Across the Stars 🕷 Peter Parker [3]

six

Alexandra

The lab was incredible. Better than anything Alexandra had ever seen. Midtown High wished it could be half as great as this place. There was technology lining the walls that Alexandra had never seen before, and she was sure was limited to Wakanda. She wondered what other surprises there would be that day.

T'Challa led them into the main lab space, where they were greeted by a young Wakandan girl. Her hair was up in braids and when she saw T'Challa, she smiled. "Brother!" She exclaimed. "Have you brought more broken white people for me to fix?" She eyed his company.

"Shuri, play nice," T'Challa reprimanded. "We have serious matters to deal with."

His sister, Shuri, nodded before turning to the Avengers and Alexandra. "My brother filled me in on your predicament," She said before looking Vision up and down. "I assume you are Vision?"

The android nodded.

"I would say nice to meet you but, well, the circumstances could be better." Shuri shrugged before patting her table. "Please, lay down."

Vision did as he was told and Shuri used something on her wrist that Alexandra would have loved to get a closer look at to scan Vision's body. In her open palm sat a holographically displayed image of the stone that rested in Vision's hand.

"Whoa." Alexandra murmured softly.

"The structure is polymorphic," Shuri sounded both surprised and in awe.

"Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially." Dr Banner nodded.

Shuri looked up at him with a slightly bored expression. "Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work collectively?" She asked.

Dr Banner didn't answer for a moment, mulling over her words before Alexandra leaned over and whispered, "I don't think they thought of that." Shuri snickered a bit. Alexandra felt a bit more at ease with Shuri there, she was the closest one in the room to her age, so making sarcastic side remarks to her (even though Shuri was technically a princess, and that was pretty intimidating on its own—adding into the mix that she was an utter genius made her even more intimidating) were a bit easier for Alexandra than making them to say, Black Widow.

Shuri smiled at Dr Banner. "I'm sure you did your best."

"Can you do it?" Wanda asked suddenly.

The princess of Wakanda turned her attention to Wanda and then nodded. "Yes. But there are more than two trillion neurons here," She replied. "One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures. It will take time, brother." She looked at T'Challa.

Captain Rogers spoke up. "How long?" He asked.

"As long as you can give me."

"I can help." Alexandra spoke up, all eyes moved to her and she shrunk back slightly. "I mean—I'm no computer-tech genius or anything but... I know a few things, and I used to help my friends Peter and Ned when they were working on one of their computer projects for school."

T'Challa glanced over at Shuri, this was clearly his sister's call to make. The young girl nodded firmly. "I'll need all the help I can get. But you must listen and do exactly as I say, we cannot risk any misalignments."

"Understood." Alexandra nodded.

Suddenly, an alarm began to sound. T'Challa's Dora Miljre general, Okoye, slid a bead from her bracelet into the palm of her hand and a holographic image of the earth appeared. "Something's entered the atmosphere."

"Oh, great... more aliens." Alexandra sighed. "Most kids deal with late homework assignments and trying to find a date to their school dance. Not me."