by Nic Stone
“Hmm?”
“I’d like to take you on a … field trip.”
“Uhh, okay …” Shuri says, nervous now.
“Fret not,” the queen mother continues, beckoning her daughter forward. “It won’t take long.”
Shuri trails the queen, her sense of dread growing with each step.
Especially when her mother leads her to the empty throne room, crosses to a back corner of it, and gently places her hand against a section of what looks like bare wall. A panel slides aside, revealing a dimly lit corridor beyond.
“Ummmm …”
“Come,” her mother says, going through the secret doorway Shuri had no idea even existed.
The corridor dead-ends at a set of stairs that takes the pair of Wakandan royals down a level (Shuri didn’t even know there was another level; is this a basement?) and spits them out into a wider, brighter room where there are tables and chairs and what looks like an espresso bar at the far end. They walk through the space, passing a group of guards poring over a map, and as they’re about to enter a different corridor, Ayo and Nakia come out of it.
“Princess!” Nakia says.
“Fancy meeting you here,” from Ayo. With a wink.
“Take it easy on her, ey, Your Majesty?” Nakia again. She and Ayo look at each other and grin in tandem.
“Oh, hush,” Shuri’s mother says. “Aren’t your breaks over now? Get back to your posts.” And the queen mother sticks her tongue out.
(Is this alternate reality?)
“Come, Shuri,” her mother goes on. “Almost there.”
And they are. Because at the end of that passageway, the queen leads the princess into a room full of monitors, each showing a different part of the palace: There’s the front drive, the loading dock, the entry hall, the kitchens, the throne room, the laundry room …
Her mother pulls out a chair. “Have a seat,” she says.
Shuri does. Slowly.
“Center screen,” her mother says. Then she gets to tapping around on what appears to be a control panel.
Shuri stares at what starts out as a view of the (empty) formal dining room with all the kingly portraits. But then it switches to a view … of Shuri. Inside the Predator, it seems, inputting coordinates. Then it switches to a view of Shuri’s face looking guilty at a table as a hand—that isn’t hers—swaps out two plates. K’Marah’s, she realizes, during their trip to Addis Ababa with the clothier. Another cut, and Shuri sees herself cloaked in what looks like head-to-toe purple plastic, moving her hands around in the air—feeling over the then-invisible wall of the Garden. Then a cut to pieces of paper floating in midair in a six-sided office with tables all around it.
She has absolutely nothing to say.
The queen mother sets a small metal tin in front of Shuri. “Open it,” she says.
Shuri clenches her jaw and does as she’s told. Inside is a smattering of what look like dead ants.
Shuri’s bugs.
She puts her head in her hands.
“A few weeks ago, when you told T’Challa and me that K’Marah had been the person to inform you about the maximum security conclave your brother was scheduled to attend, something felt … off,” her mother begins. “I won’t say I know the young lady as well as I know you do. But the notion of a Dora Milaje trainee—the top trainee, according to Ayo, Nakia, and General Okoye—sharing that information with someone very much not on the clearance list didn’t seem plausible.
“But my beloved daughter wouldn’t have lied to me, I thought to myself. Especially not if her aim is to attend this conclave she should not be aware of. So after mulling it over for a few days, I decided to take the matter to the general. She, also, was very surprised. But we had to take your word, Princess. You are first in line to the throne.”
Shuri groans.
“But I was still … suspicious, I guess would be the appropriate term. In light of your previous transgressions—”
“That seems a bit strong, Mother.”
“Don’t interrupt. The point here is that Okoye and I found ourselves in the position where it was difficult to trust either of you. When you, of all people, approached me requesting to go on a shopping trip with the clothier, I knew you were up to something. So we had a tiny camera braided into K’Marah’s hair.”
“Mother!”
“Yes?” the queen says, gesturing to the tin of Shuri’s eavesdropping devices.
The princess slumps down into her chair and crosses her arms. “Touché,” she mutters.
“After seeing what you all got up to, I decided to have the guards sweep the palace for unauthorized surveillance devices. All these were discovered in the throne room.”
What is Shuri even supposed to say?
“I trust that you don’t need a lecture on the ethics of privacy invasion?”
“No,” Shuri says. “Especially since I now know you were watching me.”
“Doesn’t feel very good, hmm?”
Shuri lets her head drop to the desk.
“I trust you’ll find your way back to your quarters,” the queen says. “T’Challa and I will see you at dinner.”
She grabs the tin and turns to leave.
“Hey, Mother?” Shuri says.
“Hmm?”
“Precisely how grounded am I?”
“Oh, my sweet child,” the queen says, locking eyes with the princess. “You have absolutely no idea.”
AND HERE WE ARE: CONCLAVE DAY.
Which K’Marah and I will be spending together in my lab. While she was very much let off the hook for the lie I told, Okoye was none too thrilled with the national alarm stunt she pulled to escape the country with Lady N.
Though no one can seem to find any security footage of the culprit in action. Seems a sixty-second section of tape mysteriously vanished sometime between when I shut the thing off and when Okoye and I departed together. (Riri is enjoying the small box of gadgets she received as a token of my and K’Marah’s appreciation for the missing footage.)
However, being forced to stay home today isn’t all bad. K’Marah and I will be convening our first virtual C.O.W. meeting—that’s Conclave of Worldrunners—with Riri, Cici, Josephine, Celeste, and Xiang Yeh. We invited our favorite Kenyan meteorological scientist, Yasha, but she’s apparently still angry with me about exposing Lady N’s operation.
Speaking of good ol’ Tilda Johnson, her sole alias now is “Inmate 473821.” She’s being held indefinitely at some “supermax” facility run by S.H.I.E.L.D. hidden in a mid-American mountain range. Riri is convinced she’ll have broken herself out and gotten up to some new scheme within a few months.
Anyway, on the agenda for the first virtual C.O.W.: the beginning stages of planning for a summer research camp at the Garden. Which S.H.I.E.L.D. has taken over, according to Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury, Jr. It would be fully dual-funded by that Iron Tony Stark guy and some mysterious “grant money” Nick says S.H.I.E.L.D. received from an anonymous donor somewhere in East Africa, who apparently put “For C.O.W. Camp” in the donation memo.
(“You present a compelling case for this camp, little sis,” T’Challa said when I presented the proposal K’Marah and I had come up with after finding out we were both mega-grounded. “You’ll make a fine world leader one day.”)
Every girl who spent time at the Garden under Nightshade’s thumb will receive an invitation, and we hope to bring in some of the best and brightest minds in the world to learn from and collaborate with. We’ve already gotten a yes from an emerging scientist (they/them pronouns) leading the research charge in the area of gender-identity formation. Nightshade was certainly off in her approach to correcting the world’s ills, but she was correct about men getting more chances to change the world than anyone else, so we hope to begin leveling the playing field.
It truly will be nothing short of revolutionary.
Oh! Lastly: I passed my Global Diplomacy retest. And have thereby completed Phase One of my Panther training.
Kocha M’Shindi has even stopped calling me “Cub.”
Which leaves me with one final thought:
Who run the world?
Girls.
NIC STONE is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Dear Martin, Dear Justyce, and Odd One Out. She was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the United States to write full-time. Having grown up with a wide range of cultures, religions, and backgrounds, she strives to bring diverse voices and stories into her work. Learn more at nicstone.info.
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