Doctor Who by Kate Orman

elements or the spirits. The hacker borrows the power of the phone system, or the computer network.
    Swan wasn’t superstitious; she read number theory and genetics as well as alchemy and astrology, and saw them all as reflections of programming. But a lot of hackers took the occult seriously. They’d try to hack any system if they thought it wouldbring them a little power, or better, a little kudos. What was Bob’s attitude?
    Swan went through Bob’s filing cabinet and the drawers of his desk, jotting down numbers and details in her little notebook. Soon she had his banking details, his driver’s licence number, his credit card details, and plenty more. She could have got a lot of this through hacking, of course, but the simplest solution is often the best. She had stolen plenty of passwords just by looking over someone’s shoulder as they typed.
    Bob’s bedroom was a mattress on the floor, a couple of toolboxes, and a collection of stuffed animals cluttering a chipped dresser. On Bob’s bed she found a scrapbook open to a collection of newspaper cuttings. She sat down on the bed and turned the pages carefully with a gloved finger.
    The military computer scandal had been all over the papers at the time. Despite his father’s efforts to shield him, Bob’s name and even his school photo turned up in print, one of a ‘small group of civilians’ who helped stop the navy’s computers being cracked wide open by Xerxes’ program. A foreign hacker named ‘the Doctor’ was mentioned as well, a man twice Bob’s age. Nothing more was known about him, except that he’d been instrumental in uncovering the plot.
    Swan had Mondy’s cassette tape from our all too brief session of wiretapping. The Doctor was back, and alert to another danger to the world’s computers. Swan smiled a sour smile. How much did he know?
    Swan went into Bob’s kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. That was when she saw the metal cabinet sitting on the table.
    Swan’s mind went blank. She switched on the flashlight and pointed the dull circle of illumination at the beige cube. The door was still open.
    She stepped up to the table, dropping the flashlight onto it, and grabbed the cabinet, as if trying to convince herself it was real. She read the familiar warning stickers on the door twice. The flashlight rolled off the table and bounced away across Bob’s kitchen floor.
    Swan reached down to grab it and found herself sitting on the linoleum, staring up at the violated cabinet. ‘I’m gonna kill them,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna kill that kid and all of his stupid friends.’
    Somehow, that promise seemed to clear her overloaded mind. Swan pulled herself to her feet, got the lights on, and made herself that cuppa. Her hands moved automatically as she considered what to do. The unique device she had gone to such great lengths to obtain was gone, stolen out from under her nose. (One slip! One! One hint of the device’s location in an email!)
    She could make this good. She could make it better than before. If we wanted the device, she figured, we might have the others as well, or know how to find them.
    Swan rinsed out her coffee cup and laid it in the drainer by the sink. She picked up the flashlight and stuffed it back in her coat pocket. She went into Bob’s study, took a clean sheet of paper out of the printer, and found a black felt-tip marker in the desk drawer.
    She left her message stuck to the fridge with a smiley-face magnet. On her way out, she noticed the clock. It was Christmas Day.

50
One
    THE DOCTOR TOOK us out for breakfast at a scary vegetarian café somewhere in downtown Baltimore. The other patrons gave us the kind of curious glances they were used to getting themselves. Picture the four of us: the Doctor in his black suit, tucking into a hill of eggs and mushrooms and baked beans and toast; Peri slumped over a stack of organic