The Vanished

by Nic Stone

  “Sorry,” K’Marah says, not bothering to whisper or ease up on her pulling. “We have to catch that door while it’s still open to slip out unnoticed.”

  And they do … but the hallway is utter mayhem.

  “Warning: intruder alert. Lockdown in progress.”

  Shuri and K’Marah are positioned directly across from the hallway that leads to the emergency exit, but there are too many girls zipping left and right in front of them. Like a bunch of human gumballs in a high entropy state.

  They toss inquiries back and forth through the air.

  “She’s not in the theater?”

  “What did Jenkins say she looked like, again?”

  “Where the heck could someone even hide in this place?”

  “A hazmat suit? She was wearing a purple hazmat suit?”

  And then there’s a break in the traffic.

  Thankfully K’Marah notices, too. They take off across the wide gap and bolt down the narrower hallway up the center of the bio wing.

  (And despite the danger—and the glaring red lights flashing overhead—it’s impossible for the princess not to peek into the subsections: botany and zoology on the left, human and microbiology on the right.)

  It seems as though they’re headed toward a dead end. A wall. Like the one in the entry area—painted to look like wood, with a panel across the center containing a double-helix carving. But then that wretched voice rings out again: “Warning: intruder alert. Lockdown complete.” And the outline of a hidden door flashes before the girls.

  They race to it, feeling around for some sort of handle or hidden lever. “Come onnnnnn,” K’Marah says, hitting the wall (door?) with her fist. Nothing.

  “We’re doomed,” Shuri says, leaning her forehead against it.

  “Uh-oh …” K’Marah’s voice says beside the princess.

  Shuri turns, fully prepared to shout “I KNOW IT’S ALL OVER!” in her best friend’s invisible face (and she calls K’Marah dramatic). But K’Marah hisses again: “Someone’s looking this way.”

  Shuri slowly peeks over her shoulder (then remembers no one can see her and feels exceedingly silly). “Oh my gods,” she says. There, with her head sticking out of the zoology and botany room and looking right at the spot where Shuri and K’Marah are standing, is a girl Shuri instantly recognizes:

  Pilar Bautista.

  Her jumpsuit is purple.

  After a glance in the opposite direction, Pilar steps out of the room and begins to creep in the direction of the Wakandan girls. On tiptoe.

  Which is … odd.

  Shuri lets go of K’Marah’s hand and flattens herself against the glass wall to her right, hoping K’Marah is doing the same. Once Pilar reaches the wall/door, she takes one final gander behind her before heaving a sigh, and running a hand across the double-helix carving.

  “The facility is in an active lockdown. Please return to your dormitory,” comes that Bast-awful voice. (Shuri hates it, hates it, hates it.)

  “Oh no, oh no—”

  “Pilar?” comes a voice from the far end of the hall (though it seems to have shortened). There’s another, older girl in a black jumpsuit, this one potentially of Latin descent. “¿Qué pasa? You don’t hear the alarm?”

  “Oh, uhhh … I thought I heard something else,” Pilar replies. “Thought I would check the door to see if the intruder went out this way.”

  From the way the older girl’s eyes narrow, it would be evident to anyone watching that she doesn’t believe Pilar for a single second. But she just nods. “Did you find anything?”

  “No.” Pilar’s chin drops. Shuri has no idea what comes over her, but she wants to reach out and lift the younger girl’s head back up. She’s almost close enough to do so. “The door had locked.”

  The older girl nods. “All right. Come on, then.”

  Despite Shuri’s level of perturbation—Pilar was clearly trying to escape—watching her go to the girl in black as summoned gives the princess an idea.

  “Shuri?” K’Marah’s voice sounds more panicked than the princess has ever heard it.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” Shuri replies. “Keep a lookout, will you?”

  “Uhhh …”

  At this, Shuri pulls her Kimoyo card from her pocket—praying to the Orisha that she can get a signal inside the Garden—and she summons the Predator. Takes a few tries, but eventually, the princess’s beloved craft is hovering invisibly just beyond the locked door.

  “Cover your ears,” Shuri whispers to K’Marah.

  And then she fires the Predator’s sound cannon. A weapon that’s really no weapon at all. More a scare tactic. The noise sounds like something much more terrifying than what amounts to little more than a forced—and non-damaging—miniature sonic boom.

  “Warning: The facility is under attack. Please evacuate.”

  And the emergency exit unlocks with a faint click. K’Marah removes her hand from her suit’s glove (Shuri hopes she’ll be able to erase the image of her friend’s disembodied, floating appendage from memory) and runs her glitter-polished fingertips over the double-helix carving like Pilar had done.

  The door slides open with a hiss. “Yes!” Shuri shouts. “Freedom!”

  She and K’Marah rush out … and discover a new problem: The Garden girls truly are evacuating. Which means the Wakandan royal and her guard-in-training can’t reveal themselves so they can see each other.

  Nor can Shuri reveal the Predator so the pair can get inside it.

  WELL, THAT WAS ALMOST A DISASTER.

  I wound up having to use the Kimoyo capture mechanism to fly us far enough away—dangling beneath the Predator in terrifying (and nauseating) electromagnetic spheres—to avoid being seen.

  On a positive note: I do believe the gods decided we’d had enough trouble for one day, because when we got back to Clothier Lwazi, he seemed more frazzled than when we left, but he wasn’t angry, and he promised not to rat us out. “I wasn’t born yesterday, darlings,” he said. “While my dear niece does have a bit of style sense, the fact that you, Princess, requested an international fabric-shopping trip was quite suspect. I figured you’d scurry off at some point. Though I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t worried you wouldn’t come back.”

  He lay down for the duration of the flight.

  All in all, despite what we discovered, I need some time to process and refocus. Come up with a plan. Because one thing is abundantly clear: None of those girls appeared to be occupants of the Garden against their wills. Pilar’s anomaly of a seeming escape attempt aside, they all seemed to be … enjoying themselves.

  I can’t say I am entirely sure what to make of that.

  Or of the sight of my name on that list.

  Returning to business-as-usual is impossible.

  Internally, at least.

  Externally, Shuri gets back to work: training harder than ever, studying, being precisely where she’s supposed to be, precisely when she’s supposed to be there.

  She tries to keep herself convinced that her sole priority is still earning her way to that conclave with T’Challa, and anyone watching her would believe that to be the case.

  But in truth, where the whole missing-girls mystery previously distracted her from Panther training, now the two have flipped: Training is keeping her distracted from thinking about the girls. Which is why she does so much of it her first few days back from her and K’Marah’s Ethiopian desert jaunt.

  In fact, on day three, M’Shindi permits Shuri to make up her missed assessment. And the princess nails it. She even manages to completely disarm the older woman, a feat not even her darling brother ever accomplished.

  Her mother looks none too pleased when she hears.

  Try though she might, however, Shuri can’t seem to get excited about her triumphs. The conclave is one week hence, and if her mother booking Shuri an appointment with the clothier is any indication—“So you’ll have something proper to wear if you wind up going to this thing your brother intends to dr
ag you to”—Shuri has almost succeeded in her mission.

  So why isn’t she … if not exuberant, at least moderately happy?

  It’s not as though thinking about the other thing is bringing the princess any sense of joy or purpose, either. In fact, part of her motivation behind avoiding thoughts of what she and K’Marah discovered is that when Shuri tries to think of the Garden, her memories of the place blur at the edges.

  It is the most bizarre thing. More than a couple of times, Shuri has attempted to record her memories, thoughts, and feelings, but when she tries to write, she comes up empty. She remembers lots of glass, but not what she saw beyond it. A wide hallway that bent at strange angles, but not what it led to. A carving of a double helix, but not what surrounded it. Girls in multihued jumpsuits, but not which colors.

  She even printed the photo she snapped of the Garden’s layout and has, on three occasions, made an effort to jot down whatever comes to mind when she looks at it. And though her memories are vivid when her eyes are on the image, the second her fingers touch down on a keyboard, everything goes blurry. Same with a pen. There was even an attempt to stare at the picture and do an audio recording. Also a no-go: She’s not sure how long she tried to speak, but all that could be heard on playback was “Uhhh …”

  The few times Shuri has seen K’Marah—in Upanga during training—the girls have barely made eye contact. And they certainly haven’t spoken. Shuri’s not entirely sure why, but the thought of trying to have a conversation with her best friend about anything right now is … she just can’t do it. No matter what they would discuss—some new roundhouse kick technique, what they had for breakfast, the latest fashion Shuri has no clue about—the princess knows the discourse would be weighed down by what they aren’t discussing. And she can’t bring herself to talk about the thing she really wants to because … well, when Shuri tries to think of what she would say, she can’t get any words to form.

  It’s confusing. And frustrating.

  And the worst part: When Shuri is able to see the place clearly—typically at night, right as she hits that strange liminal space between fully awake and sound asleep—the thing she remembers most? How fun the Garden seemed. How inviting. How nice the scent in the air and how perfect the music (which consistently gets stuck inside her head on a loop). How welcoming it would be for a girl like her. Would her mother allow her to go to a place like that? Even for a brief time? Her name was on that list … Does Bright Futures mean “next in line to receive an invitation”?

  In these times, she can’t help but wonder if none of the girls have been reported missing because their loved ones know exactly where they are. And that they are thriving there.

  It’s the reason she’s been dodging Riri’s calls and hasn’t told the other girl that she not only knows where Cici is, but also spoke with her. Cici clearly had zero interest in leaving the Garden: She’s the one who sounded the intruder alarm.

  Yes: Something doesn’t feel quite right about the place—seems strange to hide what is essentially a girl-centric innovation lab and not to allow the girls invited there to tell their friends where they are. And Shuri definitely can’t shake the feeling that Pilar Bautista was trying to get out (which is a red flag if there ever was one) …

  But as much as something inside Shuri wants to lean into the sense of wrongness, she can’t. In fact, though she tries to resist the sentiment, there’s a small voice in her head, sound tracked by that amazing music, suggesting Pilar is the problem.

  In fact, the only time Shuri really feels like there’s something sinister about the place is when her favorite song—an upbeat, percussion-heavy tune about girls running the world—filters into her still-sleeping mind in the form of an alarm each morning. It’s then that she’s overcome with a sense of urgency to do something. But when she wakes fully, that urgency gets stifled by … well, she’s not entirely sure what.

  This morning is no different.

  As the words Who run the world? drift into Shuri’s ears, something inside her seizes up, and her mind whirs into action trying to figure out how she can set all those girls free. Because they are clearly trapped there, and whoever this Lady N is, she definitely has sinister plans that do not take the girls’ well-being into consideration. (The princess doesn’t know how she knows this, but she’s certain it’s the truth.) She must act—

  “Shuri!” comes a voice that makes the princess’s arm hairs stand up straighter than the Dora Milaje in flank formation. “Oh, gods help me,” the voice continues, exasperated now. “Shuri!” There’s a shake of Shuri’s shoulder. “Why are you not out of bed, child?”

  The song continues to play.

  “Shuri!” Then: “What is this American nonsense … ?”

  The song cuts off.

  “Wake. UP, child!”

  Shuri cracks one eye. Her mother is standing over her bed, arms crossed. The absurdly long and ornate lace sleeves of her royal-blue gown hang down her front like fabric waterfalls. And she looks ready to explode. Like a geyser. The thought of her tall blue hat shooting off her head with water beneath it makes Shuri grin.

  “You think this amusing, do you?” Her mother swats at Shuri’s hip. “You feel that our beloved clothier has little else to do than wait for you to decide you are ready to grace him with your presence? Is that how you feel?”

  Right. The fitting her mother scheduled.

  Her mother swats again.

  “Ow!” Shuri says, shifting away. “I’m up, I’m up.” She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  Which just sets her mother off even more. “Stop that at once or you will damage your optic nerve, child! Tuh! I wonder what your dear brother would say if he knew his ‘escort’ to this conclave lacks the decency to arrive on time to a fitting for the clothes she needs to go!”

  “Okay, Mother. I’m sorry!” Shuri sits up and perches at the edge of the bed.

  “The clothier is the person you owe an apology!”

  “And I will give him one five minutes from now”—she yawns—“when I reach his quarters.”

  “The nerve of you young people,” the queen says, spinning on the pointy toe of a jewel-encrusted slipper and making her way to the door. “Five minutes. Or you will be barred from visiting that laboratory of yours for the remainder of the month.”

  “Mother!”

  “Five minutes, Shuri.”

  Just like that, the Garden returns to Shuri’s consciousness as a place that doesn’t seem all that bad. Especially in comparison with this one.

  At the four minutes and fifty-two seconds mark, Shuri stumbles into Clothier Lwazi’s workshop, completely out of breath.

  Of course her mother isn’t even there. (Must parents be so endlessly annoying?)

  “She lives!” Lwazi says from the opposite end of the room where he is pinning cloth into a headless mannequin.

  “Apologies for my tardiness, sir.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he replies without turning around. “That is what they all say. Go ahead and step up onto the dais.”

  Shuri walks to the center of the room and climbs the two steps to the brightly lit platform. There are mirrored alcoves all along the front and back walls for trying things on and examining them from multiple angles. So unless Shuri wants to stand facing the door—which the clothier would certainly balk at—she’s forced to see herself reflected many times over and from myriad directions. It’s disorienting and deeply uncomfortable. Especially considering that as of right now, the princess is not entirely sure who she even is.

  Or what she wants.

  “You’ve not been sleeping well, either, I see,” Lwazi says as he approaches with a stretch of shimmering indigo fabric draped over his arm. “You girls and these adventures of yours. Feet apart, please.”

  At the sound of the words either and girls, a knot forms in Shuri’s chest. She’s been doing her best not to think about the crime she and her dearly beloved partner-in-trespassing committed (among other things).

 
; “Now, I know you despise dresses, but the queen would have my head and hands if we didn’t at least mimic a look of traditional feminine elegance. So we’re going to do a nice utility cocoon pant with an elasticized hem and lots of hidden pockets,” he continues, placing a stretch of measuring tape from Shuri’s waist to her left ankle. “My, how you girls have grown.”

  He steps around to Shuri’s front. “For the top, we’ll do a fitted bodice with a sheer turtle-style neckline and long sleeves.”

  “Okay” is all Shuri says.

  “Arms out.”

  Shuri complies, and the measuring tape is first stretched from wrist to wrist, then dropped and wrapped around her waist.

  “All right,” Clothier Lwazi says, stepping down to the floor. “Away with you.”

  Shuri opens her mouth to speak, but thinks better of it. Lamenting what a waste of time this was isn’t likely to land her anywhere good, especially considering that the clothier didn’t tattle on them. “Thank you, sir” is all she says. She descends as well and heads for the door.

  “Mm-hmm. I will send for you in a few days’ time.”

  “Okay.”

  Shuri has almost reached the door when Lwazi calls out to her again.

  “Princess?”

  Her heart clenches, and she freezes on the spot. “Yes, sir?”

  “A favor?”

  She shuts her eyes. “Yes, sir?”

  “Check in with your dear friend, will you? You both look downright dreadful, and your shared well-being is of concern to me. Especially considering the hours I spent navigating crowds in Ethiopia.”

  Shuri doesn’t respond.

  “Alone,” he continues.

  “Yes, Clothier.”

  “I am placing the responsibility with you because between the two of us, your inner strength surpasses that of my niece. I have no interest in what the pair of you got up to when you left me behind, but if there is something wrong with either of you, I will have no choice but to intervene.”

  Shuri takes a deep breath. “Understood, sir.”