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.
