Green flooded the return line from the floor and crossed the distance to Matthews's wrist before his fingers could loosen around the wet fibers.
"Upper pin," Lucia said. "Now."
Matthews dropped the rope, caught the iron release with his boot, and pulled. The line slid down the stair while the green stain followed it.
As Aylin lunged for the last clean loop, Jiang cracked his beak against the sling buckle and stopped her hand above the rope.
Matthews kicked the loose end into the tear.
Wind took it sideways. The whole line vanished across the sea ice, dragging a short black-green track behind it before the colony's moving snow covered both.
"That was our way back," Aylin said.
"That was a fuse," Matthews replied. "It was burning toward us."
The tear drew inward again. Its upper edge had dropped below Lucia's shoulder, and green ice crowded both sides. Soon a person would need to crawl with her face near the floor.
Jiang fit the opening too well.
The false version of his call sounded beyond it. His throat pulled tight, ready to answer the chick that had mistaken the stolen beat for him.
He kept his beak against the buckle.
Devika worked under the noise. She had Martelli on one side, Jiang on the other, and Nerea sitting close enough that blood from her cut palm marked the rod pieces in her lap.
"Aylin, press here," Devika said.
Aylin put her hand over Jiang's shoulder wrap.
"Your fingers are on the wound. Move them toward the cloth edge. Let his breast rise."
Aylin shifted at once. Jiang felt her palm take the sling's strain instead of his skin.
"If I cross with him, I need you," Aylin said.
"You need somebody who knows this body," Devika replied. "At present, that includes you."
"That is not what I asked."
"I know exactly what you asked."
Martelli tried to push himself upright with his left hand. The packed wound at his side darkened through his sash before his shoulder left the door.
Devika forced him down with her forearm and never removed Aylin's hand from Jiang's support.
"This man will reopen the minute he believes nobody is watching," she said. "Nerea has glass in her palm and no clean vision. I am staying."
Aylin stared at her. "The fragment is in my world."
"These people are in my hands."
The words ended the argument Devika had been having with herself.
Her fingers lingered in the feathers behind Jiang's jaw. She checked his warmth twice, then placed Aylin's fingertips against the same spot.
"You planned to come," Aylin said.
Devika gave a dry laugh. "I planned to keep all of you alive. Reality edited the cast."
Jiang nearly called by accident.
The false beat crossed the tear inside an adult song, then peeled away and repeated his lower note. A chick answered from farther to the right. Whatever wore Jiang's identity was moving beneath the colony.
Nerea raised her head. "It has left the first bird's call."
"You can hear that without the rod?" Lucia asked.
"I can hear a dead sound stepping on living breaths. Sight made me arrogant, not deaf."
She wrapped cloth around her palm, leaving the two rod pieces exposed over her knees.
Aylin looked at them. "The silver might help me follow it."
Nerea's scarred fingers closed over both ends. "The silver helped it find Jiang. The aperture broke after showing us one honest seam. These remain with the person who knows why they failed."
"I was asking, not taking anything from you."
"Good. Keep that habit when urgency starts shouting."
Nerea turned the jagged end away from her body and tucked both pieces against her ribs, where nobody could mistake the answer. Without the dark aperture hiding one eye, she looked older and far less interested in pity.
"I stay with Lucia," she said. "Somebody must remember what the rod showed before grief improves the story."
Lucia crouched beside her. "And somebody must keep her from trying to look through broken glass."
"That happened exactly once."
"It happened while you were saying it would happen once."
Martelli's mouth moved around an answer he abandoned. His right hand lay open across his thigh, fingers giving him no sign that they felt the cold.
"I have no chain left," he told Aylin. "My blood would open a wound now, nothing more."
"Then keep it inside you," she said.
He accepted the order with a small dip of his head.
Devika peeled back Jiang's outer wrap. Cold found the wet feathers at once. His shoulder tightened hard enough to shift the sling beneath Aylin's hand.
"Watch his beak," Devika said. "One tap is yes. Two is no. If he strikes the cloth, you stop moving before you decide whether he is being stubborn."
"He is usually being stubborn."
Jiang gave Aylin two taps.
Lucia laughed from the stair. Matthews covered his mouth with his wrist and failed to hide his own.
Even Devika's anger loosened. "Excellent. He remains cognitively intact."
Aylin looked down at him. "I deserved that."
One tap answered her.
The laugh left quickly when Devika lifted the blood-dark pad. Jiang's shoulder had opened along the same edge, wider from the core strike but free of black thread.
"This will pull when he slides," Devika said. "So the cloth pulls first."
She threaded the fresh support beneath the good side of his breast. Aylin copied the motion on the damaged side, keeping her knuckles away from the wound while Jiang's breathing moved against her palm.
Two feathers bent backward under Aylin's first turn. Jiang snapped his beak near her thumb, and she stopped to free the trapped shafts.
"I felt them," Aylin said.
"He felt them sooner," Devika said.
Aylin freed each feather and began again. This time the wrap settled with the grain, holding his flipper against his body without pinning his chest.
Jiang tapped once in approval.
Devika tested his left foot. The toes curled after a delay and relaxed before she released them.
"That foot cannot drive the crossing," she said.
"I can carry the rear of the sling."
"Only where he cannot push. Keep his belly close to a surface. His body knows cold better than your arms know him."
Aylin's jaw tightened, but she nodded. The old version of her would have argued from urgency until somebody gave in. This Aylin shifted her grip and waited for Jiang to test it.
Under Jiang's working foot, the sling stayed clear of his breast. He tapped once for the crossing hold.
Devika placed the remaining fish strip beside his beak. Jiang swallowed it and searched the care roll, finding only gauze and a closed tin of salve.
"That was the last one," she said.
Hunger made the empty roll insulting.
Matthews folded the clean end of the silver sheet and offered it to Aylin. "The contaminated half went with the rope. This might break wind for a while."
Aylin tucked it through the rear sling knot instead of wrapping Jiang before he needed to move.
Under Lucia's hands, the dead anchor halves disappeared into clean cloth. Nerea hugged the rod pieces to her ribs while Matthews lifted Martelli's left side on Devika's order. Earth had already filled every pair of hands.
At Jiang's back, the tear sagged lower. Snow struck his face through the opening, carrying fish oil, old guano, chick down, and a black-green smell like river stones left under spoiled leaves.
Aylin lowered herself until one shoulder touched the floor. "I enter behind you. If the edge catches me, keep going toward the colony."
Jiang drew his beak across the buckle, the line they had used for no before words became possible.
"Then we pull together," she amended.
He tapped once for agreement.
Devika took the leading end of the sling. "I take him to the edge. You take only the weight he gives you."
They pushed Jiang toward another world.
His beak crossed first. Wind drove snow under his eyelids. The green rim scraped over the intact feathers on his head, then widened around Jiang's present body.
Behind him, Aylin crawled with one hand on the sling and one holding her throat open.
Devika's palm stayed between Jiang's shoulders.
"Breathe before you fight," she said. "Eat before you become clever. Make her stop when she forgets you are the patient."
"I can hear you," Aylin said.
"That is why I said it now."
The tear pulled Jiang past Devika's reach.
Her fingertips left his feathers one at a time. She chose Earth again with each finger, turning back toward Martelli's blood and Nerea's wounded hand while Aylin followed Jiang into the cold.
Ice closed between them.