Chapter Text
The air didn’t so much part as fracture. A spiderweb of crystalline light tore open in the dead center of the abandoned lab, and through it stepped a winter that had never known this earth.
Cold rushed out ahead of her, a physical wave that flash-frosted the rusted steel panels and made the few flickering emergency lights buzz and pop into darkness. Killer Frost took a slow, deliberate breath, the air burning her lungs with its warmth. Pathetic.
Her boots clicked on the frozen concrete as she surveyed the ruin. Frost Industries. Her father’s legacy on this world, it seemed, was just as hollow as it had been on hers. A cavernous space of shattered glass and dead machinery, now draped in perpetually melting icicles and drifts of unnatural snow. It was perfect.
A soft hum drew her eye. A single industrial freezer, its door slightly ajar, light bleeding out. The power was still on here, a quirk of the building’s failing grid. She glided toward it, her fingers trailing over a workbench, leaving a razor-thin layer of ice in their wake.
Inside the freezer, racks held vials of a faintly blue liquid. Cryogenic stabilizer. Crude, simple-minded science. She picked one up, watching the slush inside separate. A smile, thin and sharp as a shard of glass, touched her lips. This would do. This was a start.
The high whine of displaced air was her only warning. It was faster than any sound, a ripple in the fabric of everything. She didn’t turn, didn’t flinch. She simply let the cold around her deepen, the moisture in the air hardening into a billion microscopic diamonds.
He stopped in a blast of wind that stirred her icy hair. “Hey,” the voice came, firm but not unkind. “This is a restricted area. You need to leave.”
She finally turned, leaning back against the freezer door. He was just as the files described. The red suit, the bright emblem, that open, honest face. Barry Allen. The Flash. He stood ten feet away, stance ready but not aggressive. A hero. How tedious.
“Restricted by whom?” she asked, her voice a low, smooth alto that seemed to drop the temperature another few degrees. “The city? Its protectors?” She cocked her head. “You?”
“By me,” he said, a flicker of impatience crossing his features. “This lab isn’t safe. The structural integrity is–”
“–compromised. I know.” She pushed off from the freezer and took a step forward. The air between them crackled. “I’m not here for a real estate tour, Barry.”
The use of his name did exactly what she intended. His eyes narrowed behind the mask. “Who are you?”
“Think of me as… a potential investor.” She gestured around the frostbitten ruin. “This place has such wonderful bones. And the previous owner and I have so much in common.”
He vibrated subtly, a blur at the edges. A threat display. “Last chance. Walk out the front door, or I escort you out.”
“So authoritative,” she purred, taking another step. Now she was within his theoretical striking distance. He could probably cover the space in a picosecond. He didn’t. His morality, his rules. They were such a cage. “I’ve seen your work. All that speed, all that power. Running in circles. Putting out fires. Playing guardian angel to a city that will never, ever be worthy of you.”
“You don’t know anything about me or my city.” His voice was harder now.
“Don’t I?” She laughed, a sound like ice cracking on a deep lake. “You’re transparent, Barry. You have the power to reshape reality, to take anything you want, and you chain yourself to a handbook. To a wife.” She saw the flinch at the last word. A direct hit. “Does it ever frustrate you? The limits you impose on yourself?”
“This isn’t a therapy session.” He shifted, lightning dancing around his feet. “You’re coming in.”
He moved.
And the world turned to ice.
He was fast, but her cold was already there. It wasn’t about reacting; it was about pre-setting the trap. The moisture in the air, the residual water in the concrete, the very heat of his own speed—it all coalesced at her command the instant his muscles tensed.
A pillar of solid, clear ice erupted from the floor, intercepting his path with a cannon-like CRUNCH. He veered, a streak of red, but another spire shot up, then another, herding him. She stood perfectly still, a conductor without a baton, her eyes half-lidded in concentration.
He was a blur of motion, a hummingbird in a glacier, but the glacier was growing. Walls shot up, closing off exits. The ceiling rained down a forest of stalactites. He was quick, dodging, weaving, but he was on the defensive. She wasn’t trying to hit him. She was building a maze.
“You see?” she called over the sounds of shattering ice and thrumming speed. “You react. I orchestrate.”
He finally made his move, a direct line straight at her, vibrating so fast he was a vibrating red lance. It was what she’d been waiting for.
She didn’t raise a hand. She simply let her body temperature plunge, dropping toward absolute zero. The air around her screamed, writhing as its heat was violently sucked away. He hit the wall of ultra-cold air.
It was like hitting tar. Worse. His molecules, excited by his speed, suddenly lost their energy. His vibration stuttered. For a billionth of a second, he was solid, tangible.
That’s all she needed.
A cage, not of bars, but of seamless, perfect ice, erupted from the floor and ceiling around him, sealing him in a block six feet tall and three feet wide. It was clear as glass. He was frozen inside it, trapped mid-stride, a statue of bewildered velocity.
The hum of his speed died. Silence rushed back in, broken only by the faint creak of settling ice.
Frost walked slowly to the block, her heels echoing. She placed a palm against its surface. It was already colder than anything on this planet could naturally produce. She saw his eyes, wide behind the mask, locked on hers.
“There now,” she whispered, her breath not fogging the ice at all. She leaned close, her lips nearly touching the frozen barrier. “Isn’t this more intimate?”
His voice was muffled, distant, but she heard the vibration through the solid ice. “What… do you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted,” she said, tracing a finger over the outline of his emblem. “To see potential realized. You’re a cosmic accident, Barry. A monument to wasted opportunity. I’m going to show you what you could be. What we could be.”
She saw the defiance in his eyes. Good. He would need to break before he could be reshaped.
“Your morals, your marriage… they’re just insulation. A comfort blanket against your own true nature. I’m going to pull that blanket away.” She smiled, her ice-blue lips a centimeter from his frozen cheek. “You’ll feel the cold, Barry. And then, you’ll learn to love it.”
A beep, soft and insistent, came from the communicator in his ear, still functioning inside the ice. A voice, female, laced with static but clear with concern. “Barry? We lost your vitals. Report. Barry?”
Frost’s smile widened. She recognized the voice from the files. Iris.
She tapped the ice over his ear. “You should get that,” she murmured. “But don’t worry. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about her later.”
She turned her back on him, walking toward the shimmering, still-open portal at the center of the lab. She paused at the threshold, glancing over her shoulder at her frozen prize.
“I’ll be seeing you soon. And Barry?” she said, her voice carrying across the frozen expanse. “Tell your wife I said hello.”
She stepped through the fracture, and it sealed behind her with a sound like a glacier calving, leaving the Flash entombed, alone with the creeping cold and the echo of a threat that had only just begun.