Freezing

Freezing
Tracy freezes an entire parking garage at Union Station.
Originally held by:	James Walker (deceased), Tracy Strauss (synthetic)
Absorbed by:	Sylar (lost), Peter Petrelli (lost)
Ability to:	Lower the temperature of matter
Examples of freezing

Freezing is the ability to reduce the temperature of matter, causing it to freeze.

Characters

• James Walker had this ability. (Behind the Eclipse)
• Tracy Strauss has this ability, though it was granted synthetically. (The Butterfly Effect)
• Sylar stole this ability from James Walker, but lost it after being infected by the Shanti virus. (Don't Look Back, Kindred)
• Peter Petrelli has replicated this ability from Tracy Strauss, but later discarded it. (A Clear and Present Danger)

Limits

The range of this ability appears to be quite short. Sylar did not have to have physical contact with the roadway in order to freeze it--he merely pointed his hand at the asphalt--but he did have to open the door and lean down from the vehicle.

While the range is short, the total volume of space affected can be quite large. In Cold Snap, Tracy was able to freeze an entire parking garage; while the effect was centered on her body, it expanded slowly (Micah was able to outrun it) to encompass thousands of cubic meters.

Sylar

In Don't Look Back, James Walker was found frozen solid, mid-bite. In Road Kill Sylar managed to coat a large stretch of highway with ice in seconds and in The Hard Part Sylar froze Hiro's sword to the point of shattering. These events indicate that he can rapidly freeze a human body or cause hundreds of cubic feet of ice to form from ambient moisture in seconds or decrease the temperature of metal to the point of breaking.

Tracy Strauss

Tracy was able to completely freeze an adult human in seconds, causing his body to shatter when he fell to the ground. She can similarly freeze flowers and leather straps to the point that they become brittle and shatter under their own weight or with little to no effort on her part. In Dying of the Light, Tracy begins to demonstrate more control over her abilities: she is able to freeze the outside of a glass container without causing it to shatter; she also can induce extreme cold in human being without actually freezing him. Tracy does not appear to suffer any ill effects from being in contact with objects that she has frozen with her ability. Nathan noticed that when she freezes things, her hands don't even get cold.

Thick, insulated clothing provides protection against Tracy's ability. She can apparently only channel her ability through her hands, as her ability can be blocked by placing heavily insulated gloves on them (A Clear and Present Danger), although she can eventually shatter the gloves (Building 26). She has since honed her ability to the point she can cause the pinpoint freezing of objects (Ice Queen, Part 1) and create simple ice constructs, such as the spikes with which she killed a former Building 26 agent (Ice Queen, Part 2).

Tracy's ability can be suppressed or countered by keeping her exposed to intense heat (Building 26).

Ambient humidity apparently increases the effect of her ability, as noted by her freezing part of a parking garage when the sprinklers were turned on (Cold Snap). In accomplishing this feat, however, she froze her own body in the process; she subsequently shattered when Danko shot her. However, after being washed out into the river, she managed to somehow reform herself on the shore, albeit naked (Ice Queen, Part 1)

Peter Petrelli

After coming into physical contact with Tracy, Peter accidentally froze Flight 195's fuselage, opening a hole in it. (A Clear and Present Danger)

Selected Examples

• 
  James Walker is frozen with his own ability.
  (Don't Look Back)
• 
  After grabbing Hiro's sword, Sylar freezes it.
  (The Hard Part)
• 
  In her rage, Tracy unintentionally freezes the reporter Jim McCann.
  (The Butterfly Effect)
• 
  Tracy freezes her binds and easily breaks them.
  (Dying of the Light)
• 
  Peter accidentally freezes a plane's fuselage.
  (A Clear and Present Danger)
• 
  Tracy freezes a man and shoves him into a wall, shattering him.
  (Building 26)
• 
  Tracy unleashes her "cold snap," turning the men and herself into ice statues.
  (Cold Snap)
• 
  Tracy's ability has grown into being able to mimic and control water as well as ice.
  (An Invisible Thread)

Notes

• Jason Badower, creator of the graphic novel Road Kill, said he didn't want Sylar's freezing power to look like Iceman from the X-Men.

"A beam of ice never made any sense to me and wouldn't look right in the Heroes world. I figured that the air around his hands would simply just get really, really cold rather than a beam of ice shoot out of his hands. I figured he could then extend and direct the coldness around his hands towards the road (I couldn't get him leaning out and touching the road -- how would he steer the semi?!). But where does the water come from that forms the ice? Is it the oxygen in the air slowing down? Should I have drawn the ground wet from rain? Given that there was no direction for the latter in the script, I opted for the former. So my comic implies that he could freeze someone from a short distance (3 feet?)."

• It is unknown if "freezing" refers to the unconfirmed ability "temperature manipulation" mentioned by the assignment tracker map.
• In a question and answer session, writers Joe Pokaski and Aron Coleite confirmed that James Walker had the ability to freeze things before he died, but that Sylar stole it from him after he killed him. "Killed. Absorbed. Tested. In that order."
• In the episode An Invisible Thread, Tracy Strauss forms her body out of water. It is unclear whether this is a new ability or an evolution of freezing.

Fan Theories

Please refer to Theory:Freezing for fan-created theories and other speculation.

Evolved Human Abilities edit
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