The problem was one of brutal, elegant simplicity. Operation Serpent's Head required a weapon of mass containment, not mass destruction. They needed a way to neutralize the thousands of Aberrants Adler would undoubtedly unleash in Berlin, and to freeze the entire battlefield in place, creating a clear path for Lin Feng's strike team to the heart of the bunker. But a conventional cryo-bomb would cause billions in collateral damage and kill tens of thousands of civilians.
There was only one man on Earth who could wield that kind of power with the precision of a surgeon.
Ivan Petrov stood once more in the abyssal chasm of Zima's Heart Station. Before him, the Primeval Ice Core pulsed with a slow, sleeping, and immeasurable power. For months, his science teams had been carefully siphoning trace amounts of its energy, studying its properties. It was a power that did not just lower temperature; it fundamentally altered thermodynamic law, a force that could command the very concept of cold.
His plan was simple, direct, and utterly insane. He was not going to use a machine to wield this power. He was going to use himself.
"The human body is not a stable containment vessel, Colonel," the station's chief cryo-physicist, a woman named Dr. Lena Orlova, argued, her face pale. "A direct energy infusion from the Core... it will not just give you power. It will rewrite you. It will sublimate your cellular structure."
"My body is already a vessel for a power I do not understand," Ivan replied, his voice a low, gravelly rumble, his gaze fixed on the glowing heart of the Core. "This will not be a change. It will be a refinement."
He stripped to the waist, his torso a roadmap of old scars and hard, disciplined muscle. He stepped into the containment chamber, a cylinder of reinforced cryo-glass that stood before the exposed conduit leading to the Core's heart.
"I am a soldier," he said, his voice calm, directed at the worried face of Major Volkov, who stood at the control console. "But I have been a scientist for far longer. I know the risks. Begin the infusion. Ten percent of one percent. For five seconds."
Katerina Volkov's hand trembled as she initiated the sequence. "Infusion beginning."
It was not a wave of cold. It was a river of absolute, predatory nothingness that flowed from the Core and into Ivan's body. It was the antithesis of life, a force that did not just freeze, but erased heat, energy, and motion.
His scream was silent, a rictus of pure, unimaginable agony. Every cell in his body felt like it was being simultaneously flash-frozen and shattered into a billion pieces. The water in his blood turned to microscopic needles of ice. His vision went white, then black. He was dying. He was dead. He was a memory of a man, being washed away by a tide of primordial cold.
But in that abyss of absolute zero, he found his anchor. The memory that had become his only source of fuel. The image of his wife and daughter, their faces warm with summer sunlight. The grief. The rage. The cold, hard purpose that had been forged in the wreckage of his old life. He did not fight the cold. He embraced it. He gave his pain to it, and he took its power in return.
"STOP!" Dr. Orlova screamed, seeing his life signs flatline. "SHUT IT DOWN!"
But before Volkov could obey, the readings on the screen went insane. Ivan's body temperature, which had plunged to a fatal, sub-zero level, suddenly stabilized. The energy flowing from the Core was no longer invading him; it was being drawn by him, controlled, assimilated.
Inside the chamber, Ivan opened his eyes. They were no longer the cold grey of a winter sky. They were the brilliant, piercing blue of a glacier's heart. The frost that had covered his body was now a part of him, his skin taking on a pale, almost translucent quality.
He raised a hand, and the thick, super-cooled condensation on the inside of the cryo-glass chamber instantly froze solid, a perfect, intricate fractal of ice that mirrored the shape of his own palm.
He had not just survived. He had evolved.
He had walked into the heart of the absolute zero and claimed its throne. He was no longer just a man who could command the cold. He was the cold. And he was ready to bring an endless, silent, and absolute winter to his enemies. He had reached his A-Class.