Excessum itineris, Roxas Winchester [books for 7th graders TXT] 📗

This is the best way to die. Thought Justin while staring into a wall of ice that surrounded him on all sides. He was becoming frozen in a solid block of ice in some area of the woods in New York. As his sight started to fail him, he thought he saw the one person he was counting on to stop this madness, his mother Elaine. Her gaze didn’t falter from its fixed position on her son, as he slowly died, frozen forever as a teenager in a block of ice.
“When can we begin the research?” Elaine asked eagerly about her once beloved son.
“Not until we know for sure he’s gone.” A man in a lab coat replied. They checked to make sure there are no impurities in the surface of the ice, and then tipped him over onto a sled on the back of a snowmobile. It sped away towards the road where they parked their van earlier in the day.
The van pulled into a building two hours away, and unloaded poor Justin, still frozen solid in ice into a tub of water that was below freezing temperatures to help keep the ice thick, the lid closed on the tub and immediately froze the water inside. The group checked to make sure that the lid was on nice and tight and that everything was safe for the time coming up. After the check was finished, everyone started to leave for home, the lights were turned off and the door closed in on Justin, leaving him alone for the rest of the winter.
In May the group returned, six months after they caught Justin and left him to finish dying. As the lights came on, they revealed the tub of ice with a crack running along the length and most of the depth of it. The team went over to get a closer look at it and saw no other damage to their merchandise.
“OK, now that we know he’s dead we can melt him down and start the tests.” A middle-aged man said to his partner who was looking at Justin with great interest. She nodded, walked over to a computer and pushed a few keys on the keyboard; a mechanical voice overhead said, “Stand back, melting started.” Men with pressure washers moved towards Justin, spraying water at the ice. Pieces of ice came off in chunks and fell to the floor where they were quickly washed away down a drain along with the rest of the melting ice and runoff water. After a little while, there was only a thin layer of ice surrounding Justin. The middle-aged man raised his hand and the water stopped immediately. Justin was then lowered into a bath of warm water.
They laid the body down carefully on an examination table after he was melted. Two assistants went over to him to fasten wrist and ankle restraints on him. “Dr. if he’s dead, then why do we need those?” his partner inquired while gesturing towards the restraints.
“It’s for precautionary measures my dear.” He replied.
Shortly after that the team began their work, people clad in medical gowns and masks gathered around the table waiting. The middle-aged doctor came towards the table with his assistant holding a tray of menacing looking silver tools. He held out his hand as his assistant set a knife into it, he bent down closer to Justin’s chest, put the knife against his chest and drew it in a straight line from the center of his chest up towards his right shoulder. Suddenly there was a loud clanking sound, the sound of metal links clinking together angrily and Justin’s eyes opened wide with fear and the ragged yell of pain. He tried to move his hands to the torn flesh, but couldn’t due to the wrist restraints. The doctor straightened upright but wasn’t scared or startled as everyone else in the room was.
“That is why we needed those, my dear.” The doctor replied calmly.
Justin struggled against his restraints to try to break free from his prison. Upon failing his first few attempts at speaking, he took a long breath and tried again, this time with much better results.
“What are you doing, are you crazy?” he shouted hysterically. “What am I doing here?”
“Justin, please lay still for the time being. You are here to help us in a bit of research about some, special people.” The doctor told him.
Justin calmed down a bit and raised his head, he looked at the doctor who spoke to him and tried to focus his vision that was very blurred due to the time he spent frozen. The doctor’s nameplate read, ‘Dr. M. Marshal’, Justin whispered the name to himself.
“Yes Justin that’s correct, I am Dr. M. Marshal. Now, please lay still so I can do this.” He motioned to one of the others in the room and they brought a syringe of clear liquid Justin didn’t like the look of. Dr. Marshal had another person hold Justin still while he injected the entire amount into Justin’s system. He immediately felt a tingling feeling spread through him until he could no longer feel a thing; he only knew that Dr. Marshal continued as if nothing happened because when he looked the next time, he saw the skin of his chest was pulled open like a book. When he looked closer he saw his heart, but it couldn’t have been his own because he was alive, and that heart was still, frozen in time. He lowered his head back down, closed his eyes, and fell asleep from the injection they gave him.
The lights were still on when he woke, but he saw no one, when he lifted his head he saw that he had been sewn back up and mostly healed. How long was I out for? He thought to himself. Dr. Marshal came walking back into the room with a tray of food on it, “Are you going to feed your prisoner or not?” Justin asked him.
“If I unlock you, are you going to run off?” he replied. Justin shook his head no and the Dr. went over to Justin and unlocked his wrists then backed up. Justin immediately sat up to get his ankles. He swung his feet down to stand, but couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t support him right away, he shook out his limbs, shaking a feeling out of them that was not very different from electrical shock.
He sat for a little and looked around at his surroundings, he saw what he was hoping to find, a pile of clothes dropped on the floor by the examination table. He gestured to the clothes and the Dr. confirmed what Justin was hoping for. He bent down and picked up the pile, in it were underclothes, loose jeans, and a black long sleeved shirt. He asked Dr. Marshal if there was a bathroom around and Marshal pointed behind him to a small washroom.
Inside it was smaller than it looked, the toilet was almost right in front of the sink and the door barely cleared the sink. Justin got dressed and looked into the mirror, a person stared back that wasn’t who he was expecting, instead of an 18 year old with short dark brown hair and light blue eyes, he was looking at an 18 year old with blonde hair that had dark brown roots and black eyes. He looked closer to the eyes in the mirror to see if there were any contacts, but his eyes were a black that was darker than a night sky with no moon.
He left the small washroom and asked Dr. Marshal angrily, “What did you do to me? I look completely different now.”
“I was testing a few theories out on you, as you have just seen and I have been seeing, it appears they worked, there’s just one thing I cannot comprehend. How is it that someone like you can live with no heartbeat or pulse at all?” He picked at some fruit that was on the plate, looking thoughtfully on something in the distance. “Care for something to eat?” he held the plate out towards Justin, offering the food to him.
“What’s wrong with it?” Justin asked suspiciously. “Nothing, I just was wondering if you were hungry after all that time. If you don’t want it, then…” he trailed off. Justin reached over and grabbed an apple from the tray, deciding it couldn’t be that bad.
The bite of it took him off guard, there was no flavor or taste in his mouth, he felt it and could smell it, but couldn’t taste or swallow it. He spat it our onto the floor and looked at the apple, then at Dr. Marshal, confused, looking for answers. “That’s very interesting; tell me, what’s wrong with it?”
“There’s no flavor and I can’t swallow it no matter how much I try.” Justin answered as he went to a trash bin to throw it out, and then looked back at the Dr., waiting to give a reason to the whole thing.
“Well, it appears that you don’t require food to survive, tell me, are you breathing right now? And drink this, it’s coffee.” Marshal handed Justin a large mug of coffee as he said it. After a little wait, Justin replied with an answer, “No, I don’t think I’m even breathing right now. What does this all mean?” he took a long drink of the coffee without noticing it, then realized what it meant, he could have beverages, but not solid food, and that he was different from his old self. “I can drink, but not eat. I can live without a pulse or breathe, what am I?”
“I suppose you are an experiment gone right, you heal at an exceptional rate as well, as you may have already noticed for yourself. My theory is a true immortal being, given a few years in here under observation and we’ll know for sure if you’re the most popular form of one or not.”
A few years? I don’t think so, it’s not gonna happen. He thought to himself. He set down the mug calmly, and then ran towards the exit as fast as he could manage with his stiff limbs. Marshal motioned to someone and immediately there were people there with guns and ropes blocking the exit. Some of the men with guns targeted Justin as others with ropes moved in from behind, he stopped short and turned to flee another direction but he was surrounded on all sides, trapped- and treated- like and animal. When Justin turned his attention back to the men with guns he was attacked from behind by the ones with rope. They bound his hands together then to his body, quickly followed by his legs, they moved him onto a bed that was in the corner. They took chains from the walls by the bed and chained his hands they loosened the ropes around his torso and wrists and tightened the chains in the walls, then did the sane with his feet but with chains on the floor. Justin struggled against his bonds, but to no effect, the ropes were removed entirely from him and the men went away to guard the exits.
“Justin, I thought you said you wouldn’t run away if I let you go free, and now you’re here, chained up like a prisoner. I thought I could trust you on this one little request of mine, but I can see that you have failed me on that.”
“Why should I stay, so you and others can open up a freak show with me as the main attraction? I don’t think so; there is