Adam stopped trying to fly higher.
Instead, he folded his arms close, pointed his body downward, and let himself drop toward the road.
The Chitauri in front of him fired at the air where he had been. Their shots crossed above his head and struck the broken building behind him, but Adam had already lowered himself too fast for the line of fire to catch him.
He hit the street and phased through it.
The sensation was worse than passing through the crystal wall.
Stone, metal, pipes, dust, and broken pieces of road all blurred around him at once. For a moment, Adam could not tell where his body ended and where the ground began. He did not feel pressure on his lungs either.
'I don't need to breathe like this?' Adam thought.
That was useful.
Then he remembered what he was doing.
Above him, the Chitauri lost sight of their target. He could feel them moving through the ground in a strange way. It was not vision. It was closer to pressure, weight, and vibration. Every footstep made a small change in the space above him.
Adam moved toward the nearest one.
He shot upward.
His body came out of the ground under the first Chitauri and passed straight through it.
The alien froze from the inside out.
Adam saw too much for half a second as he crossed through the body, and he immediately wished he had not. The cold spread faster than his disgust. By the time he came out the other side, the Chitauri had turned into a stiff frozen statue and dropped backward.
"Never thinking about that again," Adam muttered.
He did not stop.
He dipped back into the ground, felt two more sets of movement above him, and rose through them one after another. One froze from the chest up. The other froze from the head down before it could even turn its weapon.
Adam slid back underground again.
This time, he understood the feeling a little better.
When he was intangible inside solid matter, the world did not disappear. It changed. He could not see normally, but he could feel where weight pressed down, where footsteps landed, and where the air above the broken road shifted when something moved.
That was enough.
Adam moved faster.
Three Chitauri were moving together near the broken opening, trying to reach the civilians from the side. Adam stayed under the road until he felt all three sets of steps line up. Then he shot through the first one, curved sharply through the second, and passed through the third before any of them understood where he had come from. Ice locked their bodies in place almost at the same time.
The attack was ugly, but it worked.
He came up behind one Chitauri, passed through its back, and froze it before it reached the hole in the shelter wall. Then he dropped, shifted left, and came up through another alien's legs. Ice spread over its body before it even hit the ground.
Two more tried to run toward the tunnel.
Adam flew out of the road between them, crossed through both in one line, and turned them into frozen bodies before their weapons finished rising.
He was not fighting like Diamondhead anymore. Diamondhead built walls and spikes, while Big Chill ignored walls completely.
That difference made Adam grin for half a second.
The grin vanished when he remembered the civilians.
He rose above the street and looked around. Several people outside the tunnel were still frozen in fear, not by his power but by the war around them. They had watched him appear from the ground, pass through aliens, and leave frozen bodies behind.
Adam floated a few meters above the road and pointed toward the crystal shelter.
"Go inside!" he shouted. "That tunnel is safe for now. Move!"
A woman grabbed a child and ran first. That broke the hesitation. More people followed, ducking under debris and hurrying toward the broken opening Adam had made.
Adam shifted sideways and held one arm out, ready to intercept anything that came near them.
The frost on his arm stretched farther than before, almost like a thin sleeve of cold air had followed the motion. Adam noticed it, but he did not have time to test it.
More Chitauri were already above.
This time, they were not only soldiers on foot.
Several Chitauri chariots came cutting between the buildings. They looked like narrow flying craft, with one alien driving and others sitting behind to fire. The first one dipped low as people ran under it, and the aliens on the back raised their weapons toward the civilians.
Adam's face tightened.
"Nope."
He pushed himself upward.
The first volley passed through his body as he phased without thinking. The shots struck the street below, but Adam did not slow down. He rose in front of the chariot and drew in a deep breath.
The craft was moving fast, so Adam took the only chance he had and blew.
Cold vapor burst from his mouth and slammed into the front of the chariot. Ice spread across its nose, over the rider, across the side bars, and around the two Chitauri trying to shoot from the back.
The whole craft locked up in the air.
For a moment, it kept moving only because of its own speed.
Then it dropped.
The frozen chariot struck the road and slid sideways like a heavy egg made of ice.
Another chariot came in from the left.
Adam turned in the air, pushed both hands out to steady himself, and blew again. His breath caught the side of the vehicle this time. Ice wrapped around the driver first, then spread backward over the weapon mounts and the two soldiers behind him.
That one fell too.
Two more came from above the street.
Adam rose between them, phased through a laser blast, and released a wider breath. The cold spread like a white sheet across both flying vehicles. Their engines whined under the ice, then both chariots lost control and dropped toward the road in frozen oval shells.