Chapter 9: The Arctic Core
Angel has finally escape the treacherous lands of the Yukon and made his way to the main tower along with a new friend Fabian a native Eskimo. He needed to make his way to meet the others, while the others would enter the main tower through the main entrance, Angel would have to find an alternative way inside. Our heroes hope to find many answers to their many questions.
Maria. Dayvon and Luis although concerned about Angel decided that they need to move on. So they head to the entrance of the main communication tower to no surprise it is heavily guarded by glooba troops. Many salamander troopers, iguana enforcers, boar cops and hoverships come in to attack. Luis says in confidence "It's time to clean house!" Maria takes care of the salamander trooper, Luis kills off the iguana enforcers and Dayvon makes mince meat out of the boar cops. However the hoverships were still unaccounted for, Dayvon uses the freezethrower and aims for the back of each hovership, the hoverships are unable to move so they come crashing down. Each trooper manning their respective hovership end up slashing themselves and killing themselves as a sign of surrender. Maria says "Damn talk about dedication to the service, either its success or die trying." Dayvon responds "Yeah talk about self esteem issues literally." Luis says "Damn! Look at all that blue goo, that's supposed to be their blood? God Damn!" The heroes continue to the entrance until the are attacked by alien looking turrets like the ones Luis encountered back at the launch facility, so they hide to avoid being shot at. Dayvon had no ammunition for the freezethrower so freezing them wasn't an option. Until he found a console which controlled the turrets, the system was similar to the one that our heroes encounter back in the prison back on Earth. Dayvon grabs a laser from one of the dead troopers and he begins guiding the laser through the circuit board hoping to short out the circuits for the turrets.
While Dayvon tries to short circuit the circuits for the turrets. More glooba troops come out to prevent Dayvon from completing his task. Maria dealt with the iguana enforcers while Luis dealt with his nemesis teleporting salamander troopers. Luis and Maria tried to hold off the enemy until Dayvon was done, while Luis and Maria were successful in defeating the initial wave more reinforcements were on the way. A huge door opened in the distance and several sentry drones were on their way, just like Angel endured previously. However the others had no idea what these suicidal robots were capable of. Luis and Maria looked puzzled these robots did not attack but were heading towards them. They shot at the drones and then they began to explode, Luis says "Geez did you see that these guys just exploded, what are these things?" Maria responds "I have no idea but I don't want to stand around to find out!" Luis finds a RPG and shoots it to the crowd of drones but to his surprise the drones are able to dodge the rocket and the rocket misses every drone. Maria says "What! No way for a bunch of flying metal they have a brain." One drone gets close to Dayvon a voice is heard from the drone saying "Suicide bomb attack!" Dayvon had just finished the circuitry work and the turrets were disabled, he is able to jump out of the way while the drone self-destructs itself. The blast is powerful, with Dayvon being close enough to the blast he does get thrown away from the console and the blast inadvertently destroys the console. Maria and Luis destroy the rest of the drones, Maria says "Man self exploding metal bombers, wow now it's getting fun and not in a good way!" Dayvon says angrily "Damn all the work and all we needed was to stick a rocket and destroy the console, it would have done just as much!" Luis tells Dayvon "I hear you Dayvon, but it seems we got a lot more to learn about this world and about the glooba race. Remember what the Elder God said don't expect this world to follow natures law. So in short don't expect these aliens to play fair they will cheat as much as they can just to take us out." The three finally clear the outside area of the main tower.
Meanwhile Angel and Fabian move towards the main tower then encounter a couple of turrets aiming for them. With his last rocket Angel shoots the turrets down then says "Score one for the good guys!" Then Fabian hears a robotic sound that sounded familiar he tells Angel "Look out suicide robots to your left!" Angel times his jump, grabs a metal stud while the drones foolishly blow themselves up. Angel tells Fabian "Thanks bro!" Fabian says "No problem." After going around the building killing off small groups of aliens surrounding the building, they find a shaft big enough for them to fit in but small enough to force them to crouch and crawl in. Angel shoots off the grate protecting the shaft and they both go inside the shaft. The shaft leads them to a storage room where a salamander trooper and boar cop are standing. Angel and Fabian jump down into the room, Angel chokes the boar killing it while Fabian throws his warclub to the trooper striking it in the head. The room contains armor which the two put on; Angel says "Any little armor will help." The duo heads out to a hallway which reads "Sub Basement" Angel says "Looks like we're in the lowest part of the tower, we need to go upstairs, I'm sure the others are there and we can get a sense where to go next." The two go through the hallway carefully search each room for any clues or anything useful then they find a note on one of the rooms. The note says "To get to central command use the console on the second floor. On the console input the symbol (Alpha, Delta, Beta and Omega) correctly on per floor (SB, 2, 1 and B) if you pay attention carefully on each hallway you shall see a symbol, but it will not be so obvious. Angel says "Oh great! Another stupid puzzle I hate puzzles with little meaning!" Fabian responds "No use getting angry about it I'll keep an eye out for these symbols." At the end of the hallway the two see a strange crack on the wall; Fabian traces the crack to the omega symbol. Fabian grabs a piece of paper to write down the symbol and the floor it was found. The two of them find an elevator which goes up to the basement level.
At the main entrance Maria, Dayvon and Luis see a big blast door the go to the console which asks for a hand print verification. Maria tries to put her hand onto the console, but the door does not open and Maria gets an electric shock at the same time. Dayvon laugh and says "That was obvious, did you really think it was going open with your girly hands." Maria responds "Oh looks like we've started with the insults again what makes your ugly hands so much special, huh?" Luis says "Stop it you too I got an idea lets use a hand of a dead alien, it won't read human hands but will read one of a alien." So Luis takes the hand of a dead glooba and puts it onto the reader then the blast doors open and our heroes enter the first floor of the main tower. Upon arrival inside the main tower main hallway they are greeted with a firefight with the gloobas after about 10 minutes the floor is clear. By the look of the facility it was ran by the U.S. government for unknown reasons by the EDF (Earth Defense Forces) as it was preparing for an alien attack. The three quickly head up stairs to the location of central command but as they expected getting into central command wasn't going to be easy, the room needed three access cards a blue, red and a yellow card which according to the note were split up to two on the first floor and one was on the second floor. So the three decided to split up, Maria would continue on the 2nd floor, Dayvon would go to the right side of the 1st floor and Luis would take the left side of the first floor. Luis says "When you get a keycard meet back here okay." Everyone agrees and goes on their way.
Maria continues on the second floor finds several security rooms containing ammo, armor and a few enemies for her killing pleasure. She finds that many of the hallways contain laser trip mines which she felt were beginning to appear a bit too often for her. Then finally she finds the blue keycard but a red force field was surrounding it, Maria says "Damn a force field gotta find a way to disable it. She goes to the console and tries to deactivate the force field but she needs a password and it said if in 10 seconds a valid password is not entered the alarm would go off and the console would be lock for another 5 minutes after. Maria had no password so she prepared herself for more aliens to come out, however the alarm goes off laser trip mines cover the entrance of the room, then salamander troopers surround the entrance and Maria was trapped, she couldn't touch the mines, even if she did get through the mines the enemy was waiting for her.
Dayvon and Luis on the other hand were heading back down to the first floor. They are back in the main hallway where they first entered and to their surprise the enemies or at least some of them respawned and came back to life. Luis says "Didn't we kill these guys already?" Dayvon says "Don't be acting surprised anymore we should be expecting the worse from here on out!" Dayvon and Luis go on to kill all the respawned enemies relatively unscathed. Dayvon goes through the door on the right, while Luis goes through the door to the left.
Dayvon goes through the door into the hallway and meets a few sentry drones that aim to get him. He goes to the nearest room takes out the salamander troopers and closes the door. The sentry drones explode once they hit the door, when the coast was clear Dayvon made his way back to the hallway. He then puts his focus on getting the keycard, he moves into the next room where he finds a switch just like in the chemical plant he activates it. He was starting to develop a bad habit of touching and pressing every switch without knowing what they did. However he did hear the sound of a door open, he goes out to the hallway and sees the blast door to the end of the hall opened up. However there was one more room that he wanted to check out he goes in and notices jail cells which were used probably to lock up trespassers. However he found a couple of poisonpus's guarding the cells he defeats them but it's what it’s inside the cells that catch his attention. There were eggs in an ugly brownish color; Dayvon says "Hmm these are probably where those bastard poisonpus's are born in." So Dayvon starts to destroy to the eggs but several of them start to hatch and all of a sudden these green some being blue in nature slimy creatures start to come out. Dayvon tries to shoot them but they are too many of them, in fact one comes behind him, gets on him and begins to start eating his pants. Dayvon says "Yo get off me you freak, what you trying to do eat me?" Dayvon kicks off the creature off his leg and ends up shooting and killing the creatures. However he notices that when he kills the slimers they just break apart as they have no body and no bones. Dayvon says "Damn those things are creepy; they were looking to feed off me. I wonder if these things turn into the poisonpus's I hate." All of a sudden he hears a scream from the direction of the blast door, Dayvon runs to check out the situation.
Luis goes inside his door of choice and finds he is in the mechanical area of the tower. Luis says to himself "Hmm maybe I could do some damage from here." He goes towards the weather room and finds out that the temperature is going up in a hurry. Then Luis goes into the radar room and finds a blueprint of the heat ray that the gloobas are planning to use. Interestingly enough Luis finds out that a slight shift in the ray's angle can help to at least stall out the warming that the ray exhibits. He takes the blueprints and resumes his search for the keycard. He finally goes into the electrical room which is full of transformers where he sees enemies around the corner. Luis decided to use stealth in the room picking off each enemy one by one until he gets to a console. He goes to the console and sees an option to open the security room on the first floor which was the middle door back in the main hallway of the building. He opens the room then an alarm goes off, then alien troops start to appear in an attempt to intercept him. He kills the aliens that are in the electrical room and then goes back into the mechanical area where many aliens are waiting plus a BattleGlooba. To Luis's shock he sees BattleGlooba without knowing that there are numerous BattleGloobas. Luis says "Son of a bitch! What are you doing here? I thought you were dead already? I should’ve known it was too good to be true." The BattleGlooba wastes no time and starts to launch mortar rounds in Luis's direction and Luis dives to dodge the explosive rounds. Luis times his runs between the gears to avoid BattleGloobas chain gun fire while shooting the other aliens including iguana enforcers and boar cops. Luis says if he can land a shot in the groin area just like Angel did; unlike Angel Luis has no explosive weapons. When Luis dives to the switchboard area, BattleGlooba shoots his chain gun; luckily for Luis every shot hits the switch board missing him. Luis makes a noise pretending that he has been shot to fool BattleGlooba into believing that he's dead. With BattleGlooba assuming that he has killed Luis, Luis crawls on his body ever so slowly until he gets to BattleGlooba hoping to get a shot in his groin.
All of our heroes make it to the tower, Once again each of them enduring their own adventures. Angel and Fabian are fighting their way up through the basement knowing how one of two things that need to be done to gain access to central command. Maria is trapped inside a secured room with trip mines and aliens surrounding her, can she possibly break out of the trap? Dayvon meets a new alien the slimer a parasite developed by the gloobas to do one thing. That is to suck the brains of their prey so they can grow even bigger. Dayvon hears a scream of another human being hoping it’s not one of his friends. Finally Luis meets BattleGlooba for the second time, can Luis craft a way to defeat one of the many BattleGloobas?
Angel and Fabian go into the elevator going up to the basement. They get out of the elevator which leads to a gray hallway which reads “Security suite and rest area”. They first explore the mess hall and indeed what they found inside was what you would expect to find in one. Food was thrown all around, but with one thing different gloobas having a feast eating unknown food or mystery meat. Angel says “Lunch time’s over kids, it’s time to clean up this mess!” Angel and Fabian kill off salamander troopers and boar cops, even to the point where Angel throws a bowl of BBQ sauce to one of the boars to blind it then finishes the boar off by sticking a fork in its eyes. Angel says “Wow this sure is a mess hall I mean look at all the swine on the floor, if only we had a BBQ.” Fabian laughs and says “I would have to say that boar’s head would make a good meal if it wasn’t filled with goo for blood, yuck!” After clearing the mess hall the two look for any evidence but come up empty. They go back to the hallway and notice the entrance to the bathroom is barricaded, so the two head for the sleeping quarters. They find a combination of boar cops and iguana enforcers inside the quarters. The two stay behind the walls until Fabian notices a box that contains pipebombs with a remote detonator and tells Angel that they can use them to take them out with one blast. Fabian throws a pipebomb inside the sleeping quarters then detonates it causing all the gloobas inside to explode. Angel tells Fabian comically “Hope you got a strong stomach there bro. It’s gonna be nasty when we get inside.” Once they get inside the walls are covered in the gore of the aliens; Fabian then throws up after seeing the green and blue blood. Angel laughs and says “So much for having a strong stomach.” They begin to explore the sleeping quarters and find a keycard leading to the Main Hallway. Angel jumps on one of the beds, hits a switch and the bed rises up about 5ft. All of a sudden Angel finds himself in a room with a poster of the Beta sign and also finds a new weapon. This weapon was twin guns that shot small but powerful heat seeking missiles, it was code named “Devastator”. Angel heads back down to Fabian and tells him the basement code is “Beta”. They use the keycard to open a blast door but find the next room is flooded with sharks; it was a huge room as well. Fabian tells Angel that he hears a generator and sees live wire hanging down from the ceiling.
Meanwhile Maria was still trying to find a way out of the trap that she was in. Then she sees a capsule and throws it into the laser trip mines which cause them to explode. The blast is powerful enough to blast the enemies away from the doorway. Maria then kills the enemies that were surrounding her. She looks to the next security room which is huge and full of enemies, she grabs a sub-machine gun and starts to take care of the aliens. However a BattleGlooba also guards the area and begins to launch mortar shots in her direction. Maria dodges the explosive rounds however just like Luis she has no explosive weapon on her. So Maria needs to improvise, she sees a sentry turret upstairs on the opposite side of where BattleGlooba is. Maria dodges fire from BattleGlooba while she's running she sees the red access card. Maria makes it up to the turret and begins to unload on BattleGlooba with the turret until she is able to finally kill him. She hears a robotic sound; a sentry drone comes behind her ready to attack. Maria gets off the turret and jumps down to the bottom while the drone explodes the turret. While it was a decent fall Maria is just fine not sustaining any injury. She says "Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean you can resurrect and pick on me! I'm one bitch you can't mess with!" She grabs the red access card then she sees laser trip mines beginning to open up from the wall. Maria runs out to the exit as fast as she can to avoid the laser trip mines, she barely escapes the trap. Maria says out of breath "Whew!... It seems... that I'm... not welcomed here. At least I got the card time to head back to the door leading to central command. Maria heads back to the central command door.
Back down on the 1st floor Dayvon is heading towards the location of the screaming. Dayvon screams "Who's there? Anyone there answer me!" Then the scream is heard again, Dayvon finds the source of the screaming but he is too late. A pack of slimers had eaten the brains and body of a surviving worker, Dayvon can only look at the situation in shock as the worker was being eaten alive and the slimers were starting to grow. Dayvon says in anger "Time to freeze you freaks of nature!" Dayvon uses his frezzethrower to freeze the slimers and with all his might punches the frozen slimers into ice pieces. He sees a group of eggs and he freezes them all, while shooting he says "I'm sending all of you parasitic freaks to the other side before you have the dishonor of being born in this world. Die you parasites!" Dayvon destroys all of the slimer eggs; a whole lot of green and blue goo from the dead slimers can be all over the wall. A really bad odor can be smelled from the dead slimers just like sewer water. While the worker was eaten alive he did leave a blue keycard for the door to central command. After he grabs the keycard Dayvon heads back to meet with the other; who he assumes are still alive.
Meanwhile in the mechanical room Luis continues to crawl his way to BattleGlooba to avoid being seen by him. BattleGlooba continues to look around still not completely convinced that the room is clear of any humans. Luis sees BattleGlooba turns his head towards his direction and quickly rolls under a desk to avoid being spotted. Luis becomes nervous because BattleGlooba starts to move in his direction walking ever so slowly. Luis has to stay still like a statue and make no noise until he can get a clear shot at BattleGlooba's groin. When BattleGlooba gets next to Luis, Luis sees his opportunity when he sees BattleGlooba's head is turned. Luis starts to crawl under BattleGlooba become even more nervous as he progresses. After carefully moving he finally gets under BattleGlooba and the under his groin just the position Luis wanted to get to. Luis says to BattleGlooba "Suck it Down big boy, gonna be the worse shit you're ever take!" Then Luis blasts BattleGlooba's groin with his shotgun and BattleGlooba screams in pain ready to kneel down. Luis quickly gets out of the way, after BattleGlooba falls down back first Luis points his shotgun to BattleGlooba face and says "Eww who's your plastic surgeon, well Dr. Luis is here to rearrange that ugly face of yours." Luis blasts BattleGlooba's face with the shotgun and says after "Now that this ugly piece of shit is where he belongs, its time to find out if the access card is in the security room." He wipes off the blood off his boots and proceeds to the security room that he had open previously. He enters the security room and to his surprise a yellow keycard is just sitting there in a normal office area. Luis says "Hmm I'll take this keycard, what the hell?" Luis legs get trapped by metal wraps rendering him immobile and then a red laser begins to move towards Luis which cuts a chair in half. Luis says "Damn now I'm in some trouble hopefully one of the others can hear me. HELP!" Luis continues to scream for help in hopes someone come in to help.
Angel and Fabian meanwhile try to find a way around the flooded room filled with sharks. Angel sees a small path way surrounding the flooded area and tells Fabian "Hey listen my man we're gonna have to shimmy our way through using the small path. Perhaps maybe those live wires can help us out to "light" things up if you know what I mean." Fabian says "Yeah I understand you my friend." Angel and Fabian attempt to grab the live wire so use it on the water to use it as a conductor to fry the sharks. When the two get close to the live wire to pull it down a shark comes and tries to attack while the shark isn't able to grab either Angel or Fabian but Fabian is knocked down into the water. Angel is able to grab the live wire but now he couldn't use it because he would shock Fabian as well who fell into the water. The same shark that attacked last time turns back and begins to go after Fabian. Fabian doesn't panic though he waits for the shark to open its mouth and gets a perfect shot killing the shark, but the other sharks begin to go after Fabian. However Fabian is able to get his footing back on the small path, Angel throws the live wire into the water, then a big arc flash is seen and the electrical current kills all of the sharks. Angel says after the burning smell "Although it's the scent of electrocuted sharks, the smell is very appetizing, mmm fried shark sounds good doesn't it Fabian?" Fabian laughs and says "Wow for a really bad situation we're in you sure got a sense a humor." Angel responds "Well you got to; it's what has been keeping us alive." Angel and Fabian are able to get out of the flooded room and we're ready to proceed to the main hallway. Before they could continue though Fabian realizes his notes of the signs needed to open the door to central command was full of water and it became illegible. Angel says to Fabian "Hey just remember it like this Omega was in the sub-basement and Beta was in the basement. We just need the symbols for the 1st and 2nd floors." Angel and Fabian use the keycard to access the elevator to the main floor.
Luis is still screaming for help as the red cutting laser is getting close to him. After Angel and Fabian get off the elevator they can hear the call for help. Dayvon also hears the call for help as well and gets moving to where he hears the screaming. Angel and Fabian find themselves meeting up with Dayvon in the main hallway, Angel says to Dayvon "Am I glad to see you!" Dayvon responds in a rush "Yeah it is a good thing no time to small talk though I think someone's in trouble." Angel responds "I heard the same thing let's go in together." Fabian while running with Angel asks "Who's this guy?" Angel says "No time to explain, one of my friends is in trouble." Angel, Fabian and Dayvon find Luis trapped; they try to loosen the straps with no luck. Fabian sees a sign "To deactivate laser trap the two buttons on each side must be pressed in unison." Fabian says "Hey I'll press this button and one of you press the other button but it has to be at the same time." So Fabian goes to the left button and Angel goes to the right button, then they press the buttons at the same time. The laser stops just before it gets to Luis, the straps are released from Luis's foot and the four are reunited. Luis says in gratitude "Yo thanks I was almost cut in half here, well lets go meet Maria or at least I hope she's upstairs." Fabian sees a Delta sign on one of the picture frames. Luis and Dayvon ask who Fabian was, Angel explains who Fabian is and how they met. Angel says "Now that we gotten to meet each other where is central command?" Luis responds "Upstairs and Maria should be up there with the other keycard to open central command." Angel says "Wait a minute I saw a note downstairs about having to match Greek symbols to the proper floor, what's this keycard business?" Fabian says "Wait that note was ripped from the top so that note may not had been in it's entirely." Angel responds "Well let's get on moving we'll find out soon enough." The four head upstairs to the door leading to central command.
Angel, Fabian, Dayvon and Luis head up stairs but before they can get up there another BattleGlooba shows up. Dayvon and Luis say “Him again, how many times is he going to come back from the dead!” However with teamwork they take out the BattleGlooba rather easily. Angel then explains “Guys you see all these BattleGloobas these are simply weaker clones of the main BattleGlooba that we killed back in the Mohawk temple.” Dayvon asks “So that means they are more of these bastards running around?” Angel responds “Exactly I’m sure you guys have bumped into one at least once.” Dayvon says “I haven’t yet but I found something even worse “green slimmer that eat you alive” yeah and their eggs.” Luis says “Sounds disgusting I could only imagine if these aliens do rule the world and these freaks are the population.” After the small talk they head to the door for central command. Once they reached upstairs Maria is there waiting for them, Maria is happy to see all of them especially Angel then she asks who Fabian is. Angel tells Maria who Fabian is and Maria responds “Hmm Fabian I have a brother who’s name is Fabian and he looks just like you, can it be? Nah never mind.” Fabian says “What it is?” Maria says “It’s fine nothing serious, okay everyone lets put our Access cards in.” Maria, Dayvon and Luis insert their Access cards in but the door doesn’t open or unlock, instead a console comes out behind the access card panel with Greek Symbols. The console reads “SB, 1, 2 and B” and Greek symbols (Alpha, Beta, Delta and Omega) appear below the floor numbers. Angel says “Ok Fabian so Sub-Basement was Omega, Basement was Beta and the first floor was…” Angel can’t seem to remember that the sign for the first floor is; Fabian reminds Angel that it is Beta. So by process of elimination the second floor was Alpha. After figuring out the puzzle the lights lit up and a loud sound is heard then the door to central command begins to open.
When the doors open the heroes see a huge computer system which is supposed to control the satellite dish but has be reprogrammed to control the heat ray. While the angle could be controlled but to the heroes disappointment the heat ray could not be turned off or destroyed. That meant that at best our heroes could only buy some time, they still needed to find a way to shut off the heat ray. While Angel starts to hack into the computer to adjust the heat ray’s angle, numerous amount of enemies start to enter central command. Several iguana enforcers, flying salamander troopers and sentry drones enter central command ready to take our heroes out. Dayvon freezes several of the aliens, Maria uses her machine gun to take care of the iguana enforcers, while Luis fights off the troopers in melee combat and Fabian uses his warclub to defeat his enemies. With the ground troops defeated Maria uses her machine gun to shoot the sentry drones. When she destroys one of the sentry drones the other drones are so close to it that a domino effect is created. As a result all of the sentry drones explode with no harm to our heroes. Angel finally finishes reprogramming the heat ray; he programs the ray to the northern mountains to slow down the warming process before the hills completely melt. Luis says “Well that’s dealt with finally, what’s next?” Fabian responds “According to the map the gloobas have built a lab of their own for their research and to raise their armies. I see a big building to the north which looks to be out target. It should be much easier now that the snow has stopped although at this time of year it really is unusually warm and calm.” Dayvon says “Good should be easier to get to these alien creeps!” Maria agrees “Yeah for once Dayvon I agree with you!” Angel responds “Yes it will be easier but it doesn’t necessary mean it’s a good thing it only means the warming is taking place quicker than expected. If we don’t stop them here the flooding damage caused maybe too much to reverse even with the anti-matter ball.” A rattling noise is heard then two shafts in the central command room break out of nowhere. A huge group of slimers come out of the shafts; Dayvon then says “Yo those are the slimy things I was talking about that eat you alive!” Maria starts to shoot them but there numbers continue to grow, Dayvon tells Maria “No use shooting them their numbers are too great we gotta run for it!” With the room filling up with the slimers our heroes head to the balcony and jump out of the main tower before the slimers begin to eat everything in the room and begin to grow in size. Our heroes who narrowly escape from the slimers start to head for the laboratory in their search for the heat ray.
Our heroes despite facing many hardships during their journey in the main communication tower find many answers. Not only that they are able to buy some time by slowing down the melting of the Arctic Circle and possibly saving Earth from a catastrophic flood at least for now. All of our heroes find out that BattleGlooba was cloned into although weaker versions of the actual BattleGlooba but were still as deadly. What other surprises are in store for our heroes as they head to the laboratory? Where is the heat ray and can it be destroyed in time? Finally is Quentin being held in the laboratory? For without Quentin the anti-matter ball will be useless as Quentin is the only one who can formulate the ball properly to reverse the damage done to earth already. Our heroes don’t have much time to waste; time is literally melting away for them.