Chapter Twenty-Four: Freedom

Sophie's POV

Doctor Curien and I ran for the satellite on the roof. The two of us fiddled around with the machine feverishly. If the Magician killed G before we could get the satellite up and running and distribute the DNA to the world, we would be helpless. I had to push every distracting thought of my head, but this was hard since my husband's charred corpse was just feet behind me and my possibly dead daughter was just underneath me.

The machine flickered with life. I have to finish this… for my family! The sound of the struggle worried me. I hoped that G would be okay. I couldn't afford to lose everyone I knew and loved. First Daniel, then Thomas, then Lisa, and now G. That wasn't going to fly in my world.

A small pod opened up in the heart of the satellite with a needle in the center. I placed the vial in the machine so that the needle poked through the cork but did not rupture the DNA. If the DNA was ruptured, all hope would be lost. We would be, as Lisa says all of the time, so royally screwed the entire royal family was screwing us over. Not funny, I know.

The needle sucked up the DNA, transporting the life-thread to the heart of the machine. Doctor Curien put in several commands until we heard a shriek. Oh, please, oh please don't let that be G! Doctor Curien collapsed to the ground, the body shape reverting to that of a young girl, a spirit medium. I quickly turned back to the machine, not concerning myself with the spirit medium that once held the doctor's spirit. I had to finish this if we were going to be saved.

Furiously, I kept punching in several commands and clearing multiple security bypasses. Why did Doctor Curien have to be so paranoid, anyways? Then, I became stuck. I had absolutely no clue what to do. Only a cryptic code was on the screen, and I couldn't figure out how to decipher it. It read, "7H15157H3K3Y2L1F34N00347H."

I stood in though, deducing that the numbers were letters, too, so the code read, "This is the key to life and death." I thought for a moment on it. The key was, without a doubt, the first, or best, strand of DNA he created. Whatever that thing G was fighting down there was called his masterpiece. What was it called? I couldn't stand simply trying to figure it out. Maybe he had said it sometime earlier.

He did. "Now this, this is my masterpiece." He held up a vial of DNA to the team of researchers. We were to experiment with it. The liquid in the vial was orange. He said he could create life with it. That seemed like something only magic could do.

Magic… that's it!

I typed in "Magician." When that failed, I typed in "M4G1C14N."

The machine whirred as the satellite glowed blue. The blue glow grew and grew until it exploded into a beautiful, blue light. Once the light faded, the blue glow started spreading through the air faster than I could keep up. I did it. We did it. I picked up the now conscious spirit medium next to me and hugged her. "We did it!" I saw G emerge from the stairs to the third floor. He ran over and hugged us.

"Thank God you two are okay," he sighed, clearly relieved. The three of us headed down the stairs, but what we saw wasn't pretty. Both Lisa and Daniel lay on the ground, badly hurt, possibly dead. A team of paramedics was hovering over them, patching them up and wheeling them out on stretchers. A smaller team passed by me with my dead husband on a stretcher. He looked so peaceful.

What I would learn from G later is that Thomas died to save Lisa. Turns out Mariza did have quite an influence on him for someone who we barely knew. As far as I knew, all I had left was G, and the spirit medium who turned out to be Maya, a close friend of Lisa's. The three of us left the DBR building together. The spirit medium ran to hug the man outside, sobbing into his hoodie. He wrapped his arms around her, comforting her. I buried my face in my scarf, finally allowing myself to cry over my husband, my daughter, and her friend – her lover.

As said in many tales of bringing the dead back to life, it takes great sacrifice for a revival.