"Miss King!" The voice was distant, but pierced through the blackness and woke Elsa. Her eyelids were heavy, but she forced them open, the only form of movement she could accomplish.

From where she lie, Elsa could see that broken glass and tiny fires surrounded her. A pair of feet in black dress shoes made their way, quickly, across the lab. But in the blink of an eye, the feet slipped and the man those feet were attached to crashed to the ground.

Elsa peered at the ground around her as best as she could without moving the rest of her body. All around her, or at least all around her field of vision, the ground was covered in a sheet of ice. But, Elsa wondered, why isn't it cold?

"Miss King, are you alright?" The man asked. Afraid that he might fall again, the man crawled slowly to Elsa's side. Elsa did her best to smile at the man.

"I'm alright, Olaf. It was just a little explosion. Help me stand, please." The butler did as he was asked and helped Elsa stand, although both of them had to work not to slip on the frozen ground.

"An explosion?" Asked Olaf. "Ma'am, the entire lab is covered in ice."

Elsa looked around her lab, and Olaf was right. Everything was covered in ice and snow. Elsa rested her head in her hand, while she held onto Olaf with her other arm. "The explosion must've set off the Weatherman solution. How long was I out?"

"It's eleven thirty, Miss King. We've been looking for you for nearly two hours. Something terrible has happened. Anna's been shot."

"What?" Elsa pulled her hand away from her head quickly. A flash of blue light flew from her open palm, knocking both her and Olaf to the ground. They stared, speechless, in the direction that the blue flash had travelled. The wall opposite of them was now covered in sharp icy spikes that jutted out in every direction.

For the first time, Olaf realized that something was different about Elsa's appearance. "Miss King, your hair," he whispered.

Elsa pulled a lock of long brown hair out of her bun, only to realize that her hair was no longer brown but white. Elsa let out a scream. "What is happening to me?!"

She began to breath heavily, and snow began to fall from the ceiling. Elsa froze. "Anna! What did you say about Anna?"

Olaf put his hands on Elsa's shoulders and looked down at her. "Miss King, you need to calm down."

"Olaf," Elsa spoke slowly, taking a deep breath in between each word. "What. Happened. To. Anna?"

His thin and wrinkled face was serious, and Elsa could see a twinge of pain in the butler's eye. "There was an attack at the Gala. Anna was shot trying to run –"

"Take me to her!" Elsa shouted. She stared, wide-eyed, at the butler, waiting for him to help her to the door.

"Miss, I don't think that's a good idea." The snow fell harder at Olaf's rejection of Elsa's request. "Come now, let's get you home and in bed. We need to find out what happened to you. I'll grab a few things so that we can run some tests."

"No, I need to see Anna right now!" A wind from nowhere picked up, sending the falling snowflakes into a whirlwind all around the room.

Without her permission, Olaf picked Elsa up and rushed her out the lab doors and into the elevator. She thought to protest, but she was feeling weak and resting her head against the butler's chest was a great comfort.

Elsa waited until the elevator had started moving to ask, "Is she going to be okay?"

Olaf gently rested his chin on top of Elsa's head. "Of course, Miss King."

Both of them were silent when Olaf sat Elsa down in the back of the black town car, and Olaf said nothing when he made his way back into King Tech to get the things they'd need to find out what had happened to Elsa.

Elsa's head pressed against the tinted windows, and she pressed her fingertips against the glass. To her surprise, the window began to freeze, glistening with sharp icy tendrils. She gasped and pulled back. The air seemed to freeze all around her, but Elsa didn't feel cold at all. Elsa pulled her legs up to her chest and curled up on the seat. She hid her face and began to cry, afraid of what she'd see when she looked up.

She heard Olaf open the trunk, the sound of boxes sliding against the trunk's lining, and the distinct slam of a trunk door closing. She heard the driver's side door open, Olaf hopping into his seat behind the wheel, a soft sigh, and the engine starting.

Elsa focused on the blaring horns and sirens, people shouting, the sounds of the city. When the noise disappeared, she focused on the sound of tires against asphalt, the crunching of gravel. Then, all too soon, the car stopped, but Elsa refused to move.

Olaf picked Elsa up, while she covered her eyes, and carried her from the garage into the house, up the stairs, and into Elsa's room. He set her down in bed and stepped out of the room.

Only after Olaf shut the door did Elsa allow herself to uncover her eyes. She sat up and scanned the room. Her bedroom was exactly as she'd left it. Clothes were thrown everywhere. Papers littered the floor. If only I was still the same, she thought. Elsa looked at the old rotary phone on her dresser. It was for show, mostly, but it was still hooked up and usable.

Elsa hopped down from the bed and practically fell on her face as she jumped across the room to the phone. As fast as one can on a rotary phone, Elsa dialed Anna's cell phone, desperately hoping she'd pick up.

The phone rang a few times. "Hello?" a man's voice answered. There was a pause as he waited for Elsa's reply. "Is this Elsa King?"

"Wait, who's this?" Elsa asked.

"My name is Hans. I was with Anna at the Gala, and I'm with her at the hospital."

"Why do you have her phone? Put her on!" Elsa realized she'd shouted at the man and pulled back. "Please."

"She's asleep right now... She was awake a few minutes ago."

"She's okay? Anna's okay?" Elsa felt breathing return to normal, as if a massive boulder had been lifted off her chest.

"She was asking for you... You should really be here."

"I'm..." Elsa didn't know what to tell him. She couldn't risk news of the accident getting out. It'd hurt the company, and people might find out about Elsa's newfound condition. "I'm unable to make it to the hospital right now, but tell Anna that I will come see her as soon as I can."

"Of course." Hans was silent for a moment. "I'll stay with Anna until you arrive. I hope whatever you're working on goes well."

Hans hung up the phone without letting Elsa respond. Elsa thought about the way he spat out the word "whatever," as if he thought that she didn't care enough to visit Anna. Tears formed in Elsa's eyes.

Elsa heard a knock on the door. She set the phone down on the receiver and said, "Come in."

She turned around and saw Olaf enter the room pushing a dolly stacked high with boxes. Olaf spread the boxes across the floor.

"Miss, if you're not feeling well, you can lie down. I'll be able to set things up on my own."

"No, I'll help. The faster we figure out what happened to me, the faster we can undo it, and the faster I can see Anna." Elsa's eyes floated back to the rotary phone. It was covered in ice where her hand had been. She couldn't risk putting Anna in harms way by going to see her now.

Elsa emptied the boxes while Olaf searched through the rest of the house for the other things they'd need. Elsa cleared her dresser, her desk, and her bedside table, replacing all of her personal items with microscopes, test tubes, computers, and a number of other things.

Olaf returned carrying band-aids and alcohol swabs. Elsa shuttered. Of course she'd have to have her blood drawn. Elsa hated needles, but it had to be done. She took a deep breath, nodded at Olaf, and they got to work.

Elsa and Olaf ran tests nonstop for five weeks. Before Anna returned home from the hospital, Elsa and Olaf began their work at eight in the morning every day. Elsa gave blood, hair, and skin samples to be stared at under the highest magnification microscope they owned. They borrowed MRI and X-Ray machines from King Tech, and stored them in the basement. Elsa also used the basement to practice with her new abilities, to see just how they worked.

A few days into their experiments, Anna returned home from the hospital. Elsa had Olaf lock up the basement, and she kept her own bedroom door locked. Anna tried speaking to her through the door, but Elsa couldn't bring herself to respond. She didn't have a good enough lie to explain why she hadn't come to visit her sister in the hospital. Elsa heard a man usher Anna away from the door. She recognized Hans' voice.

Elsa continued working. But her worked suffered as Anna's words played through her mind. Elsa, are you okay? I'd really like to see you, if you aren't too busy.

And every time she thought of her sister's words, ice would form on whatever Elsa was holding or on her bedroom walls. Elsa would squeeze her eyes shut, as tightly as she could, and push the words away.

Elsa spent most of her time alone after her sister's return. She wanted Olaf to focus on Anna, keeping her company, and making sure she recovered well.

"She was looking at wedding catalogs the other day," Olaf casually remarked on day. "That Westergard boy practically hasn't left her side since the night of the Gala."

"Westergard? As in the Southern Isles Industries, those Westergards?"

"The very same."

Elsa was about to state the fact that she wasn't so sure about her sister dating a competitor, but the computers began to go crazy. They'd found it.

"Olaf, come look at this!" Elsa exclaimed. Olaf rushed to her side and looked at Elsa's monitor. They smiled at each other. "I think I may have a temporary solution to the problem."

What Elsa and Olaf had learned by the end of their testing was that Elsa's genetics had been altered in the explosion in a way that, when she expressed negative emotions such as sadness or fear, her brain released a chemical that caused her to release ice as a defense mechanism. The presence of this chemical in her body was also what made her hair white.

From her bedroom, and with Olaf's help, Elsa created a device that would pump a chemical into Elsa's brain that would neutralize the chemical defense mechanism. But, it only worked if the chemical was being pumped into Elsa's head at regular intervals. So she turned the device into a hairpin, except instead of holding up a bun, a needle would push its way through her hair and inject the proper dosage of the neutralization chemical at all times. It took a few tries to get the dosage right, but Elsa figured it out.

When the pin was finally done, and Elsa was ready, she placed her hair into a neat bun and took a deep breath. She picked up the pin. Olaf had been in charge of making the pin look like a normal hairpin, and it truly was beautiful. The pin loosely resembled a small golden tiara with a gorgeous sapphire at its center. Only, the gem wasn't a sapphire. The gem was what held the neutralization chemical. Elsa stuck the hairpin into the top of her bun, making sure it was buried in her hair properly. She felt the needle in the base of the tiara stab through her skin.

She blinked away her tears and took a deep breath. Elsa watched her white hair turn back to its normal color, dark brown like her mother's. When the pain from the needle began to dull, Elsa smiled at herself. She tried to shoot ice from her hands, something she'd gotten good at even when she wasn't sad or scared. Nothing. Elsa's smile widened.

Quickly, she changed out of the pajamas that she'd spent most of her time wearing over the past five weeks. She put on a put on a pale blue sundress with light purple flowers and rushed out of the room.

"Anna!" Elsa shouted. She wanted to hug her sister more than anything. She heard voices in the living room and rushed to greet Anna.

But Anna wasn't alone in the room. Olaf, and two men in near-matching suits, and a red-haired man sat with Anna.

"Elsa!" Anna squealed with excitement. She grabbed her crutches, and tried to stand.

"Sweetheart, don't. The doctors said you still need to rest," the red-haired man said calmly. Elsa realized this must've been Hans. He kept his gentle gaze on Anna until she smiled, set her crutches back down, and relaxed back into the armchair.

Elsa turned to the men in suits. "Who are you?" She asked.

"They're detectives from Arendelle PD. They've been looking into the attack at the Gala," Anna said.

"Have you caught the attacker?" Elsa asked.

"No," one of the detectives said sheepishly.

"Any suspects?" Elsa asked, staring at the other detective.

"Not yet... But we're working 'round the clock to find the guy," the other replied. "We've already asked your sister, Miss King, but can you think of anyone who might have reason to harm your family?"

Elsa thought for a moment. One name sprang to mind immediately: Bjorgman. But these were slippery people. She looked at these detectives. They didn't seem anymore competent than the others, than the dozens of detectives who'd let the Bjorgman Family slip through their hands.

Elsa remembered all the times she'd watched her father helplessly give in to the Bjorgmans' demands, but all that had stopped when Elsa took over. Well, almost all of it had stopped. She couldn't go to the police about what the Bjorgmans had done to her family, to her family's company, without putting King Tech in danger. But, for the most part, they were out from under the Bjorgman Family's thumb. Was it possible that they were out for blood? Why now of all times? Why not sooner? Elsa stared down at her hands. She could protect herself now. She didn't have to worry about them hurting Anna because she could protect Anna now.

Elsa made her decision, looked up at the detective and said, "No, I can't think of anyone who'd want to hurt my family."