Samira set the wrench between herself and the loading door.
"A dog just used your name," she said. "I need you to do something unreasonable. Nod if you understood it."
Jiang gave her one nod.
Her grip tightened. Fear reached her face at last, but it arrived as concentration rather than panic.
Outside, Gredudande pressed its nose to the safety glass. Black feathers bent between the dog's teeth.
"Jiang, sweetheart," his mother's voice called. "You look cold."
Rage lifted Jiang out of the towel. His bad flipper opened before pain forced it against his side.
Samira caught the towel before it fell. "I will count that as another yes."
The loading door had a steel frame, wired glass, and an inside latch. Gredudande could throw the dog's weight at it, but the door barely shook. A black strand slipped from beneath one paw and tested the rubber seal.
Jiang barked and stabbed his beak toward the floor.
Samira saw the strand and stepped on it.
The shadow snapped around her boot. Pain crossed her face, sharp enough to whiten her lips, yet she ground her heel down and reached for the wall switch. Ceiling lamps flooded the loading bay.
Gredudande recoiled from the glass. The strand flattened into the door's shadow instead of vanishing.
"Bright light," Samira said. "Good. I can work with bright light."
She hooked the towel around Jiang, lifted without crowding his left flipper, and carried him through the inner door. He twisted to watch the black strand feel along the threshold behind them.
Samira kicked the inner door shut.
The treatment room held a rubber table, shallow sink, locked cabinet, and a monitor divided into zoo security views. Penguin calls came through the wall: sharp contact notes, braying protests, and one low voice that made Jiang's body lean toward it before his mind caught up.
Warmth waited on the other side of that wall. So did animals Gredudande could use against him.
Jiang pulled away from the sound.
Samira felt the movement. "The colony is there. You are staying here until I know what followed you."
He tapped his beak against the table in agreement.
"That is going to become unsettling very quickly."
She kept talking while she opened a packet of gauze and a bottle of clear rinse. Her voice gave him a place to put his attention while her hands parted feathers around the scratch.
"I am cleaning this. It will sting. Bite the towel, bite the table, or insult my family in penguin. My wrist remains unavailable."
Cold liquid reached the raw line below his shoulder.
Jiang bit the towel.
The scratch was shallow, but tunnel dirt came away with the blood. Samira held clean gauze over it until the seep slowed, then fixed a small pad clear of the flipper joint. Her fingers hovered over his tail, counting each gap while every remaining feather stayed undisturbed.
"Seven missing or broken," she said. "Whoever pulled them wanted a handful."
Jiang looked toward the door.
"Yes, I saw the souvenir in its mouth."
She touched the left flipper at the shoulder and worked downward, watching his beak rather than the limb. When she tested the joint, Jiang's body jerked despite the towel between his teeth.
Samira stopped at once. "Painful, still moving, and beyond what I am diagnosing without our vet. We protect it until then."
Calling the vet would bring more people into Gredudande's reach. Jiang spat out the towel and blocked her hand when she reached for the radio.
Samira looked at his beak against her knuckles. "You object to help?"
Jiang pointed first to the security monitor, then to the inner door, then knocked his beak against the radio.
"You object to bringing staff through that hallway."
He answered with another nod.
Samira exhaled through her nose. "I preferred you when you were only impossible."
She kept the radio in her pocket. After opening the refrigerator, she chose a herring and offered it by the tail.
"A reward for sparing my wrist."
Jiang swallowed the fish whole. Samira stared at his throat.
"Every day I learn something elegant about nature, and every day nature ruins it by lunchtime."
Food settled hot and heavy in Jiang's belly. It dulled the cold enough for him to stop shivering, though lifting the left flipper still sent pain into his shoulder.
A metal crash struck the filtration room.
On the monitor, the loading door stood open. The black strand had reached the inner panic bar through the gap beneath the frame. Gredudande's dog entered with Jiang's feathers still clamped in its teeth.
Samira grabbed the wall hose and turned its valve. "Quarantine is across the wash corridor. Stay behind me."
Jiang hopped down from the table.
The landing jarred his injured side. Samira made an angry sound but had no free hand to pick him up. She opened the treatment-room door only wide enough to look.
The dog rushed her.
She fired the hose. Water struck its face and drove it into a rack of empty fish trays. The hose bucked in her hands, then lost pressure with a hollow knock inside the wall.
"Timed wash line," she said, retreating. "It has to recharge."
Gredudande rose dripping. The dog's red eyes fixed on Jiang while the stolen feathers remained dry beneath a fold of shadow at its jaw.
"Come here," it said in his mother's voice. "You always make everything harder when you're scared."
Jiang's mother had said something close when he was twelve and hiding a failed exam. Gredudande had heard one phone call, not his childhood. The lie wore the right voice and none of the memory.
He stepped in front of Samira.
"Behind me means the other direction," she said.
Jiang slapped his good flipper against the hose coupling. A round release beside it had popped outward when the pressure died. As the pump began to hum, the release crept inward. The wash line would fire again when it seated.
Gredudande lowered the dog's body for another charge.
Jiang watched the release settle. The last finger-width of travel exposed a chipped edge where Samira's wrench had struck it long ago.
Tactical Strike placed its blue mark on that chip.
No strength filled Jiang's body. No perfect attack took control. He still had to reach the wall before a dog reached him.
He dropped to his belly and kicked.
Wet tile gave him the slide dry land denied. Gredudande lunged across his path. Jiang turned with his good flipper, passed beneath the dog's snapping jaw, and drove his beak into the marked edge.
The release clicked into place.
Pressure slammed into the hose. Samira chose the opening, planted both boots, and aimed the stream beneath the dog's chest.
Water lifted its front paws. The possessed body skidded backward, claws scratching pale lines across the tile. Jiang barked toward the loading bay, and Samira understood.
She walked the stream forward.
Gredudande tried to circle, but every turn exposed the dog broadside to the water. It retreated through the filtration room, shadow cords whipping from its paws and shrinking beneath the ceiling lamps.
At the outer threshold, it dug in.
Samira pinned the hose beneath one arm and slapped the overhead-door control. A red safety light came on. Steel descended between them, forcing Gredudande to leap outside before the edge struck the concrete.
The dog stood beyond the safety window, soaked and shaking. Jiang's feathers still showed black between its teeth.
Samira shut off the hose. "That door has betrayed me twice. I am replacing its entire personality."
Jiang leaned against her boot, breath rasping from the slide. The gauze below his shoulder showed a fresh pink spot, and his left flipper hung lower than before.
"You are going to quarantine," Samira said. "That was not a vote."
This time, Jiang climbed into the towel when she lowered it.
She carried him through a staff route away from the colony. Behind a glass partition, several tall king penguins turned together to follow him. One bird with a copper identification band pushed to the front and gave a hard warning call.
Jiang answered before he understood why.
Every bird in the enclosure went quiet.
Samira stopped. "We can unpack that nightmare after you stop bleeding."
The quarantine room had a shallow pool, a dry mat, and its own camera. Samira set Jiang down, then checked the security monitor mounted beside the door.
A hooded woman had entered through the staff gate. A green-lit compass swung from one hand as she followed it toward the cold-bird building.
One pointed ear pressed the hood's fabric, and its black tip had slipped free. Aylin.
Samira studied his face. "Is that one coming to kill you too?"
Honesty left Jiang perfectly still.