Heroes: Freezing

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

Characters
 Confirmed   Future 
 * James Walker had this ability.
 * Tracy Strauss has this ability, though it was granted synthetically
 * Sylar stole this ability from James Walker, but lost it after being infected by the Shanti virus.
 * Peter Petrelli has replicated this ability from Tracy Strauss, but later discarded it in favor of flight.
 * In a possible future, Sylar demonstrates this ability.

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 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.

Future Sylar
In Five Years Gone, Sylar easily manifested the ability in both hands to fight Peter. He showed he was able to generate significant energy as his fight with Peter nearly broke down a locked door that two soldiers and Matt Parkman had trouble breaking down.

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 beings without actually freezing them. 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. Danko believed she could only channel her ability through her hands, as he blocked her by placing heavily insulated gloves on them, although she was able to eventually shatter the gloves. She has since honed her ability to the point where she can cause the pinpoint freezing of objects and creat esimple ice constructs, such as the spikes with which she killed a former Buildign 26 agent. She also froze Claire Bennet after Claire touched her arm, and the freezing continued after she removed her hand.

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

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. In accomplishing this feat, however, she froze her own body in the process; she subsequently shattered when Danko shot her. However, after beign washed out into the river, she managed to somehow reform herself on the shore, albeit naked.

After Tracy was shot by Danko, her abilities seemed to change or evolve. Upon being shot, Tracy shattered into thousands of pieces of ice, though Tracy retained consciousness, even winking her eye. The ice seemed to melt, and Tracy soon thereafter formed back into her natural self. Since then, Tracy seems to be able to take the form of water and ice, being able to form back into herself at will and to control herself while in thos eforms, capable of assuming different forms and shapes. It should be noted, however, that this is an unusual new aspect that Tracy has developed. It is unknown exactly how it is related to her original capacity to freeze things. Regardless, Tracy has demonstrated great control over this new aspect of her ability, though she occasionally loses control when stressed and upset, involuntarily turnin ginto water and freezing things without meaning to. She has since learned to turn her clothes into liquid as well, as she solidified herself and wasn't naked.

Should she be attacked, Tracy's body can change into water to prevent damage by knives and bullets. In her liquid form, Tracy can quickly travel by depositing herself in a body of water, and then moving through it.

Using her ability to produce water from her hands, Tracy seems to be able to propel herself high in the air. She can also exert some influence over water sources outside her body, as she causes a geyser to erupt during a battle against Eli's clones.

Peter Petrelli
After coming into physical contact with Tracy, Peter accidentally froze Flight 195's fuselage, opening a hole in it.