Notes:
We're back! ^^
At least, this time, we did it before a month... u.u
Good news, btw, we are starting to reveal things. Besides, we had a talk about the fic's developement and it's pretty defined right now. We also want to tell you that it will have 20 chapters, more or less, so... we've already reached the half of the story! ^^
We want to thank you too for keep reading us after the hiatus... WE LOVE YOU! :D
Chapter 11. Maria's code.
"Tell me… Since when are you a nurse?" Natasha turned over and closed the bathroom's door, keeping them locked on the small room.
"What?" Clint, confused, put the bandages and the gauze on the shelf.
"I see that you are very good at nursing and, we both now that you are as gentleman as I am clumsy, I assume that you also are a nurse. A very good one, seeing Maria's big smile of satisfaction after that gentle attendance. Cuddle included.
Clint raised his eyebrows astonished, but immediately understood the situation and put a half smile on his face. He squared his shoulders and, with the more relaxed and colder voice that he could find, he answered:
"Since when is the Black Window jealous?"
"Wow. I see that attracting poor Maria's attention has fed your ego. Jealous for you? Come down from the clouds, little hawk, and get back to Earth. We are still on mission." Natasha said, staring at him, almost challenging him.
"Nat, I've never had any trouble to compatible missions and fun." Clint commented with a mischievous smile. "Do you remember Budapest?" After that, Clint left the bathroom, leaving Natasha behind, speechless.
Steve was starting to despair. They were searching everywhere, but Maria didn't appear. With the shock of the moment, all of them preferred to leave the questions for later, but they were running out of time, and they needed to know agent Hill's version, all details included.
He met with Thor next to the small tent which was assembled by SHIELD in one of the sides of the ruins and, both of them were shaking their heads on denial. A small detail was bothering the first avenger. He had that weird sensation that something was missing about Maria.
Bruce Banner came closer running as if he was on the last meters from a race. The doctor, arrived completely exhausted but he didn't even stop to catch some air, he just simply started talking, brokenly.
"Maria... Maria... Helicopter... Fake... Innocent... Tony..."
"In what kind of Midgardian language are you talking?" Thor asked.
"Doctor, calm down! Catch some air and explain yourself."
Some minutes later, Bruce recovered enough to explain his findings to the two avengers. They agreed to split. Thor would have to take charge of Tony while Bruce and Steve would try to enlight the dark case of Maria. They couldn't believe it, but the evidence was there. Some agents have commented to him that Maria had left the building in a helicopter with Clint and Natasha, while SHIELD was under attack. That meant that the one whom they talked to... Was a fake.
"Hey! I found something!" Maria said, thrilled.
"What?" Clint and Natasha asked in unison, throwing glances at each other, amazed of their synchronization.
"I'm not completely sure but… I think I have deciphered the code"
Hawkeye and Black Widow pulled the tension aside and got closer to Maria who began the explanation with the brightest of the smiles. It was simple, extremely simple, once she found out which codification had been used. Her intuition told her from the very beginning, but she had refused to believe it was such an obvious thing.
It was one of the most ancient codes in humanity and quite simple to solve with a cryptanalysis computer, which could explore thousands of posibilities in a few minutes, but a real pain in the ass to those without the keyword. It was a substitution code that anyone could make with a simple board, available in Google: the Vigenère Code. However, Clint and Natasha were still processing the information and their faces expressed how lost they were.
Maria printed a weird table. It was the alphabet, repeated several times. The first horizontal line, had the letters in the usual order, from A to Z, however the next line started with B and finished with A, the next one with C and so on until the last row, which started with Z.
"It's much simpler than it seems. This code consists in switching characters." She grabbed a yellow highlighter, and used it on the first row and on the first column, showing two alphabets linked by the A.
"Yep, the yellow line made it so much clear," Clint said.
"Shut up and pay attention," Natasha replied.
"Let's take a sentence. "Carpe Diem" for instance, and now, we need a keyword as…"
"Latin?" Clint asked.
"Perfect!" Maria started to write the word right under the sentence, matching characters.
M
I
"Now, we take the ones that coincide and we locate them in the table. C in the row and L in the column, we search where they meet and…"
"N!" Clint yelled.
"That's it! Now you know how to use Vigènere, but here comes the problem…"
"It couldn't be simple for once, huh? Which problem?" asked Natasha rolling her eyes.
"Which word has been used as key?"