Chapter Two: Coordinates of the Wing Bone

Lin remembered the accident when he was ten. Hospital files blamed his damaged eyes on auroral radiation, which made no medical sense. Before disappearing, his father had insisted on performing an ocular procedure himself. "My father put an imaging key in my eye." "If a key can be inherited or implanted, then 'only you can see it' isn't a miracle. It's authorization." That was Su's gift. She accepted the impossible not through faith, but because the impossible had left a measurable edge. At nine, they reached the abandoned tower. New shopping complexes surrounded its rusted shaft. Condemnation tape covered the entrance, but the lock was new. In the rear alley, Lin scanned the walls with an electromagnetic-field meter.