"... so is it the CS-309 or the CS-312 connector that I need for the cable?" he asked over the comm, holding one in each hand. "They look identical to me."

"It's CS-312," the female quarian on the other end affirmed. "They phased out the CS-309 connector two years ago after issues with the insulation."

"Ah, okay. And the adapter at the other end, that's the AB-5 straight through?"

"Yes, that's correct, although you'll probably need to fabricate an adapter to attach onto the AB-5 to interface with whatever auxiliary outlet the Protheans used. If you send up a scan of the outlet, I can mesh it with the schematic for the AB-5 and send it back to you. You can then fabricate it there and affix it to the adapter."

"Brilliant. Thanks, Tali. I realize that I should have probably asked you to join me down here, didn't think it would be this much of a hassle."

"It's alright. As long as you're within tightbeam range of the Normandy we can communicate just as well. Plus, Ilos gives me the creeps. I'd like to avoid it if I can."

He understood completely. In the golden age of the Protheans, Ilos had been a verdant world, dotted with the spires and arches of magnificent cities. As he looked around, it was apparent that this was no longer the case. It had been devastated by some unknown means; its entire surface changed to the colour of rust. Scans from the Normandy showed heightened oxygen levels in the atmosphere, with wildfires still burning on the dark side, probably due to lightning strikes. Most if not all respirating animal life forms had died off. Multiple levels of ruins stretched all over the planet, now covered with rust-coloured overgrowth. Thick roots and choking vines crawled over every surface.

"It wasn't always like this," he recounted to her as he crouched down to clean debris from the ancient outlet. Once clean, he scanned it. "It used to be green - some parts so covered in plant life that you couldn't see the city bustling underneath, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Now, it's like a forgotten cemetery world captured in a sepia photograph."

"Hanging Gardens of Babylon?" she asked him, unfamiliar with his reference.

"Ah, sorry, it was an ancient wonder of Earth. They were destroyed some two-thousand years ago."

"Oh, I see."

He made a couple taps on his omni-tool, and the rendered scan of the outlet beamed up to the Normandy floating in orbit above the planet. "Just sent you the scan."

"Yep, got it," Tali replied. "Combining the schematics now… and done. Sending it back."

The data appeared on his omni-tool. He sent the schematic to the small fabricator he had set up next to him to begin printing. It started printing the adapter layer by layer with a low whirl from the bottom.

"You know, the Migrant Fleet once considered Ilos as a settlement prospect," she informed him. "I remember reading from my father's reports - they spent a long time searching. Of course, they never did find the Mu Relay that led to it. I wonder how things would have played out if they did."

"I'm sure the last few years would have turned out very differently. Maybe the quarian people would have discovered the Conduit and the Reapers first. Who knows?"

Waiting for the part to complete printing, he sat down next to the fuel cell he had offloaded, atop a short wall that had once passed in what seemed like another life.

"Speaking of," he mentioned, "when I finally left Earth sixty years ago, I was sorry to hear that your people had been exiled from your home planet. That must have been difficult."

"You say that like you knew our people before… wait, keelah, did you know our people before our exile?!"

"I did, a long time ago. The Protheans studied your ancestors, so I visited your homeworld once, maybe twice."

"What was Rannoch like?" she asked him. "No quarian has stepped foot on its soil in three-hundred years. All I know of it are old recordings."

Arius shut his eyes in concentration, searching his memories for anything he could give her, but it was hazy, like seeing a damaged moving picture. "It was like... Earth, but... drier - less water. Hold on," he muttered, catching a flash of something. "I vaguely remember getting rammed by something… I don't remember what it was called - it was a large, woolly animal... had horns and ate meat."

"A qorach," she completed for him, with a tinge of sadness in her voice. "Our people used to herd them."

"That was probably it. Sorry, that's all I have."

"That's okay. Keelah se'lai - 'by the homeworld I hope to see one day'."

"Keelah se'lai - I hope you do."

"What about your homeworld? Does it still exist out there somewhere?"

He leaned back, looking up at the overcast, brown sky, remembering earlier days.

"No. The Reapers bombarded it from orbit long ago; they completely scrubbed it clean. Our abilities interfered with their tech and made us inviable as husks. With no use to them, they destroyed us."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I guess we're both exiles, in a way."

"In a way. But while my home planet is long dead, yours is not. I know this may be too hopeful, but Legion was telling me that the geth have been taking care of Rannoch since the war ended. I'm largely ignorant of that delicate situation, but it would not be impossible to imagine some ceasefire as we draw closer to the ends of our worlds."

"Hopefully we survive long enough to see it, considering that Shepard sets us up against impossible odds about twice a day. But if anyone in the galaxy can make it happen, it's her. If it weren't for her, I would have never worked with a synthetic, let alone a geth like Legion."

"It's only a matter of time, then," he suggested, grinning. "Hmm. The adapter finished printing. Hooking it up now."

He checked the cable's connection to the cell and found it to be secure, then connected the freshly fabricated adapter to the AB-5 adapter on the power line and plugged it into the auxiliary power outlet that led into the substructure of the power station. The massive fuel cell next to him hummed to life.

"Looks like something is drawing power and lots of it!" Tali voiced excitedly over the comm.

"That's a good sign. Hopefully, it's enough. Their systems were intelligent enough to serve power to the critical systems first, which probably encompasses the managing VI you encountered when you were last here. I'll be heading to the subterranean security station to unlock the door to the Archives, so we'll probably lose connection. Thank you for your help, Tali."

"Oh, anytime, Arius. It's the least I can do after all that food you made for us. I'm still stuffed, by the way."

"Glad you enjoyed it. We'll talk later." He ended the call.

He got into the rover and followed the ancient roads until the entrance of the Archives came into view. Exiting, he walked through a dilapidated courtyard toward the elevator that led down to the subterranean security station. The elevator call glyph was lit, evidently now receiving power. He hit the elevator call control, and the door to it opened.

He stepped inside, and the door slowly closed behind him before descending. When it reached the bottom, the doors opened, and the dark tunnels lit by some bioluminescent vegetation led him to a small subterranean courtyard at the end of which was the security station. Though he was alone in the dead city, the silence and history of the ruins hung over him like some invisible apparition. Down here, like up above, stone effigies of Ilos' even older occupants, the Inusannon, sat in silent, eternal rest.

He moved across the twilight yard to the security station, which was seated in an alcove above him. Up a short ramp, he spied the console, sitting up against the windows that looked outwards to the level he had just crossed below. Rust-coloured vegetation had slowly begun reclaiming the once bare stone room, though by what means he knew not as no starlight reached this place under the earth.

He was approaching the security panel when an automated holographic broadcast sprang to life on his left, startling him. The image of the message had entirely deteriorated over the millennia to the point where nothing decipherable in the projection could be recognized - but in the few remaining words that he could pick out from the static, desperation was all too recognizable.

".. too late...unable to….invading fleets...no escape...not safe… seek refuge... inside the Archives...fought Reapers… the Citadel… overwhelmed… only hope…."

The first message cut, then a second, different, even more hopeless voice played.

"…. act of desperation…. the Conduit… all is lost… can not be stopped! CAN. NOT. BE. STOPPED!"

Though Ilos sat at a balmy thirty-eight degrees centigrade, a chill passed through him as cold and as biting as any arctic wind. Though the knowledge of the horrors of the Prothean's harvest had sat with him from the time of its advent, the long stretch since had worn its emotional response in him down to a dispassionate recall, like one reciting a fact from a history book. However, hearing these last doomed voices in this place pulled the memories into startling, terrifying clarity. A fear he had not felt in an age prickled at the back of his neck, and with reflex, he reached up and grasped at the sword on his back to steady himself.

The automated broadcast ceased, and the silence of the dead world rushed back in. He closed his eyes as he focused on controlling his breathing and relaxing his tensed muscles until he felt the shock pass. They hadn't even begun the war, he thought to himself grimly, and he was already cracking. Those that were alive had no idea what was coming for them. Those that were dead had no idea how lucky they were.

He tapped the control on the security panel to open the blast doors to the Archives on the surface above him and quickly returned to them, not wanting to waste any more time under the ruins. Once he was back on the surface, he climbed into the parked rover he had left and entered the now accessible corridor that led to the Archives.

As with the rest of the planet, it was quiet, desolate and haunting. He drove in the silence between the towering corridor walls while pale yellow light filtered through from slats in the ceiling high above him, giving the already ominous site an eerie atmosphere. Under the rover's tires, a shallow stream of water flowed down the hall. Small lights illuminating cryogenic stasis pods were embedded in the walls on both sides. The hall stretched on for a great distance, and the pods were many. Each once had held a Prothean, ready to be revived once the Reaper harvest had passed. However, the harvest had taken centuries, and the power to keep them suspended was finite. One by one, the pods were deactivated as power dwindled, and for all but a dozen top scientists, the pods had become their tomb.

As he drove down the long hallowed halls of the Archives, his omni-tool pinged him with a waypoint notification telling him that he was close to the doorway and elevator that led to the V.I. terminal. He climbed out of the rover and entered the large open passageway he spied on his right, which contained an elevator that led down to a chamber containing a terminal bathed in light falling from a skylight high above him. It was the Watcher's Chamber.

As he approached it, he waited for the V.I. to appear like it had in Shepard's report, but it didn't. He called out to it using the name it had revealed to her the last time it was operational, but he got no response. Thankfully, the terminal behind the holographic projector was receiving power and seemed operational. Sighing, he took the elevator back up to the Archives and walked back to the rover to grab his interfacing hardware. Along the way, his omni-tool alerted him of an incoming call from the Normandy. It was innocuous, yet the shock he had experienced underground had twisted his thoughts, and he couldn't help but feel that something terrible had happened.

"Yes?" he asked over the line with urgency.

"Arius," spoke the turian on the other end, greeting him lightly. "Figured I'd give you a call and a sign of life. I know how desolate Ilos can be; last I was there, I found it unbearable even with company, and you've been down there alone for almost two days."

Arius sighed in relief, thankful for the voice and the intent. "I appreciate it, Garrus. I'll admit, it was starting to get to me. The sooner I have the data, the sooner I'm out of here."

"How's that coming along?"

"It's coming. Took me a while just to find the power station as it was hidden under debris, then Tali helped me hook up the Normandy fuel cell. I'm in the Archives near the V.I., but it doesn't seem operational even with power."

"Ah, that's too bad. Seemed badly damaged the last we saw it. The hard power cycle might have damaged it further."

"It's possible. The terminal behind it is still operational, so hopefully, I can get through there."

He was retrieving the terminal interfacing equipment from the rover when he remembered something he had wanted to tell the turian.

"Oh, Garrus, since you're on the line and I'm not sure how long I'll be down here, there's a weapons case with your name atop a desk in the starboard cargo hold. It's for you; go grab it when you have a second."

"For me? I'll grab it now - I'm calling from the main battery, but I can run down if you stay on the line."

"Sure."

He waited next to the rover while Garrus left the line open, and while he waited, he looked down at the indelible empty halls of the Archives, imagining if more of the occupants would have survived had he not fought alongside them, potentially prolonging the harvest by the resistance he imposed against the Reapers.

He heard Garrus return on the other end. "... Alright, I've got it with me."

"Open it."

He heard the clicking of the weapon case open at the other end of the line, then heard the turian softly gasp. "By the spirits…"

Inside the weapon case was a rifle he had designed for him. Void of typical manufacturer markings, it was fitted in a gleaming, sleek, blue and black chassis that matched the hue of his facial colony markings.

"It's everything you expect from your trusty M-92 Mantis, and more. High damage, high accuracy. Two shots per clip on its default mode as opposed to the standard one from the Mantis. It can be switched to a specialized shot unique to this gun, one per clip; it uses a miniature cyclonic mass driver taken from geth tech to spin the projectile depending on the setting - a natural advantage against armoured targets and savage against organic tissue. I've left you maintenance details for self-service in the future."

"I... don't know what to say," Garrus told him, at a loss for words. "Are you trying to make me fall in love with you? Because this is exactly how you make me fall in love with you."

Garrus' reaction elicited a laugh, and he was happy to hear the turian's admiration toward his work.

"I hope it serves you well, Garrus. Go on and give it a try. I'm returning to the V.I. terminal to see how far I get with extracting data."

"Can do. I will let you know what I think of it once you're back on board."

He ended the call and took the elevator back down.

.

He had sat down next to a railing that ran along the platform in the Watcher's Chamber, just beside the V.I. terminal and the patch of light that shone from the skylight in the high ceiling. More of the pods lined the walls in this smaller space, and long, thick roots hung down from the ceiling, having breached the bunker's walls long ago. Motes of organic detritus slowly floated through the air, shining as they passed through the ray of sunlight. The stillness of the place disquieted him.

At his fingertips was the terminal interfacing equipment he had brought, cobbled together from the knowledge of Prothean tech he possessed. In a few hours, he had confirmed that basic bootloader had been executed, the terminal had started, and he had access to the basic functions, yet he could not get the V.I. to start. It was possible that the plugged-in fuel cell did not supply enough power to the Archives to start the V.I. process, he reasoned. The process probably required some minimum threshold of computational resources to boot and properly function. He didn't really need it - he had come here for data, and he didn't require the V.I. to access it - but the opportunity to hear a once familiar voice, one that had all but disappeared from this galaxy fifty-thousand years ago, beckoned to him. It was an opportunity akin to talking to a ghost of a lost friend, and he would have loved sorely to have finally shut its chapter with one final goodbye. Alas, the V.I. known as Vigil remained inoperable.

Crestfallen, Arius changed the interface context and searched for the Conduit data. It required some sifting, but he eventually located the main memory core which was, unsurprisingly, locked down. However, he didn't need it as he found that a secondary memory unit was visible and open on the Archive network, separate from the unit used for the main programming. When he opened it, he found vast swathes of data: centuries of Ilos' planetary sensory inputs, maintenance runtime logs, and, lastly, researcher data. He nervously opened the researcher node, fearing that all this effort was for naught, when he found multiple, unencrypted copies of the Conduit data. It had been purposely duplicated to ensure that the data would be recoverable in the case of corruption by one or more copies. He wasn't sure of the state of the files from a glance, but the data was plenty, and he had copies to cross-reference with later. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and whispered thanks to the brave souls who had spent their last living months working so that he could now recover the fruits of their efforts.

Relieved, he began the file transfer. He stood back up to stretch his muscles, then closed his eyes for a moment while he leaned against the railing, hoping to rest his tired eyes and calm his nerves… when he was jolted by the sound of the elevator moving. Someone or something had called it up.

His mind ran. There was no cover from fire in the chamber, and the delicate file transfer was still underway. He pulled his pistol out in a flash and aimed it toward the doorway, ready to shoot whatever came through. He watched the elevator descend back down, its doors open and… Shepard walked through, looking surprised to find herself looking down the barrel of his gun.

"Commander?" he called out loudly, equally surprised to see her. He quickly lowered his weapon.

"Hey. I wanted to check in with you, but you're out of range down here," she explained, walking down the passage toward him. "Also wanted to see Ilos again - I was a little rushed the last time I was here. Thought I'd come down myself."

He grinned, pleased to see her. Her crew really were a considerate bunch.

"Your presence is always welcome," he told her and turned back to check the data transfer progress. "I'm almost done. We'll have the Prothean research data on the Conduit in a few short minutes. They had left it all available for us to pick up."

"Really? That's amazing news. Thanks for getting this done."

"The scientists anticipated this, thankfully. We're also very fortunate."

She nodded to him, then looked up around the Watcher's Chamber they stood in, taking in the tranquil and sorrowful atmosphere. She let out a sigh. "It feels like it's been forever since I was last here, and it was only three years ago," she reflected, running a gloved hand over one of the railings across from him. The shaft of light from the ceiling had begun moving along the floor as the day drew on, and her uncommonly red hair was lit ablaze when standing under its luminescence. "How are you doing? After so long, I imagine coming back to this place would be… tough."

He murmured in agreement while crossing his arms as he leaned back on the railing next to him.

"I thought this place would have brought me some closure," he softly shared, "but instead, I'm just disturbing the ghosts."

Their eyes met, and he sensed an understanding pass between them. "I know what you mean," Shepard offered.

The terminal interfacing equipment beeped; The data transfer was complete.

"We're done," he informed her, bending down to pick up the equipment. "I was hoping to get the V.I. to start, but… let me try one last time," he said, switching the interface context back to see the running processes. He cycled the command for the V.I. service and waited for a sound or sight to confirm that it started, but nothing happened.

"Ah, too bad. We got what we came for, which is more than I had hoped. We can go."

He disconnected the equipment, and they took the elevator back up to the Archives. As they walked back into the main bunker, he saw that Shepard had arrived in the M-44 Hammerhead, which she parked behind the rover he came in. He opened the door to his rover, placed the equipment into the back and climbed in. While doing so, he observed that shewas watching him with a sly smirk splayed across her face. He sensed she was up to no good.

"Since we're here, why don't we take the scenic route out?" she asked him, voice crackling over the vehicle's comm speaker.

"Fine by me." he radioed back. "Which way?"

"Keep driving straight ahead. The runoff under our feet collects into a trench that drains into a pool located downstream."

He started the rover and followed her, both driving forward at a slow speed, still aware that the place they travelled through was sacrosanct. The tall walls of the bunker soon ended, and the passage morphed into a wide underground tunnel they followed until it opened up above ground to an open sky on the other end.

Once passed the Archives and out in the open, Shepard used the hammerhead's hoverjets to jump clear over his rover, putting her ahead of him.

"Too slow!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, I see what you're trying to do." Provoked, he increased the speed of his rover, then cleanly activated the propulsion jets on the underside to sail over a large root blocking their path. She raised her speed to stay ahead of him, and then he increased his to catch up, eventually rolling down the trench at high speeds as they attempted to outpace one another.

"How about a friendly wager?" she suggested over the comm, "a race to the Conduit at the bottom of the trench."

"That's hardly fair," he rebuked, "you're much more maneuverable than I am."

"Hey, if you can't hack it…"

She was goading him, but he didn't care. He needed this after the past two days of working in grim conditions.

"Fine," he agreed. "You're on. And the prize?"

"The loser will commission a budget trophy for the winner, naming them the reigning champion of the Ilos Trench Run."

"Deal," he agreed, chuckling to himself. "We start on three?"

"We start right now! Just GO!" she commanded, laughing, as she punched the throttle of the Hammerhead.

He also floored the rover's throttle, and they flew off down the massive, shallow, water-filled trench. They rounded the first corner and found that the elevation suddenly dropped down steeply. Shepard fired her hoverjets before they descended, and her Hammerhead caught some major air as it sailed far ahead of him. Unable to compete with her vertical leap, he fired his rear thrusters, thrusting him forward with sharp speed. They landed with large splashes at the bottom and zoomed ahead and around another corner. Driving a hovercraft, Shepard didn't have to slow her pace much to round the corner as the hoverjets angled themselves against the direction she needed to travel, and she sailed through gracefully. Having tires, he could do no such thing but tried his best - he disabled the traction control on the rover as he was turning, causing the wheels to hydroplane but with the nose of the craft pointed where he needed to go, purposely oversteering. He punched the rear thrusters again, which pulled his craft forward out of the corner, not losing much time behind Shepard.

"Not bad," she complimented. "You're keeping up."

They hurtled themselves around the meandering bends, narrowly avoiding massive trunk-like roots and fallen debris from the crumbling walls of the trenches. He hadn't had this much fun in ages, Arius thought to himself as he careened through the abandoned complex; what a thrill! At last, they reached the last straight - a final decline that led straight to the pool of water at the bottom, with the tall, slender form of the Conduit seen at the end of the race in the distance.

"Par time is forty seconds!" Shepard hollered, clearly enjoying herself. "Let's see if we can beat my record!"

By this time, they had built up enough straight-line speed that they sailed through the air with much gusto when they passed from the plateau to the decline. They activated their jets on the takeoff and soared through the air, nearly jumping the length of the entire slope. At the bottom, the stream twisted around a large clearing, creating a bumpy final stretch of hills.

Shepard sped smoothly over the hills on her hovercraft, gaining the lead, and while his rover couldn't handle the terrain like her hovercraft could, he was able to repeatedly pulse the rear thrusters in short bursts, sustaining a higher speed without exhausting them.

They were so engrossed in their wager that they just now noticed that a salarian research team had set up around the sides of the Conduit and were watching two vehicles hurtling toward them at blinding speeds. They cleared the way on the white ramp that led up to the Conduit, not wanting to get flattened.

"First to the white ramp wins!"

The race was tight, and they both streaked like rockets toward the non-functional Conduit, but Shepard was slightly ahead and reached the finish line scarcely a second before he did. They then both slammed on their respective equivalent brakes, finally coming to a stop at the foot of the Conduit.

They climbed out, exhilarated by the chase.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the two-time winner of the Ilos Trench Run - Eden Shepard!" she celebrated, jubilantly announcing her victory to an imaginary assembled crowd. A couple of salarian researchers off to the sides of the ruins, watching them, shook their heads disapprovingly.

"And in thirty seconds flat!" Shepard added, checking the timer on her omni tool. "That's a new personal best."

This was a side of Shepard's personality that he had just recently discovered, Arius thought to himself, and he found it to be an effective balm against melancholy. Despite the heaviness of Ilos' surroundings, Shepard had lifted his spirits considerably, and he laughed, shaking off the heart-pounding adrenaline of the race. He found that the earlier gloom that had settled on his mind had at least temporarily lifted - and he forgot all about the fear that had gripped him under the ruins.

"Naturally, I'll be demanding a rematch soon," he told her.

"Naturally, expect to lose," she playfully retorted. "Alright, let's get out of here." She tapped her omni-tool, opening a line to the Normandy. "Joker. We need an extraction. We're done here."