Copper-Band called again from behind the glass.
The sound began low, climbed through Jiang's breastbone, and ended in a hard bark. Three king penguins moved behind him while two others turned their beaks toward the rear wall.
Jiang answered with the same call.
Copper-Band raised both flippers and came straight at the partition.
"You have offended him," Samira said. "That usually takes visitors several minutes."
Jiang backed away before the king penguin struck the glass with his beak. Copper-Band was shorter than Jiang's emperor body, with bright orange along his throat and the confidence of a landlord who had caught someone measuring the windows.
Copper-Band ended the charge at the glass. He shifted sideways to cover a bird with a chipped bill and another missing feathers from one foot. His aggression had an address: Jiang's route to the others.
The colony crowded behind him. Warm bodies, dry feathers, and a shallow pool waited through the shift gate between quarantine and the habitat annex.
Jiang's feet moved toward them.
He stopped at the gate.
The herring had steadied his body, but cold still found the bare places around his tail and the damp pad below his shoulder. The colony's shared warmth pulled at something deeper than reason. His neck wanted to bow. His chest wanted another bird pressed against it.
One king penguin leaned into another until their flank feathers met. A third tucked close behind them, sheltered from the service vent. Before his transformation, Jiang spent train rides hunting through crowds for space to breathe. Now his body saw the same crush and called it safety.
Gredudande had his feathers. The trace would follow him into any crowd he used as shelter.
Jiang stepped away from the gate.
"Smart," Samira said. She checked the quarantine latch twice. "You are injured, untested, and from nowhere. Nobody joins my colony because he looks lonely."
That made two of them refusing for different reasons. Jiang could live with hers.
On the wall monitor, Aylin crossed the staff courtyard. The green compass led her around a locked gate without hesitation. She touched two fingers to the chain. Green light traveled across each link, softening the metal until the hook opened and the chain slid free.
Samira watched the screen. "Your friend has a flexible relationship with doors."
Jiang barked sharply and struck the monitor frame.
"Fine. Your possible murderer."
She reached for her radio, remembered his warning, and chose the light controls instead. Every lamp in quarantine and the habitat service lane came on.
The king penguins complained at the change. Copper-Band ignored the ceiling and called a third time.
This one was different.
His beak aimed past Jiang. The first note brought the colony close; the second drove the smallest birds toward the pool; the last rasped from his throat while he faced the rear filtration wall.
Jiang followed his gaze.
Condensation trembled on a steel grate near the floor. Nothing showed beyond it, but the air carried wet dog beneath disinfectant and fish.
Samira saw the colony shifting. "They heard something."
Copper-Band turned on Jiang again, flippers wide. His bill pointed toward the warm group, then toward Jiang, then down at the floor between them. Stay out. Stay alert. The meaning arrived through posture and urgency rather than words.
Jiang lowered his head, drew his flippers close, and gave a softer contact note.
Copper-Band held his ground. He stopped advancing.
[Adaptation Recognized: Colony Signals]
[Penguin Instincts Unlocked: Reads Immediate Avian Pressure | Grants No Command]
Pressure became legible rather than language. Copper-Band might like him, hate him, or merely consider him today's ugliest emergency. Jiang received only the immediate demand carried in the bird's body: keep distance and pay attention.
What changed was pressure. Alarm calls pulled his attention toward their source. Threat posture announced distance before violence. The group tightening around weaker members became as readable as a person locking a door.
Food excitement leaned bodies forward. Danger compressed them around the vulnerable and aimed every beak outward. Copper-Band's current call carried no welcome, only a warning with somewhere specific to look.
Copper-Band's warning pressed toward the rear grate.
Jiang pressed his beak to the quarantine glass and tapped beside it.
Samira crouched. "That grate feeds the habitat return. It should be sealed from the exterior trench."
Should had done poor work all morning.
Jiang pointed to the shallow quarantine pool. Its overflow disappeared beneath the same wall, separated from the habitat line by a screen wide enough for water and too narrow for the dog.
"You are not going into a filtration pipe with that shoulder."
He pointed again and kicked water toward the screen.
"I understood the bad idea on its first performance."
The rear grate shifted inward. Copper-Band snapped a warning, and the entire colony retreated from the wall.
Samira's attention went to the monitor beside the door. Aylin had reached the building. For the length of one breath, Samira had to choose which impossible intruder deserved her eyes.
Jiang chose for her.
He entered the quarantine pool.
Water lifted the weight from his feet. The dressed scratch stung, and the left flipper weakened his first turn, but his webbed feet and good flipper carried him to the overflow screen.
Samira reached the pool edge. "Come back, and I will find a less injured animal to disobey me."
Jiang hooked his beak under the screen's service tab. It lifted freely from this side. He pushed into the narrow water return before Samira could catch his feet.
The water return ran beside the habitat filtration trench. A perforated divider let him see pieces of the other side: black water, pipe brackets, and the distorted reflection of a red eye.
Gredudande had found the rear route.
The dog waded chest-deep beyond the divider, keeping Jiang's feathers raised inside a sheath of shadow. Water shook the vessel and made one rear leg drag, but the trace pulled its muzzle toward him.
"There you are," it said with Aylin's voice.
The real Aylin stood somewhere near the quarantine door. Gredudande's version carried the choking pain from their Spirit Link and turned it into a purr.
Jiang wanted to drive his beak through the divider.
Instead, he studied the route. The dog stood beneath the colony's rear grate. One shadow cord had entered the latch housing; another felt along the waterline for a larger opening. If Jiang attacked here, the only retreat led under the birds.
He needed Samira to move the colony before Gredudande opened that grate.
Returning would expose his outline through every perforation.
Jiang activated Penguin Camouflage.
The black of his back softened into the water return. His white belly borrowed the pale pipe below. Gredudande's muzzle still tracked the stolen feather trace, but its eye passed over the exact place Jiang floated.
Cold took the herring's warmth in greedy mouthfuls.
Jiang kicked backward. The injured flipper caught the divider and sent pain across his shoulder. He held the bark in his throat, steered with his feet, and reached the quarantine pool.
Samira hauled him out by the towel as soon as his beak cleared the screen.
"You vanished," she said.
Jiang canceled Camouflage. His outline returned inside her hands, along with a shiver he could no longer hide.
[Penguin Camouflage Recovering: 5 Minutes]
He struck the floor three times, pointed at the rear grate, then herded Samira toward the habitat controls with his chest.
Copper-Band supplied the translation. His alarm call drove every king penguin toward the front pool while he remained last between the group and the grate.
Samira looked from Jiang to the colony. "Move the birds first. I agree."
She hit the shift controls. A front gate opened into the indoor holding room, and fish rattled into a metal pan. Most of the colony went. Copper-Band stayed.
Jiang called to him, using the softer retreat note he had just learned.
Copper-Band looked at Jiang, looked at the warm bodies leaving, and backed through the gate without turning his tail to the grate.
As Samira closed it behind him, the quarantine door handle moved.
Samira stepped between the door and Jiang. "One problem at a time would be a professional courtesy."
"Then start with the one under your penguins," Aylin said from the corridor.
Her compass glowed through the door's narrow window. At the same moment, the rear filtration grate bent inward beneath a dog's paw.