They don’t get twenty-four hours.

In fact, when the palace alarm blares that evening at eleven p.m., Shuri is still awake, sifting through the Internet for information about this nebular gem.

When Ayo and Nakia burst into her room, Shuri is standing in her pajamas and bathrobe, ready to be whisked to the bunker. With slippers on this time, and her Kimoyo card in her pocket. (Sure hope there’s a decent Wi-Fi signal in that den of technological antiquity.)

For a moment, they both just stand there, clearly shocked that Shuri is so … up and at ’em. “You’re awake,” Nakia says.

Mastress of the obvious, that one.

“I don’t think anyone could sleep through that alarm,” Shuri says, hoping against hope that neither woman will remember that she did, in fact, sleep through this exact same alarm a mere three nights ago. Mother had shaken her awake. “Are we going?” Shuri continues before either of them can respond.

“Oh, yes, yes!” Ayo says, snapping back to attention. “We are. Let’s go.”

The senior Dora Milaje lead the princess on a different route to the bunker—this time through a passageway accessed by a secret door in the royal coat closet—and when they arrive, Shuri is shocked (if not slightly relieved) that the queen isn’t there.

“Ahh … where is Mother?” she asks. Which triggers a different question: Has her kingly brother returned? “And T’Challa?”

Nakia and Ayo look at each other, and then Nakia sighs. “T’Challa is still on his mission.”

“Wait. Are you kidding—”

Nakia puts a hand up. “We know nothing about it, Princess. Only that he spoke with your mother.”

“And speaking of the queen: She decided she’d be more useful down in the security center,” Ayo follows.

“So I am the only person who has to hole up in this Bast-awful bunker?”

Ayo shrugs. “We’re sorry, Your Majesty. Orders were given, and we took an oath to follow them.”

“On the bright side, though …” Nakia begins as she pulls the door shut and locks it tight. “We have entertainment!” She reaches beneath the central sash that reaches from her collarbone to her knees. (Shuri has always wondered why the thing is there. It seems so impractical for a group of warriors who have to shift and move quickly.) Then holds up a small red box.

“Uno?” Shuri says, reading the word printed on said box aloud. “Doesn’t that mean one in Spanish?”

“Precisely!” Nakia replies. Shuri’s not sure she’s ever seen her so outwardly excited. “It’s an American card game where you match colors and/or numbers, and once you have only one card left, you shout ‘UNO!’”

Neither Shuri nor Ayo says anything.

“I will teach you both how to play,” Nakia continues, striding across the room to take a seat at the far end of the long table. Shuri’s guessing she’ll be required to sit at the head again.

She sighs.

“Come, come, come,” Nakia says. “There is no telling how long we will be in here, so we might as well make the most of it, yes?”

Shuri hates to be the bubble burster, but she has work to do. “Ah … not to steal your sunshine, Nakia, but I have some tasks I need to complete on my—”

“Kimoyo card,” Ayo says, rolling her eyes. “Fine, fine,” and she waves Shuri off. (Not that there’s anywhere for the princess to go.) “Young people,” she says to Nakia as she takes the seat across from her. “So addicted to their technology and devices. Teach me to play, Nakia.”

And just like that, Shuri is free to … well, sit and look at her Kimoyo card. Though she won’t be on PantherTube—which she’s sure the Dora women are assuming. Because as soon as she was back in her quarters post-encounter with the nameless intruder—whom she’s guessing has already left the palace like he did last time—she wiped a bunch of unnecessary stuff from the Kimoyo card’s memory and pulled together an “app,” as she’s heard T’Challa say, that gives her full access to the palace’s security camera network.

She removes her specially designed earbuds from the pocket of her robe and holds them up so Ayo and Nakia can see them. “Okay?” she asks the two women.

“Fine by us,” Nakia says. Then she turns back to Ayo. “Now, this is a draw-four wild card, and the most powerful card in the deck—”

Shuri pops the small hearing device into her ears, and the world goes silent.

She smiles. A short time ago, she upgraded the noise-cancellation mechanism in the admittedly store-bought earbuds by adding a tiny ring of Vibranium to the interior. So now nothing at all can get into her ears unless she wants it there.

And she wants nothing distracting her from the security footage.

As Shuri suspects, there’s very little to actually see. Five images come up this time, three of them with his full body in the frame for at least one full second. (Getting sloppy, are we? the princess thinks but doesn’t say.) She knows he’s gone again because the last clip—which is 1.3 seconds long—is from the camera at the loading dock. He appears, looks around, and then runs off into the night.

Also of note: He does not go to the hallway where the entrance to the vault of relics is hidden within the wall. Which the princess finds very interesting. What was the purpose of entering the palace this time if it wasn’t to try and get in there?

The irony hits her then: She is sitting in a maximum-security, atomic bomb–proof bunker to keep her “safe” from a being she’s not only seen up close but has conversed with. And she knows precisely what he’s looking for.

When the security footage proves useless, Shuri taps over to her web browser to look up this nebular gem the intruder is after. While there isn’t much public on the gem itself, she does come across a password-protected and encrypted website that is intensely sketchy but may be her only chance at a true lead.

Within three seconds, she’s managed to hack into it. “Flimsy American cybersecurity,” she whispers under her breath.

Her breath that catches once she sees what’s on the site. It appears to belong to a group of people who call themselves The Collectors, who buy, sell, and trade objects like nothing Shuri has ever seen. There’s a stone that’s said to give the possessor power over all space, near and far. There’s a golden horn shaped like an elephant’s tusk that was allegedly used by a god-king who reigned over what is now the American state of Georgia; he left behind chunks of the glistening metal when he vanished from Earth, never to be seen again. A rusted bronze spear that is said to have been used to slay a literal Titan (definitely the ugliest offering there … but oddly not the tallest tale). And a prismatic carved swan that was said to have its origins in something called the Bifrost on a planet called Asgard.

Shuri doesn’t find anything about a nebular gem on the “For Sale or Comparable Trade” page, but she does find something she’s not expecting: an image of a small glass case housing a dice-size block of an odd-looking metal. Antarctic Vibranium, according to the person who made the listing. Its description contains a warning: Keep away from all other metals, as proximity to Antarctic Vibranium will liquefy them instantly. Wakandan Vibranium included.

And though seeing the name of her country on this strange site gives Shuri a chill, she forges ahead and taps the link that will take her to the “Recently Sold and/or Comparably Traded” page.

“HA!” she shouts as she locates the listing for a nebular gem halfway down.

She happens to look up then and sees both Ayo and Nakia staring at her in alarm. “Is … everything okay?” Shuri asks, removing one of her earbuds.

“You tell us, Princess,” Ayo remarks. “You’re the one shouting.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Whoops! “Just watching this video about a … kid on laughing gas after leaving the dentist. It’s quite funny!”

“Yeah, okay,” Nakia says. (Clearly still peeved about Shuri not wanting to play Uno.) She turns back to Ayo. “Your turn, sis.”

The princess exhales and returns to her sleuthing. According to the listing, the nebular gem is “a celestial artifact, forged during the creation of a planet known only as Battleworld; it gives whoever wields it the ability to move through space-time by means of molecular disintegration and regeneration.”

Shuri shakes her head and rereads.

Disintegration and regeneration? So, like … the wielder of the gem would come apart and then re-form somewhere else?

Sounds like absolute upuuzi.

(Nonsense.)

She continues reading.

The gem was allegedly acquired by some American arms dealer (though how it wound up on Earth is missing from the description) who, after accidentally sending himself to “a planet full of rock giants,” returned home and sold it on the “Black Market.” Whatever that is.

It then passed through five or six other pairs of hands before one of the collectors got hold of it. He then traded it to a different collector …

Named Zanda. The princess of Narobia.

“No way,” Shuri whispers.

She lowers her Kimoyo card then.

Her sole encounter with Zanda involved the near annihilation of the heart-shaped herb and almost invasion of Wakanda—on a Challenge Day, no less. Shuri’s fists clench at the audacity of the Narobian woman. She and K’Marah stopped the multi-point assault and saved the herb almost single-handedly. (They’d had some help from Shuri’s surrogate big sis, Queen Ororo of Kenya—or Ms. X-Woman Lady Storm, as K’Marah refers to her. But still.)

What’s occurring to Shuri now, though: She doesn’t actually know what happened to Princess Zanda. Shuri was told that Zanda was returned to her home country within a tube that contained a tornado whipping around her inside it, but whether or not she ever got out, the Wakandan princess isn’t sure.

Something else Shuri doesn’t know but would like to: If Zanda is the last-known person in possession of this nebular gem, why is the intruder poking around in Wakanda instead of Narobia? Does he somehow know that Zanda was here?

Which begs a different question: Who/what is this intruder, and how does he know of Wakanda’s existence?

Shuri raises her Kimoyo card again and begins a new virtual hunt, tapping “black-suited creature with razor-sharp teeth” into the search bar. (Why people her age prefer this thumb tap-tap-tapping at letters on a screen as their primary form of communication is beyond the princess. The tedium would drive her mad.)

To her utter shock, that precise phrase returns 217,000 results (in 0.21 seconds, no less).

The first page is useless—filled with bizarre Halloween costumes and talk of extraterrestrials. But at the top of page two? She finds all she needs to see. Because she recognizes the organization mentioned in the article (which admittedly is housed on a website very clearly dedicated to conspiracy theorizing).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

Time to make a call to U.S. Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury.