For Dr. Luca Ponti, Director General of the European Center for Heavy Ion Research (ECHIR), the day that will transform his career and change mankind forever, has arrived. On a snowy spring morning, in the Alps near the Swiss-French border, MAHIC, the world's largest and only Matter-Antimatter Heavy Ion Collider will be put to its ultimate test. By compressing matter and replicating the density of space moments after the Big Bang, Dr. Ponti and his team hope to unify all the forces of nature in a single and elegant theory, one which will explain the very essence of the universe and existence... but there are complications. Two of the project's lead scientists, Dr. Steven Webber and Dr. Travis Norton, a.k.a. Toad, notice radiation emanating from the center of the collision tunnel. Upon investigation, they discover a sphere of blue energy pulsating with life. All too soon however, they determine it to be a portal of some kind... a portal to the afterlife.