Black Panther: Rise of the Princess (COMPLETE)

Chapter 14: Peter

Shuri did not stop working for hours after the bomb. She switched seamlessly from patient to patient, refusing to rest, eat, or sleep until she had done everything she could to save as many people as she could. She started with her family, though.

The queen mother, Romanda, Shuri and T'Challa's mother, sank into a coma. Shuri did everything she could, but the damage done by the explosion had hurt her brain too much. Shuri was able to get her body into a stable condition, easily, but her mind was another matter. She wouldn't wake up. The King and the Princess were forced to put her on life support and wait.

Queen Nakia had taken more physical damage. T'Challa told Shuri that she had recognized a bomb would go off, and shielded the queen mother from the blast. Her body was scarred and burned, but she hadn't gone into a coma, which was good. Shuri anticipated that she would wake up the next day, but again, all they could do was wait.

After the royal family, Shuri attended to as many patients as she could. She, along with other medical facilities in the kingdom, were working around the clock to help any civilian that had gotten hurt in the bomb. Those who weren't injured were at home, waiting to hear news from the palace about what had happened.

I tried to stay out of the way, since I didn't think I would be much help to Shuri or the King. I ended up just hiding out in the mines, watching and trying to figure out anything useful I could do without bothering the others. All I had was my scan, and I didn't dare try to use the Wakanda equipment. Not when other people needed it more.

Instead, I did my best to analyze the scan with Karen. It took a long time, but I had time to kill. The problem was that Karen's system had difficulty working with an unknown element, which we figured out was vibranium.

"So it was probably whoever was giving HYDRA the vibranium," I deducted, "since I don't think Wakanda allows people to weaponize it. Was it in the bomb?"

"It would appear so." Karen pulled up a still of the aftermath and started pointing things out for me. "To a certain extent. There wasn't any bomb shrapnel at the site of the explosion, just the remains of the float."

"Do you think vibranium can be weaponized? Shuri said it was unstable at high speeds. But it wasn't....nevermind, just...hypothetically, could it...?"

"Running a simulation to weaponize vibranium." She pulled up a diagram of the element and started running tests, based off of what was in her system. "It does have the potential to become unstable at high speeds, but it would require something to move it that fast."

"And it wasn't a normal bomb? Just the vibranium?"

"A typical bomb is not likely, considering the debris it left."

I folded my hands under my chin as the gears started turning. "Unstable, it had to be moving...fast enough, but the..ah...the float, it was, so maybe it was vibrating?"

I know, out loud it...what I say doesn't make any sense, but it helps me think. When people hear me monologue like this, they can't track with what I say because I skip steps when I think. I go from Point A to Point G without any of the in between, but if I try to think silently, I lose my concentration. It just helps me think, but it throws people off.

Anyways, it had to be vibrating if the vibranium that exploded became unstable. That's what I meant to think.

Right then, I saw Shuri and T'Challa walk out of the lab. They were talking, so I didn't want to interrupt, but once they were a ways away from the door, I slipped behind them and into the lab. If someone had rigged the vibranium to vibrate at a frequency that made it unstable enough to explode, then maybe Shuri's lab would be able to tell me how.

I walked into the lab and leaned against the counter. Since I still didn't fully understand the controls of her equipment, I opted to use the voice command. I did plug my suit into her system though.

The computer asked for confirmation that the suit was safe, since it didn't recognize Tony's program. I passed it through and accessed the scans I had taken from the blast site. "Analyze for signs of high speed movement."

A cat, or probably a panther, started running on the screen. It was a lot better than the circle that normally shows up on my computer when it's loading. In Wakanda, computers also load faster. It was done in about six seconds.

Karen hadn't mentioned it, but the vibranium from the float had been radiating like crazy, according to Shuri's lab. It made sense. The vibranium was unstable, of course it was going to radiate. We could probably go back to the place the float had exploded and it would still be emitting subatomic particles, probably with some electromagnetic waves too. The vibranium of the float had definitely been moving at high speeds.

But it hadn't been flying down the street. the float had been moving at the same velocity as the rest of the parade, and there hadn't been a bomb, according to the debris it left behind. It had to have been vibrating, but I needed a way to prove it.

I thought back to right before the float had exploded. The best people to ask would have been the ones who were standing there, but they were all injured at best, and the others were probably much worse. No one else had seen it, no one except...

...except King T'Challa, and the cameras that had been watching the parade the whole time.

....

...I should have guessed. The cameras on the street had been deactivated right before the bomb. Of course. Why wouldn't they be?