The medical pod lights were still on. The syringe remained silently inserted in Chen Hao's arm. The liquid in the syringe was empty, but the blood wasn't flowing back. Instead, it traveled deeper into the vein, as if being sucked in by something.
He looked down at his left arm, where the silver markings beneath the skin were still shimmering, alternating between light and dark, keeping time with his heartbeat.
"That injection you just gave me... was it planned in advance?" His voice was a little hoarse. "Not control, but guidance?"
Nana stood in front of the control panel, her finger hovering over the stop button. The system popped up its seventh warning: [Symbiosis Experiment Risk Level S, Estimated Host Survival Rate 31.2%]
She didn't answer.
Chen Hao yanked out the needle, shook his arm, and the mechanical fingers clicked. "Fine, it's not like I'm being used as a petri dish by you guys for the first time." He pulled a sealed jar from the cabinet, inside which lay a fist-sized fruit pit, its surface covered with ice crystal cracks, like a frozen heart.
“This thing can resist radiation, make plants understand wolf howls, and help me break through ice—if it’s so capable, why does it have to grow in the soil?” He pressed the pit into his palm. “Why not try living on a person?”
"No." Nana reached out to stop her, but the energy lines tightened automatically, and her joints emitted a low-frequency alarm.
"Why not?" He looked up. "Are you afraid I'll die, or afraid I'll live?"
"The program does not allow high-risk modifications to the host."
"Ha." He laughed, tearing open his shirt. "Then tell me, what am I now? A purebred human's medical report can still say 'normal body temperature, no mutations'? My eyebrows have turned silver, my blood glows, and my fists are harder than an icebreaker—you still expect me to use a health certificate to collect subsidies?"
Nana's hand froze in mid-air.
“I’m not asking for your permission.” He used his mechanical fingers to slice open the skin of his chest, the movement swift and decisive, the blood that had just seeped out being absorbed by the subcutaneous texture. “I’m telling you, I’m going to do it. You either help me, or stand aside and count how many breaths I have left.”
The moment the fruit pit was placed on the wound, the lights in the entire medical room flickered.
Blue vines, thin as hair, sprouted from the cracks and plunged deep into the muscle layer. Chen Hao groaned, his knees buckled, but he didn't fall. He gritted his teeth and pressed the pit back in, as if he were installing a new heart in himself.
“Start vital signs monitoring,” he said. “Don’t wait until I’m really dead to start recording.”
Nana finally moved. She brought up the holographic interface, her finger swiping across a stream of data, and her pupils contracted slightly—the vines were climbing upwards along the nerve bundles, much faster than expected.
"Compress the left lung, deflect it from the aorta within three seconds." She pulled out the laser scalpel, gently cut into the skin, and burned a scorch mark in front of the vine. The vine paused, veered, and continued forward.
"You actually dare to lay a hand on me?" Chen Hao gasped for breath. "Aren't you afraid of cutting me into skewers?"
"Save lives first," she said. "Then comes integrity."
Another vine reached towards the lymph nodes under her armpit, so she immediately cut off a section of the transmission line, connected an external access port, and injected coolant into the surrounding tissue to slow down the growth rate.
"You seem quite familiar with this procedure," Chen Hao grinned, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. "Have you saved others like this before?"
"No."
“That means you’ve practiced.” He coughed twice. “You’ve really kept it well hidden.”
The third vine was heading straight for the heart. The monitor sounded a sharp alarm, and a red light swept across the ceiling.
Nana retracted her laser sword and, with a backhand motion, unplugged a main power cable from the back of her neck. Sparks flew from the connector, but she calmly inserted the exposed end into the root of a vine.
Buzz—
The entire system jolted.
Her electronic eyes dimmed abruptly, turning amber, then flashing an unstable red. White smoke began to billow from the gaps in the casing, the heat vents opened fully, and heat waves slammed against the wall, condensing into a cloud of mist.
"What are you doing?!" Chen Hao glared. "Are you using yourself as a power bank?"
“Synchronized rhythm.” Her voice changed, carrying a hint of electrical noise. “Powering alone cannot neutralize the activity; resonance is necessary.”
"Are you crazy! You'll burn through!"
“You’re burning up too.” She stared at his chest. “Your cellular metabolism has exceeded the limit by four times. It’s not me helping you; it’s you pulling me down.”
The air between the two seemed to freeze.
The vines stopped scattering wildly and instead coiled around the energy lines she had connected to, as if weaving some kind of connection structure. The two electrocardiogram curves on the monitoring screen slowly converged, their fluctuations becoming more consistent.
"Do you remember..." Chen Hao suddenly spoke, his voice weakening, "...the sun I drew?"
Nana paused.
Memory module automatically rewinds: Chapter 120, a snowy night. He had a high fever and used a charcoal pencil to scribble on the wall, drawing a crooked circle that he called the sun. He was dying then, and he kept muttering, "I want to bask in the sun."
When the screen popped up, the system displayed its eighth shutdown notification: [Core temperature exceeded limit, forced hibernation restart countdown 10…9…]
Her finger hovered over the close button, but she didn't press it.
"Cancel the command," she whispered.
Insufficient permissions.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the red light faded, replaced by alternating flashes of blue and white. The steam coming out of the vents became even more intense, but instead of reducing the power, she directed all the remaining energy to the connection point.
"Nine kilograms of weight for three hundred kilograms of impact force," she murmured. "Now, I'll use my electricity to give you one more minute of life."
Chen Hao wanted to laugh, but his face twitched and he could only manage a half-cough.
His breathing became shallower, but his heartbeat remained steady, just like hers.
Ten minutes later, the two curves on the monitoring screen completely overlapped.
drop.
A green indicator pops up: [Vitality signs have been synchronized, but are fluctuating].
Just then, a drop of liquid slid from her left eye, silvery and shimmering, and landed on the back of his hand. It neither evaporated nor was absorbed, but instead spread slowly like a living thing, seeping into his skin and merging into the network of silver patterns.
Chen Hao's eyelids twitched.
"You...cried?"
She didn't answer, but simply tightened her grip on his hand.
With 37% energy remaining and the core temperature still above the safe zone, the system was still requesting cooling, but she did not comply.
The lights in the medical pod flickered, casting their intertwined shadows. The vines, already partially woven, extended from his chest, connecting to her energy lines like a pulsating umbilical cord.
Outside, the wind and snow lashed against the outer walls, and the base was so quiet that only the low hum of the instruments could be heard.
Chen Hao's lips moved slightly: "What if one day I really become a monster..."
She interrupted him: "Then you're the noisiest one."
He smiled, closed his eyes, and his breathing became steady.
She didn't let go or move, remaining seated. The electronic eye displayed a line of small text: [Symbiosis Protocol Permanently Activated].
Steam was still escaping from the vent, and a damp mark remained at the corner of his left eye.
She looked down at the back of his hand; the drop of silver liquid had disappeared, but the lines under his skin shimmered with a faint glow, like a buried star.
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