Lysana and Vasir jumped out of the lift, cursing with relief and frustration. Stairs wouldn't have been any more practicable, but the sudden halt of the lift and the moments of Horatio falling out of contact had done a number on both Spectres' nerves.

All her years as a Spectre had only just prepared Vasir to deal with this particular operation. Her head ached with tension, the pressure of having to do everything correctly to secure the best outcome beating with each pulse of her heart, of the blood in her veins. They were so close…and yet she suspected that in some ways they couldn't be that close. The Reapers had a way of springing nasty surprises, just when they would be most effective.

They made their way up the Council Chambers, up innumerable damnable stairs—she had always hated the stairs, even if she recognized their tactical value—to the consoles belonging to the Council.

She remembered the first time she saw the Council up close, a Commando at the time, a brash, headstrong Maiden who had only wanted to protect her people, to be their bulwark and shield. She remembered the day they made her a Spectre, how proud, awed, and honored she'd been. She remembered the first time she met Lysana, thinking that she was certainly the elder of the two…but it wasn't true. Lysana had another several decades on her both in terms of service and age. She simply chose to act like a child.

Vasir glanced at Lysana; the perky, chipper, gregarious mask was off now, revealing the hard, cold Spectre underneath. It was stamped across her face: nothing short of total dismemberment was going to stop her. Nothing. Woe be unto anyone who tried.

The console was unlocked, wholly responsive. That might be Horatio keeping it open, or maybe some of his geth cohorts had arrived and gotten into the system. He seemed to think the C-Sec network would let them do just about anything they needed to—except activate station controls. But Horatio didn't need to remote access those with two teams available to do it.

Horatio was more interested in this thing it seemed to have found. It wasn't discussing the matter much, but that was the impression Vasir got.

"Ward arms are…opening," she announced to Lysana, who stood a few feet away, holding up a shimmering biotic dome to protect them from the anticipated swarm of reciprocity. They weren't sure what the Reapers could throw at them, but they were bracing for the absolute worst…although both had noticed that there had been almost no Reaper presence on the Citadel beyond a few husks. "…and locked. We'll see how long it lasts."

"Congratulations. The Crucible is T minus twenty five minutes out. Please hold position," Horatio announced.

Twenty five minutes until they knew whether or not they were saved. That meant it was time to start wondering how, when this was over, the asari were going to cover the fact that they'd had relevant information, then sat on it until it got stolen, to hide the fact that they'd been breaking their own laws. That they'd been hording Prothean tech did not bother her; every species tried to do it, it was just that her people had been better at keeping it quiet. But it would matter to the rest of the galaxy, especially because this refusal to confess led to the data's theft and if Shepard hadn't been there to take it back…

…yes, the asari were in for a rough time, Vasir thought sadly. Bad enough that her poor homeworld had finally felt the claws of war, but that her people were to have every familiar security torn away in the aftermath? That was harder to bear. She understood war too well to have been surprised when Thessia fell. But to watch her people fall off the pedestal the galaxy usually kept them up on? That was going to be unpleasant to swallow. Like strong black coffee.

"What are you thinking?" Lysana asked edgily, as Horatio informed them that the Crucible was T minus twenty minutes out, and a krogan contingent had arrived and were en route towards 'an object of interest. Please hold your position.'

"Just wondering what happens to the asari when this is over," Vasir admitted. "Wondering how the rest of the galaxy is going to want to punish us over the Prothean data cache."

Lysana snorted. "Yeah, that's going to make a real mess," she grunted. "You think there was anything in there about the Reapers?"

"I hope not, because that means we didn't know they were coming. But if it had data about the Catalyst…it had to have some mention of the Reapers. And the Matriarchs and scientists sat on it." How hard would it have been to extract the data and hand it over to Shepard, claiming it was part of some other known trove? Or to hand it to an asari Spectre, who would understand not stirring the pot just now, and have her hand it over to Shepard—'hey, a research team found this.'

But no. No one among the Matriarchs had that degree of subtlety and discretion. It was sad, since subtle and discreet were usually two of the first words Vasir thought of when it came to the Matriarchs.

She hated to think it, because Shepard was a good Spectre, but if the Matriarchs had simply called Shepard in, they could have explained about the trove, given her lip service that they were wrong to sit on it like they had, and ask her to hold her silence just until the war was over…that would have worked. The only problem was that once the war was over, they would have wanted to silence Shepard, and that was no way to repay her as a soldier or a Spectre for her cooperation and discretion.

That was the thing about wars: they didn't just end when the sides agreed to stop fighting.