Skin Deep Read online

  Yol had offered me an exorbitant amount to track down the key. I’d refused, though I had forced him to buy Exeltec from me for another exorbitant sum, so I came away from this in a good enough position.

  The CDC failed to find evidence that Panos had released any kind of pathogen, and eventually determined that the note on Panos’s computer had been an idle threat, meant to send I3 into a panic. Earlier that morning, Dion had sent me a thank-you note from him and his mother for stopping the government from burning the body. I hadn’t yet told them I’d stolen this thumb drive.

  It contained the key, and a . . . second file. A small text document, also encrypted. We’d stared at it for a time before realizing that the key had been printed on the outside of the thumb drive itself. Chapter nineteen of First Kings. Any string of letters or numbers, or mixture of the two, can be the passphrase for a private-key cryptogram—though using a known text, like Bible verses, wasn’t a particularly secure option.

  Audrey went out, but left the door cracked open. I could see Tobias outside, leaning against the wall, arms folded, wearing his characteristic loose business suit, no tie.

  I raised the sheet of paper, reading the simple note Panos had left.

  I guess I’m dead.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, but I didn’t think they’d ever actually go through with it. My own friends, you know?

  He’d gotten that wrong. So far as I, or anyone else could determine, his fall really had been an accident.

  Did you know every person is a walking jungle of bacteria? We’re each a little biome, all to ourselves. I’ve made an alteration. It’s called Staphylococcus epidermidis. A strain of bacteria we all carry. It’s harmless, for the most part.

  My changes aren’t big. Just an addition. Several megs of data, spliced into the DNA. I3 was watching me, but I learned to do my work, even when supervised. They watched what I posted, though, so I decided to use their tools against them. I put the information into the bacteria of my own skin and shook hands with them all. I’ll bet you can find strains of my altered bacteria all across the world by now.

  It won’t do anything harmful. But if you’ve found this, you have the key to decoding what I’ve hidden. You make the call, Dion. I leave it in your hands. Release the key on this thumb drive, and everyone will know what I’ve studied. They’ll have the answers to what I3 is doing, and everyone will be on an even playing field.

  I studied the paper for a time, then quietly folded it and slipped it into my back pocket. I walked to the door.

  “Are you going to do it?” Tobias asked as I passed him. “Let it out?”

  I pulled out the flash drive and held it up. “Didn’t Dion talk about about starting a new company with his brother? Curing disease? Doing good each day?”

  “Something like that,” Tobias said.

  I tossed the drive up into the air, then caught it. “We’ll set this aside, to be mailed to him on the day he graduates. Maybe that dream of his isn’t as dead as he thinks. At the very least, we should honor his brother’s wishes.” I hesitated. “But we’ll want to see if we can get the data ourselves first and check out how dangerous it might be.”

  As my aspects had guessed, my contacts among the feds said the cancer scare had been a fake on Yol’s part, an attempt to make my task urgent. But we had no idea what Panos had really been working on. Somehow, he’d hidden that even from the people at I3.

  “Technically,” Tobias said, “that information is owned by Yol.”

  “Technically,” I said, pocketing the flash drive again, “it’s owned by me as well, since I’m part owner of the company. We’ll just call this my part.”

  I passed him, heading to the stairs. “The funny thing is,” I said, hand on the bannister, “we spent this entire time searching for a corpse—but the information wasn’t just there. It was on every person we met.”

  “There’s no way we could have known,” Tobias said.

  “Of course there was,” I said. “Panos warned us. That day we studied I3—it was proclaimed right there, on one of the slogans he’d printed and hung on his wall.”

  Tobias looked at me, quizzical.

  “Information,” I said, wiggling my fingers—and the bacteria that held Panos’s data, “for every body.”

  I smiled, and left Tobias chuckling as I went searching for something to eat.

  Acknowledgments

  First off, I’d like to thank Moshe Feder who edited this book for me, along with the Inscrutable Peter Ahlstrom, who did some serious bonus editing. Thanks to Isaåc Stewart and Kara Stewart for their assistant-fu on this and many other projects. Howard Tayler also helped me brainstorm at lunch one day, and gets a writer high-five for his help.

  My beta readers on this volume were: Mi’chelle Walker, Josh Walker, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Kaylynn ZoBell, Peter & Karen Ahlstrom, Ben & Danielle Olsen, Darci & Eric James Stone, Alan Layton, Emily Sanderson, and Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson.

  At Subterranean, the publisher for the limited edition hardcover, I’d like to thank Yanni Kuznia, Bill Schafer, Morgan Schlicker, and Gail Cross.

  As always, many thanks to my wonderful family, including my three very excited—and very busy—little boys.

  Brandon

  Also by Brandon Sanderson

  Legion

  Legion

  Legion: Skin Deep

  Novelettes

  Firstborn

  Defending Elysium

  Novellas

  The Emperor’s Soul

  Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

  Sixth of the Dusk

  Novels

  Elantris

  Warbreaker

  The Rithmatist

  The Stormlight Archive

  The Way of Kings

  Words of Radiance

  The Reckoners

  Steelheart

  Mitosis: A Reckoners Story

  Firefight

  Mistborn

  Mistborn: The Final Empire

  The Well of Ascension

  The Hero of Ages

  The Alloy of Law

  Alcatraz

  Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

  Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones

  Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

  Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

  Infinity Blade

  Infinity Blade: Awakening

  Infinity Blade: Redemption

  The Wheel of Time, with Robert Jordan

  The Gathering Storm

  Towers of Midnight

  A Memory of Light

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LEGION: SKIN DEEP

  Copyright © 2014 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Moshe Feder

  Cover design by Isaac Stewart

  Electronic book design by Peter Ahlstrom

  A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book

  Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  American Fork, UT

  BrandonSanderson.com

  ISBN 978-1-938570-05-6

  First electronic edition: November 2014