Tracy Strauss

"Keep doing what you're doing, Rebel. Go! ...And Micah! Stay ahead of the ice..."

―Tracy Strauss^[src]

Tracy Strauss is a former politician advisor to New York Governor Robert Malden. She is an evolved human with the ability to freeze objects. After joining forces with Arthur Petrelli's Pinehearst group to give people abilities, Tracy's ability was revealed to the American President by Nathan Petrelli. Tracy was captured by Danko and taken to Building 26 before being rescued by Micah Sanders. After sacrificing herself her own life, Tracy's power evolved and she went on a killing spree. She soon saw the error in her ways and began seeking redemption by using her old life to help people.

Biography[]

Background[]

Tracy is one in a set of triplets along with Niki Sanders and Barbara. Upon birth, she was granted the synthetic ability of freezing by Dr. Zimmerman upon the request of the Company.

Season 3[]

After discovering her ability, she joined forces with Arthur Petrelli's Pinehearst Company so as to give Nathan the opportunity to become President of the United States with her at his side. However, after Pinehearst's defeat, Tracy was fired by Nathan and later betrayed as he turned her information to the US President. She was the captured by Danko and imprisoned in Building 26. Tracy was later rescued by her nephew, Micah Sanders, who was forming a rebellion against Nathan and Danko, and sacrificed herself to allow him to escape. Tracy resurfaced later with the murder of four Building 26 agents.

After hearing about Nathan on television, Governor Robert Malden tells Tracy that they may have found whom they're looking for. Tracy playfully reminds him that it's her job to find the person they're looking for. Seeing Nathan on television, she remarks that she likes him.^[1]

Tracy makes a suggestion to Malden for Nathan to serve as senator for the state of New York. On her way to her car a reporter stalks her with images from lasvegasniki.com. The reporter informs her he will make an article about her, but she denies that it is her. However, the reporter's sources claim otherwise, and she makes her getaway.

When she goes to his hospital room, Nathan automatically thinks that Tracy is Niki. Tracy is confused about this. She offers him the Senate, giving him her phone number. Later, Nathan accepts the on the condition that she will be on his staff. The reporter returns, this time with a DVD of Jessica having sex with Nathan at the Corinthian. She gets so angry at the reporter that her cryokinetic ability manifests, and she accidentally kills him. She is shocked and runs away.

Hooded tracy — Tracy, hooded and drugged, being readied for transport

In Volume Four, after the Pinehearst incident, Tracy was going to enjoy a bath when she's captured by a commando team. She is then transported to an airplane hangar where she is hooded, drugged and in an orange jumpsuit. When she was unhooded and undrugged by Claire, she was gasping for air. After escaping from the plane crash, she teamed up with Peter to try and take down his brother, Nathan, but unfortunately, Tracy, in a moment that lacked common sense, was going to betray Peter, believing that Nathan was going to give her back her life, when Peter betrayed her and left her with Nathan. She is then hooded while tied to a chair in a van for 42 hours, when she is unhooded by Nathan. Unfortunately, she is re-drugged and rehooded as Nathan walks into the shadows.^[2]

After escaping the clutches of Danko, Tracy ventures into a shopping mall where she meets Micah, her nephew, who reveals himself to be the mysterious Rebel that has been sending messages to Claire. They go into the parking lot of the mall, where they find themselves followed by agents sent to capture Tracy and Micah. In order to save Micah and make sure he is not captured alongside her, Tracy tells him to run, saying "Keep doing what you're doing, Rebel. Go!... And Micah! Stay ahead of the ice." She then allows herself to be surrounded by agents, at which point she releases a huge blast of ice, turning her into an ice statue and seemingly freezing all the other agents and the entire parking lot too. Danko, who was out of the ice blast's range, walks towards the icy statue that is Tracy and shoots it twice, shattering it and supposedly killing Tracy. However, Tracy's body sinks and is collected through a drain, and her right eye blinks and sheds a tear, foreshadowing her return.

Season 4[]

At the end of Season 3 Tracy emerges from the puddle that has flooded an agents apartment, she addresses him as “Number 4” right before killing him. Indicating that Tracy has killed three men before him, it’s become her goal to get revenge on everyone involved with Building 26.

In the first episode of Season 4 (Volume 5) Tracy traps Noah Bennet in his car while in the parking garage, filling his car with water in attempt to drown him. Danko shoots the car window letting the water out and saving Noah’s life.

Later Tracy approaches Noah again, at a bar, they discuss their lives and what they plan to do next. Noah tries to convince Tracy she isn’t a killer and can help her get her old life back. Promising that he will take care of Danko for her. Tracy is reluctant at first, and asks Noah why he wants to help her.

Noah confesses that he is looking for redemption, after all the years working for the Company, he never once helped anyone. Tracy makes amends and leaves. She goes to Danko’s apartment to make sure Noah was honest, once seeing that Noah kept his word she lets it go and spares Danko’s life. Before Tracy could leave she overhears someone threatening Danko, she enters his apartment to see Danko murdered by Edgar. Edgar attacks Tracy, but cannot hurt her as her body turns to water when sliced open. She catches his wrist and freezes his arm in self defense. Edgar flees the scene shortly after.

Tracy calls Noah, explaining what happened and to defend herself, as she did not kill Danko. Noah finds a key inside of Danko and wonders what it leads to. Tracy is later called by Noah after Edgar tried to kill him for a compass. In the hospital Tracy asks Noah why he called her. He admits it’s because he has no one else in his life, she understands not wanting to be alone. Noah suggests that they work together on solving this mystery.

When Noah ends up in a tricky situation, trying to help a boy named Jeremy Greer, he contacts Tracy to help him out, hoping to save Jeremy’s life, who has the power to control the course of life.

Tracy plays the role of his only living relative and makes calls to get Jeremy out of prison. During these events she is encountered by Samuel Sullivan. He shows Tracy a glimpse of the carnival, calling it her home and a place where Jeremy belongs. Tracy is uncertain of what to think at first, still trying to find her own place and is conflicted with what would be right for Jeremy. If she should listen to Noah and make him invisible or let him be in a place surrounded by people like them.

After Tracy finds out what happens to Jeremy (he is murdered by a dirty cop) she is devastated and tells Noah to never call her again. Thus she attempts to start her old life over. But when she is unable to get the position she wants at her old job, Tracy finds it hard to control her powers. Her powers are becoming unstable, her body will shift from solid to a liquid state.

She goes to Noah’s apartment for help, as she has no one else to turn to. However Noah wasn’t home and instead Claire tried to help Tracy with her abilities. When Tracy confides in Claire about her situation she loses control and freezes Claire. Tracy is horrified and tries to bring her frozen body to the bathtub to thaw her out. But before she can get there Claire’s foot pops off. Tracy breaks down into tears, feeling awful about what happened to Claire. But Claire soon reassured her that she’s alright and can heal.

The two of them have a deep talk together before Noah returns home, noticing Claire’s frozen foot on the table.

By the end of the series Tracy makes one final appearance to rescue Claire and Noah who are buried several feet below the ground. She uses he water abilities to find them, creating a pathway for them to swim up to the surface. Noah states that she wants to be left alone after this, as Tracy told him “no more favors.”

Her whereabouts are unknown by the end of the series.

Personality[]

Tracy is fiercely independent and gives as good as she gets all the time. She isn't afraid to fight for what she wants and even went as far as to have sex with her employer just to make sure he wouldn't sack her. She doesn't beg for anyone either as shown when she is attacked by Danko's squad. At first Tracy was confused and terrified of her power and soon entered depression and tried to kill herself. She had a brief sexual relationship with Nathan Petrelli and agreed to help Arthur Petrelli in his plan to create a synthetic race of super-soldiers using the formula. She has also shown huge levels of aggression and desire for vengeance such as when she kills an innocent bystander when trying to escape captivity in Building 26 just to show how far she is willing to go. She is self confident and never gives up.

Powers[]

Cryokinesis: Tracy has the power to freeze things. Her power is artificial and was injected into her shortly after her birth but only manifested when she was 32 years old when she was in a very stressful situation. With her power, she can lower the temperature of the organic and synthetic material to the point where it freezes and in some cases shatters. It was noted by Nathan Petrelli that Tracy does not, in fact, lose any of her own body heat when using her power and her hands remain the same temperature even when she is channeling her power through them. So far Tracy's power has only been shown to work through contact with the object/person she is trying to freeze and she has only ever used her hands to do this. Although very strong, Tracy's power can be nullified by means of drugs or a powerful and constant source of heat which seems to stop her from being able to access her powers. Alongside this Tracy cannot freeze through thermal clothing. She has been shown to fully freeze a human, a rose, a glass, a telephone and shatter through insulated gloves. Recently after having been kept from using her power in Building 26 for at least 3 weeks, Tracy managed to generate a Cold snap. During this, she let out a blue light and the entire surrounding area froze and she herself turned into pure ice. However, after being shot point blank by Danko, Tracy was seen crying (a single tear ran across her face), leading to the possibility that she didn't die.
- Water Mimicry: In the season three finale, An Invisible Thread, Tracy is shown emerging from a puddle of water on the floor of a former Building 26 agent's home. This suggests that Tracy can now become (and possibly manipulate) water. Tracy now has the power to manipulate water with her mind along with being able to turn her own body into a water-based life form. She seems to be able to defend herself from attack by instinctively turning certain parts of her body into water; for example, when Edgar attempted to assassinate her with his knives, as she was slashed, her internal organs, tissues, and blood were instantly replaced by water then reforming into the undamaged skin, blood, organs with no apparent damage, preventing her from being killed by weaponry. She can also control water with her mind and can survive in water with no need to breathe. She can also apparently form clothing from water whereas before she was always naked when turning back into human form.

Trivia[]

In A Clear and Present Danger, in the airplane hangar scene, although having a hood over her face, Tracy can be identified as the hooded prisoner with gloves (she also seems to be the only prisoner whose hair slips out of her hood, though this could be due to the fact that she's the only prisoner with long hair (i.e. shoulder-length hair)).
- In the same episode, Tracy is the only one of the prisoners at the airplane hangar who can be identified immediately even though the prisoners are hooded (although Nathan's daughter, Claire, who was captured against orders and is unhooded first, cannot be immediately identified until she is revealed to Nathan, who orders his men to release her. Nathan reveals he gave Claire a free pass, tells her to forget everything she saw, and sends her home. However, Claire sneaks onto the plane to release the prisoners anyway).
Despite Tracy being Nathan's girlfriend, he ordered his men to capture her and drug her to the extent of her becoming unconscious.
Apparently, in A Clear and Present Danger, Tracy was hooded and drugged for so long, she gasped for breath when she was unhooded and undrugged. Justified, because she was the first person we see captured. On the other hand, Ali Larter probably thought you can't actually breathe while hooded, considering the other actors aren't gasping for breath when they're unhooded and undrugged.
When she is captured again in the next episode (Trust and Blood), she is only kept hooded (and this time without the goggles and earmuffs) and is only drugged after Nathan is done with her.
Tracy is the unluckiest of the Heroes in Volume 4, probably due to it being payback for what she did in the last volume.
- To clarify, though she was the first to be captured, though everybody who's been captured had been stripped of their clothing (even Claire) her clothing at the time was a bathrobe. She was also on a crashing plane. The person she partnered with soon abandoned her to several agents (of course, she was going to betray him for the dumbest reasons, which was that Nathan would release her, which he wouldn't, considering that this is the man who got her hooded, drugged and almost sent to a containment facility in the first place). She was hooded again for probably 42 hours and brought to Building 26 where she begged for Nathan to release her and she was hooded again. They later chained her to the floor of her cell and after an incident that was admittedly Danko's fault, she wasn't released. (The person who was gonna set her free was going to, but after that incident, she's scared out of her wits). Though she was later released, she is then killed in the same episode. She's been hooded the most and the longest out of the Heroes.
  - Interestingly, she is the final Heroes character to be unhooded and hooded in person (Exposed doesn't count due to being archived footage).