The Eyes of Fate (Currently in Rewrite)

Computer Wizardry

Sentinel

Home

Washington State, USA

October 3rd, 2019

"Wait, hold up," Sentinel said, "I've got it."

Oracle stopped scrolling down the page she was on and looked at him expectantly.

"Some of these letters are one point smaller than the surrounding ones." Sentinel grabbed his pencil and started scribbling on the paper. "Judging by the paragraphs they're in, as well as the capitalization, it'll be written down like this."

Vnvitvmxb Kozm Hrc Z

Sentinel scratched at his head, trying to put together the code. Oracle watched him silently, offering neither comment nor question, just letting him think. It took him a couple of minutes, but he finally slapped his hands on the desk.

"Emergency Plan Six A!"

"Very good job." Oracle patted his shoulder. "That was the last one I had for today, so we're done with those for now."

 "Awesome," Sentinel said, leaning back over his chair and stretching. He had been working through web pages with her for over an hour. Finding the hidden clues was usually easy enough, at least with his eyes. Small, subtle changes in the text, small sections of images that were color changed to highlight objects or hidden text. It was figuring out the meanings and the codes that were the difficult part.

"I'm glad that you're smart enough to think on your feet," Oracle said, standing up. "If worse comes to worst, you'd be looking for a code dropped by me completely on your own. It wouldn't be as complex as some of the harder codes I could borrow, but it would damn sure be hard to find."

"I'm just happy that I can do something on my feet, considering how often you swept them out from under me earlier." Sentinel rubbed at one of his hips, remembering how many times she had dropped him.

After breakfast, they had gone on another mile run, followed by more combat training. Sentinel had been expecting to be training with Fang or Ranger again, but instead it was Oracle kicking his ass up and down the room. He felt dumb for expecting her to go any easier on him than they did, and she proved it by sweeping his legs out from under him repeatedly until he started to figure out how to guard it. After that, she had taken him to one of the computer labs he had walked by the day before and put him to work.

"Yeah, I'd say I'm sorry, but I'd rather you know about your weak point now than learn it later." Oracle shrugged.

"So what is a 'worse comes to worst' situation?" Sentinel asked, standing up with the sound of popping knees. Oracle started walking out of the lab, and he followed her.

"That would be a situation where we all had to separate and find a way to meet back up after. Hopefully it'll never need to happen, but in this line of work, who knows." Oracle shrugged again. "Come on, let's head to my room for a bit before I find you some more training to do."

"More training?" Sentinel groaned, "Great."

"Oh hush you," Oracle said as they walked into the hall where all their rooms were. "Come on in, I want to show you something."

He followed Oracle into her room, taking in the place at a glance. The main area looked much the same as his, with two couches facing the TV, and one entire wall being full of shelving that displayed dozens of books and several small electronic things that Sentinel couldn't hope to identify. She also had a desk next to the couches that had the fanciest computer setup that Sentinel had ever seen, with three screens and a tower almost big enough for him to fit inside of. The second half of the room had what looked like a couple of entertainment centers, but had black curtains in front of where TV would be.