I really don't know how this chapter came out. I hope it's ok.

Disclaimer: I do not own Black Panther.

He uses the tablet to pull footage of the press release. Then he checks the responses of various countries and their communications to Wakanda. He uses his knowledge of people who he knows will be interested in playing this new field and pulls files on the names T'Challa have provided for him. He gets down into countries' finances, resources, allies, grey and wet work ordered for the last five years, shortages and wars cold and most assuredly otherwise.

Sixty-five hours later he has the beginnings of a web and his eyes are reminding him that he hasn't slept. He eyes his work and decides he's reached a good stopping point. He's up again in ten hours and contemplates the information while gnawing on his dinner. He wishes he had some paper but figures they won't give him anything to write with. Pens, pencils and styluses are all great weapons. Paper can be too if you're skilled enough. Still it wouldn't hurt to ask. Maybe they actually might be stupid enough to give him it.

"Erik."

Erik blinks up at T'Challa from his work.

"You should rest," T'Challa tells him. Erik snorts at this. Concern for him is hilarious when they're the ones who've trapped him in here. Besides, he's on the cusp of figuring out a connection and he wants silence.

"Erik," T'Challa begins again.

"Shut up cuz," he snaps as he teases out the lines of motivation and means. Aww a certain politician has a daughter with a medical condition, an expensive one. Nice motivation. Erik tags him and sets about delving into his finances. When he looks up again T'Challa is gone.

Erik at work is just as fascinating as Erik in motion, T'Challa thinks. When he fights Erik is all passion but here when he plans, it's when T'Challa can see the intelligence that lies hidden in his frame walled behind a cool careless exterior. Erik is dangerous. He's known it, seen it but somehow this impresses that thought into his mind much more strongly. He'll have to be very careful when dealing with him.

Erik identifies three more people they should keep an eye on and gives them several companies to watch carefully. It's not enough of course. Wakanda has stirred up the world something fierce. It's almost as if aliens had dropped from the sky again. Only this time the aliens have been here all along. For some reason people are more offended at Wakanda. Eric snarls at the news reports he watches. Typical. People feel betrayed as if it was the right of the rest of the world to have whatever Wakanda had made.

Erik has had it with his people being exploited as much as he has had it with Wakanda sitting back while their brothers and sisters suffered.

He's actually glad though, that he doesn't have T'Challa's job of liaising with the rest of the African nations, the ones that have been suffering while Wakanda has been thriving. But T'Challa handles them well, as well as he or anyone else can. It's not a pretty situation and Erik doubts he would have been as tactful as his cousin. He doesn't get much information though. Whatever happens between Wakanda and the rest has not been made public.

Erik feeds the Wakandans information for flight plans and the identities of several spies which have been dispatched. He wonders what his cousin will do when he gets them. The answer is not what he would have expected. Erik's starting to realize it rarely will be.

T'Challa takes the spies to lunch in a room that can only show a preapproved view and then caringly dispatches them back to their home country. Idiotic but bold. It's a power play. A gentle caution and a laugh in the face all at once. Erik can appreciate it for all that he thinks dead spies are the best messages one should send back. Discreetly of course.

It's all elementary stuff though. Erik doesn't doubt that the Wakandans can do this on their own. It's a test to see what he'll do. Which as far as tests go is elementary in and of itself. Still his cousin is probably pleased and probably uses it to show the council that hey, keeping this super dangerous relative of mine alive, is actually a good idea. Erik doesn't care. Gotta to crawl before you can kill and he needs a functioning web.

It takes him another week to supplement his web to the scale that he decides that is acceptable and by then he has arrived the furthest he can reach on information gained from digital sources alone. He needs hard, real-time info and the kind of stuff that you don't find in the cyber trail. Time for his cousin to make himself useful.

"Yo cuz," he says, "I need some people to do some snooping around for me."

T'Challa blinks. "Snooping around?"

"Spying. Information gathering. Intelligence. The stuff you have to get physically. A little bit of stalking, a little bit breaking and entering, probably digging through garbage, nothing too big." He shrugs.

"Ahh," says T'Challa. He looks like he's not sure what to make of the request but he nods and says," Give us the specifics and well see if we can accommodate them."

Erik nods and sends of his file to whichever the poor bastard is that is tasked with finding and giving him all the information, he wants.

T'Challa lingers. "Are you well?" He asks after a moment.

Erik looks up at him and then bursts into laughter. "Well?" He laughs again and when he speaks his voice is scalding with derision. "I'm a slave working for a black master. Sure, the digs are cushier but it's the same thing. The hell I ain't well!"

His cousin flinches and Erik wants to dig the knife in a little more but the one good thing about T'Challa being a good man, at least in his own mind, is that his conscience will do all the work for Erik. Maybe he'll be out of here before he thought.

"I'm sorry," T'Challa tells him.

"Then you should have let me die!" Erik snarls.

"Do you really wish that?"

"Are you gonna open the door and kill me?" Erik asks, "cause that's the only way I'm even bothering to answer that question."

"Why do you seek death?" T'Challa asks, like he's actually confused. Erik pities his dumb cousin. His dumb cousin who's never known hardship so bad death was a kindness. How does T'Challa ever thinks he's going to change the world if he can't even see it for what it really is?

He didn't realize that he's asked the question aloud until T'Challa replied.

"That's why I need you to be my eyes. That's why I need you alive. This has been your dream far longer than it's been mine. I can't help our people if you're dead."

Erik chooses to let any expression bleed out of his face. He's not ready to face the force of T'Challa's words as innocent and idealistic as they sound. He chooses the safest answer, the answer that leaves him Erik and not N'Jadaka.

"I'm not your anything cuz, not while I have a choice."

T'Challa leaves but before he exits he looks back and says, "You're still my cousin."

Erik must be losing his edge because his wakandan cousins seem to be having the last word a lot lately. It's not a situation that leaves him pleased.

R&R Please!