAGE BOARD ABOUT THIS GIRL NAMED KATHERINE PRYDE WHO IS MISSING FROM DEERFIELD, A SUBURB NOT TOO FAR FROM HERE, AND ON THAT MESSAGE BOARD THERE WAS MENTION OF KATHERINE DEVELOPING A LONG-DISTANCE FRIENDSHIP WITH A GIRL IN THE PHILIPPINES … WHO ALSO TURNED UP MISSING.

  ME: WHOA.

  RIRI: YEAH. SO I FOUND KATHERINE’S SCREEN NAME AND THE SCREEN NAME OF THE GIRL FROM THE PHILIPPINES, AND WENT IN AND CHECKED THEIR CHAT HISTORIES AND ANY MUTUAL FRIENDS. WHICH LED ME TO A GIRL WHO’D BEEN CHATTING WITH BOTH OF THEM FROM KENYA. ON A HUNCH, I WENT INTO THE NETWORK THE KENYAN GIRL USED TO ACCESS THE MESSAGE BOARD. THAT’S WHERE I FOUND A SURVEILLANCE BUG I KNEW SHOULDN’T BE THERE—

  ME: MINE.

  RIRI: YOURS. IT SEEMED MALICIOUS, THE SORT OF CYBER-SPYING YOU’VE GOT GOING ON. SO I DECIDED TO HACK IN AND SEE WHAT I COULD FIND—

  END TRANSCRIPTION.

  The entryway buzzer sounded at that point—Nakia returning to escort me back to the palace—but I’d certainly heard enough. That “malicious” comment aside (I am merely looking out for the best interests of my country, thank you very much), there is now no denying the possibility of a … correlation between these apparent disappearances.

  Though I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. Telling Mother and T’Challa seems counterintuitive—especially considering that (a) I’m supposed to be preparing for my upcoming assessments, and (b) I’d have to reveal my surveillance network to them (Riri wasn’t wrong about it maybe getting me into some trouble).

  Besides, what would they do about it? It isn’t as though we have any definitive evidence that the “disappearances” are connected. And there remains the fact that no alarms have been sounded. No authorities alerted. No parents/guardians reporting their girls “missing.”

  I’ve asked Riri to keep me updated with regard to her missing acquaintance, but I’m going to get back to my studies.

  Well … after I retool my encryption system and strengthen my firewalls. Girl genius or not, being hacked again (and so easily!) is not on my to-be-accomplished list.

  But of course, the princess can’t let it go. She checks in with Riri every eight hours over the next two days, and sets the P.R.O.W.L. system to run a keyword scan every hour on the hour.

  And the results are staggering. There are multiple message boards like the one Riri stumbled upon, and taken together, they reveal a troubling phenomenon: Around the world, girls aged ten to fifteen—all notably accomplished in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields—have gone missing. But no one seems to notice (or care?) besides … other girls.

  There’s a physics prodigy—her award-winning research on quarks sparked a national discourse—missing in Bolivia. The robotics genius who created a rover capable of exploring the surface of Jupiter is missing in South Africa. In addition to her work in prosthetics, the cousin of K’Marah’s French friend also won an innovator prize for coding. There’s a girl missing in Pakistan who, using a high-powered telescope she scavenged from an observatory destroyed in a fire, discovered an entire planetary system in a neighboring galaxy.

  And on and on and on.

  But despite how distracted she’s become with the matter, Shuri has yet to puzzle out a viable course of action. It’s impossible to prove the disappearances are connected, and since there haven’t been any official reports of the missing girls (she’s checked every police system she could get into), Shuri and Riri both know that without any real evidence of foul play, no adults are going to take them seriously.

  It’s frustrating, to say the very least.

  The one person she does let in on her secret surveilling? K’Marah.

  “Whoa,” the Dora-in-training says when Shuri gives her a quick tour of the P.R.O.W.L. on the open laptop in Shuri’s closet mini-laboratory. “This is … extensive.”

  While she’d never admit it, Shuri’s been desperate to tell someone about the things she and Riri have discovered. And while K’Marah can be a bit dramatic, there’s no denying how helpful she was to the princess during the heart-shaped herb crisis. It’s not the same, of course, but it is a relief to share the burden of this particular mystery.

  Not that K’Marah is helpful at all.

  “So,” she says, turning to Shuri after scanning the information. “What are we going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “Umm … yeah. We have to do something, Shuri. These girls are clearly in danger.”

  “I mean, let’s not be rash,” Shuri replies in her best grown-up voice. “Firstly, we don’t know they’re in danger. I know at a glance, all this seems suspicious and connected, but there are something like half a billion adolescent girls on Earth, and in the United States alone, approximately two thousand children go missing every day. Riri and I looked up the statistics—”

  “Who cares about ‘statistics,’ Shuri? These girls need our help—”

  “But we don’t know that for sure, K’Marah!” Shuri gulps, forcing herself to put conviction behind her words. “We can’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” The princess squats to pick up a rogue slipper and return it to its mate … at the opposite end of the dressing chamber. “All these ‘disappearances’ might look connected, but there’s actually a higher probability of … coincidence. Is all I’m saying.”

  When K’Marah doesn’t immediately respond, Shuri turns to make sure she was heard. K’Marah cocks her elaborately braided head to one side and examines Shuri’s face the way she would an enemy of the state under Dora Milaje interrogation. The princess fights to hold her friend’s gaze—she’s spent enough time training with the prestigious guards to know exactly what K’Marah is doing—but after mere seconds, her eyes drop.

  “Ah-ha!” K’Marah says.

  Shuri turns away. “What?”

  “You don’t believe your own words.”

  “Yes, I do—”

  “No. You don’t. You know just as well as I do that despite your probabilities or whatever the heck you calculated, there is no way these kidnappings aren’t linked.”

  “They may not be kidnappings!” Shuri shouts. But she sounds silly even to herself now. Kidnappings or not, K’Marah—and Riri, for that matter—is right: The disappearances feel connected. Despite the low odds. Really, the fact that none of them have been reported is in itself more than a bit suspect. Riri also shared statistics about high rates of unreported disappearances among underprivileged girls of color in “urban” American landscapes, but is the same true in the other nations where girls have gone missing?

  K’Marah smirks at the princess in that way she does when she knows that Shuri knows she (K’Marah) is right.

  “And anyway,” Shuri goes on, shutting the laptop with a sna
p, “even if they were kidnappings—and I am not saying they are!—we can’t prove it. We have no evidence! No real leads. I have nothing at all that would help us with any sort of search.”

  “We have names,” K’Marah says resolutely. “Quite a few of them.”

  “Okay … And?”

  “And … well … I mean, we can …”

  Now Shuri’s the one grinning. Which does feel a tad inappropriate considering the topic of conversation, but there is something satisfying about seeing K’Marah’s surety slip. “Told ya,” the princess says, with a shrug. “No matter how much you, Riri, or I want to get to the bottom of this, we’re all severely limited with regard to actions we can actually take.”

  “Fine.”

  Sweet victory. (And though Shuri would never admit it: relief.)

  “The least you could do is feed the names into your little global surveillance thingy.” K’Marah gestures toward Shuri’s now-closed computer.

  And all the oxygen vanishes from the air around Shuri’s head.

  It hits her: She doesn’t want the disappearances to be connected. Saving some plants—and by extension, her homeland—was one thing. This? Girls vanishing without a trace all over the world? This feels … different. The princess hasn’t even successfully completed her Panther training. A thing she needs to do in order to continue protecting her homeland—by accompanying T’Challa to that tech conclave.

  For the first time in a long time, Shuri can feel how young she is.

  What happens if she inputs the names … and gets a hit on one (or more!) of them? Then she’ll have to take some sort of action, won’t she? And what if … it’s more than the princess is distinctly prepared for?

  “Well?” K’Marah is saying. “You gonna put that ‘system’ of yours to use in an honorable way? Or have you gone all digital spy for no good reason?”

  Shuri scowls. “Fine,” she says. She lifts her arm and taps a Kimoyo bead. 09:52 appears in midair in glowing purple above her wrist. “But it’ll have to wait. We’re about to be late for training.”

  “Oh my goodness!” K’Marah says, scrambling around the pullout table and bolting toward the exit. She almost trips over the train of a shimmering indigo gown Shuri has zero intention of ever wearing. “I cannot be late again! Okoye will have my head!”

  As the sound of K’Marah’s fleeing footsteps fades, Shuri exhales, thankful for her friend’s distraction. But then her gaze is drawn to the closed computer, and the relief evaporates like dew off a glowing heart-shaped herb petal at dawn.

  Because Shuri is distracted, too.

  Very, very distracted.

  Though K’Marah manages to partially regain her focus, Shuri’s performance during her training with the Dora Milaje leaves much to be desired. And the other girls begin to take notice.

  After one particularly dismal sparring session, K’Marah pulls her aside. “I don’t know what has gotten into you, Princess, but you have to snap out of it.” She sneaks a peek to the right, and when Shuri follows her eyes, her throat practically closes: Kocha M’Shindi is standing against a far wall. “She’s been watching your every move,” K’Marah continues. “I overheard one of the older girls say word of your … retrogression—I believe that’s the term she used—is making its way around. No clue whether or not that’s true, but perhaps you should act as though it is. The last thing you need is for the queen mother to hear you’re not excelling here.” She gives Shuri a knowing look.

  And despite understanding how right K’Marah is, Shuri also feels a surge of anger toward this best friend of hers. Prior to K’Marah making a huge deal of the so-called kidnappings of all those girls, Shuri was doing just fine. Now, in addition to the unavoidable little reminders of the missing girls, she’s racked with a gnawing sense of guilt. Because she still hasn’t done anything. Nothing for the girls, at least.

  She did re-secure the P.R.O.W.L. network and implement a counterattack measure that will unleash a highly destructive virus on any attempted intruder’s operating system. But Shuri has yet to add the names of the other girls to the P.R.O.W.L.’s hit list.

  Which is another reason this conversation with K’Marah is intensely discomfiting. As the clearly concerned shorter girl looks up into Shuri’s face, all the princess can really think is, Great Bast, please don’t let her ask if there have been any hits on the girls’ names.

  Distracted.

  “Helloooo? Wakanda to Shuri?” K’Marah taps Shuri’s nose, and the princess snaps back to where she’s standing on the shock-absorbent foam floor of a sparring circle inside Upanga. A place she thought she’d only ever see from the outside.

  Opportunity of a lifetime, and she’s too distracted to make the most of it. “Huh?”

  “I asked if you wanted to meet later and go over some drills,” K’Marah says. “I won’t throw any more of our matches to make you look good, but I’m willing to help a sister out.”

  “Mmmm …” As tempting as the offer is, Shuri is 100 percent sure the vanished-girl-genius mystery will come up if she spends any time with K’Marah outside this training facility. “I appreciate it, sis. But I think I should get some rest. Could use a reboot—I mean …”

  Shuri realizes her mistake. Curse this tech-term-filled brain of mine! she thinks.

  “Hey, speaking of reboot …” K’Marah peeks around, then takes a half step closer to Shuri and lowers her voice. “Any news on … you know what? I’m sure you’ve rebooted that whole thing by now, right?”

  “Oh, umm … yeah. I have,” Shuri says. “But we shouldn’t talk about that here.” She tips her head toward the group of three older Dora trainees who have appeared to their left. Not that she’s actually bothered by their sudden presence: It gives her an easy out.

  “Ah,” K’Marah says, stepping back. “Understood.”

  “Nothing new to report, anyway.” Shuri yawns for effect. “I’m going to head back to the palace for a nap. Bast knows I could use one. We’ll reconvene later?” The princess gives K’Marah a quick side hug and makes a dash for her stuff.

  She tries not to notice the whispers of “Must be nice” from behind her. Or the feeling of Kocha M’Shindi’s heavy gaze on her back as she goes.

  * * *

  Shuri really must be tired: The palace seems much farther away from Upanga than she remembers. The princess isn’t sure exactly how long she’s been walking, but the gilded watchtowers at the front corners of her home should be peeking over the horizon by now. The sun is also higher in the sky than she’d expect it to be this late in the afternoon. It’s hot. Too hot. And also too quiet.

  Shuri looks back over her shoulder to see if she’s made any progress at all. She’s gotten far enough away from the training facility for it to have disappeared from view but—

  There’s a flash of movement to her right, but when she looks, no one is there. Despite the heat, a chill creeps over Shuri’s skin, making her feel as though there are spiders all over her scalp, crawling their way down her arms and legs. Which is when she realizes she’s alone. Yes, she told K’Marah she wasn’t up for hanging out—aka getting her butt kicked in her own sleeping chambers—but did she really leave Upanga with no escort whatsoever? Isn’t Nakia supposed to be on duty right now?

  There’s another flash, to the left this time, and Shuri’s head whips in that direction. “Who … who’s there?”

  Something grazes her arm, and she shifts into the signature Dora Milaje fighting stance. (Though she feels strange about it—it’s certainly not a stance T’Challa would employ … Should she be using different moves? Like … special Panther ones?) “Show yourself,” she commands. “By order of the princess.”

  There’s an amused huff from behind her … which she feels more than hears: Who/whatever is stalking her is standing so close, its breath hits the back of her neck.

  Quick as she can, Shuri drops into a squat, intending to rotate at the last second and use an outstretched leg to sweep the feet of her attacker out from under them.
But the person—for the princess is certain it’s a person now—anticipates the move and not only jumps at precisely the right moment, but manages to kick Shuri square in the chest on the way down, knocking the wind from her lungs.

  “You’ve been distracted, Panther Cub,” comes a voice that is all too familiar. “It shows.” A kick to her ribs makes Shuri’s vision go white at the edges. “Such a shame. You had so much potential.”

  She has to fight back.

  She can sense another kick coming (how? she has no idea), so she rolls to her stomach just in time to avoid it, and then shoves up to her feet. Her head swims, but her attacker comes into focus: Kocha M’Shindi.

  The older woman steps up to Shuri with her hands behind her back. Cool as an ice cube in a glass of mango nectar. “I am disappointed,” she says. And then she strikes. Shuri blocks the blow aimed at her throat, but M’Shindi’s other fist—tiny though it may be—lands home right above the princess’s navel.

  “Still struggling with dual-eyed defense, I see,” M’Shindi taunts.

  Then faster than Shuri can blink, the frail-looking woman has grabbed one of Shuri’s arms, rotated to shove a shoulder into Shuri’s midsection, and flipped Shuri over. Shuri lands on her back with a thud, and M’Shindi’s knee comes down on Shuri’s sternum to pin her.

  “You’ve failed,” she says, lowering her face to Shuri’s and staring into the princess’s eyes in that creepy way she does. “You’ve failed your Phase One assessments. Your distraction has cost you dearly—”

  A pinging sound fills the air around Shuri’s head. Almost like it’s coming from right beside her. She looks left and right, seeing nothing but dirt, but when she turns back to M’Shindi, ready to try and get the woman off her, she discovers several faces looking down at her. All vaguely familiar.

  “I would’ve discovered life in a neighboring galaxy had you looked for me,” comes the voice of one girl with medium-brown skin and straight, dark hair.