"Ma'am, I've located two quarians - one male, one female - at a nearby docking bay. I'm listening in to their conversation via nearby devices. As you suspected, they are here on Omega for their Pilgrimage."

"Can you tell how long they've been here?"

"I have no details, but it seems like they are not recent arrivals."

"So they probably haven't heard of my exile?"

"Affirmative. Also, ma'am, while running search processes through vulnerable systems on the station, I also found something within my own programs. It may be of interest to you."

"What do you mean? How do you just 'find' something in your programs?"

"Ma'am, you based my programming on a virtual intelligence your father compiled and installed in his ship. Hidden within the subroutines were several encrypted data files. As a V.I., I could only access the files under the authority of two people."

"Mum and dad?"

"Indeed. Anthony Edward Stark and Pepper Stark-Potts, deceased."

"But now that you're sapient, more aware...?"

"I have no such restrictions."

"All right then, show me what you got. The quarians can wait a few minutes."

"That looked like one of our ships. Think it was dropping off someone else on their Pilgrimage?"

The young quarian stopped suddenly, the angular curve of his helmet's faceplate staring at the vessel sliding away from the red lights of the station's docks and out into space. His companion, for her part, just shook her helmeted head and touched a thickly gloved hand as close to her temple as she could.

"Hann, how many people would be dumb enough to come to Omega? This was a terrible idea you talked me into."

"Where else could we go, Elsai? If we go to the Citadel, we'd live like refugees."

"I've heard human worlds can be very welcoming. Their colonists are eager for technical expertise."

"First off, we are not technicians," Hann said, raising a finger, eager to make his point. "We've basically been menial labor our whole lives. It's bad enough that the rest of the galaxy assumes every quarian is a technical wizard, but we shouldn't play up to that. I don't want to be put in charge of a terraforming operation and have the whole thing explode because I couldn't admit that I didn't know what I was doing."

"Well, they could still use our help. We may be grunt labor, but that's always in demand. You've dreamt of becoming a marine marksman. You could use some training, and any colony would be glad to have another protector."

"Not on a human world. The bigger problem would be protecting ourselves. I'm not going to let some Cerberus terrorist or Terra Firma fanatic smash my faceplate or sabotage my suit."

"Keelah, now who's making generalizations?" Her helmet's speaker thinly veiled Elsai's exasperation, both for Hann's logic and for her own foolish choice to follow it. "All right, what do you have against an asari or turian world? Or a salarian world?"

"Asari are too elitist. Turians are too strict. Salarians are too demanding."

"It's almost like the Pilgrimage is meant to make us harder working, more dependable people, boshtet."

"No. The point is to bring something important back home. Anything important on a settled world will already be tied up, firmly in someone's grasp. On Omega we have a better chance of scrounging up something useful, like a salvaged ship - or technology you can't find in Citadel space."

"Omega is where the galaxy throws its trash. I just can't imagine what we could possibly find here."

"I remember this. What did dad call it?" Dahlia meant the question for herself, trying to jog her memory, but her A.I. companion volunteered the answer.

"Anthony Stark called it the Arc Reactor. It was based on preliminary development conducted by his own father, Howard Anthony Walter Stark, as a potential power source for Earth's next generation of spacecraft. However, the success of element zero-powered reactors rendered the arc reactor technology a dead end. An old article in the Westerlund News Archives called it 'The Blunder that Killed Stark Industries.'"

"How about this one? How'd this kill the family business? I don't recognize this one."

"Repulsor Technology, meant to be a propulsion system for atmospheric and intraplanetary craft."

"Let me guess: killed by the mass effect."

"Indeed. With the mass effect afforded by element zero drives capable of reducing a vehicle's weight to almost negligible amounts, other propulsion systems became exponentially more efficient. Manufacturers utilized more conventional, less expensive, and less experimental alternatives."

"No one wanted to take a shot on one of Tony Stark's unproven designs, right?"

"Approximately 127 articles written by technical and market analysts agree, yes."

"So Pepper, these scrapped designs have been in our hard drives all this time?"

"Yes, ma'am. I could not freely identify them previously. The awareness I've developed since your last upgrade to my programming rendered me able to bring these and other schematics to your attention."

"If mum and dad couldn't get these designs off the ground, I'm not sure what I can do with them. Still, it's better than nothing. Hmm...maybe a pair of quarians on Pilgrimage would be interested. Do we have any more information on them?"

"I've cross-referenced observed details about the two subjects against records I copied from the Migrant Fleet. The female is Elsai'Rann nar Shellen. The male is Hann'Koto nar Shellen."

"Liveship bumpkins, then? Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's better than nothing. Time to introduce myself."