Black Panther: Rise of the Princess (COMPLETE)

Chapter 9: Peter

"In order to get their hands on the vibranium, they have to have to be able to get to it. How is it guarded?"

Shuri dissolved the map (that sand stuff was impressive) and instead showed me a map of the lab. "All of it is taken from here. There is no other source in the world, much less in Wakanda. Whoever is taking it has access to my lab, but I do not know who to suspect."

"Well not necessarily," I pointed out. "You just said that raw vibranium is to unstable to transport, right?"

She walked over to the window overlooking the mines. "Only at high speeds. Look there," and I walked up next to her as she cleared some of the tint on the window. "Those machines on the rails deactivate it while it is in motion on the trains."

"Right," I nodded, "and where does it lead to?"

"The factories," she answered. "This is where the tracks run, so whoever is stealin-"

"No, no, wait, wait, wait," I told her, rubbing the side of my head. "The....the crates, the vibranium in the shipments were already refined. It had to be, in order to....here, look at this." I walked over to her...projection, screen, whatever, and murmured to myself. It's a bad habit, but whenever I have to focus, I start mumbling.

"So the tracks....it has to come from...okay, so in, somehow...okay." I turned to Shuri, who looked thoroughly confused by now. "If the vibranium is already in crates when it gets to HYDRA, then it has to be refined before it gets there, right?" I walked back to the window. "And if...if this is the only place where it comes from, then this is the only place
"That would know how to refine it."
"That would know how to refine it!"

Shuri dashed over to the screen again, switching to a crew list, probably from the factory. "So we were looking in the wrong place the whole time. The treason starts in the factory!"

I looked over her shoulder, not wanting to interrupt her movement. "Anyone you can think of that might have an alliance with HYDRA?"

"We can do better than that," she insisted. "I can narrow it down to people that might be able to move the shipments without interference. Only certain people are allowed to handle it."

A few seconds passed, then a scrolling list of people filled the projection. Identification for all of the workers were on the right, and pictures were on the left. There were still a lot of possible candidates, though.

"Now we're down to about fifty," Shuri realized defeatedly. "Do we just go around to their houses, asking if they know what HYDRA is?"

I laughed. "They would just fess up to HYDRA. Do you have security cameras there?"

She snorted. "What do you take us for? Of course we do." A few minutes later, we were scrolling through the past couple of months of footage from the factory. The image quality was incredible, but I decided not to say anything. This was probably average for the Wakandans.

"Has anyone been out of place for the past two to three months?" I asked her, staying out of her way while she messed with her projections. "HYDRA likes to collect over time, if I remember it right. They'll want gradual additions, and if we can narrow it down to a window..."

"It will repeat over multiple periods of time," she finished, and selected all of the footage from the past three months. "Our system has an analysis program that will look for abnormalities from the day to day base."

I scrunched my brow. "Day to day basis?"

"Yes, that. It looks for flaws in a pattern."

She activated her program, and selections of camera roll started organizing themselves in chronological order.

"Start from the latest date," she instructed me, "over here. I will start from the beginning of the window."

She walked me over to a second screen and activated it. I reached out to touch it, then hesitated. "Do I just touch it, or...?"

"Yes," she instructed, demonstrating, "but be gentle with it. It doesn't require much force."

I brushed a hand over the projection, then realized it was sand, that changed colors to create an image. "This is insane. If other people knew about this..." I murmured, then stopped. If more people knew, it would be exploited.

I started looking through the irregularities, starting from today and working backwards. Some of them would be the royal family, others  were clips of people tripping or stubbing their toe on the corner. It was actually kind of funny, looking through the mistakes over the course of the past few months. Shuri even started compiling a file of all the best slip ups. I think my favorite was when someone slipped down the stairs.

Unfortunately, not many of them were contenders for our suspects. After we shifted through all of the video clips, we only had about ten or so different instances of potential dangers, and most of them were by the same people. Shuri IDed the people in the frame, and in total, we had three people who we thought could be responsible.

"Well," I said, rubbing my neck. "Three is better than fifty. Less people to look out for."

"Yes, but none of them are about loading errors," she pointed out. "None of these even have vibranium in the frame. It could be something entirely different."

"It's a start, and that's what we need for now." I stared at our potential thieves, then turned back to the genius. "You said there was a celebration today? Or was that the General?"

She laughed. "Either way, there is a parade tonight. You may want to bring your camera."

I grinned. "We can watch these three at the same time. It's the best chance to see if they are working together, or if they are separate." I looked down at my suit. "Should I change?"

"Even better," she went over to one of her tables, and pulled something from the drawer. "You are going to need a disguise."