She sucked at languages. She got her ass handed to her in combat training. The lie detector caught her out every single time.

‘Have you considered you may not be cut out for this line of work?’ her trainer asked.

She persisted. Cryptography was her elective for the summer term. They started with history. She took an interest, this subject her brain seemed to grasp.

She cracked the old keys and ciphers with ease. She created her own that no one could decode.

With tiny quills on the back of matchboxes her writing was neat, quick and accurate. She was top of the class.

Now they moved onto modern codes and communications. They were told about ones and zeros, number keys, millions of calculations per second.

A laptop was presented to each of them. Their task: write an unhackable piece of encryption.

After five minutes she raised her hand. The trainer approached her desk.

‘You’ve finished?’

She shook her head, ‘It keeps asking me to hit the ‘Any’ key, but I don’t see it anywhere.’

Written as part of Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. The challenge is to write a flash fiction story or poem in around 150 – 175 words, based on the weekly photo prompt. Thanks as always to the challenge host Priceless Joy. For more information visit HERE.

To read other stories based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.