Extreme cold has always held a special place in our imagination. For thousands of years it seemed like a malevolent force associated with death and darkness. Cold was an unexplained phenomenon. Was it a substance? A process? ...Or some special state of being?

-Tom Shachtman, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

"Doctor McCoy?"

"Bobby, I think we've been working together long enough that you can just call me Henry. Or Hank."

"How about 'Doc'?"

"Only if you have a carrot to chew on when you say it."

"Okay. Hank. Are we almost done?"

"Why?"

"I really have to pee."

Doctor McCoy, the Beast, turned his hulking, fur-covered body to face Bobby Drake and regarded him for a moment. He removed his spectacles, which seemed comically small in his gigantic, clawed hands, and wiped them on a corner of his white lab coat before returning them to their usual perch on the bridge of his nose. He removed a pen from his breast pocket, making a notation in his pad of looseleaf paper, which contained a variety of jotted notes and equations that looked to Bobby like little more than a collection of tiny scribbles.

"Curious," he said, rubbing the rough blue fur of his chin with a huge knuckle, "You still experience the need for basic bodily functions in your organic-cryonic state?"

Bobby sighed, a large puff of vapor exiting his mouth as the super-cooled air in his lungs met the balmy temperature of the subterranean laboratory beneath the mansion. He liked the Doctor, or rather, Hank, well enough, but his way of complicating his language was exhausting to say the least. Before this, Bobby had always referred to his mutant transformation as his 'ice form,' or just 'icing'. With Doctor McCoy, it was all thermodynamics and cryonics and sub-zero-whatevers.

"Yes," he said finally, grinning wryly "I still have to pee when I do this." He gestured to his torso, which shimmered in its near-translucent ice state, the air around his body actually distorting from the extreme cold, rippling as the ambient moisture encountered the sub-zero chill. White, heavy vapor plumed off of his form and crept lazily off the examination table like dry ice, slowly dissipating into nothing before it could hit the polymer floor.

Again, Hank studied him for a silent moment before making another note in his pad. "And it doesn't come out..?"

"What? As yellow snow?" Bobby chuckled, "No, not usually."

"Fascinating," Hank mused, more to himself than to Bobby. He seemed momentarily lost in thought before the present returned to him, and he replaced the pen grasped in his ape-like hand back into the lab coat. "In any case, I am nearly finished, Bobby. I'd like you to try for another ten degrees if you could."

Again, Bobby sighed and looked down at himself, laid prone on the laboratory's examination table, every manner of monitoring device attached to him, most sheathed in several layers of insulation to keep the various instruments from frosting over and snapping in the cold.

For the past couple weeks, Doctor McCoy had commandeered him, with Professor Xavier's consent, into becoming what Bobby was fairly certain constituted as a lab rat, or, at the very least, an indentured servant. Doctor McCoy had recently begun what he referred to as an 'authoritative omnibus' on the unusual and under-studied physics related to mutant powers, and somehow Bobby's ability to manipulate temperature and moisture had placed him at the top of the list of mandatory volunteers.

It wasn't the worst way to spend the beginning of his summer, in fact, in some ways it was downright relaxing after the ordeal of Apocalypse from the past year, but it was pretty close. It wasn't a total loss though. At least this way, Bobby had an excuse to get out of household chores, which was a requirement of staying at the mansion during the long vacation without at least a part time job. Just this morning he had passed Kitty and Rogue on his way to the lab, who both glowered at him as he winked and shot them 'double guns' with his index fingers as they mopped and scrubbed the floor of the kitchen.

"Okay," Bobby said, "Ten degrees. Here goes nothing."

Bobby looked at the digital readout near Doctor McCoy's desk, which in turn was connected to the half dozen variety of instruments that had been connected to him at various points on his body. For the past five minutes or so, it had read a steady one-hundred-and-twenty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Without putting any effort into it, Bobby's usual temperature in his ice form usually hovered somewhere around eighty below, but Doctor McCoy seemed more and more interested in how low Bobby could push it.

It really wasn't all that difficult. Bobby simply set his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and commanded himself with one simple word: Colder.

Bobby and Doctor McCoy both watched in silence as the numbers on the readout steadily clicked higher. ...Or rather, lower. In under a minute, the numbers stopped at exactly one-hundred-and-thirty. Bobby was grateful that, while his surface temperature was now so cold that it would likely strip flesh from a person's hand if they were to touch him, his ice form did not emanate cold beyond a few inches from his body, so Doctor McCoy was in no immediate danger of freezing.

Despite the rather sizable dip in temperature (this was in fact that coldest that Bobby had ever attempted to make himself), the only difference that Bobby noticed was not any alteration in physical sensation, but rather a cosmetic one; Where his body was usually a smooth plane of crackling ice, icicles had begun to sprout from odd angles at his joints, where the extreme cold had begun to coax the ambient moisture around him to form rigid spikes that sprouted from him like coral reef.

Doctor McCoy made another note on his pad of paper and chuckled. "I'll call Guinness," he said.

"Huh?"

"You, my young friend," Doctor McCoy gave a crooked smile, one of his long lower canines protruding from his bottom lip, "Are officially the location of the coldest naturally-occurring temperature in recorded history. 'Natural' being a subjective term, of course."

Bobby cocked an eyebrow, which popped and crackled as the super-cooled, organic ice that made up his face thawed, melted, and refroze in the space of a heartbeat to allow for the movement. Then, without knowing exactly why, he found himself laughing too.

"I'm not even trying that hard," he admitted, grinning with transparent, icy teeth.

Doctor McCoy let out a single note of a chuckle, more of an amicable grunt really, and again rubbed the coarse hair under his chin.

"You do realized, Mr Drake," he said, "How incredible what you're doing right now is, don't you?"

Bobby frowned and, for once not having anything to say, shrugged.

Doctor McCoy pulled up his stool and perched himself on it, his large feet gripping it like an extra set of hands. He opened up his notepad and began leafing through it with the claw of his index finger, while at the same time tapping himself on the bottom lip with his ever-present pen.

"This is exactly why I'm doing this study," the blue giant of a man said excitedly, "The sheer number of thermodynamic laws that you're in violation of right now is staggering. I could spend an entire lifetime just trying to figure out how you're able to maintain higher brain functions when CT and MRI scans show that the entire contents of your cranium is frozen solid. Even the fact that you can... heed the call of nature when the rest of your body is composed almost entirely of ice is, if you'll forgive me, one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of."

Bobby smiled. "Well, you're just going to have to take my word for it, because I've got a really shy bladder."

Doctor McCoy chuckled again and finally closed his notepad, turning for the door of the lab. "We're just about done if you'd like to power down. I'll be back in a snap."

Bobby watched Hank leave, and was about to do just as the Doctor suggested, but something stopped him. He looked again at the digital readout that still displayed a steady one-hundred-and-thirty degrees below zero. He took stock of himself, mentally and physically, and found that, despite having to concentrate slightly, he was feeling no ill effects from pushing his body temperature ever lower. He supposed there wouldn't be any harm in trying to go for broke.

How cold could he go, anyway? It surprised him that he had no idea whatsoever.

It wasn't as though Doctor McCoy wasn't going to ask him to do that exact thing tomorrow, in any case. Bobby was fairly confident that the only reason he wasn't asking now was out of concern for Bobby's safety, asking him too much in too short a time. In an odd way, Bobby felt bad that he was, as far as he was concerned, wasting Doctor McCoy's time. He clearly wanted data. And the sooner he could get it, the better. Besides, the sooner Hank had everything he needed to summarize Bobby's abilities in a dissertation paper, the sooner Bobby could spend the rest of the summer doing... Well, not this.

Why not? he thought to himself, flexing his fingers, Let's do it.

Bobby closed his eyes, and again focused on that one single idea: Colder.

The first thing Bobby noticed as his temperature began to drop even further was the noise. It was like the crackling of static electricity, except, he quickly realized, it was actually individual molecules of moisture in the air around him snap-freezing as they made contact with the super-cooled air around his body. The air around him began to actually shimmer and glisten as, in a chain reaction, the water in the atmosphere began to crystalize all throughout the laboratory.

The digital readout began to record the dropping temperature of Bobby's body, slowly at first, then picking up speed. He was fast approaching negative two-hundred degrees.

Come on, he though, strangely giddy from the exertion, Let's do it!

The digital readout displayed negative two-hundred and fifty degrees, and was still falling.

Since his powers had first manifested, Bobby had always assumed there was something, some mysterious wall of cellular fire that prevented the parts of his body that were still organic from freezing over, that protected him from succumbing to the cold the way that every other warm-blooded creature did. As his temperature continued to drop, however, doubt began to enter his mind. Deep in the pit of his stomach, he began to feel, really feel coldness in a way that he had not experienced since he was a child, before his powers manifested. True, it was not all that long ago, but nevertheless, the sensation had become almost completely alien to him. It was oddly thrilling to feel it again.

Bobby was surprised by a sudden snap and jolt beneath him, and, looking down, saw that the examination table had cracked completely in half under him, warped and twisted by the extreme temperature he was subjecting it to. He laughed, amazed by the spectacle of it, and suddenly very aware that he was probably going to be in a lot of trouble for destroying the expensive piece of laboratory equipment.

Okay, he though, That's enough.

Bobby began to relax then, and threw the mental switch in his mind that deactivated his powers. If that wasn't enough to serve Doctor McCoy's needs, he didn't know what else he could possibly offer.

Several seconds passed before he began to realize that something was wrong. He craned his neck to look at the digital readout.

It read negative three-hundred degrees, and continued to steadily fall.

Bobby swallowed, and squeezed his eyes shut, once again exercising the mental muscle that he had always relied on to control his ability to harness the cold. And once again, the cold would not be harnessed. The place in his stomach where the chilly sensation had first began to take hold was growing now into a true knot of discomfort, spreading into his chest and shoulders.

For the first time in years, Bobby Drake shuddered. For the first time in years, he felt ice crawl into his blood, chilling him to the core.

"Okay," Bobby said aloud. Speaking to himself was a habit he'd picked up from a young age, and it still manifested in times of tension or anxiety. "I'm starting to get a little worried here."

Bobby tried to sit up, and was shocked by the effort it required. His icy body, usually as pliant as any normal person's warm flesh, seemed hard and dense as stone, cracking loudly in protest as he raised himself up. Many of the instruments that Hank had attached to him, despite their layers of high-tech insulation, had frozen completely solid, and shattered into pieces as he moved. He was covered from head to toe in wickedly sharp spikes of ice that jutted from his body at all angles, forming crystalline patterns that were both hard and delicate, like the arms of snowflakes.

Bobby glanced again at the readout. Negative three-hundred and seventy-five.

Everything he touched was frozen in the space of seconds, forming ice crystals around his fingers. Every movement seemed to take more of his strength than the last.

"Bobby Drake," he said, and found that even his lips had begun to ice over, making his speech slow and thick, "World's first voluntary popsicle."

The cold in his abdomen had spread almost everywhere, and numbness, another sensation that Bobby had practically forgotten about, began creeping into his hands and feet. He could not be sure, but his vision might be going dark as well.

The readout displayed negative four-hundred and twenty-five.

Breathing suddenly became very difficult, and Bobby was just aware enough to deduce that the internal temperature of his lungs was becoming too cold for oxygen to properly exchange into his body. Despite the extreme chill he felt, he was beginning to feel very tired, like he might want to lie down. That didn't seem like such a bad thing. Though he was aware that this was the exact line of reasoning that people suffering from hypothermia followed. Still... He was so tired.

"Crap," Bobby managed, before he collapsed back down onto the cracked and frozen examination table, which promptly shattered beneath him.

"Bobby? ...Bobby?"

"I think he's comin' around, Hank."

"Get me another shot ready, just in case."

The first thing Bobby was aware of was a deep soreness in his chest. The second thing was that he wasn't dead. Which was a relief.

"Bobby," he heard Doctor McCoy's voice, what seemed like miles away, "Bobby, you need to wake up. Stay with us, now. Come on, lad."

His vision returned to him in a flood, but for several seconds, Bobby could not make heads or tails of what he saw. It dawned on him that he was no longer in Hank's examination room, but rather had been moved to the rehab center. It took him another ten seconds to understand that he was submerged up to his stomach in a warm vat of slightly viscous amber-colored liquid that churned like a jacuzzi, its warm current swirling around him, slowly taking the chill out of his bones. That didn't change the fact that it felt like he was sitting in a tub of lukewarm snot.

"Oh gross," Bobby croaked, lifting a goo-covered hand out of the sludge.

He felt a rough hand clap his shoulder, and Bobby turned to see Logan standing behind the tub.

"Try not to move, kid, that stuff is keeping you from turning into the blizzard of '77 again," he said. It was only then that Bobby spotted the absolutely monstrous syringe that the muscled, older man held in his other hand. Though he did not want to, Bobby looked down at his chest, where the strong, aching sensation still pulsed in his breastbone.

"Oh," was all he could manage. He never exactly thought of what he would plan on saying when he was confronted with the sight of medical equipment that had been stuck deeply securely into his chest. He raised his hands up to the device, ready to yank it from his body out of pure horrified instinct, but a massive, blue-furred hand reached out to stop him.

"It's best you let me do it," Hank said, then turning to Logan, "I don't think we're going to need that."

Logan shrugged and placed the syringe haphazardly on the nearest surface, seemingly relieved to be excused from any medical responsibility.

"What happened?" Bobby asked, shuddering as Doctor McCoy withdrew the absurdly long needle from his chest.

"I was hoping you could tell me," the blue-furred mutant frowned, "I left for five minutes, and when I came back, my lab looked like christmas from hell, and you were nearly frozen solid, which is a pretty impressive feat considering that being frozen is practically your natural state. We had to submerge you in thermodynamically super-charged solution and inject your heart twice to get it beating again."

Bobby shook his head, trying to make sense of the hazy memories that had formed in the moments before he lost consciousness.

"I was trying to see how cold I could go," he recalled, suddenly very aware of how stupid that idea sounded out loud.

"Yeah, no kidding," Logan grunted, "Hank had to get me to carve you off the table and carry you here. Took most of my hands with you."

Logan flexed the muscles of his palms and fingers, working them open and closed, and Bobby could not help but notice that the skin there was pink, shiny, and recently healed.

"Ouch," he winced, "Sorry."

Logan waved a hand dismissively as he walked to the rehab room's exit, the sliding doors hissing as he approached, "Forget it, ice cube. I'll see you for your training session tomorrow."

Bobby gulped and exchanged glances with Doctor McCoy, "He's mad."

"Undoubtedly," Hank said mildly, "Now, tell me more about what happened."

It was only then that Bobby took note of just how tense, how shaken the Doctor was. He was doing an apt job of hiding it, not doubt for Bobby's own benefit, so as not to upset him. Nevertheless, Bobby had always been adept at detecting discomfort in people around him, and the Beast was only just keeping it together. Whatever had occurred in the lab, it was serious. Whatever had happened in the lab had been, to Doctor McCoy anyway, frightening.

Well, he did just tell you that your heart stopped.

Bobby finally shrugged, "There's not much to it. I guess when I get to a certain temperature, it gets harder to turn back. I just kept getting colder and then... passed out."

"Bobby, you didn't just pass out. Logan and I were not exaggerating when we told you we found you frozen."

A moment passed, and Doctor McCoy adjusted his spectacles, staring at him intently. "You really don't realize what you did, do you?"

Bobby shrugged for a second time.

Hank reached into his pad of loose paper and produced a sheet of computer paper, a series of numbers and figured etched onto its surface.

"This is the data of your internal temperature leading up to... your episode. Before my equipment turned into glorified icicles, this was the last figure that was recorded."

The Doctor pointed a clawed finger at a number on the print out. Bobby squinted to make out the small print.

"Negative four-hundred and fifty-five point four degrees," he read, then looked at Hank, "So?"

Doctor McCoy stared at him for a moment, then rubbed his head. "The things they don't teach you in that high school... Bobby, negative four-hundred and fifty-five is just four degrees above absolute zero. You managed to make your body as cold as the deepest, coldest depths of deep space by accident. I couldn't replicate what you did with ten years of research and a bottomless pit of grant money."

"So why did I pass out?"

"Again, you didn't pass out, Bobby," Doctor McCoy removed his glasses and set about cleaning them, "Absolute zero is, as far as modern science is concerned, a temperature that is impossible to actually achieve, because it is a theoretical circumstance at which entropy ceases. At temperatures nearing real, true absolute zero, atoms, simply put, start forgetting how to function properly. They slow down, melt together, and start creating new forms of matter that are neither solid nor liquid nor gas. In short, once you start approaching absolute zero, atoms stop moving. They stop being, at a natural level. You start entering the world of quantum mechanics, Bobby. You lost consciousness because the atoms in your brain were physically changing into what is referred to as Bose-Einstein condensation; a condition that has only been replicated in some of the finest research labs in the world."

Bobby sat in the warm goo of the recovery tub for a long moment as this information sank in.

Here I was thinking that physics lessons were still a few months away.

"So what now?"

"Well," Hank said, "For starters we can consider our testing officially suspended. Professor Xavier and I agree that you should be monitored regularly for a period of roughly two weeks for any residual effects. Your parents have been informed that you had a mishap with your abilities, and after they calmed down, they concurred that the best option was for you to remain here under my supervision. Other than that, I'll need to give you a basic physical to make sure everything is right as rain, but I think you'll be fine. So long as you don't try something that foolish again."

Bobby groaned, "Two weeks of monitoring. That means..."

"Two weeks confined to the mansion, yes."

"Oh, weeaaak..."

Suddenly, mornings spent laying on a laboratory table didn't seem so bad after all.