Freezing

Freezing
Tracy freezes a flower.
Originally held by:	James Walker, Tracy Strauss
Absorbed by:	Sylar (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.
• 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.

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 cab. Tracy has not yet frozen anything without touching it.

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. 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.

Tracy

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.

Selected Examples

• 
  To simulate a snow globe for his mother, Sylar freezes water from a sink spray-nozzle to form snow.
  (The Hard Part)
• 
  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 a rose until its petals drop and crack.
  (One of Us, One of Them)
• 
  A distressed Tracy inadvertently freezes her phone.
  (I Am Become Death)
• 
  Tracy shows Mohinder her ability.
  (Dying of the Light)
• 
  Tracy tries to freeze Mohinder...
• 
  ...then freezes her binds and easily breaks them.
  (Dying of the Light)

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."

Fan Theories

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