Liara T'Soni and the Ring of Life

by nakati7

Liara T'Soni is a very determined archaeologist who isn't worried to do a little tomb raiding to discover ancient knowledge. Cam Shepard is an ex-Alliance mercenary with a thing for people much smarter than she is. There's no way they'll get up to anything dangerous together, right?

13. Chapter 13

A dull boom rattled through the walls of the stone hallway, dislodging a cloud of dust over Liara and Miranda as they walked together through the dark. Liara squinted and brought up a hand to cover her mouth, only to stop as a pang of pain shot through her arm at the motion. Wincing, she peered down towards the dark bruises beginning to spread across her palms and up across her knuckles. With a sigh, she fished a spare container of medigel out of her bag and began to apply it to her hands, her thoughts turning once more towards Shepard and the great stone door separating them.

She had nearly beaten herself senseless against the door Shepard had dropped, using both her biotics and her pounding fists to desperately try to find a way through. Unfortunately, however, the stone proved impervious to her efforts, forcing her to instead traverse even deeper into the pyramid with only Miranda and a fresh set of bruises for company.

Even still, as she tended to her injuries all she could think of was if Shepard was safe. Was she still fighting a flood of horrid bodies, or had she managed to escape with Jack? Was she even still alive? Even if she was, how would they find each other with the exits sealed behind them?

A cold wave of dread swept through Liara, churning her stomach and resolving into a swirling headache throbbing behind her eyes. She stumbled, a brief wave of dizziness and nausea quickly coursing through her as the hall started to spin around her. The very world seemed to have tilted on its axis, with what once seemed solid and assured now thrown into doubt without Shepard by her side. Frowning, Liara shook her head in an attempt to clear it as she pondered when the mercenary had become quite so important to her.

Suddenly, her mother's voice surfaced from her memories, full of cautious disdain at the idea of researching the Prothean Masterworks. "It's simply too dangerous, Little Wing. A wise scholar would not choose a path full of such historical drivel and baseless myth to risk their life over."

Liara groaned, massaging her temples as she grudgingly realized that perhaps her mother was right all along. After all, none of them would even be here if not for her insistence on pursuing the Prothean Masterworks. A simmering thread of guilt wove its way through the doubt clouding her mind, burning painfully in her chest the longer she dwelled on it. What right do I have to ask this of these people?

A muted sound fell dully on Liara's aural cavities, and after a moment she blinked and turned to find Miranda looking towards her with a slight furrow to her brow. Attempting to shrug off the fog enshrouding her thoughts, she blearily said, "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

The furrow of Miranda's brow deepened. "I was asking what you thought of these carvings."

Turning to examine the walls of the hallway in the dim light, Liara belatedly found them to be covered in life size silhouettes carved into the stone. Each silhouette seemed to vary in size and shape, with several sporting gangly limbs with three-fingered hands while others were smaller and five-fingered. Frowning, she peered further down the wall to see outlines of these figures extend down the entire hall.

As she leaned in to examine them further, however, she flinched as a surge of guilt washed through her. Shepard was lost somewhere, potentially fighting for her life, and she was examining pictures on a wall? What was she doing?

She cleared her throat, attempting to wrestle words from the haze filling her head. "I suppose," she began, "that these are intended to be people."

"Yes, that seems fairly obvious," Miranda drawled. "But what do you think of the variety of outlines here? Clearly, they're made of several different races, but do you think there's any significance to that?"

Liara grimaced as her pulse began to pound behind her eyes once more. Normally, she would have loved to examine ancient artifacts and exchange theories over their construction, but now it felt as if someone had sucked the academic confidence and enthusiasm right out of her and left her a shell of regret.

"There could be, I guess," she finally replied.

Miranda turned to stare towards her once more, her mouth twisted in an incredulous frown. A brief flash of embarrassment warmed Liara's cheeks, but only a moment later it was sapped away by the dread clutching at her heart. With a small shrug, she continued, "I'm sorry, I just don't really know."

Miranda continued to stare her down, pinning her in place with a cold gaze that Liara felt as if pierced right through her. Finally, after several awkward seconds, she sniffed disdainfully and turned away without a word to continue down the hall. Liara followed a few steps behind, feeling oddly as if she'd disappointed Miranda somehow.

She remembered her mother's face once again, her austere mouth turned down in a disapproving frown. Well, she thought to herself, she can join the club.

They walked together in silence for several minutes, moving ever deeper into the pyramid at the whims of the gently curving hallway they followed. The only sources of light here were more cracked fluorescent strips set into the ceiling every fifty feet or so, and even with these lights and the carvings lining the walls Liara soon found herself losing track of how much distance they had covered. It seemed, however, as if they had walked what must have been a mile or more, all of it slightly uphill if the strain beginning to burn in her legs was any indication.

One advantage of this seemingly endless monotony was that it allowed Liara plenty of time to focus on just how terrible she felt at the moment. Her hands ached, her throat still was sore from very nearly being strangled, and every exposed inch of skin felt as if she had been scrubbed over with sandpaper, leaving her with countless small nicks and scrapes. None of this, however, compared to the maelstrom of emotion still raging within her, graying out her vision and making any thoughts nearly impossible. Each step was another moment spent thinking of Shepard, and each injury was another reminder of what her friend could be suffering through.

It was shocking, she realized after a few minutes of this, to discover how suddenly fragile she felt without Shepard near her. Objectively she knew she still was just as intelligent and well-educated as before, and if anything she was even more proficient at defending herself than ever. Logically, what they had seen in this pyramid should have boosted her confidence with validation of decades of intense research and countless archaeological digs all hunting any sign of the Masterworks.

Even still, Liara found that without Shepard she felt like a cracked glass, ready to shatter. Ever since they had met, Shepard had always believed in her, always supported her and been one step behind her the entire way. In the past few days, Liara herself had even started to believe that perhaps she could have faith in herself, too. She had always believed that her theories were correct, but maybe she could believe that she was smart enough and skilled enough to prove it.

Without Shepard now, though, Liara found that having faith in herself was like holding a candle up before a strong wind. How long would she last before inevitably being snuffed out?

Miranda cleared her throat as they walked, puncturing the great silence that had filled the space. Turning her cool gaze onto Liara once more, she gestured forwards and said, "Well, Dr. T'Soni, you've surely studied Prothean ruins like this before. What do you suppose we'll find next?"

Liara pursed her lips thoughtfully, mulishly attempting to focus enough to answer the question. She knew that she should be able to answer this, but each time she concentrated a torrent of stress-induced images flooded her mind: Shepard lying dead on the ground, Shepard bleeding from gashes across her arms and face, Shepard fleeing into the dark from shambling bodies that shouldn't be able to move.

She winced, forcing words into her mouth letter by letter as if wringing them out of her brain by force. "Ah, well, the last—"

She grunted as a sudden spike of pain appeared in her forehead, forcing her to clutch desperately at her train of thought. "The last chamber seemed to be a morgue or lab, as Jack stated, so perhaps this pyramid served some sort of scientific or medical function?"

An image of Shepard, cold and unmoving as she lay stretched out across a stone slab appeared in her mind, accompanied by a burst of nausea. "It's difficult to say what lies ahead, though. Anything I could say would just be a guess at best."

Miranda arched an elegant brow. "Well, seeing as you're the expert here, a guess from you is better than nothing at all."

Liara shook her head, rubbing her temples with one hand as her headache grew ever stronger. "I'm sorry, I just… I can't." She stopped, her face flushing with embarrassment as tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, and before she could stop it words began to pour out like a flood. "Nothing has gone the way it was supposed to ever since we came into this place! Traps that shouldn't have power are trying to flatten us, corpses are just rising up from the dead somehow, and now Shepard—"

She cut herself off, heat flaring in her cheeks. "Without the others, I feel like I don't know anything anymore."

Silence filled the air once again, and after a second Liara sniffed wetly and looked over to find Miranda gazing towards her with a mix of irritation and pity. Eventually, she sighed explosively and averted her gaze as she started walking again, forcing Liara to stumble after her. "We don't have time for you to feel sorry for yourself, T'Soni," she began, her voice like ice. "You either know what's ahead or you don't, and Shepard being gone has absolutely nothing to do with that. You're the researcher here, not her, so I'd appreciate it if you'd start acting like it."

Liara ducked her head, each word falling on her like a hammer blow. Only a moment later, however, Miranda stopped once again, turning towards her as her features softened ever so slightly. "I know this probably isn't what you're used to, Doctor, but we don't have the luxury of being comfortable right now. Just remember that we've only made it as far as we have not because of my intellect or Shepard's rippling muscles or Jack's… whatever she brings, but because of your expertise."

She hesitated, clearly uncomfortable as she awkwardly tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. "Look, we're all here because at the end of the day we wanted to be here, understand? So focus down and concentrate on all those decades of research you've done so we can get out of here and go find the others. If they find us first, Jack will be insufferable about it for months."

Liara cracked a watery smile, feeling oddly both chastised and encouraged by the end of her speech. "Well, in that case," she replied, "we should probably get moving."

A brief hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Miranda's mouth as she nodded, apparently satisfied by her they turned and continued up the hallway as it gently curved upwards, moving ever further up and in through the dark passageways of the pyramid.

After only a minute of travel, however, the sloping hallway abruptly ended in a short flight of stairs, at the top of which was an open stone doorway. Liara glanced briefly towards Miranda, who simply drew her pistol and gestured for Liara to lead the way. Frowning, Liara pulled out her own weapon and cautiously ascended the stairs, her eyes open for any sign of traps as she approached the next room.

To her great relief, no stone pillars attempted to squish her flat and no shambling corpses lunged from the shadows as she stepped fully through the open door. Allowing herself a moment to relax and to remember how to breathe, she lowered her gun slightly as she took stock of the open room extending before her. Similarly to the previous lab, the room was square in shape, with several stone slabs protruding from the ground to provide large, featureless tables for bodies to lay upon.

However, unlike before Liara counted only ten empty slabs in this room, each of which was spaced quite a distance from the others and surrounded by a veritable suite of consoles, monitors on adjustable stands, and racks full of rusted medical equipment. The remaining empty space of the room was full of what looked to be ancient light fixtures, long since fallen into disrepair, and several stone desks all pushed up against the outer walls.

"Odd that they would use stone furniture," Miranda mumbled, running a gloved hand across the surface of a desk only to grimace at the thick layer of dust obscuring it.

Liara nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, in ruins this old one almost never finds signs of furniture like this. Anything built to be comfortable is almost never durable enough to withstand this many years of neglect."

She paused, a slight frown furrowing her brow. "That is, of course, unless they wanted to build something that would last long enough to be found."

Miranda brushed past her, cautiously stepping up to the closest stone slab and peering towards the several defunct terminals surrounding it. "So why the difference between the last lab and this one?" she asked. "Surely there must've been some reason, right?"

Liara moved over to a separate slab, glancing between the many cracked screens and worn down keyboards comprising each workstation. Looking past the dark monitors, she noticed that the slab was covered in ominous dark stains, barely visible beneath the grime of thousands of year's worth of dust. "It could have been as simple as a matter of convenience, I suppose. Perhaps whoever built this place simply wanted a variety of workstations at their disposal."

She stepped around the slab to move on to the next, confirming with a grim nod that it too was covered in ancient stains. "However, it seems to me that this space served a different purpose. The first lab we discovered seemed to value sheer numbers of these slabs to maximize how many corpses they could store at once, whereas this room only has ten slabs in a room that could fit fifty. Furthermore, these slabs all seem to have enough technology for several technicians to operate all over one subject, instead of having one simple monitor per table."

Nodding along with her train of thought, she turned to find Miranda holding up what appeared to be a rusted scalpel. "If I had to guess," she continued, "I would say that this space was where the majority of the work they did here was performed, whatever that might have been. The first lab seems too rudimentary and too crowded to do any sort of innovative research or advanced medical procedures, if this was indeed a lab."

Pursing her lips, Miranda considered this for a moment before replying, "So what you're saying is that the Protheans built this place to do something that potentially had to do with the Ring of Life, then built a space to work on a significantly increased number of patients at once?" She shook her head, dropping the scalpel back onto its tray as she did so. "Call me a skeptic, but it sounds to me like they were trying to mass produce whatever they came up with."

"That… would make a certain amount of sense, yes," Liara was forced to admit. "Though it almost makes this pyramid sound like a factory rather than a potential resting place of a Masterwork."

Miranda shrugged. "I just call it as I see it, Doctor. Though I will say I'm becoming increasingly curious why we're finding so many of these old research stations in what are supposed to be ancient ruins. Does this even have anything to do with the Ring, or is it just tangential?"

Liara opened her mouth to reply, then paused as something caught her eye. Stepping past Miranda, she gestured towards the far wall of the room and replied, "Perhaps those will help us find the answer."

Liara moved to stand in front of the fourth wall of the chamber, which she now realized was completely covered in detailed carvings across its entire surface. Similarly to the previous hallway, several figures of various races could be made out, each of them with their hands and legs outstretched in a way that tugged at something in the back of her brain. Unlike before, however, each figure was no longer a simple silhouette but instead showed detailed lines of muscles and what appeared to be major organs of each race, and surrounding every carving were paragraphs of Prothean script chiseled into the stone.

"By the Goddess…" she murmured, already reaching for her journal. "This is the most Prothean writing I have ever seen in one place! I know people back at Serrice who would quit their jobs just to be able to analyze this writing system."

Miranda moved up to stand next to Liara, her expression skeptical. "Yes, it's very impressive and everything, but I'm more worried about what they were writing about. Why are these carvings so much more detailed than the other ones, and why carve all of this into stone instead of just writing it down somewhere?"

Liara looked up from her journal, having already started scribbling down an embarrassing amount of notes. Glancing across the carved wall again, she found herself staring at the lifesize carving of what was clearly an asari with each major muscle group labeled when it finally clicked into place what she was looking at. "Goddess, these are all anatomical charts."

She took a step back, finding herself looking from charts of asari and humans to turians and krogan and even volus, not to mention several scattered across the wall that she had never seen before. "They must have categorized every sentient organic species they had ever come across in this place."

Miranda turned back towards the workstations behind them, eyeing the stained stone with a hesitant frown. "So all of these corpses here… were the Protheans dissecting these people?"

Liara swallowed, a lump forming itself in her throat. "I can't say for sure, not without more evidence to support the theory, but between all of this equipment left behind and the fact that everything has been carved into solid stone…"

She turned to face Miranda, poorly trying to mask the horror starting to well up inside her. "It seems the Protheans were looking for information on us, and then they left it behind in such a way to try to guarantee someone else would find it someday."

Her face paling slightly, Miranda gestured towards the carvings. "I suppose in that case, the real question is what did they find that merited all this?"

Liara opened her mouth to respond, then stopped as she glanced towards the far corner of the wall. Peering forwards through the dim light, she saw what she had taken to be a particularly deep shadow was actually an open doorway, revealing a pitch black space beyond this chamber.

Her heart began to thump in her chest and her skin began to tingle with goosebumps as her feet drew her inexorably towards this door. Wordlessly, Miranda fell in line behind her as they approached this second chamber, and with slightly shaking hands Liara withdrew her small flashlight from her bag as they stepped into the dark.

The beam of her light scythed through the shadows, providing a thin cone of illumination as they carefully moved into the room. Thick clouds of dust swirled through the light, forcing Liara to wince and cover her mouth with one hand as she took in the rows of ancient stone desks all packed together in dense clusters and covered with frayed wiring, shattered screens, and keyboards with the letters arranged into strange patterns.

"Now this is more of what I'd expect from a typical research station," Miranda mumbled. "Angle your light up a bit, maybe they left more on the wall for us."

Liara quickly raised her hand to illuminate the far wall, only for her and Miranda to stop dead in their tracks. Across the room, a massive ring loomed out of the darkness; two concentric circles carved into the stone wall in great, thick strokes that stretched nearly completely from floor to ceiling. This ring had been split into three equal pieces, with gaps a few inches wide between each piece, and each fragment had a series of symbols carved into it. In front of the ring, an ornate stone pedestal was set into the floor and rose up to waist height, but as Liara shined the light onto it she found that it was empty.

The walls on either side of this massive ring, however, were perhaps even more concerning than the ring itself. Unlike every other smooth, flat plane of stone that had served to form the walls, floors, and ceilings of every chamber they had visited so far, this one wall was pitted and uneven; pockmarked with divots and sharp fractures as if someone had taken a pickaxe to nearly every inch of it. Every so often an unblemished part of the wall could be found, often revealing half-destroyed Prothean glyphs, but Liara quickly realized almost no legible words remained outside the border of the ring.

She stepped past the last set of research stations to stand fully in front of the carving, finding that her pulse had doubled in the time it took her to cross the room. She craned her neck to look upwards towards the top segment, finding that up close the ring was even larger and more imposing than she had thought. As with other pieces of Prothean history she had discovered, something about this room seemed to radiate a particular sense of significance that chilled her blood and set her heart racing. This time, however, she wasn't quite sure if the sense of import was necessarily a good thing.

A few steps away, Miranda cautiously reached out to touch one of the gouged-out portions of the wall. "What do you think did this?" she asked, her voice echoing around the otherwise silent room.

Without averting her gaze from the ring, Liara responded, "With how localized it is to this specific wall, the only thing I can think of is that at some point somebody took steps to ensure no one would be able to read what was left here."

Miranda scoffed. "A little drastic for 'steps' if you ask me." She turned to look back towards the ring dominating the center of the wall and asked, "Can you make out anything from what's left?"

Liara nodded, once again whisking out her journal to jot down some notes as she replied, "Yes, most of the script inside the ring appears to be undamaged, though the dialect used here isn't one I'm used to seeing."

She stepped past the empty pedestal, hovering her fingers over the stone wall. "The first segment is labeled container, or maybe battery." Sliding her gaze across the wall, she continued, "The second is marked either power or fuel, I believe."

Turning towards the final segment, she frowned as she saw the final symbol had been gouged out with an almost malicious amount of force. She swallowed thickly, then said, "The final piece has also been vandalized, however. Whoever destroyed the rest of this wall must have not wanted this information to remain, either."

"At least they left something," Miranda muttered. "But still, battery and fuel? This is starting to sound more like a schematic than some ancient, mystical relic."

Liara frowned, tapping a finger on her thoughtfully. "I agree, this doesn't seem like it fits with everything else we have found in this place so far. If they just were trying to build the Ring, why have all this medical equipment here?"

Miranda simply shrugged with a baffled expression before walking further down the wall to hunt for more clues. Rather than follow her, Liara refocused on the ring carved into the wall as she began to sink deep into her own thoughts. This must be here for a reason, she mused, or else why hide it this far into the pyramid?

Though the haze clouding her mind had receded somewhat, she still found it irritatingly difficult to hunt down the answers she was after. Her mind felt like a jumbled up puzzle, one where she knew she had seen all of the pieces, but she couldn't figure out just how they all fit together. Question after question echoed around in her skull, leaving her feeling more confused and uncertain than ever.

As she continued to doggedly attempt to sort through her own mind, she found her gaze being drawn towards the first of the three fragments. "Container…" she mumbled to herself, once again feeling an itch at the back of her brain, like a thought just out of reach.

Suddenly, Liara's eyes widened and her breath hitched as lightning seemed to strike inside her mind. A series of memories began to flash rapid fire behind her eyes as her thoughts finally all clicked together: the mountains of bodies and rivers of blood from Shepard's vision, all surrounding a glowing fragment of the Ring, followed by the fragment itself sitting in her hands as the golden Prothean symbol for Death glowed up towards her; countless ancient sculptures waiting to be executed, then Liara's satchel starting to glow as she fought her way through hordes of Cerberus troops; pulses of light blasting out from the fragment she carried, and traps that should long since have deactivated nearly killing her in each ruin they travelled to.

"Goddess," she whispered, feeling as if the wind had been punched out of her. "It's a container for death."

"Wait, say that again?" Miranda called, swiftly making her way back over to the center of the wall. "Did you figure something out?"

Liara nodded slowly, feeling her blood run cold at the implications of her train of thought. "Everywhere we've gone, everything we have seen so far in these ruins, all of it has been focused around death. The headless statues, the black blood leaking from every ruin, all the corpses entombed here, they've all been connected this whole time."

She began to pace, her eyes wide as she worried her lower lip between her teeth. "At first I just thought that perhaps we had found some particularly morbid artistic style left behind by Prothean architects, or even by a large cult, but this is something more than that. Each of these sets of ruins have been both built specifically to their task and well hidden." She shook her head. "No, I believe each of these ruins we have found not only house the pieces of the ring, but they served a functional purpose as well."

"What kind of purpose?" Miranda asked, a suspicious frown spreading across her face.

"The ancient facility hidden on Jiwai was covered in statues all awaiting their own execution, correct? Shepard and I had to 'kill' a few just to make it all the way inside, and I'm sure you found something similar."

Miranda nodded in affirmation, but kept silent as Liara continued, "Not only that, but remember that massive pit of bodies that appeared as soon as we grabbed the fragment? That was built specifically to place a mass grave right at the foot of this specific piece of the Ring."

Liara pulled open her satchel, gingerly wrapping her fingers around the curved stone fragment as she held it up between the two of them. "This piece, that somehow came alive with some sort of energy while Shepard and I fought Cerberus soldiers, and that has been causing this very pyramid to power up beneath our feet."

Miranda stared towards her silently, moving her gaze between the fragment and the massive carving on the wall as the gears seemed to spin in her head. "So you're telling me," she finally said, "that this old piece of stone is somehow charging itself up by absorbing… what? People's souls as they die?"

Liara shrugged, carefully putting the stone shard back into her bag as she replied, "I can't say how it works or what specifically powers it, but after what we've seen so far I can't think of any other explanation."

"But that's impossible," Miranda sputtered, "not to mention completely ridiculous. Where's the science in 'this space rock stole your eternal soul'?"

A small grin cracked through Liara's focused frown. "To be fair, nobody said anything about souls being devoured, we just don't know exactly what it is eating. Even if it was, though, would it be that much more outlandish than ancient corpses rising from the dead to try to kill us?"

Miranda let out a deep sigh and crossed her arms. "I suppose not."

She turned to inspect the large carving once more, prompting Liara to stop her pacing and begin to sketch the wall into her journal. As she flipped open to a new page, she belatedly realized she was starting to near the end of the notebook. Glumly, she made a mental note to fetch another from her stash the next time she made it back to her apartment.

Just as she added the finishing touches to her sketch, Miranda said, "Right, so just looking at things objectively here, what we know is that we have a piece of the Ring that seems to respond to nearby deaths… somehow. Not only that, but the mechanisms built into this pyramid seem to respond to whatever energy comes out of it after it charges itself up."

She groaned, tipping her head back with an exasperated grimace. "God, it still barely sounds any better than saying the magic rock is raising the dead."

"I don't think it is, actually." Miranda blinked and turned back to Liara, a nonplussed expression on her face. Pointing up towards the carving, Liara continued, "Everything about the first piece so far has seemed to imply more of an absorption of power than anything else. Even this carving simply labels it as a container for whatever type of energy it seems to hold."

Liara moved to point up towards the second piece. "Remember how dark and quiet everything was when we first came down into this pyramid? Nothing in here was active until we brought the first fragment inside, and none of those corpses started moving until the fragment started acting up."

"We brought the power source right through the doors," Miranda gasped. "Wait, but if the first fragment didn't do anything like that until we got here—"

"Then the second piece must be in here with us," Liara confirmed. "Power or fuel, just like the carving says. The first piece charges up with energy, then the second piece puts that power to use."

An ominous silence filled the air as Liara found herself shivering slightly. By her side, Miranda seemed just as uneasy as she awkwardly rubbed her arms and asked, "So was it true all along? Did the Protheans really find a way to bring the dead back to life?"

"I don't know," Liara admitted. "We still don't understand exactly what the first two pieces do, or even how they do it."

She glanced towards the third section of the ring, once again eyeing the large gouges in the stone through whatever symbols might have once been carved there. "Plus the fact that we have no information at all on the third piece. There are just too many missing pieces to really know what is going on."

"I will say though…" She hesitated, lifting a hand to brush lightly over the bruises on her neck. "Those bodies may have been moving, but they didn't seem very alive to me."

A muffled boom rattled through the walls, throwing yet another cloud of dust up into the air as more than one ancient monitor fell off its desk and shattered across the floor. Liara hesitantly stepped back from the wall and swept her light through the swirling dust cloud, but saw no sign of what could have caused the sound.

"I think we've overstayed our welcome," Miranda muttered. "Did you see any other way out of here?"

Liara quickly turned around the room, her light flashing over wall after wall all defaced just like the first, when suddenly she stopped on a small metal door set into the stone. To the side of this door, however, a single unblemished section of the wall appeared, displaying one single symbol that drew her gaze like a magnet.

Slowly stepping forwards, she stepped around a junked research station to stand in front of this symbol, a small flitter of nerves beginning to shake in her hands. As if moving with a will of its own, her free hand reached forward to brush a thick layer of dust from the wall, fully revealing this large rune set carved into the stone.

A dull roaring began to fill Liara's hearing, as if a cacophony of whispers were flooding over her from all sides. A moment later, a brilliant golden light began to emit from the symbol, searing its image into her mind as she stared wide eyed at the text that now clearly read, "… The Voice!"

T'Soni…

A sudden metallic screeching filled the air, causing Liara to jump and nearly drop her flashlight. Snapping her head towards the sound, she saw Miranda leaning back from wrenching the small metal door open.

"Damn lucky that this thing moved at all," she grunted. Turning to Liara, she gestured towards the now open doorway. "After you, Doctor."

Liara stared forwards, desperately trying to catch her breath. A heavy silence filled the room, with no sign of the storm of whispers she had heard just a moment ago, and a single glance confirmed that while the symbol she had found was still there, its golden glow had vanished.

"Right," she said, unable to keep a small tremor out of her voice. "We've lingered here too long."

She quickly stepped through the door, flashlight raised in one hand as the other tightly gripped her pistol. Miranda followed shortly behind, and together the two of them moved forwards down a short passageway that opened up into an open, circular room dimly lit by neon blue strips pulsating softly in the walls.

Clicking off her flashlight, Liara looked around to see a single raised podium placed into the center of the room, flanked on either side by hulking stone statues. These figures were easily twelve or so feet tall, and unlike previous statues she had found each of these were carved to look like they were wearing oddly curving plate armor. Both statues held their hands clasped together and their feet spread wide, and between their hands each statue held the hilt a long, heavy blade that rested its point on the ground.

Liara took a hesitant step into the room, only to stop as her footsteps rang loudly out across the chamber and echoed for far longer than they should have. Glancing upwards, she saw that rather than have a stone roof like all the other chambers here, the circular walls extended upwards to form a stone shaft that extended far upwards and out of sight.

"Great, there's no way through," Miranda groaned. "We should head back and see if we missed any other doors."

"Wait," Liara called, "I might have an idea."

She strode forwards into the center of the chamber as she pulled open her satchel. Stepping up to the podium, she was briefly struck by the ominous presence of the two statues. Standing this close, they both seemed to loom dangerously over her, as if they could stir to life at any moment.

Shaking off the feeling, Liara instead looked down onto the podium. Unlike the ornate podium in the previous room, this one was little more than a small rectangle of stone extending four feet off the ground and covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. She carefully wiped a hand across it, dislodging what seemed like a small hill of dirt and revealing a perfectly square indent cut into its center.

Quickly wiping off her hand on her pants, she bit her lip and fished the small metallic flame sculpture from her bag. Moving achingly slowly, she placed the sculpture's square base over the indent then, as gently as possible, slid it home into the podium.

Blue light immediately flared to life, making her flinch as several more lines of neon blue ignited beneath her feet as they ran out across the floor. A moment later, a dull grinding sound rang out as the floor itself shuddered like a creature rousing itself from a deep sleep, then smoothly began to lift upwards into the open shaft above. In only seconds, the doorway they had passed through moments earlier vanished beneath the floor, leaving the chamber dark except for the blue light now glowing up from the floor as they traveled upwards.

Miranda quickly moved away from the walls, choosing instead to stand closer to Liara in the center of the floor. Gesturing up towards the moving walls, she said, "An elevator, great. Why did they make us walk down all those damn stairs at the entrance if they could've just used this the whole time?"

Liara huffed out a soft laugh. "Perhaps they simply liked to exercise."

"Yes, well, maybe they should've built a gym instead of this dusty old deathtrap."

They rode said dusty old deathtrap upwards for what felt several more minutes, though it was hard to tell in the featureless elevator shaft. Silence fell between the two of them once again, leaving Liara free to make detailed sketches of the two large statues as Miranda read a message on her omni-tool.

After finishing her drawings, Liara found herself looking up towards Miranda. Unwilling to endure the silence any longer, she stuffed her journal away and instead decided on one of the many questions currently rattling around in her skull. "Miranda," she began, "why is Cerberus really after the Ring of Life?"

Miranda looked up from her omni-tool with a single raised brow. Suddenly nervous, Liara blurted, "I know you said they had started hunting Prothean artifacts, but I just thought that it seems strange that such a militaristic group would chase something like this."

Flicking off her omni-tool with a flick of her wrist, Miranda turned to fully face Liara. "I'd think the benefits of everlasting life would be enough for almost anyone to want such an object, don't you think?"

Liara nodded, a bashful blush warming her cheeks, only for Miranda to sigh and turn away a moment later. "I know what you mean, though," she said. "A legendary Masterwork lost to time that might not even really exist isn't really the average target of a military operation."

She gazed upwards towards the open shaft above, revealing just a sliver of her face behind her dark hair. After a quiet moment in which she seemed to struggle with herself, she finally said, "First you have to understand that Cerberus is split into several different cells, each of which actively pursue their own goals independent of the others. The soldiers we've encountered all belong to one of these cells, whose goal is currently to acquire the Ring of Life at all costs."

Liara's heart dropped into her stomach as a fresh wave of unease swept through her. "All of this has just been one cell?"

Miranda flicked a glance over her shoulder, revealing a smirk. "Don't fret too much, Doctor. This has only been one cell, yes, but this particular cell is one of the largest by far. From what I've seen, most cells tend to focus more on liquid assets or advanced research rather than sheer numbers."

As Liara attempted to process this new information, Miranda continued, "This cell, code named Project Achilles, is focused on developing or acquiring technology for human use. A sort of crutch, you could say, to try to help humanity compensate for being such a new species to the galactic stage."

She paused for a moment, flexing her fingers by her side before she turned back towards Liara with a flat expression. "Project Achilles was the cell that I worked in during my time with Cerberus. Shortly after I joined, we changed priorities to focus on finding Prothean tech in hopes that we could find something nobody else would've thought of before, which eventually led us to the stories of the Masterworks."

Liara nodded along as she spoke, feeling the facts slide together in her head to start to form a clearer picture of their circumstances. "That's how you were able to follow Cerberus to the ruins here," she murmured. "You already knew where they were."

Miranda tilted her head in confirmation. "I'm honestly more impressed that you found this place all on your own," she replied. "Your university must be happy to have someone as smart as you on staff."

Liara's blush returned in full force as she dismissively waved a hand in the air. "It was just a matter of doing the necessary research, that's all."

Smirking, Miranda once again opened up her omni-tool as she scoffed, "Rather intense research, it seems."

The grating sound of grinding stone finally tapered out as the floor shuddered to a stop beneath their feet. Spinning around, Liara saw yet another open doorway was now visible as a bright blue light began filtering through it into the chamber. "This is where we get off, I guess" she said, then cautiously walked through the door.

Before her lay a room vaguely similar to the labs they had just explored; a wide open rectangular space with several cracked desks and dead terminals scattered about the floor. The far wall, however, appeared to be a single massive pane of glass through which neon light illuminated the room. Pushed up against this glass was one single terminal, barely visible underneath a small mountain of dust.

Liara walked through the room, Miranda close behind her as they approached the glass together. Squinting against the bright light, Liara leaned up as close as she could without touching the glass, only to stop as her jaw dropped in shock. By her side, Miranda let out a low whistle and mumbled, "Oh, damn."

Through the glass, a gigantic cylindrical chamber extended hundreds of feet both down and across to form what seemed to be more of a chasm than a chamber. Lining these titanic curved walls were countless specks of glimmering light, all of which combined to flood the space in a blue so intense it bordered on white. Up above all of this, vague shapes loomed out of the shadows clinging to the upper walls of the chamber, suggesting some indistinct shape Liara couldn't quite make out.

Craning her neck to look down towards the floor, she saw at first what seemed to be oddly rippling and roiling shadows completely enshrouding the chamber. A moment later, however, two blinding flashes of blue energy detonated in the center of the room, revealing two tiny figures standing back to back on some sort of central platform. Only seconds later, the flood of dark shapes descended upon these figures once again, now resolving themselves into countless grasping arms and lurching bodies of what Liara realized was a seemingly infinite horde of moving corpses.

"It's them," Liara breathed, her heart suddenly taking a vacation to move in next to her tonsils. She stared down towards the mass of bodies below, feeling as if her pulse had simultaneously quadrupled and just stopped completely. "Goddess, it's Shepard and Jack."

"And a couple hundred new friends." Liara turned to see Miranda now leaning one hand against the glass, her face pale with a stricken expression. "They must have been fighting this entire time."

Liara's earlier panic resurfaced with a vengeance, a physical ache in her chest that threatened to blot out any rational thought. Gasping at the sudden pain, she managed to gasp, "We have to get them out of there, we can't just stand here."

Miranda rounded on her in a flash, her brow drawn down into a thunderous frown as she snapped, "Well what can we do? It's not like we can bloody well jump down after them!"

Liara flinched, taken aback by the sudden outburst. Frowning slightly, she took in Miranda's wide eyes, pale skin, and tightly clenched fists, and even then it took her several seconds to realize that, for perhaps the first time, Miranda was nearly as panicked as she herself felt.

She awkwardly wrapped her hands around the strap of her satchel, dropping eye contact as she retorted, "We can't just leave them—"

She trailed off into a pained groan as an achingly cold spot appeared off her hip. Glancing down, she saw that once again small crystals of ice had begun to form across the surface of her satchel, and from gaps in the bag beams of neon light were bursting out across the room. Quickly lifting the bag away from herself, she nervously looked up to see Miranda's anger had faded into a wary look of anticipation.

A sudden white light flared to life, causing them both to jump and whirl around to see a single terminal flickering to life. Slowly moving closer, Liara saw the small screen repeatedly flash jumbled paragraphs of code, then switch off, then surge to life once more as the ancient computer desperately attempted to run some sort of activation sequence.

Finally, after several seconds of this, the screen flickered one last time before resolving into what appeared to be a single large button that filled the screen, upon which a single glyph was placed.

_Activate_?

Liara immediately leaned down and slapped the button with no hesitation. As she watched, the screen blanked out once again as it processed the command, until a moment later a new phrase appeared.

_Ceremony_ Begun

She glanced up towards Miranda, then quickly ran back over to the window. Wincing against the bright light, she looked downwards once again to see the distant figures of Shepard and Jack briefly freeze in place, their legs spread wide as if to try to keep their balance. Seconds later, they jerked upwards as the central platform of the room shunted several feet upwards, dislodging several approaching corpses as they tried to climb up over the edge.

The platform continued to glide smoothly upwards, rising higher and higher above the rest of the chamber as corpses continued to throw themselves at its base. Several managed to hook rotting hands up onto the ascending edge of the platform or in crevices in its side, but even in the first few seconds the number of corpses able to mount the platform at once drastically dropped from what Liara considered horrific to only mildly frightening.

To their credit, Shepard and Jack immediately launched back into motion once they regained their balance. Tiny blooms of biotic energy winked into existence all around them, causing Liara to smile in relief as she watched corpse after corpse flung back off the platform like ragdolls.

"I guess that solves that problem, for now at least," Miranda drawled. "But where is that thing taking them?"

The sound of grinding stone cut off Liara before she could respond, and whipping over her shoulder she turned to see the door they had entered through slide ominously shut. Simultaneously, a second doorway appeared across the room as a small section of the wall slid open to reveal a staircase leading up and out of sight.

Miranda sighed. "I should just stop asking questions, I think."

The corner of Liara's mouth briefly lifted in amusement as they crossed the room. Stepping through the door, she found the stairs to lead steeply upwards in a tightly spiraling circle, and with a sigh she began to trudge up the stone steps.

Mercifully, these stairs only led upwards for fifty or so feet rather than five hundred, and after only a minute or two Liara came to a stop before a thick stone door. As she looked for any sort of handle or place to push, another wave of cold energy flared at her hip and swept across the thin staircase. A moment later, a glowing blue inlay of a ring began to shine across the surface of the door, and with a deep rumbling sound it slowly slid to one side to reveal the space beyond.

Liara stepped through the door onto a catwalk made of a hard, dark material that clicked under her boots like glass as she walked. Curious, she thought, scuffing her boot against the odd material. Light from above reflected off of the floor in strange, shifting patterns, almost as if the floor itself was moving beneath her feet. Frowning, she squatted down and lightly ran a finger across the dark surface, only to find it to be very hard and cold to the touch.

After several seconds of examining this, she eventually shrugged and made a mental note to re-examine the material later. Looking up, she continued forwards across the catwalk only to stumble to a stop a moment later, her mouth agape in awe.

What could only be the top of the pyramid glowed brightly above her, radiating a pale blue light strong enough to make Liara's eyes water. Four huge stone walls all slanted inwards and rose up together to meet fifty feet above her in a single glowing point, down from which lines of neon blue twisted and swirled across each wall to form radiant whorls of light that extended downwards out of sight.

Following these swirls down the wall, Liara blanched as she saw the catwalk she stood on hung over what at first appeared to be a yawning abyss, with the walls of the pyramid shooting off down into the dark where they gradually faded from view. Though she had never been particularly scared of heights, Liara felt her vision begin to swim slightly as she took in this staggering drop only a few feet away.

A tiny flash of blue suddenly lit up this open pit, and then another, each of which revealed brief glimpses of a small round shape slowly rising up out of the dim space below the catwalks. Liara frowned down towards this, until after a moment her heart jumped in her chest. "That's Shepard and Jack down there!" she exclaimed.

She turned to see Miranda cautiously stepping out onto the catwalk, a wary look on her face as she replied, "We must have found another way into that giant room we saw them in." She came to a stop next to Liara and carefully peered down over the edge. "Maybe this is where that lift is taking them? But what's up here that warrants this?"

Liara frowned thoughtfully as she stepped back from the drop. Turning back towards the rest of this space, she saw the catwalk she stood on extended hundreds of feet across a wide open space before ending in another small door on the far wall. Two more catwalks jutted out from either wall, both angled towards Liara's left where they met in a single point, forming an open triangle of space between the three catwalks.

The furthest point of this triangle of catwalks shot forwards and broadened out into a wide half-circle of a platform, stretching a hundred feet across at its widest point. On either side of this platform, dozens upon dozens of stone figures lined its edges in two staggered rows, creating a border of featureless warriors that all carried gleaming blades held high in some kind of salute. The rest of the platform was left empty, creating an open space big enough for a hundred people to stand together with room to spare.

Beyond this curving platform, a wide set of stairs ascended upwards several feet, narrowing as they went until peaking at the base of what Liara saw to be a huge altar; a wide, square metal base that tapered upwards in smooth and gently curving planes of metal to form a luminous obelisk at the peak of this pyramid. Thin lines of teal light arced across its surface, seeming to pulse every few seconds like some primordial heartbeat.

The obelisk was, to Liara's eye, a truly majestic work of art, and if not for the last feature of this massive chamber she would have happily spent weeks examining each and every part of it. As it was, however, this shining spire of metal was only the second most impressive object in the room.

Set high against the back ball of the pyramid behind the platform was a singularly massive ring of stone, nearly fifty feet across and backlit with blazing blue light as if it was a burning halo hovering above the altar. Countless arches and curling lines of blue light spiraled out across the wall behind it, captivating Liara's gaze and thoroughly dominating the area under its brilliant glow.

She stared up towards this giant ring, her mouth agape and her knees weak, as a single awestruck thought looped through her head like a broken record. It really does exist.

Quickly reaching into her bag, she withdrew the stone fragment with a careful touch and held it before her. Beneath the glow of the ring above, the stone in her hands seemed to shimmer and vibrate with barely contained energy, like it might violently explode at any moment.

T'Soni…

A brief babble of soft whispers filled her hearing, before after a moment they slowly faded away like a wave retreating back into the ocean. In her hands, the stone fragment went painfully cold, and up above the burning ring seemed to briefly flare with sympathetic light.

An inexplicable spike of fear punched through Liara's chest, and with jittery hands she quickly tucked the fragment back into her bag. Turning towards Miranda with a nervous furrow to her brow, she asked, "Should we wait to see if the others will make it up here—"

A loud boom punched through the end of her sentence, nearly tipping both her and Miranda off their feet as a tremor shook through the ground. Quickly regaining her balance as her pulse skyrocketed, Liara stepped back from the edge of the catwalk and looked up to see thick clouds of dust and small flecks of stone raining down from the peak of the pyramid up above.

Only moments after the sound, silence once again snuck in to fill the chamber. Liara quickly ran her gaze across the ceiling as she strained her hearing, but as the seconds passed no further tremors seemed to be forthcoming. By her side, Miranda brushed a bit of dust off of her shoulder with a disdainful grimace. "We can't wait for them. I've got a feeling that we're going to want to get out of this place as quickly as possible."

With trepidation thrumming in her chest, Liara followed Miranda as they walked down the left catwalk. No more sounds could be heard up here beyond the click of their boots on the glass floor and Liara's own heavy breathing as she fought to get her pulse under control. Glancing over towards Miranda, she saw that her companion seemed to be just as calm and collected as ever as they crossed over the chasm below. Unfortunately, this did little to settle her own nerves.

At the junction of the two catwalks, they stepped forwards and out onto the wide platform before the glowing altar. Now that they were closer, Liara saw that the statues lining the outer edge were all nearly ten feet tall, making her feel very tiny as she stood exposed on this flat and empty space. Increasing her pace, she bolted directly for the stairs on the far side as she passed Miranda in her hurry.

She quickly arrived at the base of the stairs, then paused to take in the view. Each step here was a set of perfect angles cut out of dark glass, ascending several feet upwards to the base of the shining obelisk above. High above her now, the massive stone ring cast a luminous blue light over her, completely filling her field of vision. Her eyes widened as she paused in the light of this ring, suddenly consumed by a sense of awe that soon began to burn away her earlier dread.

"This is it," she breathed in a reverent whisper. "I was right."

I was right, she thought, slowly stepping up onto the stairs. I was right, she thought again, gliding up the staircase as if in a trance. A bubbling sense of elation began to seep through her, as if a glimmering bit of hope and vindication was exploding into a star inside her chest. Every step she took brought her closer to the obelisk atop the stairs, and every step brought her further into the divine light of the ring up above.

Belatedly, Liara found that her mouth had stretched into a wide smile that made her cheeks ache. Finally, she would be able to prove her worth to her colleagues at Serrice. Finally, her mother would listen to what she had to say. Oh, finally she might be able to start to believe in herself the way Shepard did. Her heart kicked in her chest at the thought as a deep ache she hadn't quite noticed before began to loosen somewhere inside her. I was right.

She came to a stop at the top of the stairs, her knees nearly buckling under the weight of her emotions. Only a scant five feet before her lay the base of the obelisk, which now towered over her in a curving spire of burnished steel. Where the metal met the floor, a large and rectangular block of metal supported the rest of the spire, its corners lined with the same strips of teal light that swirled up the sides of the rest of the obelisk.

Upon seeing the face of this square foundation, Liara nearly sobbed as she spotted a small indent in the familiar shape of a plume of twisting flame. She reached into her bag with shaking hands, withdrawing the small metal sculpture stored within once more. Drifting forwards like a moth to a flame, she extended this sculpture towards the obelisk, feeling the weight of this pinnacle of her career now shaking between her hands. Slowly, and ever so carefully, she closed the gap before finally sliding the sculpture home.

The statuette slid into the side of the obelisk smoothly before coming to a stop with a satisfying click. A moment later a split appeared in the face of the metal, nearly two feet tall and so thin Liara could barely be sure it was there at all. As she watched, however, this split widened as two unseen doors swung open like small metal gates, revealing an open cavity in the base of the obelisk.

This cavity was a small open cube of space, only a few feet across in any direction. Inside was a single flat piece of stone, tilted upwards like a lectern as it stretched across the entire opening. Thin glowing lines gently flared to life across its surface, basking Liara in its glow as the stone slid forwards to jut out into open air. Stumbling back a step, she fell to one knee as she looked down to see a single, ancient cushion laid out across the stone, somehow preserved against the ravages of time with only a few frayed edges to show for it.

Liara, however, only had eyes for the curved eight inch strip of stone set atop this cushion, its sides covered in countless runes and symbols carved into its side in a thin, spidery script. Now freshly exposed to fresh air for the first time in centuries, this fragment of stone slowly rose up to float several inches over the cushion, revealing the fractured rock splinters on either end of its length. A moment later, small blue lights began to flicker across its surface like ripples of neon water across its surface as once again Liara's satchel went painfully cold, nearly freezing itself to her side as she stared towards this second fragment in wonder.

Blinking, Liara glanced down beneath the floating stone to see a large, circular indent pressed half an inch into the cushion before her. Her eyes quickly widened, and with goosebumps running up her arms she slowly reached out to run light fingers over this rut.

"It was here," she murmured. "The entire Ring must have been kept right in this spot."

Behind her, she heard footsteps scuff across the glass floor as Miranda distantly called out, "Well? What's up there?"

Without turning away from the floating fragment, Liara called back, "It was here! The Ring of Life, one of the most renowned artifacts of all time, was here! It must have sat in this very spot for years, or millenia, even!"

"That's very fascinating and all, but is it still here now?"

Liara opened her mouth to respond, only to find her throat had gone dry in the sudden chill pervading the chamber. Swallowing thickly, she replied, "No, just another fragment of the whole. But even just this second piece…"

She trailed off as the fragment pulsed with light before her, blasting her with a frigid wave of light even as it began to slowly spin in place. Despite the rapidly dropping temperature, however, Liara found that she did not feel the cold biting her skin anymore, or even any of the many scrapes or bruises she had acquired on her way to this very spot. All she felt, watching this beautiful piece of history spin round and round before her, was a pull from the very depths of her soul towards this relic before her. Almost without thinking, her hand rose up to slowly grasp towards the fragment, even as she dimly heard herself say, "I'm going to grab it now, I think."

There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching up the stairs. "Wait, Doctor," Miranda began, "remember what happened last time–"

Unwilling and unable to heed her words, Liara's hand continued forwards to hover just above the fragment as it gracefully twirled before her. Her hearing had long since fuzzed out, all sounds and sensations being replaced by the image of this curved stone and by a gentle wash of whispers all around, all repeating one single word like a prayer.

T'Soni…

She closed her fingers around the stone, feeling just for a moment its rough edges biting into her palm before the world rumbled, tilted, and then finally exploded all around her.

---

It was only the fourth time a corpse wrapped its knobbly hands around her neck that Shepard was finally forced to admit it.

The first two times she simply shrugged the desiccated arms off or snapped their old, weathered elbows with a quick punch. She could do this all day, right? She was a fighting machine with endurance for weeks, not to mention a professional combatant by trade. Bring on the whole horde, she would just put them right back on their undead asses.

The third time some long-dead body tried to strangle her, it took her long enough to shake it off that it managed to leave some nasty scratches across the sides of her neck that smarted whenever she looked too far to one side. Worse, the corpse had the audacity to try to come back in for seconds, forcing her to slap away its hands before sending it reeling with a nasty uppercut. The idea had first occurred to her then, but Shepard was nothing if not stubborn, so she pushed the thought away as the fight continued. Wiping the blood off her neck with one hand, she dove right back into the fray, maybe breathing a little harder and bleeding a bit more than before, but still chugging along just fine, thank you.

The fourth time, though, one of the corpses managed to sneak up behind her before starting to do its best to choke the life out of her. By this point, her neck was beginning to feel like a tenderized piece of meat, cutting off her righteously indignant swearing into a choked and rather pathetic, "Ghrk!"

The fingers tightened, making her vision flicker and flash red. Shepard scrabbled at these dead digits locked together under her jaw, only to cough as the hands began to throttle her harder in response. Figuring she should probably change strategies if she wanted any of her windpipe to be left after this, she instead planted one foot before her and jumped backwards, throwing her entire weight onto the corpse currently strangling the life out of her.

Unable to support her weight, the corpse toppled to the ground with Shepard on top of her, who took the opportunity to rip the grasping hands from her neck before turning around and flattening her attacker with a single biotic punch. She sucked in a shuddering breath before retching once, feeling where the bruises were inevitably forming around her neck, when she realized she could no longer ignore it.

She was exhausted.

Panting heavily, she sat back up and looked across the platform to see who was still standing. Several feet away, Jack snarled as she clubbed an approaching corpse with the stock of her shotgun, then flipped the weapon around to blast two more off their feet. Thankfully, as the platform continued to rise higher, fewer and fewer corpses had been able to climb up high enough to reach the top, resulting in drastically fewer bodies trying to murder them.

On one hand, this gave Shepard plenty of time to catch her breath as she stood back to her feet, which was never something she would take for granted. Unfortunately, however, she had no goddamned clue why or even how the platform they stood on had started moving upwards like the world's most dangerous elevator. Even if they lived through this fight, who knew what would be waiting for them at the top?

Rolling out her shoulders, she reflexively popped her knuckles as she stalked around the giant ceremonial axe still embedded in the center of the platform to move up behind a corpse toddering towards Jack. Reaching out one hand, she lightly tapped it on the shoulder, only to lay it out with a meaty right hook as it turned towards her. Further out across the platform, only a handful of corpses remained on their feet, and with a scowl Shepard flared her biotics and got to work.

Several seconds later, one final shot rang out from Jack's shotgun as the last corpse crumpled to the floor. Quickly ejecting the spent thermal clip, she loaded in the next with slightly shaking hands as she turned to Shepard with a sharp grin. "Well damn, Shepard. Maybe you do know how to show a girl a good time."

Shepard barked out a surprised laugh. "God, ow, don't make me laugh," she wheezed. "I'm too burned out to flirt right now."

Jack scoffed. "You fuckin wish I was flirting," she drawled, heavy breaths interrupting her every few words. Glancing upwards, she gestured towards the vague shapes looming out of the darkness above them. "So what, we just sit here with our thumbs up our asses until something else tries to kill us?"

"Guess so," Shepard replied. "Unless you wanna start trying to climb back down to all our new zombie friends."

Grimacing, Jack shot a wary look at the nearest body laying spread out across the floor. "Nah, think I'll pass on that."

She stalked off across the platform before squatting down near the flanged axe with her back turned towards Shepard. Shrugging to herself, Shepard resisted the urge to sit and instead began to methodically stretch out any muscles she could, working down from her neck and upper shoulders all the way down to her calves. Each step of the way, her host of collected scrapes and bruises protested with every movement, and with a pout Shepard realized she was going to be incredibly sore tomorrow.

After the violent mayhem they had just escaped, time seemed to slow to an excruciating crawl. Shepard quickly ran out of body parts to stretch, so after a brief lull she switched to popping any poppable joints in her hands that she could find. Even after this, she glanced upwards to see that practically no visible progress had been made, leaving the two of them stranded on this small platform as it continued to rise up through the darkness. Exasperated, she sighed and began to pace the length of the circular lift, figuring she should keep her muscles loose for whatever came next.

An eternity seemed to pass in this manner before Jack finally interrupted Shepard's pacing by pointing upwards with a curious expression. "Hey, check that out."

Craning her neck back, Shepard saw that the eternal gloom up above had finally yielded to a piercing blue light that now filtered down all around them. Below it, sharp shadows were now visible as what appeared to be multiple catwalks crossed above them, forming a wide triangle of space for their lift to rise up through.

Glancing down towards herself, she saw that the soft blue glow now lighting the platform gave her skin a ghastly tint, deepening all of the many dark bruises across her arms from green and purple to a sickly black. Shuddering, she shook out her arms once again before turning to Jack. "Right, so what are the odds something else up there tries to kill—"

A blast of pure force punched through the chamber, picking Shepard clear up off the ground and throwing her like a ragdoll. As she tumbled across the floor, what sounded like dozens of explosions rang out from every direction as the world shook violently beneath her. A high pitched whine began to ring painfully in her ears as the deafening blasts continued, briefly muffling any sounds she could hear as she skidded to a stop near the edge of the platform.

She lay curled up into a ball for several seconds, riding out the wave of pain with a silent snarl before finally dragging herself up to her feet. A bout of dizziness immediately struck as she stood, nearly knocking her back onto her ass before she roughly shook it off. Several feet away, she saw Jack laying flat on her back with a dazed expression, and with a lurch Shepard started hobbling over towards her.

"Jack," she croaked, then coughed as she choked on a mouthful of blood. Wincing, she spat out a phlegm of red fluid onto the floor, only just noticing the pain in her tongue from where she must have bit it. "Jack," she began again, "you alright?"

She stiffly bent down to shake Jack's shoulder, only for Jack to slap away her hand. "Don't touch me, asshole," she slurred, blinking several times before finally her eyes seemed to refocus. With a grunt, she heaved herself upwards and took a step back from Shepard, who appeasingly lowered her hand.

In only a moment any confusion seemed to melt out of her, leaving only her usual flinty scowl as she stared upwards. Following her gaze, Shepard squinted as looked directly into the piercing light of day shining brightly down from what previously was a shadowy void. Peering through the glare, she saw massive chunks of the stone walls had been smashed inwards, as if a giant had taken a hammer to the sides of the pyramid. Gaping swaths of open sky were now visible through these fresh holes in the walls, and as she spun around Shepard saw that now nearly half of the top of the pyramid seemed to be missing.

A pang of fear ran through her as she saw several more pieces of splintered stone slough off the sides of the chamber and soundlessly fall into the great abyss below, followed several seconds later by a dull thud that shook the floor beneath her feet. Dropping slightly into a crouch to maintain her balance, she saw Jack wobble for a moment as she grunted, "What assholes are trying to level this place with us still in it?"

Shepard's face paled as Liara's words from the previous day echoed in her head. "It's Cerberus," she spat, blood still pooling in her mouth. "They couldn't find the front door so they're making their own."

Jack froze, looking between the rapidly approaching catwalks above and Shepard's own tired grimace. "Aw, fuck it," she said, her lips pressed into a thin line. "It was starting to get boring anyways."

She chambered a fresh round into her shotgun, and with a pang Shepard's hand twitched towards her own empty pistol. Huffing out a sigh, she instead started rolling out her shoulders and settling into a pattern of deep breathing, all the while beginning to bounce on the balls of her feet with an impatient energy. If they were going to have to race Cerberus all the way back out of this deathtrap, things were about to get a lot more complicated.

After another long minute of tense quiet, the platform finally rumbled to a halt just as it crested over the junction between two slanted catwalks. Immediately leaping forwards off of the lift, Shepard peered forwards through swirling clouds of dust to see countless piles of rubble and shattered rock littered around what appeared to have at one point been a wide open space. Around the sides of this upper platform, she saw what looked to be the remains of dozens of large stone statues all dashed to pieces across this large platform, along with several worryingly large fissures splintering across what appeared to be a dark glass floor. The far side of this platform was heavily obscured by the dirt clogging up the air, but as Shepard squinted forwards she could make out a pulsating glow of teal light somewhere up above her.

Without hesitating, she began to pick her way across the ruined platform, taking advantage of the extra light from the huge holes in the walls to avoid any particularly nasty looking cracks in the ground. Even with this illumination, however, she found that her visibility only extended a few feet in any direction, prompting her to stretch one hand out before herself while using the other to try to keep an entire dune of desert sand from being inhaled into her mouth. Behind her, she could hear the clomp of Jack's heavy boots following her through the mire, but to her dismay no other sounds could be heard.

"Liara!" she cried, skirting around a particularly large chunk of pyramid wall. "Liara, are you up here? Hello?"

She stepped past a final pile of refuse, waving her hand in front of her and coughing up what felt like a lung full of dust when a breeze swept through, clearing the air immediately in front of her. Looking upwards, she saw a wide staircase ascending before her until it terminated at the base of a towering prothean obelisk, which rhythmically pulsed with a teal light. Behind this spire of metal, she saw what at one point would have been a massive stone ring set into the wall had been blown to pieces, with nearly half of it now strewn all across the floor in jagged chunks.

Halfway up the wide steps, Miranda lay sprawled out on her back, her catsuit ripped in several places and her face contorted into a pained grimace as she clutched at her stomach. Near the top of the stairs, however, Shepard could make out an unthinkable shape: a pile of loose rubble and bits of broken stone, a body lying limply under this debris, and the soft blue of Liara's face as she lay motionless against the ground.

Oh, god. Shepard shot forwards up the stairs, unable to feel her feet as they pounded up the stone steps. In her chest, an ice cold point of fear jabbed deep through her ribs, growing colder and more painful with each step she took. Time seemed to stretch as she ran forwards, her pulse slowing to a strained crawl that thundered in her ears. Even still she climbed the stairs, unable to do anything other than run towards Liara. Please, she thought, not this, not again. Anything but this.

Taking the stairs three at a time, she blew past Miranda and sprinted up the last bit of staircase to fall to her knees by Liara's prone form. "T'Soni," she gasped, gently grabbing her shoulder, "come on, wake up."

She shook Liara's shoulder once, then again, but to no effect. As panic began to sizzle through her nerves, Shepard quickly ran a clinical eye across Liara. To her relief, other than a shallow cut to her forehead and a set of long indigo bruises stretching around her neck, she didn't find any particularly worrying injuries. Shifting her gaze further down her body, she saw that Liara was buried under the pile of rubble nearly up to her waist, so with an animal ferocity she began to fling the debris off of her.

Her pulse was now deafening in her ears, and as she dug a pounding ache began to slowly spread from her heart up through her chest and neck, before finally manifesting as a burning in her eyes. Desperately fighting to keep the tears out of her voice, Shepard grunted, "Don't you give up on me now, T'Soni." She plunged her hands into the pile of sharp stone again and again, heedless of how the rough edges cut at her palms. "Chakwas is going to kick both our asses after this and I am not going through that by myself."

Just as she started to excavate the tops of Liara's boots, a glimmer of light in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Turning back towards Liara's face, Shepard blinked as she saw bright beams of light shooting out from underneath where she lay. A mote of curiosity briefly flared through the miasma of dread threatening to choke her out, and after a moment she shifted to sit next to Liara's shoulders. Reaching forwards, she carefully looped her hands beneath Liara's arms, then flipped her over as gently as possible to lay her head and shoulders across her lap.

Blue light sparkled into the air as Liara's hands came into view, and looking towards its source Shepard's brow rose in surprise as she saw the curved piece of stone clutched in her fingers. Letting out a low whistle, a small grin began to tease at the corner of her mouth as she breathed, "Well, damn. You found it after all, huh?"

Dozens of runes suddenly flared to life across its surface, then all pulsed at once in a dizzying shower of light. Instantly, a crippling wave of nausea erupted in Shepard's gut, nearly making her black out from sheer pain as she loudly retched off to one side. Further down the stairs, she dimly could make out the sounds of pained grunts echoing up from where she had left Miranda and Jack, but any thought of them was obliterated as the fragment flared once more with that sickening light.

Before Shepard could really lose her lunch all over Liara, however, the fragment seemed to settle back down, allowing her to unclench the muscles she had engaged to try to overpower the pain. Shaking off the remnant nausea, she winced as an acidic aftertaste filled her mouth, mixing with the remaining blood from her bitten tongue in a new and god-awful combination of flavors. She spat another glob of blood onto the ground, then reached for her pack to take a swig from her canteen of water.

As she stashed the canteen away, a twitch of movement on her lap had her snapping her head back around to see Liara's breathing hitch as mouth twitched ever so slightly. Leaning over her, Shepard reverently ran a hand across her brow to wipe away a streak of blood, then moved her hand lower to cup her cheek. "Liara," Shepard whispered. "Can you hear me?"

Liara groaned softly, her brow furrowing as she nuzzled into Shepard's palm. Her heart stuttering at the sight, Shepard swiped a thumb across Liara's impossibly soft cheek. "Liara?"

A pair of stunning cobalt eyes cracked open, bleary and unfocused before they landed on Shepard. Liara's frown deepened, and after a moment she reached one hand up to brush across Shepard's cheek. "Cam?" she croaked, her voice slightly huskier than normal.

A shiver ran down Shepard's spine at the sound of her name, followed quickly by a rush of heat to her cheeks as Liara shifted her fingers to rest behind her ear. "Hey, you," she replied. "Looks like I caught you napping with your newest toy."

Liara chuckled, the warmth in her voice reflected by the smile spreading across her face. "I guess this makes us even now."

Shepard laughed, then winced as her ribs protested painfully. "Guess we gotta have ourselves a tiebreaker then, huh? First person to not pass out in a ruin wins."

She shifted her gaze down towards the glowing fragment still clutched in Liara's hand. "That's what I think it is, right? The Eternia Disk?"

"You mean the Ring of Life?"

"Whatever."

Liara laughed, a soothing sound that made Shepard's heart flutter in her chest. "I believe it's the next piece, yes."

She glanced down towards her prize, then back up to Shepard as her smile grew even wider. "I was right, Shepard, it was here! The actual Ring of Life sat in this very chamber! This entire pyramid, all the ruins we've seen, now we know that they're empirical evidence that the Masterworks really existed!"

She shifted to sit further upright, now resting her lower back against Shepard's legs as she frantically dug through her satchel. "Oh, this changes everything now. Imagine the number of papers to be written on this place, the sheer volume of cultural context literally built into the walls. This find has everything!"

A warm glow began to suffuse through Shepard as she watched Liara seem to come alive with a radiant energy that poured out of her every motion. Even as she scribbled away in her notebook with a scraped up face and a giddy little grin, at this moment Liara was the most vibrant and beautiful thing Shepard thought she had ever seen.

Blinking, Shepad shook herself out of her little reverie and managed to focus enough to ask, "So is that the last piece, or are there more?"

It took several seconds for Liara to stop writing notes long enough to answer the question. "No," she said, "no, this is only the second piece. Judging by the altar up here, all three parts of the ring were here at some point, but now only one remained."

Frowning, Shepard glanced back towards the base of the gleaming metal obelisk, where she now saw some sort of small altar protruding from its base. "Wait, then if the last one isn't here, what happened to it?"

The deep roar of revving engines filled the air, echoing around the stone walls as blustering gusts of wind started snapping around the chamber. A moment later, dozens of flood lights blazed to life as Shepard looked up towards the sound, blinding her as any remaining shadows burned away under their light. Lifting up one hand to try to block out the glare, Shepard's blood froze as she saw a swarm of shuttles coasting in through the gaps in the walls, each and every one of them marked by a large Cerberus logo that gleamed in the light.

"We need to go," she barked, quickly jumping upright. Turning back to Liara, she held out her hand and asked, "Think you can move, Doc?"

Liara quickly tucked away the fragment into her bag then took her hand, and with Shepard's help hoisted herself unsteadily onto her feet. "Yes, I think so. I just need a minute to catch my breath."

A second group of shuttles flew in from outside, joining the first as they swarmed over the platform below. Feeling the adrenaline begin to course through her veins, Shepard tugged on Liara's hand to urge her down the steps. "We don't have a minute, let's move!"

They ran down to the bottom of the stairs where they found Jack and Miranda standing together. Miranda's face was pale and her mouth was twisted into a thin grimace, and as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand Shepard's gut roiled sympathetically. By her side, Jack stood protectively next to her with a fierce snarl, and as she spotted Shepard she yelled, "Come the fuck on, we gotta go!"

Shepard merely grunted in response, only slowing for a moment as they hit the ground to check that the others were following before running back across the platform. The many piles of rubble scattered across the floor were much more visible now, as the blasts of air from the shuttles' engines had cleared out the clouds of dust obscuring everything. In only a few seconds, she cleared the initial ring of broken stone and ruined statues to run into a large, relatively clear section of the platform before she suddenly skidded to a halt.

Lining the entire far side of the platform were dozens of shuttles spread out in a loose arc, all of which had slid open their doors and were actively disgorging squad after squad of Cerberus troopers onto the platform. Distorted shouts and the clink of boots on glass filled the air, and before Shepard could react a host of laser sights flickered to life, each and everyone connected to a rifle aimed dead at her chest. As the others stumbled to a stop beside her, she watched as entire squads diverted to aim at each of them, pinning them in place before anyone could move a muscle.

"Aw, shit," Shepard breathed, her heart jackhammering against her ribs as she realized there was truly nowhere to run. The debris field behind them was too far to safely make a run for it, and nothing but open air separated them from the fifty or sixty troopers who had already taken their firing positions. Eyeing up the horde of armored soldiers before them, Shepard forced herself to resist dropping her hand to her pistol out of habit. Even if she still had any ammo, she didn't feel quite reckless enough to take on an entire army with no cover. Maybe if she could get past their front line, she could cause enough of a distraction to jump onto a shuttle?

She glanced to her left and saw Liara frozen in place, naked horror visible on her face as she tightly twisted the strap of her satchel between her hands. She shifted, then looked over to make eye contact with Shepard. "What do we do?" she asked, her voice tight with fear. Behind her, the other two had stopped as well, with Jack in particular looking like she was about to start hyperventilating.

Shepard sighed, feeling the fight drain out of her. Even if she could fight them all, there was no way she could keep Liara and the others from getting hurt. Facing forwards, she moved to stand at the front of the group, raised her empty hands into the air, and shouted, "Alright, we surrender!"

Her words rang out across the chamber, silencing any chatter from the Cerberus troops as everyone turned to face her. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the others all staring at her with expressions ranging from askance to fully furious. Sending them a pointed look, she hoisted her hands even higher until they all grudgingly followed her example.

Across the platform, nobody moved as several of the soldiers started talking to each other in bursts of garbled speech, before finally one called out in a deep voice, "All of you, five steps forwards!"

One by one they obeyed, with Shepard still making sure to stand between the soldiers and her companions. As they came to a stop, now firmly in the middle of a wide open space, Shepard's twitchiness about the lack of cover returned tenfold. If any one of the soldiers decided to open fire, they all would be cut down before they would even have a chance to move.

The soldier who had spoken took a step forwards and yelled, "Weapons on the ground, now!"

Shepard's empty pistol clattered to the ground, followed a second later by two more pistols as Miranda and Liara threw their own weapons down. Jack, however, merely tightened her grip on her shotgun as she bared her teeth, her face looking more pale than ever as the gun shook ever so slightly in her hands. "You can take my gun when I'm dead, asshole," she spat.

Several soldiers pivoted to aim at Jack, who in response growled and flared her biotics threateningly. Sensing the tension was about to reach a breaking point, Shepard quickly spun around to put her back to the soldiers and stepped forwards to place a hand on Jack's shotgun. "Jack," she said, her voice as soothing as possible, "put the gun down. It's not worth it."

"I'm not letting these bastards take me, Shepard." She was fully panting now, the whites of her eyes shining in the light of the flood lights as her gaze flickered nonstop around the chamber. "I'll die before I ever go back, even if I take you all with me!"

Shepard frowned. "Nobody's taking anybody on my watch. We're still all going to get out of here, but only if you put the gun down."

Jack finally turned towards her, the primal fear clear across her face. Sensing her hesitation, Shepard gently tugged the shotgun downwards once again. "Trust me, Jack? Just this once?"

Jack stared deeply into her eyes, seeming to look for something in Shepard's face. After several seconds of tense silence, she swore and let her biotics fade away as she dropped her shotgun to the floor, followed only a second later by her pistol. "You'd better have a plan for all this," she muttered, "or I'll kill you myself."

A wry smile twitched at the corner of Shepard's mouth as she nodded. Taking a deep breath to try to calm herself, she swung back around to face the firing line of troopers with a grim stare and yelled, "Okay, now what?"

The soldier giving the orders glanced down to make sure all of their weapons had been surrendered, then twisted to speak a short burst of distorted audio into a radio receiver built into one shoulder plate. A few moments later, a second burst of sound echoed out in response, prompting the entire company of soldiers to take several strides backwards towards the far edge of the platform. Watching them retreat, Shepard tried desperately to shove down the growing sense of restlessness starting to tingle in her gut. She had never been the greatest at simply choosing to sit and wait, much to the chagrin of many of her old CO's, and the urge to start running or fighting or anything was slowly becoming unbearable.

Before she could fully lose her nerve and do something stupid, yet another gust of wind blasted through the chamber as light flared in one of the holes blasted through the wall, this one nearly level with the black glass floor of the platform. Raising up one hand to keep the sand out of her eyes, Shepard glared forwards through the wind to see one final shuttle slowly cruising forwards from outside, only to gently set down between her and the company of Cerberus soldiers. As it landed, a sharp hydraulic hiss rang out as the door locks disengaged, and all around the chamber Shepard noticed each and every soldier heft their gun with heightened tension.

The door soundlessly slid open, and out of the dark interior climbed a single figure. This figure stepped forwards and out from the shuttle's shadow, revealing a tall woman with a severe face framed by dark hair that cut off sharply at the chin. In place of armor, she wore a dark catsuit similar to Miranda's that covered her from the neck down, as well as featured light armor plates across the back, shoulders, and outer thighs. The woman came to a stop several feet away from Shepard with her hands behind her back and head held high, completely at ease in front of the horde of twitchy soldiers behind her. Immediately, Shepard knew this was a woman long accustomed to absolute authority.

The woman made eye contact with Shepard, her gaze cold and piercing in a way that not even Miranda seemed capable of. Resisting the sudden urge to look away, Shepard merely hiked up one brow and set her jaw into a stubborn frown. After a moment of this,the woman moved her gaze past Shepard's shoulder, and in the span of several seconds examined her other three companions with the same clinical stare. Strangely, Shepard noticed that of all four of them, the woman spent by far the longest stretch of time staring down Jack, who seemed seconds away from either having a full blown panic attack or snapping and trying to kill everyone in the room.

Finally, the woman lifted her shoulders in the merest hint of a shrug, then spoke in a glacial voice, "It seems that I underestimated you, Lawson. Truly, I never thought you would become quite this much of an annoyance." She briefly lifted one hand to tuck a strand of hair behind one ear, then quickly returned it to its place behind her back. "Honestly, I would almost go far enough to say that I was impressed. Almost."

Miranda scoffed as she executed the most precise eye-roll Shepard had ever seen. "Glad to know you're still not quite capable of feeling human emotion. Keep practicing, maybe you'll learn someday."

The woman's lips twitched in what no sane person would call a semblance of a smile before returning to a neutral position. "As charming as ever, I see."

Having had enough of whatever bullshit seemed to be going on between these two, Shepard loudly stomped one step forwards. Immediately, the sound of rustling armor filled the chamber as dozens of troopers whipped around to aim their rifles towards her, but Shepard remained uncowed as she gruffly yelled, "Okay, who the hell are you and what do you want from us?"

The woman's cold glare slid over towards Shepard, who immediately felt as if she had been doused with chilling water. "Ah yes, the mercenary," she drawled. "Yet another thorn in my side, just begging to be dealt with. Still, it seems that introductions are in order if only that you may know your betters."

She began to pace left across the platform, stalking across the glass floor with all the lethal grace of a panther. "My name is Doctor Eva Coré, current Prothean expert, head researcher, and cell leader of Project Achilles. It is my men, my property, and my operation that you four have been interfering with, and for this there will be consequences."

She pivoted sharply on one heel to begin pacing back in the other direction. "Obviously, I already know all of your identities. Miranda Lawson, the runaway operative who thought she could make a difference. Cameron Shepard, the mercenary with morals and leader of The Shepards."

Coré paused then, flitting her eyes across Shepard with a thoughtful expression. "I do admit that when I read the first reports of how a single woman, an Alliance dropout no less, had defeated so many of my soldiers, I began to question if I was being too soft with their training."

A weighted silence filled the air, during which Shepard noticed several troopers shift uncomfortably. Seeming not to notice this, Coré continued, "However, after these reports of failure after failure at the hands of you and your merry little band of misfits, I realized something else."

She stopped directly in front of Shepard, a glint of something dangerous shining in her dark eyes. "You, Cameron Shepard, are something unique. A bit medieval and unrefined, perhaps, but an exemplar of peak human physicality all the same."

Shepard blinked slowly, resisting the urge to grimace at Coré's use of her first name. "Huh. Thanks, I think?"

"That being said, a tool is still just a tool, no matter how deftly it is wielded." Coré stepped back from Shepard, resuming her pacing as she continued, "This brings us to your employer, Doctor Liara T'Soni. Truly, out of anyone here, you have surprised me the most. All of your career spent chasing the Prothean Masterworks, something that nobody believed existed, only to be scorned and ridiculed every step of the way, and yet!"

She spun around once more as she spoke, looking for the first time since she had arrived to have a sense of energy beneath her icy exterior. "And yet you persevered alone, with no government or university funding and no one to guard your back, until finally you found your prize. Very commendable, I have to tell you. If we had more people like you working for Cerberus, who knows what strides we could have made."

Shepard felt cold fingers of fear begin to work their way up her spine as Coré spoke, her heart beating slightly faster as she revealed another part of their lives she had uncovered. Just how much about them did she know, Shepard wondered, and how had she found it out all so quickly?

"You're wrong." Shepard turned to see Liara glaring forwards, her brows drawn down into a thunderous frown. "I would never work for a group of thugs and killers like Cerberus, and neither would anyone like me. Not only that, but I didn't do all of this alone, either. I wouldn't even be here right now if not for Shepard and her crew, and Miranda and Jack have proven themselves to be more than helpful. The idea that I somehow solved every puzzle and braved every trap and danger by myself while the others just acted as muscle is ridiculous, honestly."

She shifted her gaze to make eye contact with Shepard, and after a moment a playful gleam appeared in her eyes. "I might be a great archaeologist, as you say, but even I'm not that good."

A quiet huff of laughter escaped Shepard before she could stop it, and at the small curve of a grin on Liara's lips she felt a loving warmth bloom in her chest. Coré, however, seemed less than impressed as her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I see the mercenary has been worse of an influence on you than I thought," she snidely remarked. "Still, let's not forget the last member of the team."

She turned to look down her nose towards Jack, who froze under her gaze. "Subject Zero, enjoying your brief stint at freedom, it seems." Running a critical eye over Jack's canvas of tattoos, she blithely remarked, "I see you've taken to accessorizing again."

"Suck my dick from the back, bitch," Jack retorted.

Coré blinked, nonplussed. "Interesting." Without averting her gaze, she said, "Lawson, you'll have to tell me how you got the asset to work with you so willingly. Perhaps it's something about your shared history?"

Jack tensed, her snarl taking on a confused slant. "What fuckin shared history, huh? I grew up in a goddamn test tube, remember?"

Coré stared towards Jack unmoving, unblinking, for several seconds. After this uncomfortable silence, a cruel smile began to stretch across her face; achingly slowly, like a jagged piece of glass being drawn across skin. "Oh, Miranda," she breathed. "Did you really never tell your greatest work where she came from?"

The room went perfectly and absolutely still, the way a broken bone goes numb for just a few seconds before the pain kicks in. Shepard, her brain still madly playing catchup on the whole situation, took a step back to turn partially around as she tried to wrangle all her thoughts into a useful shape. Behind her, Miranda and Jack were now looking directly towards each other, Miranda looking like a crumpling paper sculpture while Jack stared her down with an unsettling lack of emotion.

"What?" Jack asked, her voice subdued in a way that set Shepard's hackles raising.

Miranda flinched. "Jack, it's not what you think—"

"You see, Subject Zero," Coré cut in, "Project Achilles has had several directors across its existence, of which I am the most recent. My predecessor, however, is none other than your own Miranda Lawson. Say hello, Miranda."

"I haven't been the director of anything for over a year," Miranda hissed, "and I seem to remember destroying a fair bit of research on my way out."

Coré nodded, tapping a thin finger to her chin as she adopted a thoughtful expression. "True, not to mention you killed no less than eighteen of our top scientists, destroyed millions of dollars worth of equipment, and stole a rather nice shuttle. However, I seem to remember that you were the project lead for quite a while before you ran off, correct?"

She started pacing once more, the only sign of a sort of restless energy visible under her frigid exterior. "Ten years, to be exact," she continued. "The youngest director of the project ever, widely known for her focus and ability to produce results. Oh, yes, under your command Project Achilles advanced by leaps and bounds."

Liara stirred, somehow looking simultaneously afraid and intensely curious as she asked, "What does Project Achilles have to do with us, though? Why try to kill us over a single artifact?"

Coré whirled towards her with startling speed. "I'm glad you asked," she replied, her horrific grin still in place. "I'm sure Miranda has already fed you pieces of the truth to satisfy your curiosity; something about collecting advanced technology or Prothean artifacts?"

A stricken expression flashed across Miranda's face, and upon seeing it Coré's smile widened. "I thought as much. No, the goals of Project Achilles span far beyond digging through the dirt to chase after long dead aliens from a bygone era."

She spread her arms out to either side, gesturing like an orator in some grand theater as she spoke. "Project Achilles is the answer to the iron skin of the Turian, the biotic power of the Asari, and the resilience of the Krogan. We have worked to amass any and all advantages, technological and beyond, all with the goal of creating the perfect human soldier. A sword, if you will, built for the hand of humanity to hold back the aliens of the galaxy."

Shepard rolled her eyes, unimpressed by Coré's grandstanding. "If that's supposed to be poetry, you should keep your day job."

A petulant groan sounded from Jack, who looked like she couldn't decide if she was more bored or angry. "What the hell does any of this shit have to do with me?" she yelled.

"As Miranda herself could tell you, a decade ago the project was still focused almost completely on asset acquisition and theoretical research," Coré explained. "About six years ago, however, Project Achilles combined with another, smaller cell with a similar mission; one that had already taken several steps towards producing enhanced human combatants."

"Miranda was granted total control over this second cell," she said, "as well as their base of operations: the Pragia facility."

Jack rocked back on her heels like she had been shot, her face going slack. Next to her, Miranda wrapped her hands around herself with guilt clearly written across her face. Seeming to drink in their reactions, Coré's smile veered off into a full-on sneer as she said, "Yes, it's only thanks to Miranda's hard work that we have you with us today, Subject Zero. Perhaps you owe her your thanks for taking such good care of you."

Miranda took a halting step forwards with a hand outstretched towards Jack, only to stop as Jack stumbled back from her. "Stay away from me!" Jack spat, her face so full of fear and anger Shepard thought she would splinter into pieces. "All of you, stay the fuck back!"

"Jack," Miranda pleaded, "please, just listen–"

"No, fuck off!" Jack shouted. "I've spent a lifetime listening to Cerberus bitches like you, and look where that got me! I should've killed your ass the first time we met."

Miranda recoiled, dropping her arm as her face went stony. Glancing away from them, Shepard saw Coré watching them like a delighted artist regarding a newly finished painting. A surge of anger filled her, and stepping forwards she jabbed a finger out and barked, "Why the hell are you telling us all this? Just to get some sick entertainment?"

Coré's gaze slid over to her, her violent smile fading away back into a cold stare. "Don't delude yourself, Cameron Shepard. None of you matter to me nearly enough for this to be entertainment."

"Then why go through with all of this? Why put in all the effort to come see us yourself?"

"Simple," she replied. "I wanted to see what the four of you would do when you realized that you were beaten."

She raised up and waved a hand towards the open shuttle behind her, and in the darkened interior Shepard saw a large shape begin to move. Massive metallic fingers appeared on the side of the door, followed by two huge arms as the largest person Shepard had ever seen stepped down onto the glass floor with an impact that shook the floor.

To call them a person, Shepard realized, may not be entirely accurate as she took in what looked almost more like a large mech than a man. Metal plated shoulders nearly a meter across connected to a thick torso completely encased in overlapping metal plates all riveted together, from which arms built of bunches of cabling, hydraulic cylinders, and more metal plates hung motionless. This figure towered over any other person in the room by a good three feet, with thick legs nearly as wide across as Shepard and covered in even more thick metal plates and gigantic chunky boots that slammed into the floor as they walked. Atop their wide shoulders, a featureless combat helmet covered their head, with a rebreather covering the mouth and a strip of polarized glass covering the eyes. In the light filtering in from outside, the burnished metal of the figure gleamed menacingly from the countless pieces of metal covering every inch of their body.

The figure stepped forwards, all of its joints moving with machine perfection as they took their place behind Coré. Immediately sizing up this new addition to the chamber, Shepard felt pangs of dread start bouncing around her head as she realized that even with such a close inspection, she couldn't even find a single gap in the many armor plates covering their body.

"Eva," Miranda slowly asked, "what have you done?"

With a slight twist at the corner of her lips that might have served as a smirk, Coré replied, "Did you think that we would stop after Subject Zero?" She shook her head, seeming almost disappointed. "She may have been the pride and joy of Project Achilles at one point, but science stops for no one. No, we have been quite busy since you left us."

Gesturing towards the hulking mass of metal standing behind her, she declared, "You all now have the honor of meeting the pinnacle of human potential, the absolute peak of performance achieved through human ingenuity and technological perfection." Her face slowly broke into a smile once again, revealing her teeth in a dangerous grin. "This is Subject 01."

Subject 01 stood perfectly still as they were announced, as they had stood ever since emerging from the shuttle. Shepard, however, felt her chest start to heave as she took in the metal behemoth standing before her. This was what Cerberus wanted? Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the others seemed just as dumbstruck as she was, with Jack in particular starting to look queasy the longer she stared forwards.

"Goddess," Liara said after a moment, "is there even a human left underneath all that?"

"Of course," Coré sniffed. "We have made extensive upgrades to virtually every organic part of Subject 01, but at their core you will find a human as alive as any of the rest of us." She looked over towards Jack, who paled at her gaze. "We have taken steps, however, to ensure a more loyal asset than our last project."

Coré's omnitool suddenly flared to life around her wrist, and with a vaguely annoyed expression she lifted it to read a message. "Well then," she sighed, "while this has been mildly interesting, I still have things to do." Raising a hand once more, she waved towards Liara and said, "Subject 01, bring me the artifact and the traitor."

Subject 01 immediately came to life, stepping around Coré with heavy lumbering steps as they quickly crossed the platform. Shepard immediately sprang into motion, her pulse skyrocketing at the sight of Liara before the metal giant, but before she had taken more than two steps Subject 01 came to a halt before Liara. Reaching out a hand large enough to palm her entire head, they ripped the satchel from her trembling outstretched hand with enough force to nearly send her sprawling on the ground. Her fury mounting, Shepard redoubled her pace with her fists clenched and mouth drawn into a snarl, only for Liara to quickly wave her off as she regained her balance.

Apparently unbothered by this, Subject 01 turned instead towards Miranda only to find Jack standing between them with a wild look in her eye. "Back off, you big metal bastard. Nobody's killing this bitch except me."

Even as Miranda wilted even further into herself at this, Subject 01 coldly stared unmoving down towards Jack, who Shepard saw barely came up to their chest. A moment later, dozens of laser sights winked into existence all across Jack's torso, painting her in a grim red light as the horde of waiting Cerberus soldiers all moved their focus to her. In the resounding silence, Coré drawled in a low voice, "Do give me a reason, Subject Zero. No one here will miss you either way."

Shepard's breath froze in her chest, waiting with tensed muscles and barely restrained biotics as Jack fearlessly glared up towards Subject 01, who continued to tower ominously over her. Behind them, Miranda stared intently into the back of Jack's head, and only after several seconds did Shepard recognize that she was nearly vibrating with restrained nerves. In the quiet, a soldier loudly chambered their rifle, prompting Shepard to glance over to see if maybe enough of the assembled troops had stopped paying attention for her to be able to make a move. As she looked, however, she frowned as she saw nearly fifteen troopers still holding her dead to rights, so with a mumbled curse she turned back towards the others.

Finally, after a short eternity, Jack bent her head down to spit onto Subject 01's huge metal boots before stepping to the side. Immediately, the massive figure took one step forwards and seized Miranda's arm in a vice-like grip, nearly pulling her completely off her feet as she was dragged back over to stand next to the shuttle. As they came to a stop, Subject 01 turned and held Liara's bag out to dangle in the air as Coré approached, allowing her to take the bag for herself with grasping hands.

"Finally," she breathed, "the missing pieces of the Masterwork, found at last. With these, I can make an army immune to the threat of death, immune to the fear of oppression from the other races of the galaxy. An army without fear, able only to achieve victory and claim what we deserve."

Liara quickly stepped forwards, ignoring the soldiers who turned to aim towards her as she angrily called, "These fragments aren't weapons for you to use, these are pieces of history! They belong in a museum where they can be shared and studied, not with a terrorist organization."

Coré flicked her eyes up from the satchel in her hands, one brow arched in derision. "And here I thought the long lifespan of the Asari would have made you the wisest of the bunch," she jeered. "History is nothing but a guide on how to be successful, written by the victors of the many wars across the galaxy. Academia is merely a pretentious hobby that distracts from the true utility of artifacts such as these."

Righteous fury flashed in Liara's eyes as she coldly proclaimed, "You people are barbaric." Coré merely smiled in response, the expression not reaching her calculating eyes.

Sensing that the situation was rapidly spinning out of control, Shepard interjected, "Alright, you got the old rocks and Miranda, sure." She casually began to roll out one shoulder, keeping her tone light to quell the dread brewing in her chest. "Any chance the next step, and I'm just spitballing here, is to let the rest of us go?"

Coré laughed, causing Shepard to flinch at the cutting, unnatural sound. "Oh, absolutely not," she chided. "Both Miranda and Subject Zero are assets of Cerberus, and as such they will be returned to where they belong."

Miranda's face paled even as Jack let out a feral snarl, but Coré continued unperturbed, "Doctor T'Soni and yourself, however, are a different matter. You both have interfered quite a bit with my operations, but there is no denying that you both are very talented in your chosen fields. To this end, rather than simply kill you, I have been instructed to offer you both positions here with Cerberus."

Shepard's eyebrows shot up to her hairline, her voice pitching up in confusion as she asked, "You're offering us jobs?"

"Much of Cerberus' infantry is comprised of former mercenaries such as yourself," Coré confirmed, "and while alien participation in our organization is not exactly common, there is nothing stopping a properly motivated asari such as Doctor T'Soni from assisting our cause. The two of you together could be a powerful force for advancing humanity if you chose to lend us your skills."

She paused for a moment, then continued with a sly smirk, "All under my supervision, of course."

Oh, shit, Shepard thought. Oh damn. All at once, the massive chamber seemed to be collapsing in on her, with Cerberus orange and white filling her gaze wherever she looked. Her breath sticking in her chest, she managed to force out, "How long do we have to decide?"

"You will decide now, or I will decide for you," Coré coldly replied, and behind her the throng of soldiers seemed to tense with anticipation. "I have wasted more than enough time with you lot already."

Shepard's brow furrowed as her mind began to race. There was no way she was interested in any job postings Cerberus was advertising, assuming that she could even take Coré at her word, but what was her alternative? She had been through some shaky negotiations before in her career as a merc, but her regular clientele usually weren't so quite upfront about actively planning her painful demise.

That means they're overconfident, said a voice in the back of her mind. We can use that against them.

Rolling her eyes, Shepard ran a skeptical eye across the many armored troopers, Coré, and her metal abomination standing threateningly behind her. Yeah, maybe, she thought, or maybe they know they've got us squarely up shit creek. She looked over towards Liara to see her still staring down Coré, the indignant anger and frustration clear even through the traces of fear still lingering in her shaking hands and flared nostrils as she held her ground. No matter what we choose, I don't see a way out for us this time.

As if she could hear her thoughts, Liara turned and looked to Shepard, her wide blue eyes connecting with Shepard's own. At that moment, despite all of the desperation and hopelessness swirling around them, her mouth quirked up into a shaky smile as she tilted her head slightly to the side, almost as if to ask, Well? What's the plan?

Something shifted in Shepard's chest, like a lock gently being released at the sight of this small, hopeful smile. An all encompassing warmth began to suffuse out across her torso and up her neck, and with a sudden burst of clarity she regarded her friend with new eyes: Liara, whose passion for history had set them all on this path in the first place, whose beauty had enchanted Shepard since the first time they had met, whose friendship had brought a new light into her life, and whose gentle soul had carefully excavated pieces of Shepard that she had long thought buried. Liara, who now would either be killed by Coré's hand or forced to waste her life twisting the treasures of the past into the horrors of the future.

Shepard shook her head, a burning sense of conviction roaring to life in her chest. Liara will live, she thought, the words thundering through her mind. My crew will survive this, whatever it takes.

Energy started to flow back into her exhausted body like water sweeping over a desert. She started to bounce on the balls of her feet, suddenly too invigorated with purpose to stand still. At Liara's questioning look she simply smiled, baring her teeth to the world as she once again heard the question in her mind; a question that had been burned into her very soul over four years ago.

A survivor has to have something to live for, to fight for with everything they have. What do you fight for, Shepard?

Rather than voice all of this, however, she instead clapped Liara hard on the shoulder and proclaimed, "You get kinda hot when you're angry, did you know that?"

Liara's face immediately flushed a royal purple as she sputtered wordlessly, and even Jack forgot to be angry for long enough to grunt, "Keep it in your pants, Shepard, jesus."

A disgusted scoff erupted from Coré, and turning towards her Shepard saw her eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits. "Well?" she demanded. "How do you answer?"

Liara looked from Shepard to Coré, then back again, and slowly an achingly beautiful smile stretched across her face to match Shepard's. "No deal," she responded, her eyes gleaming with warmth as Shepard met her gaze.

"I'm technically already self-employed," Shepard added helpfully, "so actually, piss off."

Coré stared them down in silence, her mouth pressed together in a thin line. "Unfortunate."

She turned to glance towards the nearest breach in the pyramid wall, her face tight with disapproval as she reached up to toggle a hidden earpiece. "They have refused the deal," she said, then tilted her head and listened intently for several seconds. Finally, she nodded her head sharply and proclaimed, "It will be done."

Raising her chin, she neatly turned on her heel to face Shepard and said, "It seems I get to have my way with you." Without missing a beat, she quickly raised up one hand and snapped her fingers. "Surround them."

The firing line of Cerberus soldiers immediately leapt into action as large groups of troopers from either side split off and began to circle around the edge of the platform. Shepard instinctively dropped into a combat stance before she could stop herself, her hand going for her gun before remembering that she was unarmed. Forced to simply stand still or risk getting shot, she watched with a sinking feeling as the tide of Cerberus swept around them, creating a ring of armed soldiers around an open, circular space in the center of the platform.

Coré stepped back to stand in line with this ring of soldiers, calling out as she did so, "Doctor T'Soni, Subject Zero, both of you move to the edge of the ring."

Liara immediately frowned and looked over towards Shepard, who clenched her fists with frustration as a squad of troopers slowly approached with rifles raised. Still, she saw no other options that didn't involve being filled full of little holes, so after forcing herself to relax she nodded towards Liara with the most reassuring grin she could manage. "It's alright," she said, "just everybody stay calm, yeah?"

Liara nodded and slowly stepped back out of the center of the ring with her hands raised into the air, flanked on either side by soldiers. Behind her, Jack followed with her hands sullenly shoved into her pockets, glaring daggers at the remaining two soldiers as she was escorted out of the circle. Once they all reached the line of soldiers, they were instructed to come to a halt, leaving them at the very far edge of what Shepard saw was now a thirty foot wide circle of open space in the center of the platform.

"Very good," said Coré. "And now for you, Cameron Shepard." She snapped her fingers once more, prompting Subject 01 to roughly toss Miranda into the shuttle behind Coré before stomping out into the center of the ring.

Once they came to a stop, Coré continued, "You see, I hold a very low opinion of most mercenaries, and I especially dislike you in particular. You and your crew have caused me more grief in the past month than nearly any other living beings in this galaxy, and now I will have my restitution."

Shepard stood silently with her legs spread wide and her chin held high, refusing to bow to the building anticipation broiling in her gut even as Coré stared her down. After a moment, Coré twitched a brow slightly upwards as a small sigh escaped her. "Unfortunately, you have also proven to be the very example of human excellence Cerberus strives for, at least as far as sheer potential for destruction goes. Therefore, I have arranged a test that you will perform for me."

Shepard scoffed, crossing her arms as she asked, "What type of test?"

"You, Cameron Shepard," Coré replied, "will fight Subject 01. A proof of concept, if you will, of one human in peak condition against the true potential for our species; one that will end with the destruction of the inferior fighter. I think it will be most informative, don't you agree?"

Shepard's mouth went dry as she peered up towards Subject 01's featureless helmet several feet above her. All at once, the many aches and pains she had acquired in the past forty-eight hours all made themselves known in a wash of pain and exhaustion, as if her body itself was telling her, 'ain't nothin about you in peak condition right now.'

"Ah," she said. "Not the best experiment I've ever heard of, gotta say."

Coré's eyes narrowed. "Either fight Subject 01, or I kill you and T'Soni right now. What will it be?"

Shepard sighed, and for just a moment she allowed her eyes to fall closed. She was just so tired, damn it, couldn't she at least take a nap first?

What do you fight for, Shepard?

Her eyes opened, and as they did she found herself looking not at Coré, but towards Liara instead. "What do I fight for?" she murmured, too soft for anyone but herself to hear.

She straightened her spine, rolled back her shoulders, and set her jaw into a stubborn frown as she turned back to stare up at the metal giant before her. "Alright, Coré. But before we start, I got a question for you real quick."

"What is it?" she asked, a skeptical slant to her lips.

A smirk twitched at the corner of Shepard's mouth as she brought up her fists before her face in a comfortable boxing stance. "You got any bubblegum? Because I just ran out."

Not waiting for a response, she sprinted forwards across the clearing, her biotics flaring like a bonfire as she ran. Across from her, the mountainous form of Subject 01 sprang into motion with thundering steps, and the last thought Shepard had before impact was of blue skin, a soft smile, and cobalt eyes.

---

A/N: what's a two month wait between homies, am i right? jokes aside though, i did accidentally put myself into a situation where i had to make a ton of things happen this chapter, so guess who accidentally ended up with a 20k chapter! oops! unrelated, but turns out if you sort all shiara fics on here by word count this fic is already up to page four? how did this happen to me? it wasn't supposed to be a novel oh god anyways hope you're all still enjoying the story, bc im having a great time writing all this out and setting up all these fun little happenings. see you in the next chapter!