In the end, Michael successfully entered the cryogenic sleep that would sustain his life. The situation of his health would remain the same until they could find a way to cure him. Once they did so, he would be woken up from his sleep for him to start the treatment.
However, the future held too many uncertainties—the technology for cryogenic sleep was still in its infancy stage. Even though the field had been researched by a few groups decades ago, the majority had failed. So far, only Theo and Albert were the successful cases, though the latter only entered cryogenic sleep for a short period of time. Hence, strictly speaking, Theo was the only case of being successfully cured after he slept for a long time.
If the cryogenic sleep failed or there was a huge change in the future, no one knew what could happen. After all, one was simply unable to predict the future.
Take Theo for example—he would never have thought that the entire world had changed after he woke up. Cethos had nuclear weapons and no one would attack the country’s borders anymore. However, his beloved woman killed herself because she thought he was dead. Apart from that, his illegitimate son had hurt his twins. He had never even dreamed of such events. Similarly, Michael could also encounter some events that he did not even dare to daydream about.
For those who experienced cryogenic sleep, it would be just a short and sweet dream. However, once they were awake, they would feel as though they had been detached from the entire world. They would reckon that they were transported to an unfamiliar yet cold and parallel world which was filled with pain and despair. No one knew how long Michael would sleep or what would await him when he regained consciousness.
Theo moved to Michel Town to stay with his son at all times; he thought that it would help Michael if he saw a familiar face when he would wake up. He was just unsure whether he could wait until that day to arrive.
Taking the opportunity into their hands, the medical research professionals carried out a complete body check up on Michael and realized that his body was full of toxins that corroded his internal organs. His bodily functions were deteriorating and he would not have long to live.
The current level of medicine was unable to cure him, but the professionals proposed a few backup plans—one of them was organ transplant since both Quinton and Theo’s organs were compatible with him. However, with a 0.01% probability for Cade, both Michael and Sophia had rejected it many times. They did not want to use a life in exchange for another one.
There were still many treatment methods, but the available technology was not advanced enough to enable it. An example would be self-healing organs or organ regeneration—those only existed in fiction and time was needed to conduct many clinical trials before the methods could even be tested. All in all, what they needed was time, but how long do they need? It was something no one could confirm.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Virs-18 were both being researched for at least five years, yet the cure for AIDS was not even available at that point in time. To revive Michael, they could require a year or two, ten years, decades, or even the hard work of a few generations… No one knew how long he had to sleep before he could be revived.
However, Sophia would not throw in the towel. It was only until late at night that she unwillingly left the cryogenic center. Michael had already been there for around half a month. As a result, she had left everything else to accompany him for the same stretch of time as well. His cryosleep chamber was right next to Cade’s. Both of them were waiting from some unknown chances of being revived.
As Sophia stood outside the cryosleep chamber, she saw Michael, who was asleep, through the clear glass. He was completely in the state of being in a cryogenic sleep—all of his metabolism as well as his breathing and heartbeat ceased to function as blood ceased flow within him. He was hidden in the blind spot of time that simply did not apply to him anymore.
To him, everything had stopped—like the pause button being pressed on a movie. However, to people outside the cryosleep chamber, every second was real and unbearably long.
Quinton resigned from his teaching job at Bayside University even though he was promoted to a full-time employee. He then joined Michel Medical Group and devoted himself to a research project for organ regeneration.
Sophia quickly delivered the boy-girl twins through C-section—it was fraternal twins. However, there was a shadow of her and Michael in them. Unfortunately, he could not even take a look at them. Based on the previous agreement, one of them took the last name of ‘Johnson’ while the other carried the name ‘Mitchell’.
That decision was not to fight for both families’ family fortunes; it was just that even though Cooper and Anna had four children, one was in cryogenic sleep while the other two were bachelors. The remaining child, Sophia, was the most ‘productive’ one as she gave birth to three children in two pregnancies. It was enough to repay everything they had done by naming the children with their last names.
After giving birth, Sophia dived into her work. She continued working on her luxury brand business and she was also the person-in-charge of Cethos for Ronney Group. Meanwhile, she was also head of the Michel Medical Group in Cethos.
Anna and Cooper moved to Villa No.1 in the Imperial, but Sophia still stayed at her own place. The lights of Villa No. 8 were lit every night and Michael’s daily items were changed every month, as if they were waiting for him to return home at any time.
As years passed, there was still no breakthrough in the research. However, Sophia continued to wait. Even after Carmen had grown up, she firmly believed that even if she herself became old, Michael would still return one fine day.
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