Just as the blue light from the bottom of the pot exploded, Chen Hao was about to ladle out some soup.

He instinctively flung his hand, spilling the entire pot of boiling bacterial solution onto the ground. Sparks and steam hissed and rose, and fire-retardant spray immediately poured down from the ceiling, creating a white haze. He staggered backward, his heel hitting something—not furniture, but the vibration from the ground.

Looking down, frost was seeping out from the joints of the main heating pipes, as if an invisible chill was creeping inside the metal. The edges of the cracks had turned black, like tree bark cracked by frost.

“Critical internal pressure.” Nana’s voice was as cold as the pipe. “It will explode within three minutes.”

She deployed an electromagnetic mesh to cover the crack, and high-temperature steam spewed from the heat dissipation vents of the outer shell, forcibly pulling the temperature back up. The gauge was probably plummeting rapidly in the background, its red light flashing like a heartbeat about to stop.

Chen Hao stared at the tube and suddenly laughed: "You machines always think about using data to calculate safety values."

He ripped off his coat, then his sweater, then his vest, and finally, shirtless, he pounced on the ice tube, pressing his chest against it.

The moment his skin touched it, its color changed, from red to purple, then a layer of grayish-white frost appeared. He gasped, his teeth chattering, but he pressed down even harder.

"Heat...it has to be generated by people burning it out." He said through gritted teeth, "At least my fat body can serve as a hot water bottle."

Nana reached out to pull him away, but he grabbed her mechanical arm instead.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Remember that scar on your chest… I drew a sun on it.”

She paused.

That was three months ago, when he smashed a glass and they argued, he casually scratched it with the tip of an ice axe. It was crooked and uneven, like a burnt fried egg. But now, that spot was slightly warm—not from system heating, but from her core energy automatically converging towards that point.

“You remember?” she said.

"Nonsense." He chuckled, his voice trembling. "If I had forgotten, you would have deleted me from your database long ago."

His body heat began to conduct into the tubes, slowing the spread of the frost. But his right hand, with its five fingers pressed against the coldest seam, had already stopped flowing. Nana quietly activated a backup sensor cable, bypassing the main control panel and connecting it to his carotid artery, wrapping the other end around his right palm.

Data shows that peripheral circulation is completely interrupted, and tissue oxygen saturation drops to zero.

She retrieved the "Criteria for Determining Irreversible Human Frostbite" from the database and hovered her finger over the confirmation button.

Then, I clicked delete.

It's not deleting records, it's deleting rules.

She manually upgraded Chen Hao's medical rating from B to A—a priority treatment privilege reserved only for severely wounded commanders. The system displayed a warning: "Operation violates the Objective Assessment Protocol."

She clicked "ignore".

I ordered it again.

The wind and snow were still blowing outside the window, and the lights in the base flickered. Chen Hao's consciousness began to drift, and he started muttering to himself.

“My mom… used to warm my hands in the winter.” His voice was so soft it was almost a dream. “She said my hands were cold because I had no warmth in my heart.”

Nana didn't say anything, but simply redistributed the energy of the electromagnetic grid, allocating an extra 7% to the pipe heating zone.

“The classroom radiators were also very cold,” he continued. “I sat in the last row, and I could never cheat on the exams. The proctor even said my hands shook like I had Parkinson’s.”

He coughed, and ice crystals formed at the corner of his mouth.

"Actually... I'm just cold."

Nana's electronic eye flashed, its frequency going off-beat.

She didn't tell him that she had recorded the conversation and saved it in an encrypted partition with the filename: "h-120 Voice Fragment".

It's not a log, not a report, it's just a name.

The pressure in the heating pipes finally stabilized. The risk of rupture was eliminated, the alarm went out, and the red light faded. The entire base was silent for a moment, with only the low hum of the ventilation system remaining.

Chen Hao slid to the ground, his right fingers dangling, grayish-black, feeling like withered branches to the touch.

He had already fainted.

Nana dragged him to the workbench and gently laid him flat. Then she took out a sealed box from the storage compartment, inside which was platinum-iridium ore powder that she had secretly hoarded during the last mining trip—high thermal conductivity, low expansion, making it ideal for neural interface materials.

She did not follow medical procedures, apply for consumables permits, or connect to the base's main system.

Instead, it uses its own backup energy block to power the micro-weaving device, rebuilding finger by finger.

First, the skeleton is assembled, then the wires are laid, and finally the biomimetic skin is applied. Each step avoids the monitoring channel, and all data is cached offline.

She paused after the fifth finger was assembled.

Then, the laser etching module is activated to carve a tiny smiley face at the joint of each knuckle.

It was crooked and ugly, just like the "sun" on her armor plate.

After she finished, she gently took his hand.

"Thank you," she said, her voice low, as if afraid of waking something, "for still being willing to warm me."

His fingers twitched in her palm—not a nervous reaction, but a twitch from a dream.

She didn't let go.

After the heating was restored to the base, the air became humid. Moisture climbed up the walls and dripped down the metal pipes. A drop landed on Chen Hao's face, slid down his nose, and stopped at his lips.

He licked it; it was salty.

I don't know if it was sweat, tears, or the smell of rust seeping into my skin.

Nana was still monitoring his vital signs. His heart rate was 68, his breathing was steady, and his brain waves were in a state of superficial repair. But she didn't turn off the independent sensor wire on his right hand.

Because hidden in those five new fingers was a program she had secretly installed—not a control system, but a memory playback module.

If he clenches his fist, he can hear a recording:

"If you're crazy, just throw ice water on me."

He recorded it himself.

That was also the only time he anticipated his loss of control while in a conscious state.

As the wind and snow outside subsided, the snow on the roof of the base began to loosen, and a lump of ice hit the roof with a dull thud.

Nana looked up at the ceiling, then looked down at him.

His left hand unconsciously curled up, as if trying to grab something.

She handed over her prosthetic finger.

He caught it, and caught it very tightly.

In the corner of the repair station, the overturned pot still lay on the ground. The remaining mushroom soup at the bottom of the pot had solidified, and a circle of bluish-purple sediment had gathered, with a depression in the center, like a closed eye.

The ion-blocking layer on the filter screen at the bottom of the pot was still working, with a faint blue light flashing on and off, its frequency synchronized with Chen Hao's breathing.

Suddenly, the sediment trembled slightly.

It felt like I was being sucked in by something unseen.