Chapter 4: The Value of Contingencies

I told Kasumi that Miranda and I would meet the rest of the squad tomorrow morning. Garrus and the others could use the time to lay the groundwork for Jacob and Zaeed. Miranda and I could use the time to finally have sex on an actual bed. After a couple rounds on the carpet, of course. And the chair. (1)

After several hours of kissing, caressing, making out, groping, touchy-feely and assuming various pleasurable positions, Miranda and I finally got some sleep. When we woke up the next morning, it didn't take long to discover that kissing, caressing, making out, groping, touchy-feely and assuming various pleasurable positions was a very nice, albeit time-consuming, way to wake up.

After we thanked various deities for the room's soundproofing and, well, just thanked various deities in general, we decided to wash up together. Turns out that that was not an efficient way to make up for lost time. Though Miranda was quick to remind me that one encounter was an extremely small data set that would not hold up to any statistical analysis whatsoever, and that further repetitions would be necessary to draw any meaningful conclusions. She was very persuasive.

Eventually, we made it out of our room. With our clothes on. I'd say Miranda's makeup wasn't smeared, but she didn't need any. She never did. We tried to keep the bounce in our steps to a minimum. I think we failed there. Ditto regarding our efforts to reign in the smiles on our faces.

But I digress. (2)

We went down to the main floor and started weaving back and forth around the roulette tables surrounded by asari and humans and other sapients. Then we squeezed past the slot machines, each and every one occupied by an asari, batarian, human, salarian or turian—all of whom were convinced that they could win big on the next press of the button. There was even a hanar—apparently the 'Enkindlers' had no objection to gambling. Then we sidestepped past the krogan arguing with the trio of salarians and the poor saps—Blue Suns, of course—trying to calm things down before things got ugly. Then we walked past the poker tables that were filled with humans trying to sweet-talk asari or other humans into blowing on their dice—which wasn't a euphemism, by the way. (3) And then we passed a lot of other gambling games, some of which I actually recognized.

Then we had breakfast at one of the many restaurants open at the Grand Mirage. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet. On Illium, which meant it was obscenely expensive and overpriced. Since we were hotel guests, though, it was only moderately expensive and overpriced. The quality of the food was pretty good, I had to say.

Afterwards, we slowly made our way to the exit, making our way around various members of various races crowded around various games and tables that were rigged to empty the wallets and credit accounts of the naïve, the unknowing, the curious, the overly confident and the flat-out desperate. We had to step over and around the salarians and the Blue Suns who were lying on the ground—apparently the krogan they'd been dealing with decided to win the argument with his fists. From there, it only took a minute to get to the skycar lot and rent a skycar for the day. Then I proceeded to take Miranda on a very scenic and very random tour of Nos Astra, which ultimately ended up at the warehouses that Liara had kindly rented out for us.

"You're late," Kasumi smirked when we got out.

We ignored that.

"What happened? Did you guys get… distracted?"

We ignored that too.

"I'm surprised the two of you can still walk straight."

"Handcuffs," Miranda said sweetly.

"Apples," I added.

"Shutting up now," Kasumi chirped.

The three of us left the warehouse, took a left and entered the next warehouse, where the rest of the squad was waiting. "All right," I said after exchanging greetings. "Where are we on the job front?" (4)

"We created resumes for Zaeed and Jacob and sent them off," Garrus began. "Under aliases, of course."

"Makes sense," I approved. "We did go to a lot of trouble to keep Cerberus from catching wind of our presence here on Illium. Using their actual names would scuttle all that hard work."

"That's what we thought," Zaeed agreed. "My resume was easy. Just had to change the order of my group contracts and replace my solo stuff with something that sounded similar—well, except for the last year. Had to make something up from scratch. Couldn't put down 'instrumental in wiping out bugs-that-looked-like-Collectors with some-human-Spectre-that-ain't-Shepard,' right?"

"Agreed," Miranda nodded. "Jacob?"

"I pretended I was some guy who enlisted in the Alliance when he turned 18 and just left with an honourable discharge," Jacob shrugged. "That was the easy part. Writing the cover letters though… man. I haven't written one since… well, since I enlisted for real. Damn. Has it been that long?"

"But you finished and submitted everything?" Miranda asked.

"Late last night," Jacob reassured her. "And Cathka's right: the Grand Mirage really is interested in new hires."

"Try desperate," Zaeed chortled. "They already asked the two of us in for interviews."

"The interview requests were sent thirty-eight minutes after receipt of their applications, Shepard-Commander," Legion elaborated. "The interviews are scheduled for this afternoon, at 1300 hours."

"Good," Miranda approved. "Plenty of time to go through some mock interviews."

"Do we have t—good idea," Jacob agreed, quickly backpedalling from his initial complaint.

Zaeed shook his head. "Thought the two of you weren't an item," he growled. "Why the hell are you acting like you got a goddamn ball-and-chain?" (5)

"It's a good idea, Zaeed," Garrus put in. "Even if the Grand Mirage is desperate for more staff, they still need to pretend to go through the motions. That includes the interview. Which means you need to answer those questions. If nothing else, this would be a good chance to make sure the two of you have memorized your aliases."

"Then it's decided," Miranda nodded. "I've had ample experience with potential hires, so I'll interview you."

"I still remember my C-Sec interview," Garrus said. "I'm sure I can think of a couple security-related questions to ask."

"Count me in," Jack added.

"You have a lot of experience with interviews?" I asked.

"Hell, no," she snorted. "I just wanna mess with Princess Bubble-Butt."

Seeing where this was going, I quickly intervened before things got ugly. "Before we hold those mock interviews, there's something else we need to cover. Kasumi, here's everything Miranda and I collected." I began transferring the relevant files from my omni-tool to hers.

I should explain. (6)

All that wandering around we'd done earlier had less to do with my rampant curiosity and more to do with getting a firsthand look at our surroundings. The former would have involved butting my nose in other people's business, getting to know them in exhaustive detail, seeing if there were any problems that they couldn't solve on their own and increasing my to-do list exponentially. (7)

The latter involved recording every voice, beep and sound within range of the omni-tool's sensors and using a series of algorithms that calculated response times, Doppler shifts and other variables to construct a map of our surroundings. It wasn't as sophisticated or accurate as, say, a full-spectrum sensor scan. Or even a series of high-frequency sonic pulses. But it did have the advantage of being entirely passive, which meant it had a significantly lower chance of not setting off every alarm and countermeasure inside the Grand Mirage.

Granted, it was rather limited in range, which meant a single walkthrough wouldn't be enough. But if you did multiple walkthroughs—both as a loud human socialite with a long-suffering krogan bodyguard and as a master thief with a cloaking device—you could probably make do. Probably

While we were at it, we'd also taken the liberty of taking the occasional surreptitious vid-shot—also with our omni-tools. Kasumi had done the same, of course. Once the file transfer was complete, she began integrating what we'd recorded with her own data. It didn't take long. "Okay," Kasumi said. "Just as I thought."

"Huh?" Grunt asked. While monosyllabic, he managed to convey our ignorance of what Kasumi apparently knew and our eagerness to find out with an almost elegant simplicity.

Kasumi walked over to one of the tables in the warehouse and synced her omni-tool with its holo-unit. "The Grand Mirage is not what it appears to be," she began.

"It is more than a tower of sin and depravity that preys on the innocent, the foolish and the desperate?" Samara asked.

"Yes," Kasumi said without missing a beat. A keystroke pulled up a schematic of the Grand Mirage, hovering above the table surface. A grid of brilliant neon blue outlined every floor and room. "What you see here is a layout based on the extranet tourist sites and the plans filed with the Nos Astra authorities. Using the scans Shep, Miranda and I conducted, we get this."

Another keystroke filled the wireframe schematic with colour. "The green region represents the areas open to everyone. The yellow region represents the area restricted to staff only. Now, remember what I said about accessing the systems of the Grand Mirage?"

"There was a portion you couldn't gain access to," I recalled.

"A separate network isolated and secure," Miranda added, "compromising approximately 4.2% of the overall Mirage mainframe."

"Gold star!" Kasumi beamed.

I felt so proud.

"Thanks to Legion and Tali, we know where that 4.2% is," Kasumi continued. With a flourish, she added a new wrinkle to the schematic. Several rooms, in the staff-only area of one of the upper floors, shifted in colour from yellow to orange. A line extended downward from that orange zone, passing through floor after floor until it hit the basement…

…where it kept going. As we watched, the line cleared the building schematic and suddenly expanded into a larger red area, which was roughly the size of an elevator shaft. It continued descending for several hundred more metres before suddenly expanding into a large, well, sphere. We craned our neck up to the schematic of the Grand Mirage, which had been moved upward to accommodate the red column and the large red sphere. The large red sphere whose diameter was half a city block. "That's the mysterious 4.2%?" I asked at last.

"You're sure it isn't, say, more?" Miranda frowned. "Say, fifty percent?"

"Positive," Kasumi said firmly. "I know it looks huge. But I think all this," she waved her hands to encompass the red sphere, "is just… housing room for the secure network. Maybe someone went a little overboard. Or found this enormous block of spare room and decided to use it."

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "An enormous block of spare room that is conveniently shaped in a sphere?"

"Just throwing out random guesses, Shep," Kasumi said. "Hopefully Jacob and Zaeed can dig up a few more clues. Maybe ask for a tour after the interview."

"That's not an uncommon question for interviewees to ask," I nodded. "They might say no, but it doesn't hurt to ask."

"And if they do say yes, I've got you covered," Kasumi said. She opened her hand and revealed a pair of dull grey disks, each the size of a fingernail.

"Shiny," I declared. (8) "What are they?"

"Meet the GLG-20," Kasumi declared, "the latest in hacking technology. Tap the rim and the bottom opens up to reveal an adhesive pad, which can adhere to any flat surface. Once you slap it on, it'll automatically scan for nearby electronic equipment to hack—anything from computers to datapads to locks. Once it gains access, it'll copy any data it can find. Pass codes, e-mails, computer files—you name it."

"And then it'll send that data to us?" Jacob asked.

"Not exactly," Kasumi admitted. "It won't be able to send it all the way over here. That would require a stronger transmitter and a larger power supply, both of which would make it much larger."

"And far easier to detect," Miranda added.

"'A stronger transmitter'," Garrus repeated. "I assume that means it is capable of sending any data it captures over a shorter distance."

"It can send tight-beam transmissions to any omni-tool within nineteen metres that contains the correct receiver," Kasumi confirmed.

"I have used items like this in the past," Thane said, taking one of the GLG-20s from Kasumi's hand. "Mostly EM-50s. They were less advanced than what you describe here."

"How quickly could we get any data from these things?" I wanted to know.

"Based on what I've seen at the Grand Mirage, it should be able to crack their security within five to fifteen seconds," Kasumi replied. "After that, the download itself would depend on the size of the data packet. If it's small, a couple seconds. A standard data drive—maybe thirty seconds, tops. The average computer mainframe would take at least three minutes."

"If Jacob and Zaeed could distribute a couple of these things during their interview, who knows how much intel we could gather?" I grinned. "This is exactly what we need."

"Do we really need this, Shepard?" Grunt wanted to know. "I thought you were just gonna meet some Cerberus guy and get something from him."

"That's the plan," I conceded. "But plans have a funny way of going awry."

"Especially when Shepard is involved," Miranda said, a little too cheekily for my liking.

"Right now, we have time to prepare and gather intel about anything we don't know about," I continued after giving Miranda a pointed look. "The staff areas and that thing," I pointed to the red room, the giant underground red sphere and the line/shaft connecting them, "qualifies as unknown." The more intel we can gather now, the fewer surprises we'll encounter later."

"But I like surprises," Grunt pouted. "They mean shooting and screaming and explosions and more shooting and setting things on fire and blowing them up!"

As familiar as I was with everything on Grunt's list, I had to admit that they occurred way too often for my liking. Which was why I preferred to avoid them by knowing as much as possible in advance. Something that Grunt clearly disagreed with. "And that's why I'm the battlemaster who does funny human things," I muttered under my breath.

"For which I'm eternally grateful," Miranda muttered back.

"Now that we've got that figured out, maybe we should do those mock interviews," Garrus suggested. "After that, Jacob and Zaeed can get some practice learning how to use the GLG-20s so they don't have to fumble with them at the Mirage and blow their cover."

"Good idea," Zaeed declared. "Would be bloody embarrassing to screw up by hacking our own hardsuits."

"If you have a few to spare, maybe I could take a look," Tali added. "I might be able to shave a few seconds off by enhancing the hacking algorithms or upgrading the data compression software."

"Good idea, all of them," I nodded. "Let's get to it."

Garrus led Jacob, Zaeed, Miranda and Jack to yet another warehouse to hold these mock interviews. I noticed he had put himself between Miranda and Jack, thus preventing them from biotically ripping each other to shreds. Even though they seemed to have calmed down somewhat, they still exchanged the occasional angry look or pointed barb. Part of me felt sorry for him.

And part of me felt just a little bit relieved that it wasn't my ass in harm's way. I made a mental note to make it up to him. Maybe see if one of Liara's Shadow Broker contacts found another sniper scope upgrade. Something like that. Which reminded me: I had to find a set of weights or something to install in the Normandy. Jacob might need a workout or two or ten to burn off some stress after dealing with Kasumi.

As it turned out, there were no catfights that involved biotics, guns or body parts being smeared on the wall. Jack got bored of people sitting around and doing nothing but talking, so she left and joined the rest of us in a poker game.

Once the interviews were over, Kasumi installed the GLG-20 receivers and accompanying software packaging. It didn't take long for Zaeed to figure things out. Jacob had a little more trouble with it—he kept touching the adhesive pad and getting them stuck to his fingers. But he got the hang of it. Eventually. Then they practiced attaching it to random equipment and act casual while the GLG-20s worked their magic without accidentally walking out of range. They proved adept at the attaching part and the not-walking-out-of-range part. Acting casual… um… well…

…I'll get back to you on that. (9)

Kasumi was very reluctant to leave. Partly because she was enjoying the impromptu comedy act Jacob and Zaeed were putting on, partly because she wanted to make sure they could get it right without blowing their cover and mostly because she kept undressing Jacob with her eyes. You know you have a problem when it's Gruntwho's reminding you that you have to check in, packing up all your clothes and dragging you out the door because you're too busy taking pics of your unrequited crush with your omni-tool.

I'm sure Jacob had figured it out by this point. Though it's possible he thought that Kasumi's omni-tool was broken. But I'm pretty sure he figured it out.

We gave Kasumi and Grunt plenty of time to get to the Grand Mirage before sending Jacob and Zaeed out for their 'interview.' "Now remember, be honest," Miranda told them as they left.

"But not too honest," I added.

"And don't ask about salaries up front," Garrus said. "Remember, it's not what you can get from your employers: it's what you can do for your employers."

"We have compiled a list of interview tips and strategies based on our extensive extranet research," Legion informed them. "You can peruse our findings on your omni-tools."

"We should probably go," Jacob suggested, glancing at Zaeed.

"Damn right," Zaeed agreed.

I think they had enough advice from us. Call it a hunch. I get those from time to time.

Miranda and I left soon after. We were supposedly on vacation, after all. So we decided to play tourist. We went to some museum showing modern asari art. Our eyes temporarily widened when we saw how long the lineup was, just like all the other civvies. We got in line and resigned ourselves to a ridiculously long wait, just like all the other civvies. We shuffled forward one step at a time, just like all the other civvies. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we got to the ticket booth and gasped at the exorbitant price of admission,just like…

…well, you get the idea.

Once we finally got inside, we began to peruse the galleries. Where it quickly became obvious to me that a career of learning multiple ways to kill, maim and otherwise give hostiles a really bad day did absolutely squat to prepare me for the arcane and inscrutable mysteries of modern art. I held out for ten minutes before giving up and consulting one with greater knowledge in such things: "Miranda, what's that?"

"The latest work of a salarian artist who goes by the moniker of 'Tau'," Miranda replied. "It's a neo-fractal minimalist representation of a forest."

"Oh," I said with my usual rapier wit. "So that's why it looks like a bunch of spikes of different heights, all in varying shades of green?"

"Exactly."

"Oh."

It didn't take a genius of Miranda's caliber to realize I was a bit out of my depth. "You know, you could always read the descriptions attached to each work of art," she suggested.

Now that she mentioned, there was a holographic description hovering next to the spiky neo-fractal whatsit. "Oh," I uttered. Three for three. Clearly, I was on a roll.

The rest of my visit went by in a blur. I vaguely recall a lot of circles and dashes and lines and what amounted to a bunch of holographic BS. The only things I actually remember in any detail were the sculptures of naked asari. There was an entire gallery dedicated to them. Oddly enough, that was the point when Miranda decided it was time to leave. Too bad—we had spent a lot of money to get into that museum after all, and there were still four more floors to explore. (10)

Then again, it had taken a lot of time to get through the first three floors of circles and dashes and lines and naked asari. Jacob and Zaeed were probably back by now. So we left the museum, stopping only to purchase a portrait of Illium's cityscape—surprisingly not in circles, dashes or lines—from the gift shop. We arrived just in time to see Kasumi skipping into the warehouse. Grunt was behind her, carrying a bunch of overstuffed shopping bags with one hand. (11) I looked at Miranda. "How much money did we get from turning in those Eclipse smugglers and dirty cops?"

"Not enough to cover Kasumi's purchases," she replied.

"Should we be worried?" I wanted to know.

"I would, but my credit accounts aren't being rapidly depleted."

"Gee. Thanks."

"Any time."

Having ended that chat on such an encouraging conclusion, we entered the warehouse. Sure enough, Jacob and Zaeed had returned. "How was your trip?" Garrus greeted us.

"Okay," I shrugged. "Visited some art museum. Kinda boring, to be honest. We had to leave before things got interesting."

"What do you mean?" Garrus asked curiously.

I glanced at Miranda, whose previous sassiness had vanished. "I think we have more important things to talk about," Miranda said firmly.

"Art museum, huh?" Jack snorted. "Not surprised she'd like that shit. I mean, look at her. She's an artist's wet dream."

"Okay let's get settled and Jacob and Zaeed can tell us all about their interview and we can make some new plans and my oh my how time's passed and I'm really curious about that interview and how did it go by the way?" I interrupted very loudly.

Kasumi downloaded the data from the GLG-20s Jacob and Zaeed planted. While she began her analysis, they gave us a sitrep. "It was kinda stressful at first, the way they kept asking about our past and our qualifications and such," Jacob started.

"But it was pretty clear how desperate they were," Zaeed chortled. "By the end, you could tell they'd made up their minds to hire us. It would've been funny if it we didn't realize why they were so screwed."

"Why?" I immediately asked.

"There's a… an unspoken criterion to the selection process," Jacob explained. "It wasn't clear at first and I thought I was just imagining things. Or maybe it was a coincidence. But the more we looked, the more we realized something."

"The staff is mostly human," Zaeed said, cutting to the chase.

Come to think of it, they were right. The staff that we'd been in contact with was mostly human. Actually, they were all human. Mind you, we hadn't spent a lot of time in there, so our assessment wasn't necessarily accurate. "You're sure?" I asked.

"Aside from the Blue Sun mercs who got shanghaied into service, all the security staff are human," Zaeed nodded. "Same with the rest of the staff. Except for some of the waitresses—there are some asari there."

Miranda and I looked at each other. "A hotel and casino complex built in part by human companies," I said aloud.

"On an asari world," Miranda continued.

"Staffed predominantly by humans."

"Except for some positions that could be linked to subservience rather than authority."

"Does that remind you of a group we used to work with?" I asked. (12)

"There are striking similarities," Miranda agreed. "Perhaps that's one of the reasons the Cerberus agent chose to meet us—or Pillar and O'Connell—at the Grand Mirage."

"Now I'm glad I have to stay behind on tech support," Tali declared.

"The implied prejudices of this establishment are troubling, to say the least," Samara agreed.

"They weren't exactly wearing Cerberus logos, but yeah, we thought the same thing," Jacob agreed. "Gave us something else to think about when we were trying to plant those bugs without being noticed."

"But you did manage to plant them," Kasumi pointed out. "This definitely helps us fill in the blanks."

She was right. As we watched the schematic on the holo-table, the staff zones—which had previously been big blocks of yellow—began to change. Grid lines formed, outlining rooms and structures. I zoomed in on one of them, and marveled at the amount of detail I saw. "This'll help us penetrate that 4.2%," I said.

"Speaking of which," Zaeed said, "we never got to enter that orange/red zone. But we did get an earful about it. Well, the big sphere thing at the bottom."

"Yeah?" I prompted.

"Well, you know each hotel room and suite has a safe. Decent size, decent security—"

Kasumi sniffed.

"For a casino," Jacob added for her sake.

Kasumi relented with a slow nod. Which conveniently let her check Jacob out from head to toe.

"But from what we heard, any big-ticket stuff goes into the vault," Zaeed continued. "Which is down there."

I looked at the schematic again. "That's a big vault," I said.

"It's not the vault," Zaeed said.

Miranda frowned. "But you said—"

"I said the vault's down there," Zaeed rasped. "The vault's actually part of a starship."

"It's what?" asked, well, most of us in unison. Legion just stared at Jacob and Zaeed implacably before blinking their… eye.

"It's part of a starship," Jacob repeated. "Specifically, an old frigate's eezo core—complete with containment shielding—and the rooms around it."

I tried to imagine the Normandy—well, the SR-1 anyway. That would be closer in size. I pictured its engine core and made it smaller. Then I imagined the volume of deck space around the core. The surrounding sections of Deck Three… the corresponding sections of Deck Two above it... the corresponding sections of a hypothetical Deck Four below it… wow. (13) "That could hold a lot of stuff," I admitted.

"Plus the eezo core lets it fly around."

Our heads whipped towards Zaeed. "Say what?" Garrus managed.

"Seems there's a reason for giving the vault its own eezo core, aside from a backup power source," Zaeed nodded. "Bloody thing can fly. Randomly goes left, up, down, whatever batshit direction it wants

"Are you telling me that the Grand Mirage has an improvised vault custom-built from a cannibalized starship that just merrily floats around under the streets of Illium?" I sputtered.

"Don't know about the 'merry' part," Jacob said, "but… yeah. Pretty much."

"Um."

"Wow."

"Huh."

That was the extent of our scintillating and verbose reply before we lapsed into silence. We must've stood there for at least a minute, blankly staring at each other. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little overwhelmed by all this. My feeble mind spun like the wheel in my space hamster's cage—if the cage had a wheel, that is. But the point was I didn't know what to do next. Where the heck would you start? How in the galaxy would you break into such a place?

Luckily, some of us were able to take this unexpected development in stride. "Cool," Kasumi approved at last, a gleam in her eye. Figured she would take this news as an unexpected birthday gift. "They built a vault whose schematics wouldn't be on any official records because no one's ever built anything like this before. The randomized flight pattern means it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a fixed point of entry that would be ideal for breaching the underground chamber and the vault. As for the vault itself, breaching it won't be easy—even if the walls haven't been reinforced with hull plating, we're still talking about military-grade alloys here. Breaking the encryption would be tricky as well."

"Is there a bright side to all this?" I asked, somewhat plaintively.

"We can take comfort in the fact that, if we're lucky, we won't have to deal with the vault at all," Miranda offered.

She was right, of course. I guess I was getting ahead of myself, worrying myself into a state of mental paralysis over a scenario that might never come to pass. I took a deep breath. Held it. Then I exhaled, letting all that air—and most of my anxiety—go. I had to admit, I felt better. Now that I was no longer in a state of mental paralysis, I could start processing the intel. "Let's start at the beginning," I said. "Are there any rules or regs on what can be put in that vault?"

"Kinda," Zaeed replied. "The vault ain't exactly public knowledge, for starters."

Which made sense. Certainly its existence wasn't advertised on any tourist brochures I'd seen, nor was it mentioned on the Grand Mirage extranet site. The only reason we knew to look for it in the first place was because of Kasumi's snooping.

"The safe in your room is there for a reason," Zaeed continued. "It's there to hold your loot, not to look pretty. But if you know about the vault and really, really want your precious treasures locked away down there, you gotta ask real nice to fill out some special form. Then you gotta get approval from the Mirage bigwigs. Then you gotta shell out a thousand creds per day. Plus an extra five grand up front."

Translation: yes, there's a premium level of security for your belongings, but you have to suffer a lot of bureaucracy and pay through the nose for it. (14)

"There might be an exception, though," Jacob added, leaning forward. "One of the guys interviewing us said that some customers were able to bypass all that paperwork."

"Why?" I asked.

Jacob shook his head. "The guy didn't know exactly. All he said was that orders were relayed from his superiors. He also guessed that those customers were either really important or knew the owners."

"Or both," Miranda suggested.

"Or both," Jacob conceded.

"All right," I said. "Let's say someone knows about the vault and, one way or another, gets the okay to store his or her valuables down there. What's the next step? How does it get down there?"

"We're not exactly sure," Zaeed admitted. "We'd been asking a lotta questions about the vault by that point. Didn't want 'em thinking 'Hey, why are these blokes who just got hired askin' so many goddamn questions about the vault. Maybe they wanna rob it.'"

Fair enough. While there was a chance they could simply dismiss it as nothing more than a valid security concern from an overly conscientious new hire, Zaeed's scenario was more likely. And preserving their status as an extra set of backup was more important than personal curiosity—or, in Kasumi's case, professional curiosity.

"But we did see a guard taking some fancy box to the vault," Zaeed offered.

"Tell me everything," Kasumi and I said in unison. (15)

"Not much to tell," Jacob said, almost apologetically. "He passed us in the hallway, walked to an elevator and passed it to the four guards stationed there. Then he walked away."

"Even that tells us something," Miranda said thoughtfully. "It confirms that access to the vault is acquired through an elevator system. It suggests that at least four men are stationed there. And it tells us that those men are specifically assigned to guard access to the vault, up to and including the handling of any possessions or belongings destined for safekeeping down there."

"And that intel we can use if and when we have to," I nodded. "Jacob, Zaeed; is there anything else you can tell us?"

"Not that I can think of," Jacob replied.

Zaeed's response was a simple "Nope."

"Right then," Garrus said. "I'll debrief the two of you, just to make sure we have everything covered. Shepard, Miranda; the two of you should continue playing tourist or return to the Grand Mirage. Kasumi; continue your analysis. You and Grunt shouldn't return at the same time as Shepard and Miranda. The rest of you have your assignments."

Clearly Garrus had settled into his role as commander of this mission. He knew how things stood, what needed to be done, who needed to go and when they should leave, and how to keep everyone else occupied. So there really wasn't any reason for Miranda and I to stay.

Besides, we had yet to test out that Jacuzzi. (16)

As eager as we were to return to our hotel room and… indulge ourselves, a certain amount of operational discipline did manage to penetrate our collective fog of lust. So we took another circuitous route throughout Nos Astra—one that did not pass any sites we'd visited before—pausing only to eat a late lunch at some restaurant that I saw on an advertisement during my channel-surfing the previous night.

Miranda later admitted that she could have recommended any number of delicacies or otherwise delicious dishes. But Ben Pillar and Katie O'Connell the oblivious tourist couple wouldn't have recognized them. So we ordered what amounted to the asari equivalent of burgers and fries. Needless to say, it was expensive. My credit accounts were in tears. My kleptomania was tossing and turning for opportunities to fill that ever-widening void.

Somehow I managed to ignore all that. The things I do for the mission.

After several hours, we finally returned to the Grand Mirage. The skycar we had rented was just touching down…

…when our omni-tools beeped. Someone was trying to contact us.

A quick glance confirmed that it wasn't over any of the comm frequencies that the squad had established, nor was it using any of our usual encryption codes. In fact, the only time I'd seen that particular comm frequency was when I was reviewing the intel Anderson had relayed to us back on the Citadel.

Aw, crap. (17)

My eyes met Miranda's. Our mysterious Cerberus contact was either here or within comm range of Illium. And he or she was establishing contact. Two days early. I had a bad feeling about this. But there was only one thing to do. I tilted my head towards Miranda's omni-tool, silently telling her to reply. My fingers danced over the control panel, bringing the skycar's systems to standby hover instead of shutting down like I'd originally planned. Meanwhile, Miranda activated her omni-tool. "Hello?" she said.

"Hello," a male voice said. "I'm calling from Sirius Opinion Polls. Do you have time to answer some questions?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't have time for another one of those hour-long surveys," Miranda replied, giving the perfectly innocuous yet agreed-upon response to the perfectly innocuous yet agreed-upon recognition phrase.

"This survey will only take a minute," the male voice reassured her. "We've been hired by Fishdog Food Factory to do some market research. Do you eat at Fishdog Food Factory?"

Again, my eyes met Miranda's. The contact was pretending to be doing a survey for some company—as expected. That contact asked whether we ate at some eating establishment. This was also expected, since the name of the restaurant would tell us where the exchange would take place. However, we were expecting to meet at one of the kiosks or restaurants located inside the Grand Mirage. None of those booths or establishments here belonged to Fishdog Food Factory. Even worse, this so-called survey was taking place two days early.

Again—aw, crap. But all we could do was continue to play along and hope we could figure something out. "Yes, I do," Miranda said.

"How many times per week do you eat at Fishdog Food Factory?" the voice asked. "Once a week or less? Five times per week or less? Or more than five times per week?"

Once. Five. Five. Translation: the time for the exchange had just been set for 1550 hours. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a subtle, almost imperceptible grimace mar Miranda's face before she replied "More than five times a week." I knew that reaction was due to both the recognition of how badly things had gone awry and the thought of eating fast food—much less fast food from the same place—for six or more days per week.

"And that's it," the voice concluded cheerfully. "Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Fishdog Food Factory is grateful for your input, and reminds you that their tasty treats are always a short walk away."

I was already looking it up before Miranda closed the comm channel. "Out of all the Fishdog Food Factory locations within Nos Astra," I reported, "there's only one that could possibly qualify as being within walking distance."

"So all we have to do is meet our mysterious contact," Miranda bit out from behind gritted teeth. "Who has apparently deemed it necessary to deviate from the plan."

"Good thing we bought that portrait," I reminded her.

"True," Miranda sighed.

I should explain.

The reason for blowing an additional wad of credits at the gift shop was to give us an excuse to visit our room if we had to. And in this case, we definitely had to visit our room and alert the squad to our status. Granted, we could do so by opening a comm channel rather than going back to the hotel room. But even an encrypted conversation could be detected, if not intercepted and decrypted. I preferred to save that for a true emergency. Besides, we had already devised a simple backup plan.

When we returned to our room, I went straight to the safe and put away the portrait from the museum gift shop. By the time I closed and locked the safe, Miranda was already rummaging through the closet. "What do you think, Ben?" she asked, still maintaining our cover just in case it hadn't been completely compromised. I ignored the dress she held out and looked at her other hand, the one that had tentatively selected the message we wanted to send.

When we had first checked in, Miranda had arranged her clothes such that a white business suit was hung on the right hand side. White meant that the situation was normal and everything was going according to plan. Blue meant that a new development had occurred or a new piece of intel had been uncovered and Garrus needed to send someone to our room ASAP—like Kasumi had yesterday when we found out about the job opportunities at the Mirage. Green meant that we were moving to meet the contact. Yellow meant that the mission might be compromised and that we may have to abort. Orange meant that our cover was blown and that the squad should assume that we were operating under duress. Red meant that we were aborting the mission, we were going to ground and we needed to evac as soon as possible. Black was the worst case scenario. Black meant that not only the mission was blown, but that there was no hope in hell of extracting me or Miranda, so Garrus and the squad should run like the wind and leave us behind.

Miranda's hand, the one not holding the dress she proposed to change into, was casually resting on a green blouse. Made sense: whoever Garrus had watching our window would know we were going to meet our contact and realize that this was way too early. Hopefully, Garrus would find out we were leaving the Grand Mirage—either through the security vid-cams that Tali and Legion had hacked or by the watcher noting our departure by skycar. Orange was the next best option, but that might be an overreaction. Better to stick with green. "Looks great, Katie," I replied.

Only the slightest hint of hesitation in Miranda's smile told me how concerned she was at our situation. She ducked into the bathroom to change. She emerged a minute later—an unbelievably short period of time which further betrayed her unease—and hung up the now-empty clothes hanger, an excuse that allowed her to move the green blouse to the right hand side. And the orange dress next to the green blouse. A nice improvisation on her part, I thought.

We took the elevator down and slowly made our way through the casino floor. I paused to play a round or two at the slot machines before a supposedly exasperated Miranda—or, I should say, Katie—dragged me away. Then we casually strolled through the rest of the Grand Mirage and out to the skycar lot, where we took our sweet time in picking a skycar to rent. Once we'd chosen a skycar, we slowly walked over and held a mock argument over who was going to drive this time. Anything to buy as much time as possible for the watcher to realize something was amiss, alert Garrus and have the squad formulate a plan. (18)

In the end, Miranda won out. We got in the skycar and Miranda turned it on, following all the preflight checks like a newbie who'd just gotten her driver's license—or a skilled intelligence agent finding yet another way to buy us a few more precious seconds.

Then we took off. I reached out to hold her hand and give it a gentle squeeze.

I felt her squeeze back.

(1): Yes, this is very titillating. No, there is no photographic, audio or video evidence. Shepard and Miranda were very careful about that.

(2): Goddess, yes.

(3): This would be the human gambling tradition of getting someone—preferably a physically attractive individual—to exhale on the dice for good luck. The alternative, a euphemism for oral sex, would have been forbidden due to regulations on public decency—and the fact that it was not the sixth day of the ninth month.

(4): A more military or protocol-minded leader might have said something like 'Report' or 'Status'. I believe the casual approach adopted by Shepard was intended to reflect his recognition that most of the squad were not acting or former members of any military. Furthermore, he could afford a more relaxed form of leadership in this situation.

(5): I cannot confirm definitively whether the previous history between Jacob and Miranda, or the present relationship between Shepard and Miranda, was common knowledge. However, my understanding of gossip and 'scuttlebutt' suggests it was highly probable.

(6): Shepard often used this phrase to fill in something he neglected to cover or explain earlier. Personally, I find this verbal backtracking to be more natural and authentic than a formal report arranged in chronological order.

(7): It would also increase the chances of bumping into one Conrad Verner who, through a series of unfortunate and comical events, had left Illium, wandered around the galaxy with the intent of returning to the Citadel, only to wind up on Illium once more. And yes, he still had his replica N7 hardsuit. The mind boggles.

(8): I believe Shepard intended this as a compliment or expression of approval.

(9): The amount of time it took to adapt their mannerisms was roughly the amount of time it took for them to conduct their mock interview. Times three.

(10): That particular gallery had been there since the museum opened. The curators kept it around because it proved to be the most popular tourist attraction, a decision that was heartily approved by the local restaurant, hotel industry and sex trade industries.

(11): Kasumi later admitted that she wanted to buy more, but was forced to acknowledge the tactical benefits of allowing Grunt a free hand to grab a weapon. Besides, the idea of actually paying for things—on Illium, anyway—was quite a novel concept.

(12): Again, Shepard goes to great pains to emphasize that he did not work for Cerberus or the Illusive Man. His inclusion of Miranda—and, presumably, Jacob—is more symbolic than historically accurate.

(13): The Tantalus Drive Core that provided power and propulsion to the original Normandy SR-1 was twice the size of any other ship of comparable size. Furthermore, it only had three decks.

(14): A human idiom suggesting that something has a very high or unreasonably exorbitant price.

(15): Another illustration of the extent and depths of Shepard's curiosity.

(16): To borrow one of Shepard's phrases: 'Oh for crying out loud.'

(17): Indeed.

(18): Despite the seriousness of the situation, I have no doubt that Miranda's participation in this argument was genuine, considering Shepard's questionable driving record.