The Vanished by Nic Stone

Author:Nic Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

It’s a miracle they’re able to keep sight of the small, pink-clad girl: There are so many other things vying for their attention, Shuri consistently finds her eyes pulled in various directions. In addition to the delightfully upbeat music wafting through the air—which smells the way it did in the entry hall, but stronger—there are young girls everywhere.

And they all look … happy.

As the Wakandan girls walk, careful to avoid bumping into anyone, Shuri wonders if there’s any rhyme or reason to the jumpsuit colors. They’ve come to a bend in the hallway that spits them around a corner to the right. Opposite the corner is a cross hallway that leads down to the left and dead-ends at a wall that looks like the fake-wood ones in the anteroom, and it seems like they’re headed for a second corner with an adjacent hallway just ahead.

The wide hallway they’re traversing is lined with big windows that give view into a variety of rooms, all with brightly colored walls that appear to match the various jumpsuits. There are classrooms, traditional laboratories, and spaces where large-scale tests and experiments are in progress. In one such space, Shuri can see a group of girls using jetpacks, and in another, there’s a domed structure that looks like an antigravity pod (based on the person floating inside it). There’s also a virtual reality lab.

Shuri and K’Marah continue forward behind Syd, and as they bank around the next corner, they can see inside a space Shuri would’ve never expected in a facility like this one: It’s … a spa. There are separate hair and nail salons, and set in the back wall is the entrance to a “Fitness Center,” according to the words that arch over the double doorway. “Whoa,” Shuri whispers beneath her breath, unable to help herself.

As she stares at the girls moving about inside and breathes in the sweet fragrance of the air, the princess can’t deny that she’d really like to shed her invisibility suit and go in. To maybe … stay here. And though the thoughts feel only half-formed, Shuri can’t ignore the certainty of them. None of the girls they’ve seen so far are in any rush to leave …

So why should the princess be?

While on a fundamental level, this bizarre invisible hideaway is exceedingly creepy, the princess can’t deny understanding why a person—especially one like her—would want to stick around. A fully supplied research and experimentation facility, full of young people who have no problem whiling the days away in pursuit of knowledge and scientific advancement? Where can she sign up—

A tug on her hand snatches Shuri back from “la-la land,” as the queen mother calls it, and her vision clears.

Right on time, too: A pair of young ladies exit into the main hallway—a tall one in a red jumpsuit with brown skin and shoulder-length locs, and a short, curvy one in pink, also brown-skinned, but redheaded and freckled. The taller girl looks more familiar than Shuri is expressly comfortable with, and the princess’s pulse picks up pace.

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