Chapter Four: The Wing Beneath the Ice

Headlamps revealed a space large enough to swallow central Shanghai. Transparent buildings hung from the ceiling. Streets followed a curved skeleton, and a wing bone crossed the darkness. Tiny warm lights remained sealed inside the structures like windows left burning for millennia. Su drilled a black film from the threshold. Carbon dating exceeded forty thousand years. Uranium-series dating produced an absurd figure: 127,000. "There were no cities then." "None that fit our definition." Thousands of gold lines ignited beneath the ice and converged into a star map. Antarctica was not at the pole, and Orion was displaced by nearly half a degree. Su calculated precession. Her face paled.