Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.

Author Notes: I'm surprised at how quickly I was able to get this one done, even with some of the added research I had to do. I'm hoping to continue riding that wave. Enjoy!

Episode 63: The Revenant of Eden Prime [Part I]

The Old Whistling Mountain mine yard was a warren of buildings and rail tracks. The pad where the Kodiak landed had once been a staging ground where a crane transferred ore onto vehicles, to be taken to the foundry and mill in town. The tangle of long-unused cart tracks connecting the yard to the mine was still in place. The recessed rails were a tripping hazard covered in a loose layer of old ore dust. All of it had also oxidized during the two decades since the mine closed, covering every building in rust runs and giving the ground a patchy appearance.

Of the number of structures on the surface, the largest was the mine's life support station, which housed both the mine's fusion power plant and the enormous blowing apparatus that forced breathable air underground. Two conduit pipes emerged from the building's roof and ran into the mine's main entrance, one being bigger than the other, carrying the air, and the other the power. There was also the smaller building that sheltered the miniature mine trains that performed many different tasks within the mine.

The main entrance itself was at least ten meters in diameter. After the mine's closure the company closed off the entrance by installing a metal barrier on it that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast. At the bottom were two sets of large, heavy-looking doors draped with chains as thick as Shepard's wrist held shut by tumbler padlocks with anti-cutting guards. The whole thing was positively plastered with warning plaques in multiple languages to notify any would-be spelunker of the various deadly hazards within, as well as the heavy fines on unauthorized access.

Carl had surprised her by announcing that he had a couple of his friends drop by the mine in the hours since their meeting on the beach. Though only Carl and Denis would be going inside, the others had ensured that at least the lights inside worked, and then set one of the mine train locomotives to charge. It was a bit of favor-pulling, as the power was coming from Blackrock itself via an emergency line. The mine's own small fusion reactor was unfueled and behind on maintenance. The company would never foot the maintenance and fuel bills. That meant they did not have enough power to run the blowers, though even if they did, it would still take days for the sensors in the deepest sections of the mine to report adequate oxygen levels.

Setting up the mine train took a bit. The diminutive locomotive only had a small enclosed cab for its driver, to transport crew it had to be coupled to a crew car, which was a basically a claustrophobic sheet metal box with two long benches inside mounted on train wheels. After the crew car they needed a flat cargo pallet car to take equipment down as well. The amount of equipment still on site told Shepard something about the company's plans. They had not discarded the thought of re-opening this part of the mine.

Carl, Denis, and Kaidan spent a good fifteen minutes shuttling gear from the back of the equipment truck onto the cargo pallet car. The miners brought everything from spare scrubber filters and masks to hand-held digging gear and meters of rope. They also brought enough food and water to feed themselves for three days. The generator in the other truck was to be used for recharging equipment, if the work required that.

While they were doing that, Liara was busy with her equipment case. From what Shepard could see, the archeologist brought her whole tool kit with her. She had a terminal and a small collection of various peripherals, but also standard tools that Shepard would consider archeology basics. All of it was currently clean, but it showed that the asari was not above getting her hands dirty, even if her bright white, blue-accented armor would become utterly filthy in the process.

In the end, Carl muscled the heavy doors open so that Denis could drive their train inside, then they closed and latched the doors behind the train. The main tunnel inside was ringed with dark stone supported by regularly-spaced metal beams and debris netting. The yellow-tinged lighting elements hung from the ducts were not exactly powerful to begin with, and about a tenth had not even turned on. Still, any little bit of weak lighting was preferable to stumbling in the dark.

Carl jumped up on the cargo car, opened one of the cases, and pulled out a portfolio of printed, laminated tunnel maps with a waving flourish. He then proceeded to lay it across Liara's kit crate. "Alright, Commander, what's your plan?" He asked, eager as a man half his age.

Shepard climbed up onto the pallet car and glanced down at the chart. "Yesterday you mentioned three sections with an unusual quantity of lodestone. Where is that?" She asked. The mine was a complete labyrinth, the large main tunnel ran deep into the mountain and then turned to descend underground. It also spawned a number of other tunnels running in every cardinal direction, each was labeled by a Greek letter. Those branching tunnels then in turn branched further into numbered, room-like chambers, many of which looked quite enormous. She glanced at Nihlus who was now at her side, idly wondering if they had bitten off more than they could chew.

"Ah yes. I figured you would be interested in those." Carl said as he flipped a folio sheet to show the mine's second level, seemingly oblivious to her moment of apprehension. "As you can see this main tunnel we're in right now, goes out west for two hundred meters, then branches into tunnels alpha, beta, and gamma, then it curves and descent into the mountain. The sections you want are off tunnel delta below us." He ran his finger down a tunnel that ran west. "Chambers five, six, and seven had the highest concentrations. We could throw nails at the wall and they'd stick."

"Great. I think we'll stop by there first." Shepard looked up from the map and toward the miners. "Doctor T'Soni and I discussed the possibility of using lodestone from those sections as an indicator. It'll be relatively easy to collect some samples and analyze their field lines, to see whether they point with a single, more powerful magnetic field from deeper within the mine. It might give us a clue where to put in the shovels, so to speak."

"Sounds like a plan! But you are right about the shovels. All of this will have to be done manually. We don't have enough power to operate any heavy cutting equipment," Carl said.

"It wouldn't be safe to power up the cutting wheels." Denis slipped in. "They're definitely behind on maintenance and we don't have the probes to test rock integrity. We don't want to cause a cave-in."

"That too!" Carl flicked a hand in Denis' general direction.

"A little manual work never hurt anyone," Shepard said. "Besides…" she glanced and grinned at Nihlus. "There must be an actual entrance into this place, and if it exists. The Protheans would have wanted to keep this installation well hidden, but not inaccessible." Shepard figured it would be best to continue referring to the ark in general terms. She did not want the miners to spook at the thought that they were digging under a Prothean cryogenic stasis colony that might have turned into a tomb.

Carl hummed thoughtfully, low in the back of his throat, but said nothing.

"Also if nails stick to those walls, we might not have to dig. The lodestone will be right in the face and we can pry some out," Liara said.

"That is good point," Carl beamed.

"We might not even have to dig for another reason," Denis announced suddenly.

Shepard instantly turned to face him, and it was blatantly apparent that she was not the only one to do so.

The Frenchman shook his head, "Commander, you are right to think there should be an entrance into that facility. I think I may even know where. And Carl…" he glanced at his friend. "It's not down in the delta section. That was cut later. Remember the original layout? This main tunnel went back. We started alpha and beta off natural gaps in the rock. But remember that weird chamber off alpha, number three?"

Carl all but jumped as his eyes widened. "Denis, you're a genius. You know that? I forgot about alpha three! We never did clear it fully! It would be just the right sort of sick joke the universe would pull, wouldn't it?"

"Where is alpha three?" Shepard asked.

Carl did not say a word, he just turned the map portfolio back to the first page and pointed at a tunnel running west right off the curving section of the main passage. Then he ran his finger down its length as it turned southwest, and finally stabbed his finger at the chamber marked with the number three. Shepard noted that alpha was narrower than the main tunnel, there was just one line of rail running down its length where-as the nearby north-running beta tunnel had two. The chambers coming off alpha were also shorter and there were just four of them, whereas the other sections had as many as eight. Alpha three was on the west side, in the very depths of the mountain. It was not an enclosed loop, indicating that miners did not know how far it actually went.

"Alpha is the oldest section of the mine. It's actually this same central tunnel continuing deeper in. We did not widen it fully because every chamber off it produced very little ore." Carl explained. "We figured the ore vein did not go that way, so we curved and went deeper in. Section delta is immediately below alpha's even numbered chambers, and that's where the ore started."

"This whole mine was cut into what appeared to be a natural cave system. The cave allowed us to set up operation a little faster than if we went blasting in." Denis added.

"The chamber in question was as the very tip of what we thought was a natural feature, and already caved in. We partly cleared it, just to check for ore, but there was none. It was a weird thing too, this being a long-extinct shield volcano and all. All the iron here is intrusive. Yet alpha seemed to be just… empty!" Carl went on.

"So what are we going to do?" Nihlus asked.

Shepard stared at the chart in front of her. The chamber in question was caved in, that meant they might have to move a lot of rock around. It was a backbreaking task none of them have signed up for. Did she want to commit that much energy, only to end up with nothing? The answer was a resounding no. They needed to get some indication that there was an ark inside this mountain before they committed any serious effort toward finding it.

"I think we should test Doctor T'Soni's technique first." Kaidan broke his previous silence.

Shepard looked back at him and smiled. "Took the words right out of my mouth, Kaidan. I want to run some tests on the magnetic fields inside this mine first. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like busting my back shifting rocks if there is nothing inside this mountain. This is a super likely location for the facility, but not certain." At the end of the day, the only thing Nabu had showed her was Eden Prime as a location. He pointed her at a hay stack and told her to search. Then there was the fact that the Protheans had been discussing building the arks. There were higher-than-zero odds that they had never build them at all.

Still, as she turned to peer down the dimly-lit mine tunnel, she sincerely wished for the most unlikely of holes-in-one she would ever hit. She would hate to be the cause for such a colossal waste of time for everyone involved, and it would be more than a little embarrassing for her on top.

"Alright," Carl closed the portfolio and stuck it back into the supply crate he pulled it from. "Guess we go down to the tunnel delta."

"I'll drive, you give them the safety reading," Denis said, turned, and made his way toward the locomotive.

Carl clapped his hands hard, and though he wore gloves that deadened the sound, it still echoed down the tunnel. "Alright, people. Let me run you down a not-so-brief safety lecture, straight from our manuals." He paused there, looking at each of them in turn. "First rule, helmets stay on at all times, loose ore does drop from the ceiling. Second rule, old mines like this are always a collapse hazard. We're not on an asteroid where the lack of gravity actually helps, and this part of Eden Prime gets quite a bit of rain, so water seeping through might happen, and that can erode the rock and damage supports. Any water that seeps in here can pick up sulfur from the rocks and turn caustic. Do not touch any pool, no matter how clear it might appear. Third rule, the air might become unbreathable as we descend. Mines can present a deadly hazard through a combination of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, or even radon. Yes, radon. If you hear any high-pitched beeping, that is either Denis' and-or my detector going off. If that happens we mask up immediately." He tapped at the small device attached to his overalls for emphasis.

Shepard grimaced. Radon was radioactive, and exposure would mean a visit to the med bay and running a complete decontamination cycle on all their gear. It was more fussing than dangerous, but Shepard could do without the fuss too.

"Our suits have their own detectors too," Kaidan noted.

"Good. Even better!" Carl beamed. "Now I'm going to run you down the specifics of this mine. Up front I'll say we are lucky in that there are no fossil fuel deposits in this area of Eden Prime, so the risk of flammable methane is low. That said, this mountain actually used to be a volcano a long time ago. So if you smell rotten eggs, that's plain ol' volcanic sulfur. A collapse can release a pocket of previously-trapped gas, and it will stick around. We'll have to mask up if the concentration is bad enough. Again, listen for our detectors."

"Don't forget to tell them about Code V!" Denis called from the locomotive.

Carl stuck his hands into his pockets. "Right. Who can forget Code V? Well, people… Code V is literally the worst case scenario. This mine only goes down one hundred meters. It was closed before we got to where geothermal heating became a factor. But… as I've said, this was a shield volcano. I'd think it hasn't erupted for thousands of years even before the Protheans built in it… but… we can't be a hundred percent sure that the hotspot is truly extinguished… is that the term for that? Well never mind… what I'm getting at is that if we come up on a space where the air is too warm, that means there's a lava upwell nearby, and that's super bad news. We leave right then and there."

"What are the odds of that?" Kaidan asked.

"Truthfully…" Carl shrugged, "Very slim. Our seismometers would pick up any stirrings long before lava reaches up here… but Code V is in our manuals just in case. Welcome to mining on other planets. Volcanoes are rich mineral sources, but they come with additional hazards. We have protocols for everything."

"Thanks for letting us know," Shepard said. When he said that it would not be a brief lecture, he meant it. Still, Shepard could appreciate the miners wanting to ensure no one got hurt. Even if one part of it had to be corporate pressure. Visitors injuring themselves on company property inevitably resulted in extra paperwork.

"Rotten eggs is not the description I would use for sulfur, but I suppose that is a species thing." Nihlus murmured.

"Oh right." Carl smiled sheepishly. "Dextro folk perceive smells differently."

"Yes… the point is we should be careful if the air smells strange." Liara murmured as she adjusted her helmet.

"I do apologize, Spectre. I should have phrased it like Doctor T'Soni." Carl smiled sheepishly.

"It is fine, I got the basics." Nihlus replied as he turned to make his way toward the crew car.

"Alright. Does anyone have any other questions? Now's the time, folks," Carl announced.

Shepard glanced around, no one seemed particularly eager to ask anything. As far as she was concerned, the whole thing was rather straight-forward. Mine safety was kind of like general cave safety, and one part of her training had been anticipating environmental hazards. ICT graduates could never be sure where a mission would take them. By necessity their survival and hazard mitigation training was extensive.

"Excellent! We can proceed." Carl declared.

The mine train slowed down as it came down the bend and began to descend down the slope to the second level. Here the tunnel was even worse lit than the previous, simply because less lighting elements had been installed. Fortunately the debris netting continued unbroken, along with the massive conduit pipes.

Shepard watched her HUD the entire way, namely the environmental indicator. She would rather avoid dancing with death by being slow to realize they were entering a void zone. Surprisingly enough, the air quality only took a slight dip. Then again, deadly gasses were heavy, if the mine went down to a hundred meters, they would settle into the lowest reaches. The second level was only about twenty meters below the first. She would not linger for very long, but it looked like they would not suffocate in the hour or so that Liara needed to conduct her tests.

At the bottom of the ramp they encountered a mechanical issue. The track switch that should have opened, allowing the train to continue toward the Delta tunnel was stuck in the closed position. The train would turn into the Theta section. The locomotive sent the signal to the switch to open but it did not react. It meant they had to stop while Denis and Carl opened the switch manually.

Once they entered the Delta tunnel, Shepard noted a further dip in the oxygen levels. Carl tapped at his detector, but the device remained silent, so he deemed it safe enough to continue as is. Denis stopped the train right in the middle, in front of chamber six. Delta five was behind them on the left, and seven in front, also on the left.

The tunnel was no brighter than before, but the equipment was carefully set aside. Even before the locomotive stopped humming and its front light went off, Liara rushed out of the crew car, turning on her helmet lights as she went toward the equipment car. Shepard grinned to herself and followed. She did not want to spend a lot of time on the train. The car was too narrow even for her average leg length. Now it made sense why Legion opted to ease down right on the equipment pallet. The locomotive was hardly a bullet train, so their platform's mass was more than enough to keep them anchored on the turns. By now the geth was back on their feet and seemed distracted with looking at everything around them. Shepard jumped down from the car and followed Liara. A few moments later Carl caught up to them.

"Anything we can do to help, Doctor T'Soni?" He asked.

Liara opened her kit crate, but stopped. "Oh, sure. I'm not going to do anything all that complex. I just need to make sure that I note exactly how the bits of lodestone fit into the rock faces. I want to check whether their poles point in a single general direction."

"Easy enough," Carl replied as he went for the tool kit on the pallet, drawing a rock hammer and a chisel, both of which he slipped into loops on his harness, before he grabbed another hammer and chisel.

Liara turned back to her case and pulled out a mobile terminal, and then rooted deeper in the box until she found the sensor peripheral she had been looking for. "This will probably be exceedingly boring for you, Commander." She flashed Shepard a sheepish smile.

Shepard shook her head, "I can do with boring after the last couple weeks."

Liara chuckled, but then followed Carl toward chamber five. Shepard turned to the quiet synthetic, "Legion, think you can lend them a hand finding the lodestones?" She asked.

The geth's emotive plates flicked a little. "We will assist Doctor-T'Soni." With that said, the geth carefully climbed off the cargo car and followed Liara. Shepard turned to watch them go, but remained where she was. By then the others had gathered around the crew car. When Carl passed by it, he handed the spare hammer and chisel to Denis and both turned toward chamber five. Shepard was perfectly content to watch them until they vanished out of sight.

"What should we do?" Kaidan asked breaking the silence.

"Good question." Shepard murmured. She would leave the science work to Liara, as this was definitely out of her field of expertise. "I have to wonder… just how close did the miners get to the ark?" She glanced toward the west-going dead end of the delta tunnel. Could the ark be just a little bit beyond? Had the miners just barely missed digging into the vault?

"As long as we do not touch, we should be fine looking around." Kaidan said.

Shepard chuckled, "You're right, Kaidan. And we have no reason to stand around doing nothing." With that said she started down the length of the tunnel. The lighting here did not improve much, and she kept glancing at her HUD readout every couple seconds, but the oxygen level seemed to be holding about steady. With the locomotive no longer humming, the only sound was the echo of footsteps. She was not surprised when Nihlus fell in step at her side.

The tunnel's dead end was still a good hundred meters away from where the train had stopped. She had to take care not to trip over a projecting railway tie or debris as she covered the distance. Why she was even going there? She did not know. Maybe it was some irrational instinct, maybe something extra that Nabu slipped her. But this was continuing with that inexplicable sensation of certainty. She just knew that the ark was in this mountain.

The tunnel here was just as large as the one above them, a good ten meters in diameter, lined with metal beams and debris netting. The rock face itself was a mix of material, primarily dark bands with some lighter ones, with bits that would glimmer if they caught the light. It also still bore marks left by the teeth of the digging equipment that had chewed on it.

"It is a wall," Nihlus stated.

"You don't say." Shepard replied, rolling her eyes, not that he would be able to see that. "I didn't expect it to magically open for me or anything. I'm not crazy. Just… curious."

"You are fully convinced that the ark is there?" Nihlus went on.

Shepard shook her head. "I'm not convinced of anything here. Think of it this way… Eden Prime is a pretty big planet, and strictly speaking there is no guarantee that the arks were ever built. That said… Nabu seemed convinced that they were going to be built, and that Eden Prime was one of the planets chosen. This mountain? I'm mostly going off a hunch. Still, makes me wonder… what if all of this is a giant waste of time for everyone involved?"

"Mistakes happen, Commander." Kaidan stepped in, calm as ever.

Shepard hummed and turned away from the wall, to face her team.

"Besides," Kaidan went on, smiling one of warm lopsided smiles. "This isn't the worst sort of mistake someone can make."

"Is it crazy that I want the ark to exist… to be here?" Shepard asked as she started on her way back toward the train.

"Not at all," Nihlus replied. "It would mean that the Protheans are not truly extinct. It makes sense why you would want the ark to be here, whole and operational. Wishing the best for everyone is not a bad thing."

Shepard stopped dead in her tracks as the words washed over her. It was like something clicked in that moment. That was the crux of it all, was it not? The thought of bringing the Protheans back, if it was possible, was the right thing to do, and she wanted to do it. She wanted to find a whole and functional colony. That was the stirring of her normally-subdued idealism. It was the part of her nature that normally tamped down with some cynicism. She was still trying to tamp it down. The cynicism demanded she ask the obvious questions. Her unease was caused by metronome-like swinging between idealism and realism.

The echoing sound of a rock hammer tapping on metal brought Shepard out of her thoughts and back to reality.

"Sounds like Liara found her sample," Kaidan said.

"Yea," Shepard replied.

The three of them made the rest of the walk toward chamber five in silence. As Shepard stepped into the chamber, she spotted Liara fast at work. Legion held the mobile terminal up so that the archeologist could pass the sensor peripheral over a pillbox-sized chunk of black-colored rock without tangling up in its cable, or touching anything that could throw the readings askew. Even as that happened, Legion's sensor suite was trained on the piece of lodestone, and judging by the faint ticking at the back edges of the largest emotive plates on their head, the geth was busy studying the magnetic field themselves. Carl and Denis stood nearby, watching her work silently.

"What's the news?" Shepard asked.

"Oh the news are very interesting!" Liara replied as she looked up from her work. "We found two pieces of lodestone right in the face. Both of them have poles aligned in the same direction, west! I want to find a few more samples from other chambers just to make sure, but this is beginning to look promising."

Shepard nodded. She would not jump for joy yet, because a sample size of two did not make for much of a study, but at the same time she could not help but feel a surge of hope rush through her. "Legion, you're verifying everything?" She asked.

"Correct. We can confirm that the magnetic fields of the samples Doctor-T'Soni has collected are aligned. But Doctor-T'Soni's statement regarding the direction of alignment is inaccurate."

"Oh? Can you refine the reading?" Liara asked as she set the sensor tool on the terminal's keyboard.

"We can. We are Geth. Our sensory resolution is superior. You stated that the field lines point west. That is correct only on two of the three axes of space. The magnetic poles of your current sample are tilted eighty degrees, they do not run parallel to the floor of this mine."

Liara blinked, but then her eyes widened as realization dawned. "Oh, of course! The Z axis!"

"Correct. We can confirm that the field lines of both samples point west and above our present position. All data available at this time suggests that the facility Shepard-Commander seeks is above our position." Legion argued.

Carl hummed thoughtfully, "So you're saying that there might indeed be something in the general direction of the alpha tunnel."

"Correct." Legion replied.

"Alpha three is looking more interesting by the minute," Carl added, tucking his hands into the pockets of his overalls.

"Alright, but two is hardly a good sample size," Liara said.

"Correct." Legion repeated. "We suggest additional tests to confirm the hypothesis." Then they tilted their head a few degrees. "Addendum: Doctor-T'Soni, we did not intend to imply that your conclusion is incorrect. We merely clarified it to encapsulate all available data."

"Oh I don't take being proven to be a little off personally," Liara replied with a broad smile. "I'm figuring things out too. I could tell you an hour-long lecture on the civic organization of the Prothean Empire, but I admit… hard scientific analysis is not my forte."

"Acknowledged." Legion replied as their emotive plates flickered faintly.

"Legion likes everything to be as precise as possible." Shepard smiled.

"Nothing wrong with that," Denis murmured.

Shepard figured it was time to steer the conversation right back on topic. "Well, nothing left but doing more tests."

"Yes," Liara replied as she tucked the ore sample into a pouch on her armor belt. Then she closed the terminal and took it from Legion's hands. "Thank you, Legion."

"You are welcome, Doctor-T'Soni," Legion replied.

"Shall we move on to the next chamber?" Liara asked as she looked toward her three assistants in turn.

"Follow me, Doctor." Denis replied and started on his way toward the chamber entrance.

Liara followed without saying another word. Legion lingered for a good second before they too followed her.

Carl lingered, and once the three of them were out of immediate earshot, he turned to Shepard. "Is it really a Geth, Commander?" he asked.

"Legion? Yes. They're a geth."

"I heard stories about the attack, and I was unsettled by its presence. At first. But now? It seems… I don't know… different."

Shepard hummed. Chalk another one down under the times she had to explain it, but she did not mind. "The Geth have factions, just like everyone else. The ones that attacked Eden Prime previously belonged to one, and they chose to use force to get what they want. Legion comes from the majority of geth who stay within the Perseus Veil." Shepard explained.

"And that's the truth?" Carl asked.

"Mister Fenton, I was the one who sent the violent ones packing." Shepard figured it had to be said, even if it was a smidgeon more information than she needed to share.

Carl froze and his eyes widened, "No kidding? You are the Commander Shepard?"

"In the flesh." Shepard replied.

"Then I will apologize, ma'am. I didn't realize. Denis is going to want to know!"

Shepard chuckled, his reaction was, as Legion would say, within expected parameters.

"I suppose it makes sense that you would know a good geth from a bad one, and might have one around. You're a Spectre too." Carl mused.

Nihlus laughed, "Oh no, her being a Spectre has nothing to do with it. Most of us would shoot a Geth on sight. Shepard is the only one who would talk to them first."

"Well if there are peaceful ones, why not?" Carl asked.

Shepard rolled her eyes. At least Nihlus had the decency not to mention her so-called 'mothering tendency'. "What can I say? I prefer achieving a peaceful resolution. The easy solution is almost never the right one. I guess that makes me a champion for lost souls and causes." She gave Nihlus a meaningful look. "We're friends, aren't we?" She added, affecting all due innocence. Let him figure out if he was a lost soul or a lost cause.

Carl turned away, but Shepard caught him smile.

Nihlus' mandibles began to tick against his jaw.

Shepard took the silence as him waving the white flag. "Let's not leave Doctor T'Soni waiting, shall we?" She smiled, turned, and started on her way toward the chamber entrance.

"I do believe you walked right into that one, Spectre," Kaidan murmured behind her.

"I have a habit of doing that," Nihlus admitted.

"You said it, not me," Kaidan replied.

Shepard heard three sets of footsteps, each in their own cadence, catch up to her.

By the time Shepard reached chamber six, Liara and Denis were already there, inspecting the cutting face. The miner was using his chisel as a crude sensor, passing it over the wall, waiting to feel a tug from a permanently magnetized lodestone. Liara was using a similar technique, though with a hexagonal nut. It was another good minute before the nut suddenly slipped from Liara's grip and stuck to the rock wall.

"Here's one!" The archeologist announced, sounding quite giddy.

Denis was almost immediately at her side with his chisel and rock hammer. As Shepard watched, they scored the chunk of lodestone with a nail, just so that Liara would know how it came out of the wall. Then, when Liara was happy, Denis went on to carefully chip it out. The task took a good few minutes, and while he was working, Liara set up her terminal, with Legion once again holding it up.

When Shepard looked, she found that Nihlus had wandered off. He was now sitting on the edge of the crew car steps. Kaidan stood near the chamber entrance, diligent in his duties, but it was patently obvious that he was bored. By the time she looked back, Liara was running her analysis, and Denis had gone back to passing his chisel over the rock wall, looking for a second sample.

A minute later Liara reached over to tap a key on the terminal, "It's the same, isn't it, Legion." She announced.

"Correct, Doctor-T'Soni. The magnetic field of sample three is identical with samples one and two."

"Excellent!" Liara slipped the sample into her pocket and then turned to the terminal to make some notes.

"Once is a chance, twice is a coincidence, but three times? That's beginning to look like a pattern alright," Denis stated. "By the way, I found sample four. I already scored it if you want me to start chipping it out, Doctor."

"Oh, thank you! Yes, please," Liara replied.

Denis turned back to the rock wall and commenced chipping around the rounded nugget of rock sticking out of the wall.

"If Sample four is consistent with the previous three… I think we should move on to see what's up in the alpha tunnel," Shepard murmured. As far as she was concerned, this was beginning to turn into an open and shut case. Over the thousands of years the ark's power core had aligned the magnetic poles of the lodestone to run in a single direction. Perhaps it had even magnetized some of the ore bits to begin with.

Before Liara could reply, Denis stepped up and held out a black-colored chunk of ore that was easily half the size of Shepard's fist. "This is a big one. Haven't seen one like it in a while," he said.

"Even better. That means its magnetic field will be stronger." Liara replied as she took the rock.

Behind her, Legion had already trained their sensory suite on the sample. Liara picked up the sensor peripheral and tapped a key to start the scan, then stepped back and started to move the rod over the rock, carefully keeping it still so that Legion could complete their analysis simultaneously. Legion's emotive flaps rose at the back as the iris rotated to narrow the light beam. The little lights at their temples flickered as the sensor suite dimmed almost to nothing. Shepard could only stand back and watch them work. Meanwhile Kaidan was shifting his weight behind her, his webbing D-rings clinked ever so slightly against ceramics.

It was probably a good two minutes before Liara's whole posture changed. She reached over and tapped a key on the terminal even as her hand closed around the rock. Then she turned to Denis, "Well Mister Benoit, if three times is the beginning of a pattern… what would you say about four?"

"Definitely a pattern." Denis replied without a moment of hesitation.

"So that rock also points…" Shepard trailed off.

"Due west, above us. Yes." Liara replied as she set the sensor probe on the keyboard.

"Our analysis can confirm that as well." Legion stated as the iris of their sensor suite opened and the light brightened again.

"Excellent! Thank you." Liara smiled at the geth, but then returned to trying to find a pocket where to stash the ore sample.

Shepard hummed. "Well, that just means our next destination is Alpha tunnel-"

"Alpha three here we come!" Carl cut in, exuberance returning in a flash.

Shepard smiled even as she turned away and started on her way out of the chamber. It was a good thing that at least someone there was looking at this as a pure adventure. In some ways that was a breath of fresh air she did not realize she needed. Too much in life had been deathly serious lately. Even Jenkins and Tali had begun to pick up on the heavy atmosphere. Nihlus rose to his feet the instant he saw her emerge, and Shepard accelerated her pace.

"We are done here?" He asked as soon as she was close enough so that he would not have to raise his voice.

"Here, yes. Now comes the fun part… the ark seems to be off the alpha tunnel." Shepard replied as she turned to stare at the end of the tunnel. Now that even the ore seemed to be saying that there was something just past that wall, she could not help but wonder. What kind of sick twisted joke would it be if the miners missed the discovery of the millennium simply because they were a surprisingly superstitious lot?

Nihlus hummed, but said nothing.

Shepard heard multiple sets of approaching footsteps and turned, the others were coming their way. Carl looked even more excited now than he was a minute ago, but Denis looked positively harried. What had Shepard missed in that chamber? Well, no matter.

The ride to back up the ramp took longer than the descent. The locomotive's batteries may have survived two decades in storage, but its motors seemed to have lost some power. It climbed the ramp with a positively deafening electric hum and at a walking speed. However, once it had mounted the ramp and pulled its two cars up after it, the humming died down, and the speed picked up. Fortunately the switch that diverted the trains into the alpha tunnel functioned properly, if a bit sluggishly.

The lighting in the alpha tunnel was barely functional, with seemingly every other element knocked out. Fortunately their luck was holding. Since alpha tunnel was almost on the same level as the entrance, the oxygen level here was not much lower than by the doors. The passage was also not very long, only about a hundred meters. Denis drove the train almost right up to the bumper bar on the end of the track.

When Shepard looked up, she could just about make out the remains of the natural cave system that the miners had widened. Their digging machines had widened turned what was once a cleft in the rock into a circular passage, but there were still parts where ceiling came to a peak above them. The ducts here were also not bolted to the ceiling, they were suspended from it instead.

"Shepard-Commander, our magnetic navigation device is malfunctioning. Magnetic navigation within this space is impossible." Legion announced from their seat on the cargo car pallet.

Shepard glanced at the corner of her HUD. Her own direction indicator had started spinning. Legion had merely beat her to the punch of making that announcement. "That's not a hardware fault, Legion. My heads up display compass is oscillating wildly as well," she replied as she got up and moved toward the chain thrown across the crew cart's entryway. "It has been a bit erratic since the moment we stepped into this mine, but this is… beyond that."

"Acknowledged."

"That's kind of normal for this place, Commander. Stay long enough, and you'll start seeing shadows flitting in the corner of your eye, and feeling cold spots," Carl stated. "This place plays with your mind. Always had. The corporates tell us it's natural for a mine rich in magnetic ore… but now that we know better? They were wrong, and that's that."

Shepard hummed as she jumped the ladder of the crew car.

"There is a buzz over my implants." Kaidan announced as he got to his feet. "That does mean that the ambient magnetic field here is much stronger than on the floor below," Kaidan stated bluntly.

"Yes, I can feel it too," Liara murmured.

"I can imagine that don't feel good, what with the tech biotics got," Carl said.

Shepard stepped back, allowing the rest of the team to step down from the car. "It's not painful, is it?" She asked. She could not really understand what biotics meant when they said there was a buzz over the implants, but if it was even a little bit like the sensation she experienced whenever a biotic tried to use their abilities on her, then it was not pleasant.

"Oh no, it does not hurt," Liara replied as she stuck up her hand, seemingly to ward off concern for her, even as she climbed down from the car.

"It just feels like I have ants crawling up and down my back and neck," Kaidan replied.

Shepard nodded. "If either of you need to step away, I won't hold it against you."

"I will be fine, Commander! You needn't worry!" Liara said hastily.

"Same," Kaidan smiled.

Shepard knew when to change the subject. "Well, back on topic… this magnetic field can be one of two things. Either there's an insane quantity of lodestone here, or we're close to the ruins."

Carl, who had been looking at his omni-tool looked up as the device turned off. "I don't remember the field being this strong. Compasses were always pointed wrong in here… but now they're spinning! This strong field got to be new."

"Indeed," Shepard replied. Did the ambient magnetic field really change this much in the two and a half decades since the mine's closure? She supposed it was possible. Which would mean that the power core inside the ark was in bad shape and deteriorating fast. That did not bode well for any hope of finding survivors.

"Well, shall we get to work?" Denis asked. "Alpha three is the chamber on the left here."

"Thanks," Shepard replied. One glance up confirmed that chamber three was natural, as the remnants of the cleft in the ceiling continued right into it. When she looked, the chamber's entrance was narrower than any other chamber, and the tunnel's dead end wall curved toward it, as if the machine that had widened the tunnel had stopped short and the rest of the widening was done with smaller tools. Not that the entrance was widened by much, it was still essentially a cleft in the rock.

When Shepard's helmet lights hit the wall just right, she could also see a marked difference in the striation and layering as well. There were many more of the lighter colored bands as opposed to the darker ore-bearing bands that had been dominant in the tunnel below. No wonder the miners had stopped digging in this direction. There was a noticeable decrease in the quantity of ore. They went underground, where the veins were more pronounced. As she stepped into the chamber proper, she stopped cold. Her compass had just gone positively berserk.

Inside the chamber the ceiling here rose higher. The original cave once had a noticeably wider chamber here, but it was impossible to tell how long it was. The collapse debris started barely twenty meters into the room. When Shepard had heard the word "collapse" she imagined a pile of debris angling and sloping toward the chamber's opening. What she was looking at was hardly that. The debris was all large stone of various piled up from floor to very near the ceiling. For all intents and purposes this looked kind of like a collapse. If the material had been sheared or blasted off places.

Still, something bugged Shepard enough. Her instinct told her that this was not natural. She was not a geologist by any stretch of the imagination, but the rocks piled in here seemed orderly. Largest as the bottom, shrinking slightly at the highest tiers. Even then, the smaller stones were not smaller by much. Their fit was also too good. The crevasses between the rocks were small and tight. The most compelling evidence was the near total lack of very small fragments and chips. There was no sloping ramp of material. She could be imagining, latching on to something that her mind said did not look right, or something could indeed be off there.

Then she heard additional footsteps behind her and glanced back. The rest of the team had gathered in the entryway.

"Something wrong, Commander?" Liara asked. She had her terminal on hand, and her helmet lights blazing.

"Just… now I'm no expert, but there is something wrong with this picture." Shepard replied as she raised her arm to motion to the rock pile.

Liara hummed and stepped deeper into the room.

Shepard turned to Carl and Denis. "You said this chamber was partly cleared, yes? What material did you remove?"

"We only removed the looser materials," Denis replied. "There was no point in removing the larger stones because… well take a look at the exposed rock wall on your right. There is very little to no iron ore in here."

Shepard turned and trained her helmet lights on the wall, and indeed, there were almost no dark-colored striations. "Something really does not add up here. Take a look at the ceiling. It is higher, as one would imagine with a collapse… but shouldn't a collapse have rounded it off? Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, it still rises at a shallow, but consistant angle with only one axis of symmetry. The center is higher than the where the ceiling meets walls, like a gabled roof. We can't see the actual gable because it should be where the entrance to the chamber is, and we can't see the other gable at the back of the chamber."

Both miners turned to stare at the ceiling, and Shepard watched them squint at it. They really should get a laser device to take a height reading, but she very much doubted that her practiced depth perception was playing a nasty trick on her.

"I will say one thing for this room," Kaidan stepped in as he slipped a hand to the back of his neck to rub at it. "If I did not have my helmet on, the hair on the back of my neck would be upright in here. The sensation on my amp is much stronger, and it is spreading across my shoulders. It is starting to become… uncomfortable."

"Yes, I agree. It is definitely unpleasant at this point," Liara added.

Before anyone could say anything else, Legion stepped deeper in to the chamber and stopped right in the center of the cleared space. Shepard turned to watch them only to see the geth look up. The large emotive plates on the top of their head rose as the geth's sensor iris turned and wound. Then they emitted a brief burst of geth chatter and their head turned to the right, seemingly staring at the corner where the wall and ceiling met. Another burst of chattered followed and the iris narrowed as the geth turned around, staring at the opposite corner.

"Is it… scanning something?" Carl asked.

"I think so." Shepard replied as she continued to watch Legion, growing more mystified by the second.

"Shepard-Commander, your assertion that the ceiling changes elevation is correct. Based on our calculations, the center of the ceiling is zero point five meters higher than the points where the walls and ceiling meet."

"Impressive. Commander, you saw that in this half-light?" Denis asked.

"I… have pretty good vision." Shepard replied sheepishly. There was no need to toot her own horn by saying that some considered her one of the Alliance's best snipers. Having good vision came part and parcel with that.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Legion seemed to have chosen to ignore the turn of the conversation. They were running their light along the debris slowly. The emotive plates continued to dance, showing that the geth was definitely still doing something.

"Legion, is something wrong?" Shepard asked. Their actions were perplexing, and maybe a little worrying. Drawing the attention off herself was a happy bonus.

"Negative." Then they turned to face her, emotive flaps wiggling. "Based on all available data from the present conversation, we have concluded that Shepard-Commander is operating on the theory that there was no natural collapse in this chamber. We request confirmation."

Shepard blinked, she should have known that Legion would figure her suspicions out. She merely hesitated to say anything because it would imply that she had noticed something the miners had missed. What she saw was a hunch, a particularly loose one, with less facts and experience to back it up. Legion seemed to have gone in search for evidence. So, had they found anything? To be sure Legion would not have spoken up without something. "You're right, Legion... I do think that this debris pile is not natural. I mean it is rock, but gravity alone did not create it."

"Commander, you think someone arranged this debris?" Denis asked, suddenly deathly serious.

"Yes. My sources tell me that this facility was built in the final period of Prothean Empire. It is a… vault. Given what I know, burying its entrance makes sense." That was a bit an intentional misdirection on her part. She highly doubted that the Protheans did it themselves, but they definitely had an enemy who would, given half a chance. Engineering a deadly toxin spoke a certain motive. The enemy the Protheans had been at war with saw genocide as a solution. If said enemy discovered the Arks, they would put in an effort to destroy them. That done, burying the entrance under a huge pile of rock was basically entombing what they could not fully obliterate.

"If you're right…" Denis murmured as he turned to stare at the collapse pile.

Shepard chose to remain quiet. The realization of just how unlikely it was that the ark was functional hit her hard. Right then she could only stand there and grieve in silence.

"Do not lose hope. Not until we enter the facility itself!" Liara stepped in, adamant in her conviction. "First though, we need to confirm if the door is indeed on the other side of that pile, and I have just the thing!" With that said, the archeologist whirled and rushed off back toward the train.

"Doctor T'Soni is right, there are still things we can try and tests we can run," Denis added, turned and followed the asari out of the chamber.

Shepard blinked, opened her mouth to say something, but the words died on her tongue. Had Liara sensed the turn of her mood? She felt a set of hands settle on her shoulders. From the corner of her eye she saw Legion continue their inspection. It had turned positively hands-on, with the geth running their hands over the rocks, seemingly caressing them one moment, or tapping at them the next.

The sound of rushing footsteps snapped Shepard out of her reverie and caused her to turn her head. Liara had come back, this time carrying a small device that had a long, thin hose attached. Denis was a few steps behind her, carrying a similar device, with an even longer hose section.

"We have endoscope cameras!" Liara announced, brandishing her device for all to see.

"We borrowed one," Denis added. "Doctor T'Soni having her own is a pleasant surprise."

"Well, it's not standard archeological kit, but I have more funds than most archeologists." Liara replied, grinning sheepishly.

"Legion is doing… something, too." Shepard stated lamely.

"Shepard-Commander, we are performing rudimentary acoustic density tests." Legion announced without missing a beat.

Shepard turned, only to see that the geth had stopped with one hand resting on one of the largest rocks.

"We have already calculated the dimensions of all the visible rocks. We can estimate material density by applying concussive force and analyzing the produced sound. Once completed, we can use the data to estimate the mass of the debris." They explained, as if her movement had been a prompt.

"Well would you look at that," Carl laughed. "Where did you learn to do that?"

Legion's emotive flaps flicked as they turned to face the miner. "We are Geth. The Creators designed us to perform numerous tasks deemed dangerous to organics. We retained the necessary programming for those tasks."

"Guess mining was one of those tasks, huh?" Carl murmured.

"Correct." Legion replied bluntly, turned around, and went back to tapping on rocks.

Suddenly Shepard understood why Legion volunteered to come along on this one. They knew that their advanced sensory and nigh-bottomless well of collective experience would prove useful. Then, a thought hit her. The Geth retaining the ability to carry out the manual labor made sense. They would have to extract resources to build ships, and they sure had no problem digging in on Solcrum. What did surprise her a little was that the knowledge was common enough that even Legion, an isolated unit, still had it somewhere in their memory banks.

Silence settled over the chamber then as Liara and Denis joined Legion at the face. Flashlights in-hand, the two started feeding the ends of the endoscope cameras into the various crevasses, probing for a spot where the cameras would reach deeper. Shepard stood back and waited.

It was a good half an hour before Denis suddenly tensed up. "I think I have… something," he announced.

"Oh can I see?" Liara asked as she set her camera down and flitted to his side to peer over his shoulder at the device in his hands.

Shepard drew close as well, and angled from the other side to peer in as well.

"By the Goddess!" Liara breathed.

Shepard blinked once, and then a second time. She could not quite believe what she was seeing herself. The screen was mostly dominated by dark material, the surrounding rocks between which the hose end of the camera had been wedged. Yet there, in the middle of it all was a circle of light, and dead center in it was a sheet of light grey metal. It reflected the camera's lighting nicely, and there was no mistaking it for anything natural. "That has to be the door," Shepard murmured.

"Or its frame. At the very least it's clearly not natural," Denis agreed. "It should be… right in front of us, at the camera's furthest reach."

"Can you capture that image? I would like to have it as proof that there is something in there." Liara said.

"Of course, Doctor." Denis smiled and tapped at the device's screen to bring up the menu. With a few more taps he flashed the captured image to every omni-tool in the chamber.

"Well, Commander, those are some damn impressive sources you got," Carl stated.

"Yes, it would seem so," Shepard replied as she crossed her arms. What were the odds that the very first place she looked ended up panning out like this? Legion could probably calculate them if she asked, but she did not need to. She knew they would be astronomically slim. Which meant that her theories about Nabu's cipher might hold water. He might have encoded something more in there, a preternatural instinct, something like a radar for arks. She would be lying if she said some part of her was not disturbed by the thought.

"So what now?" Nihlus asked.

Shepard let her arms drop, she could ponder what damage Nabu may have done to her head on her own time. "We need to clear the doorway." It should have gone without saying. It was not like any of them could phase through solid rock. "Unfortunately that is beyond our current abilities. Even with two powerful biotics, those rocks look… massive. That will mean going to Miss Waters, and something tells me she will not give us what we need just because we ask nicely."

"No, she won't," Denis agreed. "She will want to know exactly why we need that stuff, and once she discovers that… it will become company property. Even a Spectre will be lucky to see the past the door for months."

"That's no good, but technically we don't need Miss Waters helping us, and she will not even be able to stop us," Carl stated, sticking up a hand. "Denis think about it. We do not want the corporates taking the credit for our effort?"

"Well no," the Frenchman replied, sounding suddenly very cagey as he spared his compatriot a side-along look.

Carl threw out his arms and grinned from ear to ear. "Everyone who ever worked inside this mine will want to know they weren't hallucinating." He turned to Shepard. "Commander, you need only ask and you'll get all the volunteers you could want. That I'll guarantee."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Mister Fenton, but you've already… asked around. Haven't you?" Shepard asked. There was no other way to explain the man's certainty right then.

"I may have." Carl replied with a blinding smile. "I mean we had to pull some favors. By now I'd reckon everyone who has worked in this mine should already know. We're a small community. We talk."

Shepard had a horrible sinking feeling that she had given the miners an opening for a mutiny of sorts. They we looking for vindication, and would happily take whatever they could get, however they could get it. Even if it meant going behind their superior's back to use company resources. Say what they may, she doubted they could keep it from the suits for very long, but that did not seem to bother them. Well, she supposed they could be unionized, in which case the company would find itself up against an unmoving union leadership on top of Alliance Colonial Affairs. If the two joined forces to side against the company executives, then that would be all over. Miss Waters and whoever was above her would have to take it, and they would not even be able to come after Shepard either.

Denis sighed and shook his head. "If we are already going to do this, then we do it right, and safely. First and foremost, we can't dig with the blowers offline. This place has some oxygen, but the sort of team we'll need will run it down quickly. We don't need people making mistakes while handling these rocks."

"Our proximity to the entrance should help. We don't need to recirculate the entire mine." Kaidan stated.

Denis nodded and said nothing.

"Miss Waters will never approve any core maintenance and refueling here. Without official approval, the core is out." Carl stated bluntly. "The only other option is… Denis, your friend at the station already pretended he did not see draw on the emergency conduit while the locomotive charged. Tell him we will need to power up the blowers for a day. The station can support them, so it's only a matter of ensuring that no one thinks the draw is a malfunction and cuts it off."

"Figured you'd say that," Denis said. "Consider it done."

"First though, we need someone to get back up here to check on the blowers, make sure that they don't overload. We can cover up unauthorized use, but a fire is a smidgeon harder to explain. He also needs to check on the locomotive, we will need it to move the waste rock, but it almost seized coming up from the level below. That isn't a good sign."

Shepard thought that was beginning to sound like quite the list of things that needed to be done.

Carl went on, "We will also need to borrow some heavy hand-tools and a bulldozer from the other mine. If we borrow one of the dozers that's out for routine maintenance they shouldn't notice it being gone for a day or two." Then he turned to Shepard. "Don't worry, Commander. The lot of us have worked at this range so long that we know each other. We'll get it done. You have my word."

Shepard decided that mutiny might just be a bit of an understatement for what she accidentally incited. Hearing Carl run down the list of things they would need showed pre-meditation. These workers had a system of getting around their employers, and they were not shy about doing so. Things were beginning to sound like an all-out rebellion.

Author Notes: Shepard stirs up all the corporate hornet nests, doesn't she? I really tried to speed this up along, but with the strong emphasis on realism in this work… any more cutting of corners and it would be blatant "video game logic". Let's be real the "From Ashes" DLC had Javik's pod laid out for us on a platform nicely. Served for our convenience, I wanted to avoid that.

General Notes:

Abandoned Mines – The hazards Carl mentions in his safety lecture are mostly real hazards found inside real abandoned mines. I felt some responsibility to do research into that. The only embellishment/extrapolation is in the parts about mining in a long-extinct volcano. Even then, I tried to reason out what hazards would be found inside one. Ultimately real abandoned mines are very dangerous. That is fact.

Chapter Notes:

Episode Title – A brief note to state the obvious. A "revenant" comes from the French verb revenir, translated as "to come back". Strictly speaking a revenant is an animated corpse that comes back to haunt the living. It felt apropos here.