Chapter Four: The Wing Beneath the Ice

Lin saw pale feather marks on two of their wrists. Chen worried him more. The golden eye in Chen's palm had closed into a charred scar. "Is my father alive?" Lin asked as their crawler crossed the white plain. "His body died in 1994," Chen said. "What you saw was his personal time preserved by the heart chamber." "And the black beak?" "Swift—or what it wants us to call Swift." Gatekeeper records did not explain its origin. The intelligence inhabited the city's systems and borrowed the voice an observer trusted most. Lin Yue had denied it access to both eyes by staging his death, then locking his consciousness inside the city. "Why didn't you tell me?"