A/N – Sorry for the hiatus. I'm going to try to be more regular (fortnight) with the original 4-5K word chapter length. Got lots of write-ahead done, but still have to stitch it all together.

Also, the first half of this chapter isn't about Liara, it's a flashback from almost eight years earlier (2175.)

*** Underground ***

The assassin turned a corner and walked the short distance to her weekly-rented flat. It had been almost a month since her last contract – a drell of no note – and she had been worried that her presence on the Citadel was in jeopardy. But today, her luck had changed. An asari had offended one of the Mighty-born – though this seemed to happen regularly – and the assassin's timely presence made for her selection as the Instrument of Reprisal. Tonight was a night for celebration.

It was a welcome change in this increasingly dark time for the Hegemony. Humans had become an associate Council member over a decade ago, and the Hegemony had closed its embassy in protest. Batarians were becoming rare on the Citadel; the assassin had been forced to actively seek out contract work for other races in order to remain available (such as that for the luckless drell.)

The closing of the embassy meant she was no longer living on the Presidium, and also without an "official" job as cover. She had moved deep into the Wards, to make sure she remained available. Though her presence was unofficially termed a "necessary embarrassment," with its diversity of aliens, the Citadel remained a relatively rich zone of targets. Two more kills, and she would earn the right to bear young for the Hegemon, with all the privilege and status that would entail.

She entered the flat, touching a panel that activated lights and music, and turned toward the kitchen. The last piece of sumptuous Lasu cake awaited, and she had been saving it for a turn of events like tonight's. The transparent cover set aside, she lifted the plate and selected her most expensive eating utensil, allowing the cake's exotic fragrance to fill the room, overwhelm her.

As she turned and walked to the traditional stone table, she didn't notice the eyes watching from the shadows of the hallway, nor hear the soft biotic flange.

Music fell gently from the ceiling; she seated herself in the First Chair, reserved for the most honored guest, and usually left empty in case a member of the Mighty-born decided to grace a household with his or her presence. Leaning back, she used the cutting edge of the utensil to carve off a bite of the cake.

She closed her eyes and scraped the cake off with pointed teeth. The narcotic, calming effect was almost instantaneous. She sighed.

The lights went out, and the room was suddenly silent. The assassin froze in place, looking for any light. "Thech," she cursed, leaning forward to place the cake and utensil on the central stone table. Citadel technology was not nearly as reliable as its press suggested.

As she rose to find her way back to the door, a soft growl came from somewhere nearby. "Death comes."

She froze briefly, having just enough time to regret the fact that she did not carry a weapon except when on assignment before being hurled across the room, smashing through furniture and decorations along the way.

Whoever the intruder was, they clearly had biotic powers, but they did not realize she had secreted weapons throughout the flat. The poison-tipped ceremonial knife that had been on the shelf she had crashed into was surely on the floor now, but her eyes had not adjusted to the dark yet. She felt around briefly, hoping to find it.

"But it will not come swiftly," the voice continued; it sounded drell.

This time she heard the burst of biotic energy before it struck her, batting her sideways across the room. She thought briefly of her mentor, wondering how she would have responded to this insult. The drell and their jellyfish keepers would be made to suffer for this. Her sensitive hearing had located the attacker in the hall to her private rooms – another offense – and as her hand found a loose, heavy object, she hurled it that way.

It came flying back at her almost instantly, delivering only enough force to annoy. She gave a cry as if injured, and then cursed; hopefully enough to make the attacker think he had actually done damage. Her feet found the wall, but as she positioned herself to attack, a sharp pain struck her lower right leg; a blade had slashed through muscles there that would have been crippling for a human or asari, but had little effect on a batarian.

Who would send an ignorant amateur of this sort after her?

She spun right, hurling a fist across the space and connecting with nothing. Fortunately, her night vision was starting to awaken; the room was beginning to resolve from darkness.

"Your so-called religion focuses on strength," the attacker said. Another slash, this one across her other leg. "No amount of strength can save you from ignorance."

Where is this cursed drell? Her night vision was almost recovered, but there was nothing to be seen in the place where the voice had been. "Shut up and fight," she hissed.

Something hit her head from behind. She spun again, found nothing. A blade slashed across her left arm; she turned and struck, contacting nothing. But she spotted a shelf where she kept a dueling weapon.

The two-barrelled firearm was from another age, when honor was life. To wound an enemy rather than kill was an insult or a mercy, depending on how it was used. There was the old story of a duel between two brothers, where both used only one barrel, but only one meant it as an insult. It was taught to the young as a cautionary tale against showing mercy.

She dove across the room for the weapon, spun to find the drell directly opposite her, simply standing there casually. She raised the weapon and fired both barrels; it clicked but did not discharge.

Curses, she thought.

The drell hurled a biotic throw at her, slamming her against the wall; she leapt up as healing nanotech began to work immediately, closing off the bleeding vessels, neutralizing the pain, and beginning to regenerate the injury. She threw the weapon, but the drell was gone.

The fight continued for several minutes, the drell moving in silence, wounding without killing, and the batarian wearing herself out in her attempts to crush him.

At last, the massive stone table was flung at her, pinning her legs under it, smashing her into a sitting position against the half-wall between the kitchen and living room.

"Thank you for an enjoyable workout," the attacker said from behind her. "But let's get down to business, shall we?" He dropped straight down in front of her, landing on the table, maddeningly out of reach.

He had drawn blood from all four extremities, but failed to deliver the killing blow. "Fool," she snarled, "Your parents were siblings. Your children will curse you to your face."

"Your death is near," the drell said calmly. "I will do my best to let you savor it."

She spat blood at him. "Primitive!"

"Thank you." He stood, produced her ceremonial knife, waved it past her face. "You surely noticed that I wounded you carefully on each arm and leg. Your death will be an humiliation to your entire line. If it survives your failure at all, it will only be by becoming outlaws, underclass slaves, animals that breed without ceremony." He struck twice at her head with the knife's tip, leaving a cross on it. "You are thus marked."

As he plunged the dagger into her abdomen, she realized the drell had located the blade when he first entered the flat, and managed to distract her from finding a weapon while insulting her entire lineage. Biotech neutralized the pain, giving her time to notice that he had missed vital organs.

Almost casually, he removed her two lower eyes with both thumbs; only then did she begin to realize that this was all very deliberate; he wanted her to suffer, he would surely remove her chance at entering the afterlife with honor.

"The names of your ancestors will be striken from the records." He twisted the ceremonial blade ninety degrees, sheared it to the right, wedging it between protective bones so she would bleed faster. "The young will be cast out. The fortunate ones will be eaten."

In what looked like a single, fluid motion, he produced long, barbed stakes from either wrist, and impaled her forearms against the wall, effortlessly bending the handles so she could not move them.

She would not show him the fear and pain he was inflicting, but he was right; the markings on her body would show clearly that she had been unable to defend herself during a protracted fight. The repercussions of her failure would be visited upon extended family to the uttermost reaches of the empire, and members of other families would take their places.

Only the strong could survive; this was simply Nature taking its course.

But she was not the only batarian to have lived with this threat. If she were thought to have been dead before these indignities were visited upon her, her transgression of being killed might yet be overlooked by those in power. With so much at stake, she had taken precautions.

She flexed her jaw left and right to activate the poison cache lurking in her soft underpalate; somehow, the drell saw her starting to do so, and leapt forward, jamming a forearm sideways into her mouth to prevent further movement.

"Ah…careless of me to have forgotten." As he spoke, he pressed his other arm against her forehead, and snapped her jaw off its hinge with a wet, grinding crunch. Her mouth fell open; she could neither move or close it.

The drell held a finger to her gaping mouth as if to silence her. "No, no…do not say anything to spoil the moment. It is too beautiful."

Then he sat back and seemed to look at her for the first time.

She had little knowledge of the insignificant drell race, so his expression was incomprehensible to her.

"You are the least important task to which I have set myself," he said carefully. "And yet your death is very important to me. It sends a message to the others to whom I owe this debt: No amount of security can protect or shield them from me. Their days are numbered. And their endings will be even more artistic, more deliberate."

She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how weak she felt; she would remain at the base of the First Pillar: Strength Under Adversity.

The drell tilted its head as if listening to her carefully. "Of course there is another reason you had to die. It is not an assignment. It is a duty." It held her gaze coolly, but frowned. "You killed my Beloved."

The poison on the blade was not designed to kill, only to paralyse; it was hours before the batarian assassin finally bled to death; much longer than necessary for an autopsy to reveal that she had been battered and humiliated long before both hearts finally stopped. And until that happened, Thane continued to speak in reassuring tones of her medical condition, of the insult and death that awaited her family. Toward the end, he noticed her trembling slightly, and her remaining eyes misting. He realized he had nearly broken her.

Even then, she had several minutes of consciousness before her eyes began to glaze and gray.

Thane's enhanced vision allowed him to see when the corpse began to cool. Only then did he stop telling her of the horrors that awaited her family.

He sat back with a sigh and a frown. Time is short.

He produced a tiny glass vial of faintly-glowing pinkish liquid, pressed it into the gaping hole that had been the assassin's mouth, pressed it downward, then struck her once in the neck to break the glass. The metamaterial began to convert the copper-rich batarian flesh into explosively flammable crystal. In a matter of minutes, this place would be a funeral pyre of epic proportions, seemingly an example of spontaneous combustion, but constrained by the station's almost mythical "Impervium" surfaces.

To a batarian, this was not simply the most honorable way to die – only the powers of the gods could end a life so grandly and quickly – it was the stuff of legends. It was also the simplest way to actually hide the fact that she had been caught unawares and surgically wounded by an assailant.

His time was short, but he had enough of it to lift the table off her, and seat her in one of the smaller chairs, arranging a meal in front of her.

He smelled the Lasu cake, checked the remaining time, and carefully but quickly put the remains on the nearby plate, and set it before her as well.

Finally, he folded his hands in supplication. "Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, forgive me this offense against one of your lovers. She sent my Beloved to Kalahira before her time, and I was angry. Forgive me also the manner of the other's finish; it was childish and immature of me. I am only an egg, and I have much to learn. I beg forgiveness of you and of her."

He reached out, carefully closed the remaining set of the other assassin's eyes. "Sleep well, my sister. Kalahira of your world will surely welcome you home."

He turned and stepped out of the flat, leapt easily into shadows of the overhead. A brief detour to the service panel would delay the activation of the AFEWS long enough for the fire to consume everything in the flat before being safely extinguished.

The catwalks made for easy movement, and granted him the luxury of being able to continue praying as he walked.

It was one thing to take an assignment. For his body to kill another was his life purpose: It was a weapon.

It was quite another for him to choose such a thing himself; it meant his spirit was now burdened with the debt to the other.

And his Beloved was still gone.

# # #

Bravo team scanned the cavern as they worked their way back; there were rocks scattered around the floor as if there had been a cave-in, but there was nothing hiding behind them.

"Let's check the camp more closely." Kaidan started toward the nearest of the tents.

"I don't like this," Garrus muttered.

"I think what you're really not liking that we're underground." Tali was walking back to the biggest piece of tech in the room. She scowled. "Now what archaeologist with brain cell one would use a mining laser? It's not a geth device."

"Not so fast," Garrus replied. "Something nobody's talking about is why there is only one survivor from this archaeological expedition. We haven't seen any bodies. The asari didn't tell us to look for anyone, or tell us what happened to them." He paused for gravis. "There is something seriously wrong here."

Kaidan looked at the two aliens in turn. "I think you might be on to something, but we'll have to figure out what we're looking at first. Why don't you put that paranoia to work and stand guard, somewhere you can see both of us. I'm going to inspect this data hub; Tali'Zorah, see what you can find out about that laser. I'm assuming they've already tried to use it to get through the barrier."

The turian nodded to himself. "I can do that." He leaned over to look inside the tent briefly, then stood again. Adjusting his visor to use multispectrum combat radar, he began to scan the area with his assault rifle's scope.

Tali began looking around more as she approached the laser. "Wait a second. Someone has been doing major modification work on this thing. There are parts lying all over…and they're neatly arranged." She read from her HUD as it scrolled data about what it was finding; things that the VI harem deemed significant were highlighted and persisted at the top of the list.

"What?" Garrus looked her way. "What do you mean? You think the geth were building it and we interrupted them?"

Tali stopped and picked up a toolkit. "No, this isn't geth work. Geth always remember where they put things, so there's no need for them to be wasting time arranging things to make them easy to find. I think the archaeology team brought this. But what would they be doing with a mining laser? This is for heavy tunneling, and it's newer than the rest of the mining hardware we saw on the surface."

"Stop, don't touch anything," Kaidan said over LOSI. "This workstation is still active, and there's a VI guarding it. It just polled my ID. I think this was part of the archaeology hardware, but now I think we need to be really careful."

"If I disconnect the laser from the mains, can I keep working it?" Already reaching for a service panel, Tali had frozen in place.

"Yeah, go ahead and do that." Kaidan frowned to himself. "But be careful." Sitting on a small folding stool, he touched part of the interface before him. He continued to wave and gesture his way through the interface, "This is confusing. It's like…"

After a few seconds of silence, Garrus prodded, "It's like what?"

"Sorry, I got a little lost." Kaidan pulled away from the holographic interface. "It's like there wasn't anyone else here to secure it from. Or like no one was expected."

"That can't be right." Garrus peeked into the tent. "No one would do a science expedition solo. You'd spend your days just keeping up with housekeeping."

Kaidan shook his head. "Apparently not. The level of automation here is…significant." He worked in silence for a few more seconds. "And it looks like this asari really was the only one here." He shook his head in amazement. "I think the data hub locked itself up tightly enough the geth never got into it. Or maybe they never tried."

The turian leaned in closer, looking closely at the control displays. Kaidan turned slowly, looked over his shoulder at the turian.

Garrus blinked when they made eye contact. "Right. Standing guard," he said with a hint of embarrassment. He ducked back out of the tent and switched on his rifle light, panning around the cavern in search of hostiles.

"This isn't a mining laser," Tali said over LOSI. She sounded annoyed.

"What?"

"Well, not anymore. It's been so heavily modified, it wouldn't cut through wet paper. But Keelah, does it throw gamma radiation and despun top quarks!"

Kaidan was still prowling through the control environment. "So what's it for?"

"You're the one sitting at the console. Isn't there a Supervisor VI?"

Kaidan sounded surprised. "Ah…yes, and…it's finally offering to help."

"And…?"

"Hang on, I'm still…uh…" He went silent for a few seconds.

Tali studied her VI's analysis of the mining laser. "Lieutenant...um…don't take this the wrong way, but…if it would help, I'd be happy to come over and assist."

"No, wait a minute. I'm trying to read this map. It looks like they…I mean she…managed to map this place with enough detail that…I think the field stops a few meters down. If you can get that laser working again, I think we can tunnel down to the chamber under it. Or behind it." Kaidan shook his head at the display. "I've never seen data displayed like this. It's…weird."

"Hmm." Tali put her hands on her hips, frowning at the equipment on the ground. "Are you telling me you want this turned back into a mining laser?"

Kaidan didn't take his eyes off the holographic map. "Can you do that?"

"If you want a full 19-burner laser…um…yes, but it will take several hours of printing the parts that were probably turned into omnigel. But I think I can make one burner work, because the parts were left out and arranged so they can be duplicated and put back together."

"How long will it take?"

Tali sighed. "Hm. Based on all the other times I've rebuilt mining lasers, about an hour."

Garrus turned. "You've rebuilt mining lasers?"

"I suppose it was more of a 'built' than a 'rebuilt.'"

"That sounds like only one time."

"Right. I'm telling you it might not be an hour."

Kaidan sighed, ducked out of the tent. "How can we best help you?"

There was a loud clack from the laser, and the massive center emitter assembly started to slide forward with the sound of composite bearings; Tali was standing with her arms extended, apparently planning to catch it. The hexagonal assembly began to extrude from the end of the cylinder very slowly, but it was gaining speed.

Kaidan started to run closer. "How heavy is that? Are you going to be able to catch it yourself?"

Tali took a step back. "Sure…um…I think so…mmm…uh…it might be heavier than I thought."

As he ran up alongside the quarian, Kaidan extended his arms and seemed to push upward; a blue-purple glow surrounded his shoulders and head, and the 200-kilo emitter slowed again. "I think I've got it," he said. "You just want it on the ground, or do you want to arrange some rocks to use as a service rack?"

Tali stepped back, watching the human instead of the machinery. "Uh…I was going to put it on the ground, but I didn't think about needing to get under it." She looked down at the rocks and equipment. "Can you hold that there for a few seconds?" She reached under a particular rock and lifted one side, rolling it closer to another. "I think I can arrange some of…these urgh…into place."

Kaidan manipulated his Lift field subtly, allowing the emitter assembly to continue its gentle slide. "Don't take too long, but yeah, I...I can do this."

# # #

As Bravo team started down the ramp, Shepard looked down through the scaffold at the ground, four meters below them, and then back across the gulf at the asari. "We might get this done faster if we all work the problem," he said. "Are you going to be okay here for a few minutes?"

"She's been here for days," Wrex shrugged. "What's a few minutes now?"

The asari nodded. "Yes, I will be fine, but please be careful. There are a lot of geth here."

Shepard's ARO displayed, A. Williams: We don't know that. She could be working for Saren. Or at least for her mother, who we know is working for Saren.

"We wiped out a bunch on our way," Ash said. "Maybe we got them all. How many do you know about?"

"Just the ones I have seen as they worked to get past the barrier curtain. I…cannot use my omnitool, but I would suppose I've seen over fifty."

"You said there was a krogan." Wrex stopped looking around and spoke to the asari, "Did you get a name? Did you see any more?"

"No, no name…and I haven't seen any others."

"What color was his skin?"

"Ah…he is yellowish."

"Armor?"

"Yes…yes, he is wearing armor."

Wrex chuckled, then tapped his skullplate with his free hand. "No, this. What color is his armor?"

"I am sorry, I do not know. I only saw him once, and it was right after I was trapped."

"Purple teeth?"

The blue alien looked away, trying to remember. "I do not think so. But I cannot recall."

Shepard turned to Wrex. "You think you might know who it is?"

"Just trying to find out. But I'd need a better description."

"Whoever he is, he doesn't seem to be down here now." Shepard looked into the darkness behind them, then back at the asari. "What exactly happened here? How did you end up in there?"

The asari spoke quickly, "I arrived over a month ago, because I knew it would take several weeks to get the equipment modified and tested. Doctor Tesinni – she's the Department Chair – had to authorize purchasing the laser because of the scope of the modifications, but the Engineering Department was confident we could modify it back and lease it to Eldfell-Ashland when they start up their operations again, and Doctor Hannell – who was to be here with me – wasn't going to be able to be here after all, so I knew…"

"We don't need the whole back story," Ash interrupted, pointing into the chamber, "just how you got in there."

The asari looked briefly startled, and thought for a few seconds before continuing, "Of course, forgive me. Ah…the…barrier curtain can be controlled from the top chamber – I tested it – but the geth arrival surprised me, and I didn't have time to get up the elevator. I thought I could turn it on from any of the chambers, but...I think these lower ones may be prisoner cells, and I…did not consider that at the time."

Shepard nodded. "Okay. So you're trapped, but you're not injured. We're going to go work the problem."

"You will find the mining laser that I was using. I had modified it so it…does something else now. It cannot penetrate the barrier curtain, but you must still be careful with it…it is very powerful. I do not advise using it; I think the geth may have damaged themselves with it."

Shepard stopped and turned back to face the levitating asari. "But you don't know? Or know how many?"

"I do not. I am sorry."

"All right. Don't worry, we'll be back."

"Thank you, and be careful."

# # #

Kaidan's LOSI chirped. "Alenko. How's it going?"

The biotic looked up as if he could see through the tent, assuming the other team was coming down the one remaining ramp. "Hey, Commander. We found a mining laser, but it's been modified. Ms. Zorah has been rebuilding it while I was poking around in the campsite VI."

"Oh, please," Tali said, "Can you not call me that? You make me think I'm in trouble. Just call me Tali."

Kaidan chuckled. "Okay, sorry. Anyway, it looks like the barrier curtain forms a cylindrical shape, meaning it may be open at top and bottom."

"So we might be able to dig our way up into the chamber from below? That sounds like it'll still take a lot of time and be extra dangerous to boot." Shepard approached the mining laser, found Tali on her back, under a long, approximately hexagonal framework supported by rocks. "How's it going there, ma'am?"

Tali stopped working, tilted her head so she could look up at the human and be sure he was speaking to her. "Better than I expected," she said. "This is surprisingly clean work for non-techie, though maybe she didn't do it by herself."

"You think she had geth working for her?"

"No way; it may be good work for an archaeologist, but there's no way it's geth. Like I said to the Lieutenant, geth don't arrange things neatly when they work because they don't have to look for things they've put down."

"Commander, there's a small weapons locker in that tent over there," Garrus pointed. "Might be worth a closer look."

"Might be booby-trapped," Ash warned.

"Might be," Shepard agreed. "Let's check it out. Williams, you're with me. Wrex, Garrus, find me those other geth. We haven't seen another android or another flyer. I'd rather find them before they find us."

"Yes, sir," Garrus said.

Shepard and Ash arrived at the tent; a thorough scan at three meters showed nothing suspicious. "Almost as if the geth ignored it completely," Ash shook her head. Shepard cracked the lock on the weapons locker, then used another almost-legal app to download the licenses for the very modern but rather unremarkable pistol and shotgun that were in it.

Garrus shook his head. "You know, I would have bet real money there were geth over here in the shadows."

Had he looked up, the torch on his assault rifle might have let him see the three geth platforms that watched him silently.

# # #

Organics have accessed the data hub
Remote data gather initiated
Grodis-contractor successfully booted, armaments in ready state
Deploy Grodis-contractor to south entrance
(2) New platforms assembled:
YYURYYU8 and 1CURYY.4M3, Runtime integration complete
Deploy platforms to south entrance
(2) Platform assembly pending, Runtime integration ready
Transport repairs complete, ready to deliver offspring of Benezia-asari to Virmire facility

# # #

Because the parts had been so thoughtfully arranged, Tali's modification took about half an hour; with Kaidan's help, the one accelerator was lifted back into position. The "laser" body tilted to a horizontal position and ran a self-check. "Okay, I think we're about ready," Tali announced over LOSI.

Wrex looked from the laser to the ground before it and back. "What are we waiting for?"

"The system has to reconfigure itself," Tali said. "But it's the original system design, so integration might take less time than installing the modified ones. I have no idea how long that took, so I can't even guess how long it will take to run its self-check now."

"You don't know how long it will take to dig?"

"Oh, that. Umm…that should take less than a minute. The Lieutenant said we only have to burn through a short distance."

Kaidan checked his omnitool, which he had connected to the camp data hub, tapping controls as he did. "It's done," he said. "It asked me for permission to re-IPL from its onboard failover ROM. I've already given it cutting instructions." He glanced up at the device uncertainly. "At least I'm pretty sure that's what it is." An alarm klaxon sounded from the laser, and yellow warning strobes began to beat out a flash-flash...flash...flash-flash...flash. "Okay, everyone get behind me, I think it's about to start up."

"Warning," the laser's amplified VI voice reverberated from the walls of the chamber, "Please remain in current safe locations. Burn commencing in five seconds." Ash was the only one actually in front of the device's "business end;" she moved a little more quickly as the voice continued, "Four. Three. Two. One."

There was a thunderous crack, and the air shook as the "laser" fired. The ground before the beam trembled, glowed, undulated, and began to collapse, the resulting noise drowned out by the laser's thrum. About six seconds later, it stopped, and the strobes went dark. "Burn completed successfully," the VI announced. "Area will be safe for entry in eighty-six seconds." The mechanicals inside the laser continued to wind down; a cooling ventilator started to whir.

Shepard leaned forward, waited for his VI to provide an analysis of the still-glowing ground; the thermal imager showed its temperature dropping rapidly from the high 400s.

The laser had opened a ragged tunnel about a meter and a half across that led through the wall of another chamber, its floor a couple of meters below them. It still glowed a menacing orange. Chunks of semi-solid rock dropped noisily from the top to the floor of the tunnel.

Kaidan put his hands on his hips when he stopped at the edge of the hole. "Didn't know it would be so noisy. Or fast."

"And that's with only the center generator working," Tali said. "This looks like quite the cutting machine."

Wrex stopped next to Shepard; both of them looked down into the new tunnel. "I suppose you want to wait until it cools."

Shepard nodded. "At least so we don't bake our boots."

Kaidan asked, "Should we go up and tell the asari we're on our way?"

"Don't go backwards to go forward," Wrex pointed into the opening. "When you can just go forward."

They had to wait for over a minute before the surface resolidified.

When they reached the end of the tunnel, they jumped down to the floor and found themselves in a room opening into an even larger room at the back, as if they had stepped onto a stage and were facing an auditorium. But as they continued toward it, they found the larger room seemed to have no floor.

Ash was the first to the edge; she looked down and saw only walls vanishing into blackness. She turned and pointed up. "How are we supposed to get up to there?" She gestured for her omnitool's torch function, waving her arm up and down the shaft to see if any other rooms opened to it. "We're gonna need jump packs or climbing gear."

# # #

When the human stepped through a series of sensor fields near the opening, she had unknowingly activated an ancient system that combined the functions of security and access. A freely-moving platform, held to the shaft's central column with a magnetic metamaterial, orbited the shaft as it rose to the level where Garrus and the team were standing, its path describing a helix.

A bemused Ash took a step back as the platform stopped at her feet. It formed a bridge to the central column, seamlessly joining it to the floor of the room where she stood. Another segment of the platform rose up next to the first, followed by others to that side, until they formed most of a ring, encircling the central column. Two of the platform segments did not rise, leaving gaps in the ancient lift.

"How'd you do that?" Tali asked.

"Hell if I know," Ash said, sounding a little disturbed. She pointed at it and looked at Shepard. "Do we trust this thing?"

"If those fields have held off the geth and a krogan for this long, this should be a sure thing," Wrex lumbered across the room and out onto the platform. As he stepped onto it, a green holograph lit on the column wall.

Shepard took a cautious step out toward the column, and then moved more quickly to the controls. "Not like we have a lot of options," he said. The rest of the team followed; Ash and Garrus stayed near the "outer" wall, Kaidan, Tali, and Wrex stayed near Shepard and the controls.

The green holograph, about half a meter wide and reaching from waist level to shoulder height, was mostly empty space. Eight vertical rectangles spanned most of its height, one of them had some alien symbols near the bottom. Shepard thought it likely that this represented the one occupied cell, and if he had touched it, the lift would have delivered them to it.

But aliens are different, and Protheans may be even more different.

There were four other keys near the bottom with symbols that seemed to be universally understood: elongated triangles pointing in four directions: Up, Down, Left and Right.

"This doesn't seem too hard," Tali turned to Shepard. "Or…is it another trap?"

"I'm going to bet it isn't," Shepard eyed the console warily. "But spread out a little…just in case." He waved once toward Ash and Garrus without looking that way.

He reached out and waved a finger quickly through the holographic "up" arrow.

The platform didn't move.

Shepard put his finger through the triangle and held it there; the platform began to rise to the next level of cells, and continued to do so as he pulled his hand back.

The platform slid to a gentle stop.

Two more times he did this, and as they reached the next level, a bubble of energy slid into view with a solitary figure in it.

"There she is," Garrus said.

*** Glossary ***

AFEWS: Anti-Fire Electrical Wave System; popsci dot com/science/article/2011-03/future-firefighters-could-fight-fire-blasts-flame-bending-electricity

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

HUD: Heads-Up Display

IPL: Initial Program Load

LOSI: Line Of Sight Intersuit, an Alliance telecom protocol

ROM: Read-Only Memory

VI: Virtual Intelligence