Tracking a man the size of a dump truck wasn't difficult, especially when he left a trail of warped chainlink fences and panicked alley cats in his wake. Frostbite leaped from a rusted fire escape to a slate roof, her boots leaving faint, crystalline footprints that evaporated seconds after she launched herself across the gap. Below her, Larry Pastel was tearing through the narrow backstreets, moving with a terrifying, locomotive momentum until he finally shoved his way through the rusted side door of an ostensibly abandoned auto body shop on the edge of the industrial district.
Pachino’s safe house.
Frostbite dropped lightly onto the corrugated tin roof, creeping toward a grime-caked skylight. Inside, the harsh glare of halogen work lights illuminated a half-dozen heavily armed enforcers. They were tense, gripping their weapons as Larry paced the center of the concrete floor, roaring about the police ambush.
She didn’t give them time to organize. Frostbite shattered the skylight, dropping into the garage like a falling star of pure winter.
She hit the ground in a crouch, instantly unleashing a volley of razor-sharp ice knives from her gauntlets. Two henchmen went down immediately, their weapons pinned to the wall by solid ice. A third raised a submachine gun, but Frostbite slammed her palms against the concrete floor. A jagged wave of frost surged outward, coating the man's boots and freezing his legs to the ground before he could pull the trigger.
For a fleeting moment, she had the upper hand. But then the heavy steel doors at the back of the shop slammed open, and a dozen more of Pachino’s men poured into the garage.
"Take her apart!" Larry bellowed, wiping a smear of blood from his cheek.
The air filled with the deafening crack of gunfire. Frostbite swept her arms up, conjuring a thick barricade of black ice just in time to catch the barrage of bullets. The shield cracked and splintered under the heavy fire. She was entirely surrounded, forced into a defensive corner as the mobsters laid down suppressive fire.
Then, the barricade exploded inward.
Larry didn't bother shooting; he simply charged like a rhino and shoulder-checked her ice wall into a thousand glittering shards. Frostbite lunged forward, twisting in mid-air to drive a concentrated blast of sub-zero energy directly into Larry’s chest. The ice coated his leather jacket, thick and heavy, but the brawler just grunted. With a terrifying display of brute strength, he flexed his massive shoulders, shattering the ice as if it were nothing but thin glass.
Before she could vault out of reach, Larry’s massive hand shot out, his thick fingers wrapping around her ankle. He swung her like a ragdoll, slamming her brutally against a hydraulic car lift.
The wind was knocked from her lungs in a sickening rush. Frostbite gasped, her vision swimming as she crumpled to the greasy floor. She tried to push herself up, but the sheer force of the impact had left her ribs screaming in agony. Larry loomed over her, cracking his cinder-block knuckles, while the rest of the armed goons closed the circle.
She was outgunned, completely out-muscled, and out of time.
Operating on pure survival instinct, Frostbite triggered the emergency release on her belt. A highly compressed cryogenic sphere dropped to the floor, detonating in a blinding, roaring flash of absolute zero. A thick, impenetrable blizzard of freezing fog instantly filled the garage, blinding Larry and sending the henchmen staggering backward as the temperature dropped thirty degrees in a single second.
Under the cover of the violent whiteout, Frostbite fired her grapple line blindly toward the shattered skylight. Her ribs flared with agonizing pain as the winch violently yanked her upward, pulling her out of the freezing chaos just as Larry’s massive fists smashed into the concrete where she had been lying a fraction of a second before. She collapsed onto the freezing tin roof, clutching her side, knowing she had barely escaped with her life.
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