Chapter 36: Material Fact

Overnight, Su had reduced Mo's secret to two photographs. One showed the copper collar inside Madsen's furnace. Eleven rings surrounded an open center, with the hooked cut at the lower edge. The other came from Ashwood's archive. Seven rings. Qingyue's crowded handwriting. The same hook. Su set both images on the hospital tray. "Tell me what it preserves." Mo stood beside the window in his gray shirt and dark jeans. Desai had removed the IV but left the hospital bracelet around his wrist. Three black pinpricks marked the place where the severing hook had broken through his skin. His black jacket lay across the foot of the bed. Su had carried it into his room yesterday. She had not touched it today. "The center," he said. "At what cost?" "Everything linked to it loses measure." "Water?" "Qi. Heat. Circulation, if the seal is placed over a living body." "And at…