SHADOW OF DEATH

Chapter 18: The Gift

T'Chaka could not say he felt surprised when he first heard the mgeni had crossed their borders. He could see it. The Asgardian moved with the restless energy of a caged leopard coiled within his lean frame. He would flee as often as he could to pursue his freedom, but he would return to the cage each time without fail for Wakanda still held his prize. And, if events transpired as T'Chaka feared they would, soon the Asgardian would be forced to stay within the gilded cage of their secret kingdom, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

T'Chaka did have to admit he felt surprised when he saw a small package waiting for him on his desk in the late watches of the night. Wrapped in cloth spun of fine gold thread and embroidered with distinctly Asgardian runes, its wrapping alone was worth a small fortune. He carefully removed the fabric and within he found an even more elaborate golden box inlaid with glowing, finely cut gems. He opened the lid and his white eyebrows crept upward as he laid his failing eyes on the bedraggled piece of broken machinery before him.

He lifted it and turned it over in his hand to observe it closely. It was a black metal octagon with a series of wires protruding from its edges and a few orange buttons on top. It appeared almost as if it had been forcibly torn from another piece of machinery and it had marks of burn damage on one side.

He opened the small leather parchment he found beneath it and found a message written in runes. As soon as he focused on the writing, it shifted like sand into an ancient form of Kishenga, the script that formed the basis of their modern Kikanda writing. This form of writing was now only used in the most sacred of ceremonies and by the most learned of his people.

In careful script, the note said: "I remain in your debt. Give this to my son. Tell him it is a gift from the Midgardian host of the Tesseract."

T'Chaka removed the broken machinery and placed it in a safe on his wall, safely hidden under an old leather shield and set of spears that had belonged to his great grandfather. He took the fabric and the box and the parchment and knew what he would do with these. Without saying it, T'Chaka could tell the All-Father sent those as gifts to express his thanks.

He did not worry about the late hour as he neared his daughter's rooms. She preferred to work late into the night on whatever project currently captured her imagination and she would most likely still be awake.

"Hodi," he said softly outside her door.

"Baba!" she said. He heard a thump and a thud and a patter of footsteps before she threw open the door with a wide grin. She pulled him in by the hand and he couldn't contain his laugh at her enthusiasm.

"Umelala?"

"Hapana. Siwezi," he said.

"Na mimi pia. I had an idea and couldn't sleep until I tested it to see if it worked. It didn't," Shuri said with a sigh. A pile of computer parts sat dismantled next to her bed and strewn across her desk. Some years earlier, a large dining table had made its way to the center of her room and never managed to migrate back to the dining hall. Now it was pitted with knife marks, soldering burns, and the occasional calculation written onto its surface instead of the notepaper too inconveniently far away for her current stroke of brilliance.

Her room still held an air of girlhood about it. Her large ebony shelf on one side of the room displayed her collection of dolls. Since her birth, T'Chaka brought her one doll from every country he traveled to. Her dolls no longer filled her arms or her bed, but she was not ready to part from them completely and so they stayed in their place on her shelf. The walls on one side of her room showed posters of her favorite Bollywood films, while the other had her favorite Lugaflow musicians. Every other surface seemed littered with test tubes, wires, tools, charts, and books. Ever since one experiment exploded, Shuri refused the cleaners from entering her room. She said she preferred her own mess over one created by well-intentioned watunza and their brooms and mops.

Shuri quickly knocked a pile of screw drivers and wires off one chair and brought it for her father to sit in. She knelt on a woven banana fiber mat beside him, her hands on the knees of her dark brown night dress. Her hair was wrapped for the night in a green and yellow scarf. T'Chaka could read a series of calculations scrawled in a marker up her left arm when she turned it to gesture for him to sit down.

"You gave Dr. Foster a tour of your lab today?" he asked after he sat down beside her.

"Yes!" Shuri said. "I should have recorded her reaction for you! It was better than the time I put the fire ants in T'Challa's Panther Habit. Her mouth gaped so wide I thought she was a fish! I think she'd like to set up her own sleeping mat in a corner there, if she was permitted."

T'Chaka gave her an expression of mock rebuke before hiding his smile. He was pleased to see his lastborn so delighted by her new companion. It was rare Shuri met outsiders in Wakanda and even more unusual for her to have the opportunity to share her lab and ideas with someone other than one of her subjects. She positively glowed in her excitement, and the sight of her made the king's heavy-laden heart somehow lighten.

"You and the mgeni should be very grateful to me," Shuri continued. "It took me half the day to convince the mzungu that she should stay and that she is not betraying the people of the Earth by assisting the Space Colonizer with his plans."

"She did not wish to stay?"

"She had already packed her suitcases to return when I found her this morning. I think she would have left - even after all my brilliant arguments and persuasions - if it wasn't for my lab. When she saw the kinds of telescopes she would have access to if she stayed, then the decision became much easier. She did not like that she will have to learn to read Kikanda to work most of the computers, but I think I gave her enough incentive to inspire her. I showed her our newest telescope and she immediately asked me for a book about the Kikanda alphabet. I left her deep in her studies."

"Has she shared her research with you?"

"Not yet. It will take time. I am still working to convince her to take me seriously. She came thinking she would be in a village using generators and she was not prepared for Wakanda. She was even less prepared to work with me as an equal and not simply as a host. Pole pole. Slowly by slowly the banana tree grows."

"Asante. Thank you, Shuri," he said. "And the mgeni?"

"He disappeared over 24 hours ago. A guard from the Border tribe saw him pass through our external shield near Bwera and he has not been heard from since. He travelled to the SHEILD headquarters in Washington D.C. before visiting the sight of the bombing in New York. He returned to Washington D.C. for some time before travelling to Moscow and Beijing."

T'Chaka let his surprise show on his face and he clapped his hands together. "Eeee, eeee, eeee! How have you managed to track his movements? He is sure to notice a device on his body or his clothes."

"Hapana, baba. I am not tracking his movements directly. I placed a tracking device on his cat. You can argue that I do not actually know all his movements, however, those are all the places his cat has gone today."

"You are tracking his cat?"

"Ndio," she answered and nodded her head in assent.

"You are sure it is a cat?"

"I did not want to open it up to find out any differently," she said. "And after I placed the tracker on its collar, it refused to let me run any other tests on it so I did not try."

T'Chaka broke into a wheezing laugh. He wiped at his eyes where moisture gathered beneath his deep wrinkles. Shuri's ingenuiety never ceased to surprise him. He watched her carefully, then, as he withdrew the real reason for his visit. He pulled out the Asgardian gift and held it to her.

"Here, I have brought you something," he said. She eagerly took it and ran her fingers over the delicate embroidery and inlaid gems.

"These are beautiful," she said. "Where did they come from?"

"Gulu sent them," he said. She did not disappoint. Her eyes lit up like the sun at dawn and she jumped to her feet to grab one of her many hand-held scanning devices. She eagerly turned it on and began to run it over the gifts.

"These materials are not found on Earth!" she said in excitement. "I have never seen anything like them!"

"One more," he said. He handed her the scroll and watched in amusement. Her mouth fell open as she watched the words rearrange themselves into the ancient Kishenga script.

"How does it…this is some kind of leather…how does it do that? Is it magic?"

"Aya," he said. "That is not all. The words I read are different than the ones it is currently showing you."

"No!" she said, a slight chirp of excitement in her voice. "I cannot read it. What does it say?"

T'Chaka laughed and t'sked at her. "Daughter, you should be able to read this fluently by now. You have neglected your Kishenga lessons again."

She shrugged. "I like science better than history and linguistics."

"I cannot tell you what I read because that is for my eyes alone, but for you it says, 'Asgard welcomes the Princess of Wakanda.'"

Her dimpled grin met him in answer and she pulled out a magnifying glass and a notebook. He did not think she would sleep till dawn and he would let her find her enjoyment where she could. Anything she learned was bound to be of benefit to all and so he would not chide her for her enthusiasm. His old bones, however, felt the call to rest. He left her furiously scribbling notes onto a computerized tablet and testing chemical compositions of the box.

Loki stood outside the primary shield and waited. He knew they would come. Within twenty minutes, he heard the whirr of motors and he could sense the company of soldiers standing at attention through the illusory barrier separating him from Wakanda. A small doorway appeared in the projection of the forest and through it walked the proud, muscular figure of the commander of the Border tribe guard. He frowned at Loki, but then nodded in greeting.

"Mgeni, umerudi? You have returned," he said with a nod. "Who is your companion?"

"This is someone I require assistance with. I am requesting safe transport to your capital for us both and an audience with your chief healer."

The man gave him a skeptical expression and began to speak into the beads on his wrist. A projection of the familiar face of the general soon filled the space between them.

"Mgeni-who is he?" the general said, her one eyebrow arched in her tattooed forehead.

"One of my soldiers. He is an enhanced mortal. I wish to break the mind spell keeping him enslaved to the whims of others with ill-intent."

Loki could hear the rushed argument between the commander and the general for a few moments before the transmission vanished and Loki followed the commander through the shield. He motioned for his Winter Soldier to follow, which the man did, as mindlessly and stoically as a statue. Behind the soldier trailed the Flerkin. Goose occasionally paused to pounce on an insect or bite off the head of a flower, but it calmly sat on the grass once it passed through the barrier. Loki had not forgiven Goose for trailing him or for stealing his brother's hammer. However, there was very little he could do about either irritation. A Flerkin was not a beast that could be persuaded to obey and Goose was more than aware of the fear it instilled into Loki. Loki rather wondered if the beast took the hammer just to raise Loki's ire.

Loki sighed as he felt his magic bound the moment he crossed through the shield. He glanced at his silent companion, pleased to see the glazed blue eyes remained intact. The power of the scepter remained in place, even if his own spells could not be utilized. He followed the commander to where a sleek, light aircraft waited to transport them the rest of the way to Birnin Zana.

"Bwana, you wish to bring the paka?" the commander asked and motioned towards the Flerkin.

"No, I do not. Leave the irritating beast where it is," he said. He gave an imperious glare at the orange cat and got into the aircraft. The commander nodded and closed the door behind him, effectively separating Goose from the rest of the company.

Loki nearly choked on his surprise when they landed at the airstrip at the palace and he found the Flerkin calmly waiting for him there. He glared at the creature as he disembarked and began to run calculations in his head. It shouldn't be possible for the creature to cross such a distance so quickly. Granted, his knowledge on Flerkins was minimal at best. They were not native to the Nine and so Asgardian knowledge of the species was limited to traveler's accounts. He felt unsettled that the creature could have even greater capacities than he was aware of. Goose ignored his glare and came up to rub its head against Loki's ankle, despite all of Loki's efforts to push the creature away with his boot.

T'Chaka, T'Challa, Okoye, a man in a grey and yellow embroidered shirt, and five Dora Milaje surrounded him as he disembarked.

"You have returned," T'Chaka said as he took Loki's hand in his own. The old king seemed neither surprised nor upset by that statement. Instead, his keen eyes searched over Loki's companion as if he were a museum sculpture on display.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"I know not his name. His master called him Winter Soldier One. There were five advanced humans created by a nefarious Midgardian cult some years ago. They are strong, fierce, and formidable. Their master used this small army to topple the powers of Midgard. They have neither will nor memory. They are under a firm mind spell which ensures compliance and single-minded focus to the will of their master. When I discovered them, I temporarily overwrote their mind spell with one of my own. However, I fear that mine will not be permanent and, if it should fail, they will once again be vulnerable to exploitation by whoever would deign to call themselves master."

"Why do you bring him to us?"

"I have not the time to cure the mind spells of my army. It will take many weeks or months. I wish you to determine if a cure is possible so that he, and his companions, are once again master of their own minds. If not, I will dispose of them."

T'Chaka nodded and the man in the grey and yellow shirt stepped forward. "This is Dr. Okapi, head of our medical services. He will assemble to team to determine his care."

Loki nodded. "When his cure is complete, I will bring the others. I could not spare them all at once, nor did I wish them all thrust upon your hospitality simultaneously. They are too much of a liability."

"We will see what can be done," T'Challa said and nodded towards his father.

"Go with them and do as they say," Loki commanded the silent man beside him. The part of his face not covered by a black face mask remained expressionless as he turned to follow.

"Sit on that table here, please," Dr. Okapi said. He ushered towards a metal table in a glass-walled medical wing of Birnin Zana's expansive medical research lab. Long screens along each side of the room whirred with constantly updated data and communications. Small beeping sounds from various machinery prevented total silence from ever descending upon the large, high-vaulted facility.

Before Dr. Okapi, Winter Soldier One stood, his mask removed to reveal an impassive face beneath his long, dark brown hair. The man stood half a foot taller than the lean doctor beside him and twice as broad. The soldier's gaze met Dr. Okapi's without a flicker of awareness and the man remained standing. Dr. Okapi sighed and glanced behind him where the Asgardian prince stood leaning against a wall.

"Soldier, sit," Loki interjected with marked annoyance in his voice. He pushed himself off the wall behind the metal table and pointed. The man immediately sat, though his position was rigid and he did not relax. He held both of his fists clenched at his side. In the lights of the examination room, one arm gleamed with a metallic glow.

"You are to listen to the doctor," Loki said with a slight huff. "I cannot remain here as your nursemaid."

Dr. Okapi rubbed at his dark brown eyes and pulled a series of devices from a cupboard. His low voice gave instructions to a series of assistants who flittered in and out of the room, as worker bees from a hive. They came back with boxes full of equipment and set up machinery around the room as per the doctor's instruction.

Dr. Okapi pulled a small scanner out of the pocket of the yellow and grey lab coat he now wore and slowly an orange line of light moved across the soldier's body. A frenzied cacophony of high frequency beeps warred from each of the screens on the walls around them as he worked.

"You have said you have him under your mental control?" Dr. Okapi asked Loki, without removing his eyes from his scanner.

"Yes."

"Can you remove it so I can perform tests without your controls on him?"

"Yes," Loki said. "If you wish it."

He walked up to the unmoving soldier and stared at him with an imperious glare. Then Loki swung his fist into the man's forehead with so much force that the soldier flew off the table and into the wall behind him, creating a dent in the wall and a flurry of dust. The soldier did not rise again. Dr. Okapi gave a startled cry and ran up to the soldier's unmoving body on the floor.

"Eh, eh, eh! Bwana, umefanya nini? What have you done?" he said and rolled the soldier onto his back. He pulled out a pen-sized flashlight and shone it into the man's unresponsive eyes.

"Cognitive recalibration," Loki responded with a lackadaisical toss of his head. "I suggest you complete your tests before he returns to consciousness."

"Could you not remove your control another way?" Dr. Okapi asked through gritted teeth.

"Perhaps. However, I have never sought to discover another means and this is quite effective."

Dr. Okapi clicked under his breath in a way that clearly communicated his disapproval. He summoned two assistants over to lift the unconscious, and very heavy, soldier back onto the examination table.

"How long before you will finish your initial examination?" Loki asked, his eyes fixed on the orange characters filing across the black screen in front of him, instead of meeting the wary eyes of the doctor. Dr. Okapi removed a series of wires from a machine and motioned for his assistants to place them on the unconscious form on the table.

"Eh, it will not be too too long. Two hours? Four hours? I do not know."

"I will return in four hours," Loki said. "I suggest you do not let him wake unless you have him restrained."

Dr. Okapi muttered something under his breath, but he nodded and Loki left them to their tasks.

Loki sat on a secluded bench in the warm, humid morning sunlight. Dense foliage from the overhanging jackfruit trees gave him enough shade to keep him cool as he picked noncommittally at his meal with a fork. While incomparably better than the fare he survived off of in the SHIELD headquarters, it still felt foreign to him and tasted like Midgard. At this moment, he would easily have exchanged his meal for even the most meager of Asgardian soldier's rations simply to have something that reminded him of the home that was no longer his home. He felt stifled in the growing warmth of the day, but he preferred the quiet isolation of the garden over the forced interaction he would likely stumble upon within the palace. Here, among the orange and yellow flowers surrounding him, he could hide away in the shadows and pick at his meal in peace.

He had not planned to free his army this quickly. They were useful as they were-firmly under his control and using their considerable powers for his purposes. If freed, it was highly possible they would choose not to serve him, or worse, fight for their old masters in opposition to him. However, he would allow them the opportunity to choose. His dream the night before had compelled him to act now and cease his procrastination. In his mind's eye, he had a vision of himself with hazy blue eyes, kneeling at the boots of the Mad Titan, and willingly raising the scepter towards Thanos as an offering. He had woken him out of his sleep with a tense jerk and torrent of sweat.

Was it a memory or a future threat?

Most likely, it was both.

It was time to destroy the cursed scepter, but he needed his army firmly controlled before he could risk its destruction.

Loki was roused out of his musings by the sound of footsteps. He groaned inwardly and attempted to shield himself deeper in the shadows, but to no avail. Jane Foster rounded a bend on a path and made her way directly towards him. She carried a notebook in her arms and a pen was balanced behind her ear. A look of such forced cheerfulness crossed her face that he almost laughed. He admired her determination, if nothing else, and she had decided to attempt civility... and she would force herself to uphold that decision, despite how she abhorred it.

"There you are," she said. "The guard at the door told me you went this way."

She gave him a slightly unsure expression and pulled a lock of brown hair behind her ear. She shifted her weight, her pale yellow dress swishing from side to side, as Loki let the moment grow longer and longer without acknowledging her presence.

"Dr. Foster," he responded when he deemed her discomfort adequate. "I trust you are well."

Despite the politeness of his words, he infused ice into his tone and he saw her shrink inwards slightly. Then, she pulled herself taller, threw her shoulders back, and mustered up her courage again.

"Where were you?" she asked. "You missed all the tours of the city and the lab and the orientation and everything. You just vanished without a word."

"I'm pleased you missed the pleasure of my company, Lady Jane. I assure you, my time was well spent in other pursuits. I am certain I can learn what I need to in my own way."

She let out a frustrated huff.

"Is there something else you wish to ask me apart from my past whereabouts?" he asked, exchanging his icy tone for one of patronizing boredom.

"Yeah. I had some questions on the calculations you gave me. The technology I have access to here is beyond anything I could have possibly dreamed I'd be able to get my hands on. It's amazing! I think I'll be able to start making progress now. I need to figure out how some of the Asgardian data you gave me translates into the data and star charts I have access to in the lab here." She waved her hands more rapidly in tandem with the growing excitement in her voice as she forgot her discomfort in her explanation of her current pursuits.

"I will come this afternoon," he said.

"Ok. That'd be great."

She stood in silence, carefully measuring him with her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but then appeared to change her mind, and closed it again.

"I'll see you then," she said and she disappeared back on the path she first came on.

"No, Jane," Shuri said with a laugh. "That button will open up communication channels to the entire palace. I do not think you wish for every room in the palace to hear you record your notes."

Jane glared at the orange symbol as if it had personally insulted her and turned to sulk at the list of symbols on a digital tablet in front of her.

"But this says here… oh, there's a little thingy underneath the hoop. I missed that part," she said with a groan. She hung her head onto her hands and rubbed her forehead. "I'm a scientist, not a linguist. Isn't there some kind of magic button you can push that will translate all this to English?"

Shuri shook her head, leaving the dimpled smile on her face.

"Pole sana, daktari. Siwezi," she said.

Jane looked up and gave Shuri and exasperated glare. Shuri raised both her hands in mock apology and broke into giggles.

"Fine, fine. Let me try again. I press this button here and then that one over there?" she said and gestured towards the glowing orange symbols on the wall panel in front of her.

"Indio! Unajua!" Shuri replied.

"Ugh! Shuri-come on. Don't make me learn this many languages at once. What did you say?"

"She said, 'yes, you know," said an amused voice from the doorway. Loki strode into the center of the lab and both Shuri and Jane swung towards him in surprise.

"You understand Kiswahili?" Jane asked.

"I speak the All-Tongue," Loki replied. "I can understand all languages - on Midgard and further afield."

"All-Tongue? Wait-is that some kind of magical language? Cause if so, that is totally not fair."

"It is a form of communication that does not rely on signifiers but solely on the signified to relay communications. It encompasses all forms of verbal and symbolic communication and grammatical structures in a way that ensures what is communicated is understood in its entirety by all parties involved," he said. He turned to look at the tablet of symbols that Jane held in her hand and smirked at her when he saw her confusion. "I suppose you could describe it as a kind of magical language."

"Figures," she said with a groan. "Let me guess. You can read all these symbols, too."

"Of course," he replied.

"I hate you," she said and threw her tablet down onto the table with more force than she meant to. Then she groaned. "I've spent the last week studying a whole new kind of writing and a whole new language- just so I can work the basic programs in here and still I'm messing them up."

Loki shrugged and turned to take in the various displays around the cavernous underground vault that they found themselves in. Every table, corner, wall, and shelf overflowed with some type of equipment or project or display of blueprints. Lab technicians in goggles and white coats wandered from counters to tables to shelves and back again, tools and materials in hand. The laboratory hummed with life and electricity and creativity and possibility.

"So, this is the preferred throne room of the Princess of Wakanda," he asked, turning to address the petite woman besides Jane. "I hear tell that if someone wishes to find you, they look no further than this underground cave."

Shuri's eyes sparkled and she gave a slight bow. "I told Baba to let me move my bed to that corner there and he refused. He said he would never see me again if I were allowed to sleep here. A few times a day, my mother forces me to leave here to eat and sleep and see the sun. But, yes, most times you will find me here."

"Most impressive," Loki said in a flat tone which did not differentiate between sincerity and sarcasm. "I am indebted to you for your assistance in the research of Dr. Foster," he continued, now with greater earnestness.

"I am always happy for a new challenge and the opportunity to learn something new," Shuri said. "And everyone in Wakanda is happier when I am busy. I tend to cause problems for everyone else when I am idle."

"And why is that?" Loki asked, giving her a sideways glance as he turned a small face mask over in his hand.

Shuri shrugged. "I do not handle boredom very well and have been known to cause mischief when I am not occupied."

Loki gave her a more appraising glance and placed the mask back on the table he found it.

"I see," he said. He ran his fingers along one counter of wires and tools before pausing to read a blueprint for a new vibranium hovercraft design.

"Dr. Foster, you wished to ask me some questions?" he said, turning now to where Jane stood and watched him.

"Ummm, yeah," she said. She pulled a notebook and laptop out of a briefcase at her feet and rifled through a series of papers. She pulled a pen out from behind her ear.

"I have a series of questions for you," she said and held her pen ready for his answers.

Notes:

Kishenga/Kikanda: in Black Panther, the creators painstakingly crafted their own form of writing based on Nsibidi, an ancient Nigerian script, which is awesome. However, for the purposes of this story, we will pretend they have a written form of Kiswahili with their own distinct alphabet. This written language is called Kikanda. Kishenga will be the precursor to that (think Latin to Spanish or Ge'ez to Amharic).

Real confession, to make Wakanda make sense, I shouldn't even be using Kiswahili. They should be speaking their own unique Bantu language. I thought about trying to switch to Runyoro or Luganda, but I'm not that talented. I then thought about going Tolkien and making up a spoken version of Kikanda, but I'm not that talented.

I think I've figured out how to explain my use of Kiswahili in this story as the primary language that is more acceptable than "it's closer than Xhosa": Swahili traders (people from coast of Kenya and Tanzania) made it inland as far as Uganda by the 1830's and Kiswahili developed as the primary inter-tribe language of communication for the whole region….thus, while not indigenous to Wakanda, in their "history", they adopted it for ease of communication with their neighbors. And all Wakandans grow up learning a bunch of languages and so speak their mother tongue along with Kiswahili and English and French and whatever other local languages they pick up. (See-that takes care of both the use of English and Kiswahili here.) ;)

P.S. building an imaginary real country is much harder than working with a real country…or an imaginary country.

Mgeni: visitor/stranger
Hodi: can I come in?
Baba: father
Umelala?: have you slept?
Hapana. Siwezi: No, I'm unable.
Na mimi pia: Me too
Watunza: caretakers
Watu wote: all the people
Asante: thank you
umerudi?: you have returned
indio: yes
bwana: sir/term of respect
paka: cat