Snow packed over Jiang's open shoulder before Aylin found her feet.
She crawled to him, one hand protecting her bleeding throat and the other dragging the torn silver sheet. The cold had already stiffened its folds.
"Show me the wound," she said.
Jiang kept his belly on the ice and lifted his head. The crossing had pulled the outer cloth loose. Blood warmed a small patch beneath it, then cooled against his feathers.
Aylin reached for the wrap and paused where Devika had taught her.
His beak touched the buckle once.
Her fingers followed the feather grain. She tucked the cloth edge back under the support, left his breast free, and used the silver sheet to block wind from the injured side.
"I know it is temporary," she said. "You may glare after we find cover."
He glared while she worked.
Beyond Aylin's shoulder, dark bodies shifted with the wind.
The rookery stood in broken groups rather than one dark wall. Adults moved between downy chicks, pairs found each other by voice, and birds at the exposed edge shuffled around the mass toward shelter from the wind.
There were no nests.
Jiang saw no defended circles or fixed places, only bodies keeping track of bodies in a white world that erased every footprint.
The sight struck him harder than the cold.
Every beak, rigid torso, webbed foot, and low turn belonged here. Adults glanced at Jiang as another bird while every doorway problem he had learned on Earth shrank into nonsense. His shape was ordinary here, and his stolen voice ruined the relief.
Then his stolen call sounded beneath the chicks.
Heads lifted across the colony.
The low note carried his roughness. Its second source formed the beat his body used to announce one living identity, but the sound came from under the ice and overlapped an adult already calling.
Living birds avoided that collision. Gredudande leaned into it.
"Can they tell the difference?" Aylin asked.
Jiang listened with his whole breast.
Penguin Instincts brought him alarm, searching, hunger, and the sharp pull between chicks and returning adults. It offered no sentence he could hand to Aylin.
He gave her one tap, then dragged his beak sideways through the snow.
"Yes and no," she guessed.
One tap confirmed it.
"Useful. I missed arguments with limited vocabulary."
Jiang pushed his working foot beneath him. The left toes folded when they touched ice, forcing him back onto his belly.
Aylin caught the sling without lifting. "Devika said close to a surface."
He gave one irritated tap.
They moved toward the colony with Jiang sliding under his own push and Aylin carrying the rear weight whenever his bad foot dragged. The silver sheet flashed beside them whenever wind lifted an edge.
The nearest adults saw Aylin first.
Their calls shortened. Birds on the outside turned their white bellies toward the chick groups and drew closer together. Young birds vanished behind legs and brood folds without any adult claiming a patch of ice.
Jiang lowered his head.
He wanted to call that Aylin was hurt, that his shoulder was open, that something beneath their own feet wore his identity. His throat prepared the two-source song.
The false beat waited under the colony.
Any sound he gave could become its next clean piece.
He held his beak shut and kept sliding.
An older adult left the moving edge of a huddle.
Its crown looked broader and darker than the others, black feathers reaching low beside both eyes. Wind had worn the yellow at its throat to a dull band. It walked without hurry and placed itself between Jiang and the nearest chicks.
Jiang named it Black-Crown.
The name belonged in his own head. The System stayed absent, and the bird showed no sign of caring what a stranger called it.
Black-Crown lowered its head.
Jiang matched the lowered head but kept his injured flipper against his side. The posture carried uncertainty and distance, not surrender.
Black-Crown answered with a long call.
Both acoustic sources belonged to the body producing them. The beat struck Jiang's breast with an identity he had never heard and a warning his instincts understood only in pieces: chicks behind, danger attached, stay away.
His breast prepared a contact call before his mind chose one. A living answer might have told Black-Crown he was wounded and alone. It would also hand Gredudande another clean breath.
Jiang pressed his beak into the snow until the urge faded. Black-Crown read the silence as uncertainty or deceit and moved closer.
Jiang stopped his slide.
Aylin stopped with him. "This one sees the fragment?"
He drew another uncertain line.
Black-Crown pecked the ice between them.
The blow opened a shallow white mark. Black-green frost shone inside it and faded before Aylin could touch the spot.
"It sees enough," she said.
Wind pushed the silver sheet against Jiang's back. Aylin pulled it free and wrapped it around her own shoulders for one breath. Her teeth struck together before she folded half toward him again.
Jiang nudged the whole sheet back at her.
"Your feathers are wet with blood."
He pushed the sheet harder.
"And I have skin. We can both lose this contest."
Aylin looked toward the downy chicks. "I could make a small flame. This wind would carry it straight into them."
Jiang tapped once. They kept the silver between them.
Black-Crown watched the exchange, head turning between the human and the injured bird. Behind it, the colony kept moving around the chicks rather than waiting for a verdict.
Hunger called from everywhere.
From the young came short, high calls. A few found an adult answer and moved toward it; others called until wind swallowed the note, then pressed deeper among other chicks.
At the outer edge, one hungry chick tested three adult beaks. Each bird turned toward a different voice. A returning parent bent only when its own chick reached it, and the young around them begged harder at the smell of food.
Along the far ice, returning adults approached from the direction of dark water. Their bodies leaned into the wind, each calling only when space opened between neighboring songs.
One chick near the outer group answered before any of them called.
It had a grey line down the front of its throat and one patch of down missing near the shoulder. The little bird stepped from between two adults, head tilted toward the ice.
A deep answer rose beneath it.
Jiang recognized a stable identity beat inside the call. It was neither his nor Black-Crown's. The fragment had copied another adult cleanly enough to draw this particular chick.
The chick took one step.
Black-Crown turned at once. Its warning call crossed the colony without overlapping the false parent song.
Adults closed around most of the young. The grey-throated chick slipped sideways between two larger bodies, still following the answer below.
Aylin started toward it.
Black-Crown struck her boot.
The beak hit leather hard enough to turn her ankle. She planted the foot instead of kicking and raised both empty hands.
"I am trying to help."
The adult called directly into the torn edge of her coat. Penguin Instincts gave Jiang fear shaped around chicks and the wrong rhythm clinging to both newcomers.
Black-Crown was right to block them.
Jiang hated the conclusion.
He reached for Aylin's boot with his beak and tugged her back. She yielded one step, though the chick kept moving toward the false song.
"Then tell me what we can do," she said.
He had no clean call and no human words. His bad foot had failed, his shoulder was cooling open, and the first emperor penguin he had met in this world considered him part of the threat.
Jiang watched the returning adults.
One walked apart from the rest. Its beak ended in a healed split that pulled one side slightly outward. The bird carried its body heavily, guarding whatever food remained inside after the journey from the sea.
Jiang named it Split-Beak.
The adult raised its head to call.
Before living breath left it, the stolen version sounded beneath the grey-throated chick.
The call had arrived before the bird.
Split-Beak froze with its beak open. The chick turned toward the real adult across the ice, then toward the identical voice under its feet.
Both calls rose together.
The chick answered twice.