The first Guard to attack learned the hard way that something had changed. His Frostbane-enhanced strike, meant to freeze my suit's systems, met a swirling barrier of ice crystals that absorbed and redistributed the energy. The backlash sent him staggering, frost crawling across his white armor.
"Hold!" Queen Isolde commanded, raising a hand to stop her other Guards from advancing. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the ice formations surrounding me. "Fascinating. You're not fighting the cold – you're working with it. Just like your father theorized."
"The temperature wants to equalize," I said, understanding flowing through me as my enhanced mind processed decades of research. "Frostbane technology forces it, creates artificial cold through brute force. But there's another way. A natural way."
To demonstrate, I reached out with my newfound awareness. The ice responding to me wasn't a weapon – it was part of the environment, as natural as gravity. The crystalline patterns around me grew more complex, more beautiful, responding to the thermal currents in the room.
"Impressive party trick," Isolde said, but I could hear uncertainty in her voice. "But can you actually fight with it?"
She struck without warning, Frostbane energy blazing from her black armor. The cold was intense enough to crack the facility's reinforced walls – but instead of trying to block it, I let it flow past me, channeling it into the existing ice formations. The energy dispersed harmlessly, creating delicate frost patterns across the ceiling.
"Commander," I said to Ash without taking my eyes off the queen, "get to the maintenance shaft. Take Marcus and the data. I'll hold them here."
"Like hell we're leaving you—"
"That's an order." I pushed more power into my suit's neural interface, feeling the enhanced connections my father had engineered into my nervous system. "I understand now. This is what I was made for."
The queen attacked again, this time with a continuous stream of Frostbane energy. I could see the strain it put on her systems – forcing the cold like this was inefficient, wasteful. I met her attack with minimal effort, simply redirecting the thermal energy into natural patterns.
"You're burning through your suit's power," I told her. "Frostbane technology was never meant to work this way. It's why your Guards burn out so quickly – the human nervous system can't handle forcing nature to bend."
"And your way is better?" She gestured, and her Guards began moving to surround me. "Gentle cooperation with the elements? That's not how power works, girl."
I heard Ash and Marcus reaching the maintenance shaft behind me. Good. Now I could really show what adaptation meant.
I stopped redirecting the queen's attacks and instead opened myself fully to the environmental systems. Cold flooded through me, but not as an enemy to be controlled. My enhanced nervous system processed it as simply information, patterns, the natural flow of thermal energy seeking equilibrium.
The effect was immediate and stunning. Every ice crystal in the chamber responded, not with violence but with perfect synchronization. The temperature dropped, but in a controlled, gradual way that my modified body handled easily.
The Guards' suits began to flicker as their Frostbane systems struggled to compensate. Even the queen took a step back, her armor's power readings fluctuating.
"Impossible," she breathed. "The energy requirements alone..."
"That's what you never understood," I said, remembering my father's words about adaptation. "Fighting nature takes enormous power. Working with it takes almost none."
To prove my point, I expanded my awareness further. Ice grew in intricate patterns, not destroying but creating, turning the chamber into a cathedral of frost. The Guards' armor began to fail as the natural cold overwhelmed their artificial systems.
"Fall back," Isolde commanded. "Everyone out. Now."
"Running?" I taunted, though in truth I was reaching my limits. This level of integration with the environmental systems was taxing, even with my enhancements.
"Tactical retreat," she corrected. Her mask snapped back into place. "Don't think this is over. Your father's work, your abilities – they're too valuable to ignore. I will have them."
"You've got bigger problems," I said, feeling tremors through the ice. "This facility's geothermal taps? They're not just power sources. They're part of a stability system. One you damaged during your attack."
As if to emphasize my point, the chamber shuddered. Cracks appeared in the walls as decades of carefully maintained thermal equilibrium began to collapse.
The queen saw it too. "Clear the facility!" she shouted to her remaining Guards. "Full retreat!"
They fled up their rappelling lines as the tremors intensified. The queen paused at the breach, looking back at me.
"This changes nothing," she said. "Your father's work will be mine. One way or another."
Then she was gone, leaving me alone in a collapsing research facility. I sprinted for the maintenance shaft, my connection to the environmental systems telling me exactly how long I had before everything came down.
I found Ash and Marcus waiting for me one level down.
"Facility's coming down," I said before they could speak. "We need to move. Fast."
"Already found an exit route," Marcus reported as we ran. "But the transport's a loss – the queen's forces will have disabled it."
"We go on foot then," Ash said. "There's a rebel cache five kilometers north. If we can—"
The facility lurched, cutting her off. Above us, I heard the mountain groan as ancient thermal barriers failed.
"Less talking," I suggested. "More running."
We ran through collapsing corridors, climbing where we had to, my environmental awareness helping us avoid the worst cave-ins. Behind us, decades of my father's work disappeared beneath tons of rock and ice.
But the most important part was safe – the data in our suits, and the understanding growing in my mind. I knew what I was now, what I had been engineered to be. Not a weapon, but a bridge between human technology and natural forces.
And somewhere out there, Eleanor had the missing piece – the part of MIRRA's code that would make everything make sense.
Time to find her.
The queen wanted to fight nature? Fine.
I would show her what nature could really do.