Dragon and Liberator

"Two wide, flat, round containers," Taneem said. "Also a flat tube sort of like the one you have for your toothpaste."

"Any writing on either of them?"

Taneem looked closer. "The tube says 'akid well putty.' "

"Acid well putty? A-c-i-d?"

"Yes," Taneem said. "Acid well putty. The round containers say . . . they just say 'keyhole.' "

"Beautiful," Alison murmured. "Thank you, Mr. Harper. Grab everything and bring it back here. We're in."

"I don't understand," Taneem said as she tucked the strips of skin under her forelegs and headed down the duct toward Alison's lifepod. "How can you put a keyhole inside a container?"

"This isn't a normal keyhole," Alison explained. "It's an acid-based paste that's supposed to be able to eat through any normal door material. You're supposed to set it over the lock where it'll either expose the mechanism so you can get at it or else eat away the bolt itself. Hence, keyhole."

Taneem winced. "It sounds dangerous."

"It is," Alison confirmed. "It can eat human flesh even faster than it eats doors. But if you know what you're doing it can get you out of a tight jam."

"I thought you could get out of the lifepod any time you wanted," Taneem said, frowning. "Or did we take it because we don't want Harper getting out of his stateroom?"

"Actually, right now we don't really care what Harper does or doesn't do," Alison said. "What we want is a way to get you back in here with me."

Abruptly, Taneem understood. "We can use the acid against the duct wall!"

"You got it," Alison said. "You saw how relatively thin the metal was where you popped into the duct. That's because the lifepod acts as that part of the ship's outer hull. We shouldn't have any problem making a hole big enough for me to stick a couple of fingers through."

She was right. Following Alison's directions, Taneem first squeezed out a semicircle of the putty beneath the spot where the acid was to go. Then she half-turned the acid container's seal and nestled it against the wall with the putty holding it in place.

The smell, once the acid started working, was incredibly strong. Midway through the operation Taneem had to retreat down the duct and wait near one of the grilles.

By the time Alison called her back, five minutes later, it was finished. The acid had eaten away the metal of the duct, leaving a small hole between it and the lifepod. Again at Alison's instruction, Taneem folded the flaps of skin and their remaining contents and put them gingerly into her mouth. Alison stretched two fingers through the freshly made hole, and Taneem slithered up her arm and back onto her body.

Taneem had barely made it onto Alison's skin when she leaped out of the girl's shirt collar. In the same motion, she spat the two folds of flesh onto the deck. "Ackleh!" she gasped, trying to drive the taste from her mouth.

"That good, huh?" Alison said, stepping around her and retrieving the flaps.

"No, that bad," Taneem said, wiping her tongue back and forth across the inside of her teeth. "It tastes like real flesh."

"It is," Alison said. Her voice was calm enough, but Taneem noticed she was taking care to touch the flaps only with her fingertips. "You take a sample of someone's skin, grow the right-sized strip in a lab, then paste it back over his own arm or leg or whatever."

Taneem shuddered. "Why would anyone do that?"

"For exactly the reason Harper did it: so you can sneak in your goodies without anyone spotting them." She began prying out the remaining items, again touching the skin as little as she could. "A good scanner will pick up any synthetic you try to use. This way, they can even pull a DNA sample from the fake skin and it'll match up with any other samples they take."

"It's still disgusting," Taneem said. "Is this a common practice?"

"It's a very uncommon practice," Alison said. She removed the last item and began folding the empty skin strips together. "Harper obviously has access to some very sophisticated and expensive equipment."

Taneem thought about that as Alison took the roll of skin to the lifepod's disposal container and pushed it through the opening. "But why would the Patri Chookoock go to so much trouble?" she asked.

"I don't know," Alison said, stepping to the sink and washing her hands. "But your question assumes Harper is genuinely working for him."

"You don't think he is?"

Alison shrugged. "I find it hard to believe one of Braxton's top bodyguards would turn traitor as easily as Harper makes it sound," she said. "And this"—she gestured to the collection of items she'd taken from the fake skin—"looks a lot more like Braxton's budget than the Patri's."

"Do you think Braxton sent Harper to find Neverlin?"

"That's certainly the logical assumption," Alison agreed.

Taneem pricked up her ears. There had been something odd about the way Alison had said that. "Are there other possibilities?" she asked.