He opened the door slowly, not knowing what to expect. Why would Anton want to see him, before even notifying Trent? It just didn't make any sense. His eyes fell onto Anton, who looked to be resting peacefully. Hesitantly Tommy made his way over and took a seat.

Anton slowly opened his eyes and found Tommy staring right at him. "Tommy. I'm glade you came."

His face was pale and he looked weak. All they would tell Tommy over the phone was that he had woken up, nothing about his condition and whether it would improve. "They said over the phone you needed to speak to me."

He nodded his head gently. "Yes," he replied weakly.

"Why me? I would have thought you'd want to see Trent."

Anton was silent for a moment. "Because I needed to discuss some things with you." He gulped in heavily. "The doctors do not believe I will survive…"

Tommy's heart began racing with fear. He shook his head, not wanting to believe it, but even as he stared at him, he knew it to be true, Anton didn't look well. Not well at all.

He gulped in heavily. "The mutation that I had undergone is slowly eating away at my organs. It's only a matter of time until it will kill me."

Tommy bowed his head, sighing heavily. If only he had known long ago, maybe he could have done something, stopped it from happening. "Why? Why didn't you tell me? I could have helped you, stopped you from testing on yourself…" he rambled on until Anton reached out to him.

"There was nothing you could have done, Tommy." He smiled faintly. "I'm a scientist, after all." He paused a moment, gathering his words, his guilt. "I just want you to know how sorry I am, for everything. I hope someday you will be able to forgive me for all the pain and hardship I have caused you." He blamed himself for everything that had happened, maybe even more than Tommy blamed himself.

Tommy looked into his eyes, nodding his head. He couldn't let him take on all the blame, not when he could have prevented all of this from happening. He cleared his throat, wanting to press on to a more concerning matter. "When are you going to tell Trent the news?"

Anton sighed heavily; his eyes were sad and tired. "When he gets here." He looked to Tommy, pleading. "I hope you'll be able to be there for him. After I'm gone, he'll be alone. But I've taken care of everything…He'll be okay." He found it hard to go on, whether it was getting difficult to speak or just too painful, he didn't know. Maybe both.

"Of course," Tommy answered. "Trent told me he lost his birth parents a few years ago-"

Anton sighed heavily. "That's what he tells everyone."

A confused looked crossed Tommy's face. "You mean they aren't dead?"

"No. They are dead, have been for the last thirteen years."

"Thirteen years? What? But-"

"There something you have to understand about Trent. When he was just five years old he witnessed the death of his parents, before his very little eyes. We were on a dig, heading into a cave…"

"Now Trent, you stay right here and play with your truck. We'll be back real soon." Trent's mother gently kissed him on the forehead.

"Okay Mom," he replied.

"Trent, if we're not back in half an hour send a search partly out for us," joked his father, as he patted him on the back.

"Dad," laughed Trent

"You two all set to go?" asked Anton, who was standing behind them.

"Yeah," answered John as he picked up his pack and headed towards Anton.

"We weren't even in the cave five minutes. It all happened so fast, we had no time to react…"

"Hey I think I found something. Anton! Helen! Over here," yelled John as he began digging away at the cave rocks. He gently brushed away the small specks of dust to uncover the fossil.

Anton and Helen crawled over near him, the space around them was small and tight. "Oh that's so amazing, John. Anton, look," said Helen, moving over a little to give Anton a better look.

"Keep going, this could be our greatest find yet."

"You got it."

Too excited, no one noticed the little pieces of rocks giving way from above. The more John dug away, the quicker the rocks and sand began to give, and start to cave in.

The cave started shaking. Piles of sand and little stones began to drop on top of them. "Shit. It's gonna blow!" yelled John. "We got to get out of here. Now!"

Anton moved as fast as he could turn around in the small space and began crawling as fast as he could with Helen and John following close behind him. He crawled with all his might, scratching and cutting his fingers and ripping his pants. It seemed like forever since he had seen daylight, only the darkness of the cave…And then….He saw it, light. "We're almost there, just a little farther!"

Tears glowed in his eyes, as he began to relive the memory. "I moved as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough."

The first thing he remembered seeing was Trent staring right at him. He remembered that Trent looked scared to death. Anton bolted out of the cave, just as the cave caved in, crushing both Helen and John.

Anton stared into Trent's death stricken eyes. He slowly turned around and saw the reasoning behind it. The cave had collapsed. "No…."

"Mommy! Daddy!" he heard Trent cry. "NO!"

Tommy's face fell. "That must have been terrible for him and for you."

He nodded his head. "It was." Anton licked his lips. "He doesn't talk about it, blocks it out and changes the story saying they died a few years ago, to ease his pain. Pretending that the accident never happened." He cleared his throat. "I have tried to get him to talk about it, but…"

Never had he felt so much agony in his heart. And he thought he had problems, just goes to show, there's always someone else out there who has it worse. He couldn't imagine the pain Anton must be going through right now. "I promise I'll be there for him, Anton. You have my word."

"Thank you, my old friend."

Tommy smiled gently. "No problem."

Anton returned the smile briefly, then his smile turned very serious. "There's something you should know, about Zeltrax."

"I know, he's Smitty. I've tried to get through to him, but I couldn't."

Anton sighed. "He's probably too far gone. He doesn't remember the man he was, only his anger."

Tommy nodded his head sadly. "Yeah." He had seen more than one side of Zeltrax's anger towards him, the envy he felt.

Anton then got very serious, as if there was some burden he had carried with him for far too long. "But he wasn't the only one turned into what he is now, there was another."

"Who?" asked Tommy, having no idea who Anton was speaking of. Although hidden deep in the back of his mind, he knew.

"I believe you met her a few times. Ellie Ladnar, Smitty's fiancée."

Tommy's face looked like he had just seen a ghost. He began seeing flashes of the photo he had left on his desk and then images of Elsa and Principal Randall flashing in his mind. And then a memory came.

"Tommy, glad you could make it," said Smitty, getting up from his seat and giving his friend a hug and a good pat on the back.

"Hey, I wouldn't miss having lunch here," he laughed. The two men laughed together and then Tommy's eyes fell onto a very beautiful young woman, with long black hair and gleaming eyes.

Smitty smiled. "Tommy, I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Ellie Ladnar." Smitty walked around and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her gently on the cheek.

"It's nice to meet you, Ellie." Tommy put out his hand.

Ellie shook it. "You too. Smitty told me all about you."

Tommy laughed. "Good things, I hope."

Ellie smiled and laughed. "You can expect to hear only the best from Smitty…"

He could just hit himself for being so stupid. He should have seen it. "Elsa! Randall! I knew she looked familiar, but I just couldn't put my finger on it." He smacked himself on the head. "I should have seen it. How could I have been so stupid?"

"Don't be so hard on yourself. It can happen to the best of us."

He nodded his head. "How? How did she become Elsa? The last I knew when we declared Smitty dead, she left and went back home."

A grim look crossed Anton's face. "She came to me, just a few days after we had stopped the search for Smitty, declaring him dead. We yelled at each other, said some things…."

"I don't believe this! You're just going to stop looking for him?"

"We searched the whole perimeter; all we found was a good amount of his blood on the rocks. He was probably eaten by bears or some other wild animals."

"You don't know that! He could still be alive, out there, starving, or he could be hurt," she cried.

He started to approach her, wanting to take her in his arms. "Ellie, we have been searching for weeks. You need to face it, Terrance is gone."

She shook her head angrily. "No! No I will never accept that Smitty is gone, not until I see a body."

"Ellie, please be reasonable."

She shoved him away. "Damn you! Damn you! You say you're his friend, but you didn't even offer the partnership to him, after he had worked alongside you for years. And now you're just giving up on him!" She looked him right in the eyes, anger burning with hurt. "I'm going to go look for him, and don't try to stop me…" she snapped.

"Ellie, please wait. Let me explain-"

"I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen," Anton sighed.

"What happened after that?" asked Tommy.

"Several hours had passed and she hadn't returned. So I set out to look for her. I went to the location where you saw Smitty fall…"

Anton walked through the brush that led to the ground below the mountain until he reached the location. He looked around, but didn't see Ellie anywhere. All he saw was her pack, lying on the ground, torn, as if some animal had ripped it. He saw fresh blood marks around the area, but not enough to believe that she had been killed by a bear or lion.

"Ellie! Ellie, it's Anton!" he yelled out. He wasn't sure how many times he had yelled, until he just stopped. Perhaps she was still mad at him and that's why she wasn't responding? Maybe she had just accepted things and had gone on back home?

He walked around some more, seeing if he could find any other traces of her. Hours had passed when he decided to take a break, perhaps even head back to the camp once he was rested up. He took a sip of his water and then poured some on top of his head, to cool him off. That's when he saw it, the strange glowing. And at least two sets of footprints, one smaller, the other seemed large and unnatural.

"I walked and walked, but found no trace of her. Then I came upon this small, dying tree; this strange glowing ooze was coming out of it, two sets of footprints around it. It seemed unnatural, so being the scientist I was, I took a sample. I took it back to the lab and began testing it. It was alive. I found living organisms within it. So I went back and got all of it."

Tommy became very alert. "That was the ooze we used to make the Tryrandrones."

Anton nodded his head. "Yes, along with the dino gems. But then I went and did more testing on the ooze, tested it on myself." He sighed heavily, looking into Tommy's eyes. "You know the rest…"

Tommy cleared his throat. "And Ellie?"

"Never found any trace of her, nothing at all. I only can guess there must have been some radiation or something around the area that caused both her and Smitty to just vanish and turned them into what they are today." He bit his lip and sighed heavily. "Only after I had fully become Mesogog did they re-emerge, and found me, but they were no longer the same people, didn't remember anything." His face fell. "Mesogog made sure that would continue…" Anton's face grew sadder. "I had tried to help them remember, but Mesogog always got in the way, wanting to use them as he wished. Twisted every thought in their mind…"

"It wasn't your fault, you couldn't control yourself when you were Mesogog," stated Tommy, knowing all to well what it was like to be controlled by something which you couldn't stop.

Anton smiled faintly. "No. But it could have been prevented…." His face fell, with a great burden of guilt, for his two old friends.

Tommy licked his lips. "Yeah," he replied softly. I could have prevented it…