Alanwa is locked away in the “bubble” for a while.  She is in and out of consciousness and looses track of time.

A young man (Matthew) walks down and has a cooler with him.  He puts the cooler down on the table next to an older man (Westin).

M – The samples from Croatia are in.  Did you want to look at them now?

W – No – put them over there – I will look at them later.  I am still having problems with the time sphere – it is accelerating too fast and we are losing cell cohesion.

M – I thought the time acceleration problems were due to tass quality – that should have been fixed with the last batch?

W – The last batch appears to have disappeared.  Someone tripped the alarm last night and apparently took most of the Tass with them.

M – Who? Technocracy?

W – No – it was too sloppy to be technocracy – if it was the technocracy we would never even know they had been here.  Now, let us see how the adjustments I made affected the Time sphere:

They walk over to a globe-like thing where Westin pushes some buttons and they wait expectantly.

There is a power up sound and the globe gets a bluish tone to it.  It makes a very loud noise, and a thumping noise and then suddenly it stops.  There is a whoosh and the globe starts to open.  You see a boy lying down inside of it.  He looks to be about 18 years old.

Westin walks up to him and inspects him.  He puts his hand on the shoulder of the boy and says

W – Adam?

The boy wakes up and looks at him and smiles.  He sits up – Westin looks delighted.  The boy swings over and puts his feet on the ground

W – “Take it easy – slowly” The boy smiles.

W – How do you feel?

The boy looks like he is about to say something and cannot get the words out.  He tries again and then puts his hand to his chest.  He starts coughing and clutching at his chest.  The cough gets stronger and stronger and in the middle of his fit – he starts bleeding from the nose, mouth everywhere.  The boy is bleeding so much now that he appears to be gagging in his own blood.  Westin looks at the boy with a terrified look on his face.  After a few minutes of gagging in blood – the boy’s body simply explodes into a pool of blood.  Some of that blood splashes on to Westin.

W – DAMMIT!

Westin takes his robe off – and looks at Matthew and hands him the blood-soaked robe.

W – I overcompensated.  DAMMIT.  Where are those new samples?

Matthew shows Westin the cooler – they walk over to it and open it.  He pulls vials from it inspects them and then puts them back inside.

W – Well – I am not trying it again without the proper tass.

M – You have a new sample here – <walks over to the dome with Alanwa in it> why can’t you use her tass?

W – Sighs – I have told you already – her tass is entropy – I need time.

Westin walks over to Alanwa’s bubble as well and looks in with Matthew.

M – How long do we have this one for? The last one lasted less than a month.

W – I would say 6 weeks tops.

M – I don’t get it – that guy that comes here – Gregor – he would last much longer than that – why don’t we take him?

W – Because he keeps the bloodsuckers off our back and he can provide us with an endless supply of Entropy Tass.  Bloodsuckers are full of it and the ones that use magic have double the tass than normal bloodsuckers.

He walks over to the other dome – the one that glows red and has a lupine in it –

W – This one however, is almost spent.  We need another one.

M – These are harder to come by – they are no longer traveling alone – they travel in packs now you know.

W – I know – I still have some contacts left down in Dade – I am going to see if I can wrestle us another one.  Maybe Pentex has a few they are saving for experiments.

M – What about Time – what are going to do about that?

W – I am not sure – I haven’t seen any new shipments coming into Pentex recently – nothing to steal.

M – So what are we going to do?

Walks over to Alanwa’s cube …

W – I wonder…. Where is the file on this one – did they give us an age?

Matthew walks over to the some folders – open up the drawer and pulls a file out.  He looks through it briefly.  Then walks back towards Westin with the file open – he looks through the papers in the file, shuffling through most of them.

M – Uhm – not an exact age – you know how Gregor is about that – but she is over 100 years old from what I can tell.

W – I wonder… if I calibrate this for time – I wonder if I can extract some Time Tass instead?

M – What about entropy?

W – We still have some entropy left from the last sample – let’s see if we can squeeze some time out of this one…

M – But I thought you said this one only provides Entropy?

W- Well yes – in its natural state yes – but I wonder if I re-calibrate the converter, if I can extract time from her.  If she is over 100 years old, she should have some time saved up.  Of course this will use her up much sooner, but at least we will have some time.

They walk over to the bank of machines and Westin starts to type some stuff in.  He types and types and turns a few knobs and after about 10 minutes looks up at Alanwa.

W – and that should do it – let’s see what we can get.

Westin turns a knob on the console and the machine buzzes and hums and you feel a vibration inside the dome and then a very sharp pain as the machine buzzes and hums even higher.  You feel the life draining out of you, and you look down and see your veins popping out of the skin even.  You feel your skin sinking into your body almost like a balloon deflating and the pain is almost intolerable.  After a few minutes, you pass out.