New York
August 19, 21:05 EDT
Hidden by the moonless night, Peter quietly landed at the entrance to his house, hurriedly stuffing his suit into his backpack. Right as he finished zipping it closed, the front door to his house swung open, revealing his mother standing there with a look of disapproval, but mostly worry, while Dexter rested blissfully in her arms.
"Peter Benjamin Parker, you are late." she said. "I have been worried sick."
"I'm sorry, Mom." said Peter as he entered the house, closing the door behind him. "The lesson took longer than usual because there was a guest instructor, and there was a train delay. Besides, I texted you."
"Yes, but you said you were going to be a little late. Nine is a lot more than a little late." she said, sounding far more worried than usual.
"Is everything all right, Mom?" he asked, noticing she was a little on edge.
"Sigh. I'm sorry for getting so worked up, Peter." she said, stroking Dexter's head, eliciting a purr of contentment. "The whole city's on edge from that thing that happened at the morgue."
"I heard about that. Any new developments?" he asked, even though he knew there probably hadn't been.
"Yeah."
"There has?" asked Peter, surprised. "What?"
"Turns out a few of the ... deceased that were being held there were ... destroyed." she said, grimacing at the thought.
"Destroyed? What do you mean destroyed?"
"They were frozen and shattered into a million pieces." said Richard, who had walked in from the kitchen and was nursing a drink. "And one of them was Frost."
"Jesus." Peter said, his mind racing from the new information. 'If she did that, she might be more in control of herself than I initially thought. The villain usually goes crazy after their transformation, case in point, Lizard and Green Goblin. The fact that she took the time to make it seem like she, along with other bodies, were destroyed, bodes well. She might just be able to be reasoned with.'
"Yeah, Jesus is right." said Richard, taking a sip of his drink before walking off to the living room, sitting down on the couch, and turning on the TV.
"Come on, I'll heat up your dinner." said Mary, the two of them walking to the kitchen.
"He's taking it hard." said Peter, putting his bag on the ground and leaning against the counter.
"Well, they were colleagues and friends. They had mutual respect for each other's work. He was also the one who scouted her." said Mary, stroking Dexter's head one last time before placing him down on the ground.
"I didn't know that. Neither of them mentioned it on the tour."
"Hm. Well, as you know, Wayne Enterprises has booths at all the top schools, hoping to hire the best before anyone else, and they usually do. Anyway, in his second year at the company, he was put in charge of the Biotech booth at Harvard, and that's where he scouted her. He said he had a gut feeling she was bound for success." explained Mary as she heated up a plate of food. "Only hired her and no one else. Got reamed out for it, but not even a month later, his bosses saw what he had seen, and boy did they sing his praises. Now, every year, he mans the Biotech booth."
"Wow."
"So you can see why he's taking it hard." she said, putting the plate in front of Peter. "Her death was already a blow, and now there's not even a body to bury. Oh, it's just awful. No one deserves that."
"Yeah. Awful."
~
Fed and showered, Peter was ready to sit down, review what he knew about the morgue incident, and devise a plan for dealing with Dr. Frost, but before he did, he went downstairs to get a drink of water.
Water bottle in hand, he was about to head back upstairs when he heard something coming from the TV in the living room that caught his attention.
'They're talking about me.' he thought, making his way to the living room where his parents were watching GBS news.
On the screen was a wide shot of a newsroom with the two anchors, Tod Donner, a skinny man with grayish eyes and brown hair wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and gray tie, and Lola Barnett, a blonde blue blue-eyed woman wearing a maroon pantsuit. The two anchors were interviewing a guest, a male with blonde hair and blue eyes wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and dark blue tie.
"Oh, Peter. Were you studying? Is it too loud?" asked Mary, looking up at Peter as she ate a bowl of ice cream.
"Actually, can you turn it up?" asked Peter. "Who is that?"
"One of those anti-hero guys who spew their rhetoric on the internet, named G. Gordon Godfrey." answered Richard as he upped the volume. "He's talking about Spider-Man."
'Oh, come on. What kind of zemblanity[1] is that? I thought I was catching a break by not having J. Jonah Jameson, and here I find out instead of JJJ, it's GGG.' thought Peter. 'Typical Parker Luck.'
"Gordon, in your blog posts, you mentioned that the appearance of the vigilante known as Spider-Man was the start of very bad things happening for New York City, did you not?" asked Tod.
"Yes, I did, and I was the very first one to say so, you know. I knew that with the appearance of that webhead, New York City was going to become a lawless hellscape like Gotham." said Godfrey with an English accent and a look of superiority.
"Surely that is a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? I believe most people would disagree with your assessment. They would say that Spider-Man is a good thing for the city, and I include myself in that group of people. In fact, we polled a hundred people and found a whopping 80% of them believe that Spider-Man is a welcome addition." said Lola.
'I like her.' thought Peter.
"Ha! Classic example of recency bias." said Gordon, smugly shaking his head. "Just like Gotham, they too liked that grown man dressed like a bat in the beginning. Thought he was cleaning up the streets, putting an end to the violence that ravaged the streets of Gotham, but little did they know that his appearance would be a match that started a fire. All of a sudden, other freaks started coming out of the woodwork in response to the bat."
"So you believe that the appearance of these heroes, or in our case, one vigilante, begets the existence of villains/criminals?" asked Tod.
"Yes, I do. It is the nature of things. A 'hero' comes around and takes down all the criminals, expecting things to get better, but instead, it gets worse. Why? Because now there is a new target to conquer, the hero. So new criminals appear who are smarter, stronger, crazier, or whatever to take down the hero. And meanwhile, the everyday people, the you and I of the world, are the ones who suffer the most." explained Godfrey. "Before Batman, there was no Joker, no Harley Quinn, no Mr. Freeze, no Black Mask, only regular criminals."
"And you believe today's events at the morgue are an example of that?" asked Tod.
"Yes. Spider-Man has gone around taking down criminals-"
"He has, but he's done more than just that. He saved a mother and her baby from ge-" said Lola.
"Getting run over by a bunch of bank robbers, yes, I know the story, but the bank robbers wouldn't have been about to hit the mother and her baby if not for Spider-Man interfering. He webbed them up, and they were unable to steer the car. If he hadn't done that, the mother would have been fine anyway." said Gordon, interrupting Lola and waving his hand dismissively. "My point is that spider menace's presence has shot out a flare to all the criminals and crazies of the world that New York City is ready for something else, and this Killer Frost at the morgue is the first wave of that."
"Killer Frost?" asked the two anchors.
"Yes, you heard it here first, folks. An original moniker from G. Gordon Godfrey for our mystery ice killer, Killer Frost." he said, smugly looking at the camera. "And not just that, my website has exclusive photos of the suspect that no other news outlet has. Go to www.thegggshow.com to see them."
'Photos?' thought Peter, surprised. 'He must have a source inside the NYPD. I'll have to message Detective Daniels to see what they got. Don't really want to add any more foot traffic to Gordon's website if I can help it.'
"Okay, that's it. You're done." said Tod, the camera panning away from Godfrey before it went to commercial.
"What a tool." said Richard, changing the channel.
"Poor Spider-Man. He's just trying to help out, and he's being blamed for that incident at the morgue. I hope he keeps his head up." said Mary, shaking her head as she ate a spoonful of ice cream. "Though that thing about new criminals appearing to take down the heroes does make a little sense."
"Those criminals would exist regardless of whether there were heroes or not. Heroes just make it easier to stop them." said Richard. "Good people will always stand against evil."
"I agree, I just hope New York doesn't become Gotham." added Mary.
'I'll try not to let it.' thought Peter.
~
At his desk, Peter stared at the screen of his custom-built laptop, where he was going over the files he created of anything and everything relevant to Dr. Frost, her 'death', and the incident at the morgue. Thanks to Detective Daniels' help, he also got the pictures that G. Gordon Godfrey was selling on his website for free, and very grainy security footage, which were both added to the files.
The photos that Gordon was boasting about selling on his website were blown up and blurry stills from the security footage, which showed a figure that barely looked like anything. With Peter knowing it was Dr. Frost, however, he could tell that she looked very different. Her hair had gone from a light brown to white, her pale skin had become much paler, and she had used ice to cover her face and body; another indicator that she might be more mentally sound than he initially thought.
Besides those stills, the rest of the photos sent over were of the bodies and frozen police officers. They were mostly different angles from the ones he had seen on Detective Daniels' phone, but some showed things that Peter thought might be a clue to Dr. Frost's new abilities, so he noted them down.
Unfortunately, the security footage itself did not have video of where the bodies were held, i.e., where everything began; Detective Daniels mentioned that a lot of the cameras were either outdated or broken. Still, Peter had spliced together all the relevant footage, which was neither a lot nor of very high quality, but it did help give him more information as to what he was dealing with.
The footage began with a shot of the doors leading to the room where the mortuary cabinets were located, and the place where everything began. The first victim, a medical examiner, entered the room, and a few minutes later, out came Dr. Frost, face and body covered in ice. She stood still a moment, as if feeling something out before heading down the hall, where she quickly ran into a female lab assistant.
The lab assistant was looking down at her tablet and bumped into Dr. Frost, but before she could do anything, she was kissed by Dr. Frost. She looked surprised and then scared, and she tried to struggle, but she quickly shriveled up, becoming a blue husk. Dr. Frost then stopped kissing the lab assistant, her body dropping to the floor while Dr. Frost looked up and rubbed her arms in what seemed like euphoria.
Peter hadn't known why the six bodies had looked the way they did, though his best guess was that Dr. Frost had frozen the water in their bodies, but the footage revealed the truth. Dr. Frost hadn't frozen them, she had drained them of their heat like a vampire drains a person of their blood.
The rest of the footage showed her strolling through the halls, draining another four people of their heat in a similar fashion to the lab assistant. While she was draining the last one, she was caught in the act by two police officers. They raised their guns and shouted at her to get on her knees, but she became enraged, most likely from having her meal interrupted, and with an angry wave of her hand, the two officers were encased in ice.
That seemed to have calmed her down because she stared at her hands for a few moments as if amazed at her newfound abilities. After that, she made her way to an exit and left the building, which was also where the footage ended.
'Quick review of what I know. Dr. Frost, now known as Killer Frost, thanks to G. Gordon Godfrey, was accidentally trapped in the Thermafrost Freezer, causing her to be presumed dead. In reality, she was, let's say, hibernating, and she awoke in the morgue, changed forever. She became a heat vampire, way to go me for that one, and acquired cryokinesis, though to what extent is still unclear.
It's clear she feeds on heat, but it's unclear if heat is her only form of sustenance. She kisses her victims to drain them of their heat, but it seems more like her modus operandi rather than the only way to do so. Besides that, she seems to gain some pleasure from draining people of their heat.
Her mental status looks to be fluctuating. One moment, she seems clear-headed enough to hide her identity, but the next, she becomes enraged from having her meal interrupted. It also seems to me that the accident probably altered her brain chemistry and made her, no pun intended, cold-hearted. She killed six people back to back and didn't even take a second glance at their bodies. My idea that she may be able to be reasoned with is looking less and less likely.'
Peter had read the file and reviewed the information with himself so many times that the letters were starting to swim off the page. He glanced at the time and saw that it was one in the morning, surprised he had let the time slip away from him.
'I should sleep. I'll think better in the morning. Maybe I'll even dream of an idea of how to track her.' he thought as he got into bed.
[1] opposite of serendipity; the occurrence or discovery of events described as unlucky, unpleasant, or expected.