The Frost Walker's scream echoed through the transformed arena like the death cry of winter itself, a sound that seemed to freeze the very air around us. Ice crystals formed and shattered in the wake of its voice, creating a cascade of glittering fragments that fell like deadly snow across the rink's surface.

I raised my flamethrower immediately, feeling the familiar weight of the fuel tank across my shoulders, but something held me back from pulling the trigger. This creature—this thing that had once been human—was staring directly at me with those lightning-blue eyes, and I could sense something in its gaze that went beyond mere predatory hunger.

Recognition.

The Frost Walker knew what I was. It could sense the Dullahan virus coursing through my veins, could identify me as one of the symbiotic hosts its creators had designed it to hunt and eliminate. This was a targeted assassination attempt by alien forces that had been hunting people like me across the galaxy for millennia.

"Ryan," Christopher whispered beside me, his own flamethrower raised and ready. "Why isn't it attacking? What's it waiting for?"

Before I could answer, the creature moved.

It didn't shamble or lurch like normal infected. Instead, it flowed across the ice with liquid grace, its elongated limbs carrying it forward . Each step left perfect ice formations in its wake, and the temperature around us dropped so rapidly that our breath began forming thick clouds that obscured our vision.

"Scatter!" I shouted, diving to the left as the Frost Walker's first attack came not as a physical assault, but as a wave of supercooled air that turned the moisture in the atmosphere into a barrage of ice shards.

Thankfully the ice rink wasn't that slippery but more like rough maybe because the ceiling for some reason seemed partially destroyed and the melted having melted nearly in several spots.

The projectiles struck the concrete where I'd been standing with sounds like gunshots, embedding themselves so deeply that spider web cracks spread outward from each impact point. If any of those had hit human flesh, they would have punched through protective equipment like it was tissue paper.

Christopher rolled in the opposite direction, his bulky protective suit making the movement awkward but effective. The Frost Walker's attention immediately shifted between us, those alien eyes calculating distances and angles with inhuman precision.

"Now I understand why it was waiting," I called out to Christopher as we both sought cover behind the spectator seating. "It was deciding which of us represented the bigger threat."

"And?" Christopher asked, though from the way the Frost Walker was primarily tracking my movements, the answer was obvious.

"It wants me," I replied, feeling a mixture of fear and grim satisfaction. If the creature was focused on me specifically, that gave the others tactical advantages they could exploit. "The Dullahan virus—I'm exactly what this thing was created to kill."

The Frost Walker released another of those crystalline screams, and this time I heard something else underneath the alien sound. An echo, a reverberation that seemed to carry beyond the confines of the arena itself.

"Oh, shit," Sydney breathed from her position near the entrance. "It's calling for backup."

She was right. That scream wasn't just an expression of rage or territorial challenge—it was a summons, a call for assistance that would bring every infected creature within hearing distance straight to our location.

"Rachel, Sydney, Cindy!" I shouted. "You're about to have company. Infected, probably a lot of them. Get ready to defend."

Rachel's response came immediately, the sharp crack of gunfire as she put her first bullet into an infected that had already appeared in the arena entrance. The creature's head snapped back and it dropped instantly—a clean kill with the gun I gave her. Did she train somehow?

"Contact!" Rachel called out. "Multiple infected approaching from the main corridor. I count at least six, maybe more behind them."

"We've got this," Sydney replied, and I caught a glimpse of her pulling something from her pack—a wooden shaft wrapped with oil-soaked cloth, crude but effective. She flicked a lighter, ignited the makeshift torch, and hurled it with surprising accuracy at a cluster of infected that were trying to force their way through the arena entrance.

The improvised fire weapon struck its target dead center, immediately engulfing two infected in flames that spread across their decomposing flesh like napalm. They stumbled blindly, their anguished moans mixing with the crackling of burning tissue, before collapsing in heaps of smoldering bone and charred meat.

"Yes guys! That actually works!" Cindy exclaimed, lighting her own torch and preparing to throw it at the next wave of attackers.

But I couldn't spare more attention for their battle. The Frost Walker had used our momentary distraction to close the distance between us, and it was now less than twenty feet away, well within killing range for a creature that could freeze anything it touched.

I triggered my flamethrower.

The stream of burning fuel erupted from the nozzle with a whooshing roar, creating a lance of fire that reached across the space between us like the breath of an angry dragon. The heat was so intense that I could feel it through my protective equipment, and the light was bright enough to cast stark shadows across the entire arena.

The Frost Walker's reaction was fast. Instead of retreating from the fire as I'd hoped, it seemed to absorb the heat, drawing it into itself like a living heat sink. The flames that should have melted its ice-crystal armor instead created clouds of superheated steam that billowed around the creature like fog, obscuring its exact position while somehow making it even more dangerous.

"That's not working!" Christopher shouted, adding his own flamethrower to the assault. Two streams of burning fuel converged on the creature's position, creating a miniature inferno that should have reduced anything organic to ash within seconds.

But when the steam cleared, the Frost Walker was still there, seemingly unharmed by our attack. If anything, it looked stronger, more solid, as if our fire had somehow fed it energy rather than inflicting damage.

"It's absorbing the heat!" I realized with growing horror. "The fire isn't hurting it—it's making it stronger!"

The creature proved my assessment correct by launching its own counterattack. It raised both arms above its head, and the moisture in the air around us began to crystallize into massive ice formations—boulders of frozen water the size of basketballs that hung suspended for a moment before hurtling toward Christopher and me with deadly accuracy.

I dove sideways, but even my enhanced reflexes weren't fast enough to avoid the barrage completely. One of the ice boulders grazed my shoulder, spinning me around and nearly knocking me off my feet. The impact sent shock waves through my protective suit, and I could feel the cold seeping through the insulation like liquid nitrogen.

Christopher wasn't as lucky. Three of the projectiles were converging on his position simultaneously, and his bulky flamethrower equipment was preventing him from moving with the speed necessary to avoid them.

Time seemed to slow as I watched the ice boulders closing in on him. I could use my time freeze ability—ten seconds would be more than enough to get him out of danger and position us for a counterattack. But something held me back, some instinct that warned me to save that trump card for a moment when it could be decisive rather than merely helpful.

Instead, I did something I'd never shown anyone before.

The chain-like tattoo on my right arm began to glow with dark green light, the same power I had awakened after my sex with Elena. But this time, instead of just activating the power, I shaped it, controlled it, turned my arm into something that was part flesh, part weapon, part elemental force.

The wind that erupted from my transformed limb was visible, a cutting blade of compressed air that sliced through the approaching ice boulders like they were made of paper. The frozen projectiles shattered into harmless fragments that scattered across the arena floor, leaving Christopher unharmed but staring at me with an expression of complete shock.

"What the hell was that?" He shouted.

"Something I should have told you about," I replied, feeling the familiar drain that came from using the Dullahan virus's more exotic abilities. "We'll discuss it later—assuming we survive the next few minutes."

The display of power had clearly impressed the Frost Walker as well. Its alien eyes focused on my still-glowing arm with what looked almost like hunger, and when it moved toward me again, there was a new urgency in its predatory grace.

This was exactly what I'd been hoping for. If the creature was fixated on me, if it saw me as the primary target that needed to be eliminated above all others, then I could use that obsession to control the flow of battle.

"Christopher, keep hitting it with fire!" I called out, beginning to move in a wide circle around the arena's perimeter. "Even if it's absorbing the heat, it still has to deal with the flames. Keep it distracted while I try to get behind it."

My plan was simple in concept but dangerous in execution. I would use myself as bait, drawing the Frost Walker into pursuit while Christopher maintained pressure from a different angle. Between my enhanced speed and agility and the creature's apparent fixation on eliminating me specifically, I should be able to stay ahead of its attacks long enough to find some kind of weakness or vulnerability.

The strategy worked better than I'd dared to hope. The Frost Walker immediately abandoned its position and began pursuing me across the transformed ice rink, its movements creating a trail of crystalline formations that turned the arena into an increasingly complex maze of frozen obstacles.

I ran, ducked, dodged, and weaved between the ice pillars that had once been human victims, using their frozen forms as cover while the creature stalked me with single-minded determination. My enhanced physiology allowed me to maintain this pace despite the weight of the flamethrower equipment, but I could feel the strain beginning to build in my muscles.

Behind us, the battle between my teammates and the infected reinforcements was intensifying. I caught glimpses of Rachel's muzzle flashes as she carefully placed each of her limited bullets for maximum effect, and the orange glow of Sydney and Cindy's improvised fire weapons as they hurled torch after torch into the growing crowd of infected.

"We're running low on torches!" Sydney shouted during a brief lull in the fighting. "And there are more infected coming through the main entrance!"

"How many bullets do you have left?" Cindy called to Rachel.

"Four!" Rachel replied, punctuating her answer with another precisely aimed shot that dropped an infected that had gotten too close to Cindy's position. "Four bullets, maybe eight more infected!"

The mathematics were grim but not impossible. If they could maintain their current defensive position and continue using the improvised fire weapons effectively, they might be able to hold the entrance long enough for Christopher and me to deal with the Frost Walker.

But that assumed we could actually find a way to damage the creature, which was proving more difficult than anticipated.

I triggered another burst from my flamethrower as the Frost Walker closed to within ten feet, but once again the fire seemed to strengthen rather than harm it. The creature absorbed the heat and converted it into another barrage of ice projectiles, forcing me to use the wind blade ability again to protect myself.

The pattern was becoming clear, and it wasn't encouraging. The Frost Walker was essentially immune to our primary weapon, capable of converting thermal attacks into kinetic counterattacks, and possessed enough speed and agility to maintain pursuit despite my enhanced capabilities.

We needed a new strategy, and we needed it fast.

"Christopher!" I shouted as I vaulted over a particularly tall ice formation, landing hard on the arena floor with the Frost Walker less than five feet behind me. "The fire isn't working! We need to try something else!"

"Like what?" he called back, maintaining his own running battle with several infected that had broken away from the main group to attack him directly.

Before I could answer, the sound of splintering wood echoed through the arena. One of Sydney's torches had struck an infected with enough force to shatter the wooden handle, leaving her holding a flaming stub that was rapidly burning down toward her hand.

"Sydney!" Cindy screamed, abandoning her own position to rush toward her friend. "Drop it! Drop the torch before it burns you!"

Sydney did as instructed, flinging the burning remnant away from herself, but the movement left both women exposed and vulnerable. Three infected that had been held back by their improvised fire barrier immediately surged forward, sensing an opportunity to reach their prey.

Rachel's gunfire cracked twice more—her final two bullets—dropping two of the infected but leaving the third still advancing toward Sydney and Cindy. The creature was close enough now that they could see the details of its decomposition, close enough to smell the sweet-sick stench of rotting flesh, close enough to die.

"I've got it!" Cindy shouted, pulling a knife from her belt and stepping forward to meet the infected's charge.

She was determined but completely unprepared for the creature's unnatural speed. The infected's grabbing hands closed around her shoulders, pulling her into an embrace. Cindy's knife found its target, punching through the creature's skull and dropping it instantly, but not before its teeth found their mark.

The bite was clean and deep, the infected's teeth sinking into the muscle of Cindy's left shoulder with an audible crunch of breaking skin. Blood immediately began to flow, soaking through her protective clothing and dripping onto the arena floor.

"Cindy!" Christopher's anguished shout carried across the entire arena, filled with a mixture of rage, fear, and desperation.

But I couldn't spare attention for the emotional aftermath of what had just happened. The Frost Walker had used my momentary distraction to close the remaining distance between us, and its ice-cold hands were reaching for my throat with lethal intent.

The time freeze ability was there, waiting to be used, but something still held me back. This wasn't the decisive moment yet…I could tell it.

Instead, I dropped to the ground and rolled sideways, feeling the creature's fingers brush against my protective suit with cold that burned like acid. The near miss was close enough that ice crystals formed across my shoulder and arm, but not close enough to achieve the instantaneous freezing that would have meant my death.

I came up firing another burst from my flamethrower, not because I expected it to damage the Frost Walker but because I needed the light and heat to see clearly in the chaos of the arena. The flames illuminated the scene like a strobe light, showing me Christopher fighting desperately against two infected while trying to reach Cindy's position, Sydney helping Rachel reload with ammunition from someone's emergency supply, and Cindy herself pressing a makeshift bandage against her wounded shoulder while her face went pale with shock and the beginning stages of infection.

It can't be happening…

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