Flutter (The Discover Series) by Melissa Andrea Page A

began to melt, in turn thawing the lake. A few weeks into spring, one of the women in the village spotted Eduardo coming toward them and started screaming. When they brought him to the village they kept asking him over and over what had happened to him, but he couldn’t remember. Days later he was finally able to tell them what had happened the morning he fell, and where he had been all winter long. At first they didn’t believe him. But when they thought about where his stuff had been left behind, how he had been found, and that it wasn’t uncommon for our primary origin to do it, they figured he was probably telling the truth.
    So that’s when they began to experiment. I guess you could call some of them scientists. They found out how closely we are related to our origins, and if we could repeat the freezing process or if the one incident had been a fluke. When they succeeded with the process again, they realized we could survive freezing ourselves, because our inherited instincts took over. So we use it now, as sort of a defense mechanism, and it works.”
    I had been so wrapped up in his story that it took me a few minutes to realize that he was no longer talking. He was right; it was an interesting piece of their history. I wanted to ask him something, but I was afraid of the answer, so I bought myself some time with a different question. “So that’s how he freezes Sara?” He seemed to get irritated when I called her by her name rather than her title, but he ignored it, and it was too late to correct myself, so I went on. “He just drops her into the middle of the lake and she freezes before she has enough time to float to the surface?”
    “If I had to guess, I would say that was as good as any.” He shrugged,
    “Has anyone ever died from it?” There, the question was out..
    He frowned. Not at my question, but at the answer. When he finally answered, it felt like a lifetime had passed. “There have only been two different situations that I have ever heard of. Since we started Freezing, other then the disorientation right after, there had been no negative side affects. A couple of years ago, two guys set out to see how long they could be frozen. Since Spain doesn’t have water that freezes longer then the average winter months, they set out for a place that was frozen all year long. One was to freeze himself, and the other was there to document and defrost him after one year. When the year was up his friend started the defrosting process on him, unfortunately it was too late, and he was already dead. They cremated him and his urn says ‘ In the name of Science ’. Since then we have never stayed frozen longer then a natural winter term.
    “And the second time?” I asked trying not to gulp.
    “The second time was really odd,” he went on. “It wasn’t his first time to be frozen, but for some reason this time was different. He must have started to defrost early, why he did, no one knows really. Since most of us freeze upright our heads are the first to defrost, but in his case it was his being frozen upright that caused his death. The sun wasn’t strong enough to defrost all of him at once so as he started to defrost at the top, the water had no place to drain and he drowned. There has been no other case like that until now-“
    I hadn’t waited around long enough to hear him finish the rest of his sentence before I was gone. I had already figured out what we he was going to say, two seconds before he would have. Fear; terrifying, gut twisting, agonizing fear had my heart pounding in my chest so hard, that I swore I heard a rib snap. I was flying down the side of the mountain, and I had never been as thankful for my speed as I was now. Aaron wasn’t as fast as I was, but I could hear him racing down after me.
    Why hadn’t I thought about this before? It was so obvious now that I was kicking myself.
    What if I’m too late? I asked myself, my question drenched in panic.
    You won’t be. My mind