It's not storing the value. It's more that it gets stuck switching, and takes an unkown amount of time to resolve itsef. The classical picture on metastability is a hill with 1 and 0 on both sides, and a ball that is pushed over the hill to switch between 1 and 0. But when the uTsu or uTh is violated, that ball gets pushed to the top of the hill but doesn't have the momentum to go to the other side, and so it takes longer for it eventually roll back down(and you don't know which way it will roll). That's why more registers are added, so that they have a period of time to wait for that ball to roll to a valid state before the clock it. Otherwise, if the unkown state is sent out to multiple registers, one might see it and resolve it as a 1, while another may resolve it to be a 0, and when different registers identify the same signal as different values, bad things can happen(state-machin lockup, etc.).
But in simulation, when a register's uTsu and uTh is violated, that register goes to X and never gets resolved. So that X propogates throughout the design and the simulation is essentially useless. So you add this assignment saying not to go to X but to a 1 or a 0(doesn't matter which, since physically you never know) and the simulation will work. Naturally, this is a brief description.
In TimeQuest for Stratix III, thre is a metastability analysis(has to be enabled under Fitter Settings)