When the Firerunner blew up, some force grabbed Ves' consciousness and pulled him back to his present time and space.
His mind came back online in his own body, but he felt an enormous amount of fatigue. The brief but intense ordeal on Rilrod severely taxed his spirit.
As he took a brief rest, he looked around and found to his alarm that his body hadn't woken up in his bed. Instead, his body somehow ended up in the lab!
Ves jumped off the chair and looked around for anyone who could have moved his body here. "Who's there! What did you do to me?"
The only thing that greeted him was a bemused Lucky. The gem cat meowed at him as if he was relieved that Ves had returned to his senses.
Ves looked back at the lab machine and found to his surprise that it looked a lot different from when he previously left it. The most important change was that a strange cube the size of his palm rested in the lab machine.