The housing area not far from the clinic had been abandoned, the inhabitants apparently having left so quickly that almost everything was still in place, as if just waiting for them to return. The doors had been left unlocked, the inviting green sensor lights flickering eerily from the fronts of several housefronts as they passed. A large, decorative potted plant had been knocked over in front of one of the housefronts, causing the space-sensitive automatic front door to open, begin to close, and then open again when the weight sensor reactivated, over and over and over. "Cerberus won't come here," Nyreen told Shepard, apparently noticing her looking around, bewildered at the state of the neighbourhood. "They had an easy enough time chasing all the innocent people out of the housing area, but they didn't expect to be met with resistance at the clinic."

"Seems strange they wouldn't try at all," Shepard returned, frowning. "I've never really known Cerberus to give up easily."

"Nobody said they gave up easily," Nyreen assured her, shaking her head. "Sometimes you'll see one or two of them sneaking around, trying to figure out if there's some weakness in our defences or some way around the security mechs. For the most part, though, they figure we're not really worth their time. There's only about a hundred or so of us, and hundreds upon hundreds of them. If they wanted to blitz us, they probably could. They just don't want to waste the manpower."

"So what about these tunnels?" Shepard asked, readjusting her gun in her arms. "Does Cerberus monitor them very closely?"

"No, not at all," Nyreen answered, frankly. "They're afraid to. And for good reason. There's things down there that could probably do your worst nightmares justice."

"I dunno," Shepard returned, sceptical, raising a brow. "I've had some pretty messed up nightmares."

With Nyreen to guide them through the winding streets of the housing sector, it took very little time at all for them to reach the double-doors leading to the outside areas. Grabbing hold of one of the doors, Nyreen jerked her head towards the other side, indicating for Shepard to grab hold, too. With both of them working to pry the doors apart, they managed to inch them open, Nyreen using her shoulders and foot to push the heavy doors as wide as she could manage to allow Shepard and Zaeed to pass through. Then, once they were safely outside, she stepped out of the doorframe as well, letting the doors slam shut behind her, sealing off the housing area once again. "Cerberus probably heard that," Nyreen sighed, bringing her gun up, ready to use it. "Be on your guard. They can come from just about anywhere, and they're damn mean."

"You don't have to tell me," Shepard assured her, making a quick look around for Cerberus troopers. Just then, out of nowhere, a single shot flew past her head, exploding against the nearby wall in a burst of heated plasma, and Shepard ducked, just barely managing to miss having part of her ear taken off by the bullet.

"Take cover!" Nyreen shouted, ducking behind a nearby stack of metal crates and pulling her gun up to her chest, ready to use it. "Cerberus troopers!"

"I kind of figured as much!" Shepard shouted back, taking shelter behind another nearby stack of abandoned metal crates. Leaning around the side, she fired blindly towards the source of the gunfire, hearing the satisfying sound of a muffled grunt as one of her shots hit its mark. Rolling out from behind her cover, Nyreen opened fire on the troopers, moving as quickly as she could towards a large, round set of double-doors on the far end of the open area.

"Shepard!" she called, kneeling down behind a large, curved pipe to avoid being shot. Propping her weapon over the top of the piping, she returned fire, gasping and ducking down as a plasma bullet grazed the top of the pipe, barely missing her arm. "Shepard over this way!" she shouted. "The tunnels are just through these doors! Cover me and I'll get them open!"

"Shit," Shepard hissed, peering around the side of the crates to see what was going on. Then, ducking back again, she reached over, tapping Zaeed on the arm to get his attention. "You take the left flank," she told him, pointing. "I'll take the right. We just need to distract them and not get shot long enough for Nyreen to get the doors open."

"Not getting shot sounds like a good plan," Zaeed agreed, before moving out from behind the crates and opening fire on Cerberus. Realizing her cue, Shepard moved out as well, spraying a hail of bullets across the open area where the troopers stood as she ran towards the huge double-doors. Nyreen had turned her back to the fight, her gun tucked haphazardly into her belt as she attempted to override the security panel just outside the door. Flanking her, Shepard and Zaeed opened fire again, focusing on the troopers closest to the doors first before turning their attention to the ones further away. After what seemed like an eternity of close-call gunfire, the security panel gave a loud beep, and the double-door responded with a loud, shuddering bang, followed by a whirring noise as they slowly began to inch open.

"In here!" Nyreen called, running towards the now-open corridor and motioning for the two of them to follow her. "Quickly! Come on!"

Taking one last shot over her shoulder, Shepard made a run for the open door, diving and attempting to tuck and roll, but managed only to roll over her head and land flat on her back with a hiss of discomfort as her spine smacked, hard, against the concrete flooring. Running over to her, Zaeed grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her to her feet again, and Shepard quickly dusted herself off, hoping Nyreen had not seen her embarrassing display of ineptitude. Rushing to the security panel on the inside of the double-doors, Nyreen tapped in a quick combination, and the door froze, whirring angrily, before starting to close again, sealing them inside with another finalistic, deafening bang. Letting out a long, low breath, Nyreen turned away from the double-doors, taking her gun from her belt and stashing it more securely in its holster before looking up at Shepard and Zaeed, who were both still struggling to catch their breath.

"Well, that was exciting," she commented, dryly. "But now Cerberus knows about these tunnels. Great." She sighed, putting a frustrated hand to her head, and left it there for a moment before shaking her head and letting her hand drop back to her side again. "At least we're safe from them for the time being," she added, trying to sound at least moderately positive. "And with any luck, they won't be able to figure out how to get in until we're long gone." Crossing her arms, she looked back towards the doors, as if expecting Cerberus to burst through at any moment, but, when they remained sturdily silent, she looked away again, her gaze returning to Shepard and Zaeed.

"We should get moving, I guess," she said. "We still need to find Aria, and I don't know how much time we have to do it." Crossing the open corridor, she moved to the far end of the room, where a second set of round double-doors, these much smaller than the first, had been built into the solid wall. They appeared rusted around the edges, as if no one had used them in quite some time. "Come help me with this," Nyreen told them. "These tunnels haven't been used in years, so the door's a little bit…" She grunted, attempting to pull them apart. "…Sticky," she finished, giving a frustrated huff of breath.

"You know these tunnels well, I take it?" Shepard asked, moving over and taking hold of the other side of the double-doors. Grunting, she pulled her designated door back towards her, hearing the metal give a scraping shriek of protest as the doors began to slowly inch apart.

"Not necessarily," Nyreen admitted, giving another hard yank on her side of the double-doors, causing them to pull apart a little further. "I've only been here a couple times. Mostly I came down here with Aria. She was the one who showed me the tunnels."

"You've been here more times than me, at least," Shepard assured her, letting out a deep, mollified breath as the doors scraped far enough apart for the three of them to squeeze through, dropping down into the dark adjoining corridor. "I didn't even know these were here."

Pulling out her gun, Nyreen switched on her light, taking a quick look around before starting down the gridded metal walkway, her footsteps echoing eerily in the empty, cavernous mine shaft. "There was a time when these mines were the most lucrative source of trade output on Omega," she told Shepard, half-distracted as she looked around, her slitted pupils dilated, cat-like, in the near-darkness. "Before they all ran dry and had to be shut down. They warned the mining companies they were working too fast and too hard… they told them to slow down, pace themselves, wait for other businesses to open up that coincided with the mining trade. They warned them that, if they didn't slow down, once the minerals were gone, that was it for the miners. They couldn't transition to other jobs they were similarly qualified for, because there was nothing else."

Reaching a corner of the catwalk, Nyreen peered around it, quickly scanning the upcoming walkway before taking a few cautious steps forward, Shepard following along behind her, intrigued. "But, they were greedy," she sighed, continuing on. "They didn't listen, and as a result they mined Omega all but barren. Then the fat cats who were making all the profit off the mines went off-world to find another investment, while the now out-of-work miners were left to fend for themselves. Most of them turned to crime… drug trafficking, mercenary work, anything that would put credits in their bank accounts, food on their tables. A lot of them had families to support. But, that's always been the way it is on Omega, I guess… every man for himself."

"That's terrible," Shepard commented, frowning.

"Kind of," Nyreen agreed, noncommittal. "But, that was a long time ago. These days, most people have forgotten about the mines, and why Omega is the way it is. They've just kind of… come to accept it." She sighed, her mandibles tapping gently against her tapered chin as she glanced behind them, making sure they were not being followed, before turning her attention forward again. "That's one thing I'd like to change around here, if possible," she said, shaking her head, thoughtful. "Maybe once Cerberus has been chased off Omega, we can start this place over again, fresh. Bring in some legitimate businesses, maybe figure out a new resource we can export that isn't red sand. Crime has become the norm on this station, and it's destroying everything it touches. Archangel had the right idea when he waged his war against the gangs. It's time someone tried to clean up these streets."

"You knew Archangel?" Shepard asked, surprised, looking over at Nyreen again.

"Not personally," Nyreen answered, shrugging a bit, sheepishly. "I mean… I'd heard stories about him, but… I never got to meet him in person. It's really too bad he got killed. I would have liked to have met him someday. Guess it's way too late for that now."

"Yeah," Shepard agreed awkwardly, looking away again, unsure what else there was to say. Just then, the whine of a weapon heating up caught her attention, and she turned, training her own gun on whoever – or whatever – it was that was aiming at them in the darkness.

"Drop your weapons!" the assailant demanded, as all three of their lights came to rest on her. It did not take long for them to realize who it was they were facing, and Shepard quickly dropped her weapon willingly to her side. Seeing who it was, Nyreen quickly lowered her weapon as well, clicking off the light and letting out a thin, incredulous breath of a laugh.

"Spirits," she said, sounding relieved. "Aria T'Loak. It really is you."

"Nyreen," Aria returned, seeming surprised. Then, lowering her own weapon, she scoffed, trying to cover for her momentary lapse of coolheadedness. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Playing cat-and-mouse, mostly," Nyreen answered frankly, shrugging a bit. "Babysitting Gavorn and his crew. Just trying to stay alive."

"Gavorn," Aria muttered, blowing out an unimpressed huff of breath. "His so-called police force is a joke. How did you get stuck with him?"

"Well, who else was I going to team up with when Cerberus took over the station?" Nyreen answered, pointedly, cocking her head to one side. "You weren't anywhere to be found… conveniently."

"Don't start with me, Nyreen," Aria returned, her frown deepening. "You know they would have killed me if I hadn't gotten out when I did. I posed too much of a threat to them."

"Right," Nyreen answered, deadpan. "They were the ones running scared. From you."

"Yes, speaking of running," Aria commented, allowing herself to take the lead in the conversation once more as she tucked her weapon back into the holster at her belt. "Nyreen, you left Omega fairly angry with me… I wasn't aware you'd returned. When did that happen?"

Nyreen shrugged, nonplussed. "The truth is, I never left," she answered, simply. "In fact, I went to great lengths to keep from you."

"I'm not easily duped," Aria told her, crossing her arms. "So, well done, I guess… but why bother?"

"I just… couldn't leave," Nyreen answered truthfully, shaking her head. "Though, considering all this… I wish I had."

"Well," Aria returned, smirking, unamused, "you always said I'd be the death of you."

"So why are you back, Aria?" Nyreen asked, trying to turn the conversation away from herself once more.

"To reclaim what's mine," Aria told her, straightforwardly. "Plain and simple."

"Left something behind, I take it?" Nyreen asked, cattily.

"Not something," Aria told her, shaking her head. "Everything."

"And here I thought you were setting up to say something romantic," Nyreen chuckled, shaking her head. "I should have known better. Same old Aria. Never manages to spot the perfect opportunity, even when it bites her in the ass."

"I still have a scar from that, you know," Aria returned, nonplussed. "You should have warned me how sharp your teeth were."

"Awh," Nyreen answered, offering her a small, fake pout. "The great big bad monarch of Omega can't stand a little bit of nibbling? Poor thing. Next time I'll bring the first aid kit and patch it up before it starts to bleed."

"I like it when it bleeds," Aria told her, smirking. "Just next time, do it someplace where I don't have to sit on it while it's healing."

"I think I don't need to know this about either of you," Shepard commented, feeling extremely out of place in the middle of the conversation.

"You seem very quick to trust Nyreen here, Shepard," Aria commented pointedly, turning on Shepard now. "You two didn't even know each other before this little… escapade. What changed?" Her smirk widened then, one tattooed brow raising observantly. "Did she give you a little demonstration of her skills?" she asked, her voice barely above an amused hiss. "She's very good with her… pistol."

"You love it when I use my pistol," Nyreen purred contentedly, grinning, in on the joke.

Aria chuckled, enjoying their little tête-à-tête, then, taking a sharp breath, she turned away from Nyreen and towards Shepard again, cutting the conversation short. "All right, Shepard, we need to move fast," she said, speaking as if they had never gotten separated in the first place. "Cerberus is closing in quickly and I'm itching for revenge."

"If you think I'm gonna let you carve a bloody path through this campaign, you're sadly mistaken," Shepard told her, frowning as she crossed her arms, unimpressed. "We need a plan. A real plan this time. No more of your 'shoot first, ask questions later' ideas."

Aria scoffed, offering her an incredulous breath of a laugh in return. "If you think you're going to change the way I do things, Shepard," she answered, unfazed by the Commander's do-gooder heroism. "Well…" Dusting off her hands, she shrugged, giving Shepard a telling once-over before turning away from her and back towards Nyreen again, blocking Shepard out. "We're going to need a resistance," she said, now ignoring Shepard in lieu of the turian soldier. "And a base."

"There's already a resistance," Nyreen informed her, frowning a bit. "And we've already got a base. It's in Mordin Solus's old clinic, in the station's underbelly. The whole place is defended by a small army of unhackable mechs that were left there when the clinic was abandoned. Talons, mercs, vorcha gangs, Gavorn's men… even Patriarch, Grizz, and Harrot are there, all banding together to take on Cerberus."

"What happened to the mad prophet?" Aria asked, crossing her arms, concerned. "Is he still around anywhere?"

"I don't know what happened to him," Nyreen answered truthfully, shrugging. "I think he managed to escape off-world, but I'm not sure. Either way, what I'm trying to say is, this isn't just your home, Aria. It's their home, too. It's our home. All of us."

"It may be your home," Aria returned, flatly, unimpressed by Nyreen's feel-good speech. "But it's my kingdom. I'm the queen of Omega, and that rat bastard Petrovsky is sitting on my throne."

Just then, a guttural, howling noise echoed up from the darkness of the mine shaft, faint enough to let them know it was not yet upon them, but still loud enough to cause all four to take a step back and make a grab for their weapons. "What was that?" Shepard demanded, quickly pressing her loaded heat sink into place. The Marauder whined, the red buttons on the side lighting up to show it was properly loaded, but Nyreen merely sighed, dropping her uneasy stance and instead lifting her gun to rest it tiredly against her shoulder.

"Adjutants," she answered, sounding almost disappointed.

At this, Aria's eyes widened. "They got out?" she hissed, clutching her gun closer to her chest, anxious. "Shit."

"They got out all right," Nyreen told her, solemnly, turning to look at her. "It got worse after you left, Aria. Much worse. Cerberus couldn't control them. They ran wild through the streets until finally making their way into the abandoned tunnels. Now they prey on anyone stupid – or desperate – enough to come down here."

"Which means us," Aria replied, letting out a low, dark breath.

"Which means anyone trying to hide from Cerberus," Nyreen told her. "Omega is a nightmare, Aria. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place no matter what you do. Either you die fighting, or you die hiding from the fight."

"What are Adjutants?" Shepard asked, looking between Nyreen and Aria curiously.

"They're creatures created by Cerberus," Aria explained, clearly irritated by the mere thought of them. "They let them loose on the station not long after you destroyed the Alpha Relay."

"Likely while you were still on suspension," Nyreen added, and Shepard nodded, agreeing, before turning her attention back to Aria again.

"A Cerberus transport ship returning from one of their research bases beyond the Omega-4 Relay docked with Omega a few months back," Aria went on, resting her free hand frustratedly on her hip. "Somehow they managed to release dozens of these things, these… Adjutants, onto the station. The creatures then proceeded to attack everything in sight, including Club Afterlife."

"I bet you were real happy about that," Shepard said, letting out an incredulous, sympathetic breath.

"You can only imagine," Aria returned, darkly. "It was only later on, after I'd been chased out of Afterlife, that I learned that those idiots had been keeping a colony of Adjutants in a research base near Avernus Station, right outside the Omega-4 Relay. It seems those two-bit morons couldn't keep a leash on their own experiments, and somehow these things had managed to get loose and fly themselves all the way to Omega using the base's transport ships." She scoffed, turning her gaze away from Shepard and pursing her plum lips, frustrated. "Petrovsky and I hit the Station," she told her, letting out a soft, derisive snort at her own stupidity. "I thought, if I helped Cerberus to contain the problem… but no. As it turns out, I was the fool after all. Cerberus didn't care about their Station. They wanted Omega."

Shaking her head, her gaze dropped to the floor, angry and ashamed. "The Adjutants… the Illusive Man set them loose on purpose so Cerberus could take over Omega," she said. "And I fell for it."

"The Adjutants are dangerous creatures, Commander," Nyreen told her sternly, stepping forward to get Shepard's full attention. "They're a walking, breathing contagion device. Their bodily fluids have been replaced with this blue…" She made a face, trying to think of a word for it. "Solution," she finally settled.

"Goop," Aria corrected.

"It's not really goop," Nyreen returned, crossing her arms, thoughtful. "It's more… it's got the consistency of milk, almost. Thicker than blood, but…"

"Goop," Aria said again, sterner this time. "It's goop."

"Fine, goop," Nyreen conceded, sighing. "It's been replaced with this blue goop, and if they stick you with one of their needles—"

"In their fingers," Aria added, holding up a hand and wriggling her own fingers for emphasis.

"Right, or spray this junk on you, you get infected," Nyreen explained, frankly. "They have a sac of the stuff on their back that's constantly producing more of it anytime some gets depleted. They have to relieve it almost constantly, otherwise the sac gets overfull and has a tendency to pop."

"Not pretty," Aria commented. "Also very messy."

"And dangerous," Nyreen added. "If an Adjutant's sac pops and it gets in your mouth or eyes, you're done for. That solution is highly aggressive and will start multiplying as soon as it comes in contact with living cells in a wet environment, so your eyes, mouth, any open wounds…"

"So like a zombie virus," Shepard conceded, nodding. "I think I get it."

"Right, but these guys are fast," Nyreen told her, warningly. "A lot faster than zombies would be. And they leak, too, so watch where you step. Like I said, they expel that nasty blue stuff almost constantly. I've seen good, trained soldiers who weren't looking where they were going slip and fall on this stuff and get overpowered in no time flat."

"Is there any way to stop it?" Shepard asked, frowning, liking the idea of these creatures less and less the more she heard about them. "The transformation?"

"No," Aria answered firmly, shaking her head. "There's no way to stop the infection from spreading if it gets in a vulnerable area, and the only way to stop the transformation from occurring is to kill the infected person. Adjutants… their main goal is to transform other life forms, to make more of themselves. They'll more often than not try to avoid outright killing their prey since the dead are useless to them." Then, taking a few steps forward towards Shepard, she reached out a hand, placing it sternly on the Commander's shoulder. "Shepard," she told her. "If I get infected by these things, I want you to shoot me. No questions asked. Do you hear me? Do not let me become one of those creatures."

"I won't," Shepard promised.

"Good," Aria returned, retrieving her hand and moving away again, wiping her palm off on the material of her pants as if she had touched something unsavoury. "Let's get moving, then, shall we?"

"Lights on," Nyreen agreed, switching the bright white light of her weapon back into life.

The deeper they went into the tunnels, the darker it seemed to become. Even the strong white beams coming from all four of their guns did not do nearly enough to light a sufficient path. Shepard stumbled over something in her path, catching herself before she fell, and looked back to see what she had tripped over. She quickly recognized the armour to be that of a Cerberus trooper, his bloody body haphazardly strewn across the path, his leg bent at an unnatural angle up towards the side of his body. A clatter caught her attention then, and she turned her light beam towards the edge of the catwalk, where a helmet had rolled to rest against the metal piping of the rail. Nudging the helmet with her foot, she managed to kick it over, and her hand moved quickly to cover her mouth when the helmet slid off to one side to reveal a decapitated head underneath.

A bluish-black, almost rot-like paste had overtaken half of his face, or at least that which was not covered in large, sickly-looking blue pustules. His black tongue had swollen out of his open mouth, revealing what looked to be several bright blue, tentacle-like growths coming out of it, and his eyes had rolled back into his head, revealing black veins creeping up through the exposed whites. Shepard staggered quickly away from the carnage, banging up against the opposite railing in her haste, using her free hand to cover her mouth and nose. Zaeed moved over to her, offering her a silent expression of concern, but, after a moment, she patted him awkwardly on the arm, nodding reassuringly as she tried to swallow down the lump of bile that was still threatening to come up.

Aria and Nyreen stopped as well, turning to look back at Shepard, confused, before Aria's light came to rest on the decapitated head, and she let out a dark, unamused huff of breath. "Adjutants," she muttered, before moving over to the head and kicking it over the side of the catwalk. The skull echoed all the way down as it hit railing after railing, the sickening squishing noise of the flesh hitting the metal finally dying away as it sank lower and lower into the pits of the mines. Suddenly, as if on cue, another howl echoed up out of the darkness, closer this time, causing all four of them to jump to attention again, grabbing up their weapons and holding them at the ready.

"Fucking pricks," Aria hissed, baring her teeth in frustration. "Why don't they show themselves? Cowards. I'll take 'em all down."

"Don't be foolhardy," Nyreen reminded her. "We aren't here to find Adjutants."

"I know, I know," Aria returned, snippy. "No need to get on my back about it. I just wish they'd stop playing games with us. It's pissing me off."

"Everything pisses you off," Nyreen muttered, eliciting a sideways glare from Aria, but nothing else.

"So what's the plan?" Shepard asked, feeling a bit like a broken record. "Now that we're here in the mining tunnels—"

"If we play our cards right, we should be able to take these tunnels right up to underneath Afterlife," Aria said, cutting her off and jerking her gun towards the unseen, black ceiling of the mining shaft. "Then we can take Petrovsky by surprise… and whoever else is up there with him."

"Do you know how to get there from here?" Zaeed asked, tapping his fingers against his gun, causing it to give a soft, anxious clicking noise.

"It's a pretty straightforward path," Aria answered, frankly. "If we can make it to the central point of the tunnels, there's an elevator that goes straight up through the heart of the station. If I remember correctly, that should take us to a room directly below the lower level of Afterlife. After that, it's only a matter of getting to the top floor, which… with any luck, shouldn't be too difficult."

"We shouldn't leave anything up to luck," Shepard reminded her, trying not to appear too on edge. "Let's just concentrate on getting one thing out of the way at a time. First things first, let's try to find that elevator."

"The elevator starts at the bottom and stops at the top," Aria told her, jerking her gun again, indicatively. "We'll need to get to the bottom of these tunnels if we want to take the elevator. They built it that way to increase efficiency – the more the workers dug, the lower they built the elevator shaft. Either you were going up, or down. No unnecessary stops along the way." Turning on her heel, her beam of light swung in a wide arc, taking in the huge, empty maze of gridiron walkways. "These catwalks were built as the workers moved downward, to help them move the product along more efficiently," she explained. "Eventually the mine started needing so much power to keep it lit that they became fallback exits should the power ever go out in the middle of a work day. Just, use the ladders and catwalks to climb back to the secondary mine entrance." Here, she nodded solemnly back towards the way they had come. "That's where we came in," she said. "But there's no catwalk to take us to Afterlife. To get there, we have to use the elevator."

"Of course," Shepard sighed. "And in order to get to the elevator, we have to go down into the deep, dark pit."

"Don't tell me the great Commander Shepard is scared," Aria scoffed, resting her gun confidently against her shoulder. "Surely you've faced worse than a few little Adjutants before."

"Not scared," Shepard corrected her, looking up at her, tiredly. "Just…"

"She doesn't like ladders," Zaeed finished her statement. "Or stairs. Or anything else that requires climbing. Or crouching. Or ducking and rolling."

"Basically," Shepard agreed.

"Well, suck it up," Aria returned, unimpressed. "Once we get to the bottom of the shaft the ladders are going to be the least of your problems."

"Somehow I doubt that," Shepard sighed, just loud enough for Zaeed to hear.

"Let's move out," Aria announced, settling her weapon into a ready position again. "The sooner we get down there, the sooner we can take back Afterlife… and the rest of Omega with it."

"After you," Zaeed told Shepard, indicating towards the first ladder with his gun.

"The elevator should be just through that door."

Aria jerked her chin towards the far wall, where a pair of sealed double-doors could just be made out by the light from her pistol. Shepard lifted her weapon, shining her light over the doors as well. She frowned, noting the lack of any sort of lighting on or around them, before dropping her weapon to hip level again and turning her attention back towards Aria. "Looks deactivated," she told her, bluntly. "Looks like it's been deactivated for a while. A few years, at least."

"Then we need to power this place up," Aria answered, simply, turning her attention away from the elevator to take a quick look around the room. "There should be a backup generator somewhere around here."

"Probably somewhere near the end of this piping," Nyreen added, pointing to a string of dim red lights trailing indicatively across a nearby wall. "That emergency lighting is as good a sign as any. They probably had it installed in case the main generator shorted out while the miners were at work, so they wouldn't be left completely in the dark."

"Nobody gave a damn about the miners," Aria scoffed, shaking her head as she neared the string of lights. "If the power went off, that just meant the miners couldn't see, and if they couldn't see, they couldn't work. Which seems like it would be a pretty standard state of affairs, but it didn't take long for the miners to realize that hardly anybody in charge of the operation wanted to bother getting their hands dirty checking up on them, and before long, the miners got lazy." She shrugged, a faint sneer curling her lip as she stared at the dim red lighting along the wall. "A lot of them would claim the lights went out just so they wouldn't have to do a full day's work, but still get paid for it," she added. "The emergency lighting was installed as a way to ensure they couldn't slack off. It meant that, even if the lights did go out, there was no reason they couldn't find their way over to the backup generator to turn them back on again. It was a precautionary measure to ensure cashflow."

"Sounds like Omega," Zaeed agreed, snorting.

"Let's follow the lights, then," Shepard said, starting in the direction the dim red glow was leading. The rest of the party followed close behind her, the beams from their weapons scanning the walls and the catwalk for Adjutants, with Zaeed's weapon trained behind them to make sure they were not being followed. The emergency lights led up a steep ramp and through an open door frame, before leading off across a small chasm lined with thick, metal pipes. Stepping cautiously out onto the piping, Shepard jumped across, landing squarely on the opposite catwalk, and waited for the sound of her companions behind her before starting off after the string of lights again. Spotting a high step-up up ahead, she fell back a bit, letting the rest of the party move in front of her, before tapping Zaeed's arm with the back of her hand and indicating the uneven walkway.

"I need some help," she whispered, careful to keep her voice low enough that neither Aria nor Nyreen would hear. The last thing she needed was Aria getting on her case for not being able to scale a waist-high gap. Pulling himself up onto the ledge, Zaeed turned back, offering his free hand towards Shepard, who took it, appreciatively, allowing him to help her to drag herself up with a soft, belligerent grunt. Once she was successfully up on the ledge, she patted his shoulder, grateful, before letting out a hefty, tired huff of breath and returning her attention to the path ahead. The emergency lights led up a small flight of stairs, ending in another open doorway lined on all sides with reflective yellow caution tape.

"I don't hear the Adjutant anymore," Nyreen commented, pausing to look around at the dark hall, wary.

"Maybe it didn't like its odds," Shepard suggested, panning her light across the catwalk, looking for the generator.

Nyreen shook her head. "Don't kid yourself, Commander," she told her, following Shepard through the open doorframe. "I've seen one of those things take down a squad of soldiers."

"The backup generator should be just down that ladder," Aria cut in, pointing ahead towards a sharp drop-off, where the broad, hooked handles of a downward-leading ladder could just be seen peering over the edge of the catwalk. Taking the lead of the party once more, Shepard stashed her weapon on her back, turning and grabbing hold of the ladder's handles before letting herself slide all the way down, landing with a sharp clack as her boots hit the concrete floor. Stepping out of the way to allow her party to follow, Shepard scanned the area, kicking a pile of coiled cables out of her way as she moved warily into the room.

"There's the power control," Nyreen said, jerking her gun towards a broad, metal station at the far end of the chamber, where a single large, red button glowed out at them from the centre. "Seems simple enough to turn back on."

"I told you," Aria commented, shaking her head, unimpressed. "They made it so the miners would have literally no reason not to be able to keep working."

Making her way to the control panel, Shepard wasted no time in slamming a fist down into the red button, causing the machine to beep attentively, and then whine, the whining growing louder as the generator powered to life. A screen on the console flickered on, showing a series of unmarked graphs, before several rows of smaller buttons blinked into life in a yellow-white wave of light. Aria looked around at the now-lit room, making a face at the state of untended disrepair it seemed to be in, before sighing, disapproving, and shaking her head again.

"When this is over, there will be a lot of repairs to make," she said, candidly.

"I hope you'll focus on the civilian areas first," Nyreen told her, turning to look at her, pointedly.

Aria scoffed, turning to face her and giving her a quick once-over. "You are relentless," she said, sounding not altogether disapproving.

Nyreen took a step forward, facing off with the asari, a soft, almost challenging purr rising in the back of her throat. "That's one thing we have in common," she answered, drolly. Aria smirked.

Just then, the seemingly solid wall of the control room exploded inward, a deafening shriek filling the room as the attacking Adjutant righted itself from the dust and rubble. "Spirits!" Nyreen exclaimed, grabbing quickly for her gun and beginning to fire. Zaeed took cover behind a large motherboard panel, while Aria ducked behind the edge of the control console, peering around just far enough to take a few well-aimed shots at the creature, but Shepard was not fast enough to find cover. The Adjutant quickly turned on her, howling at her, its rancid spit flecking her armour with tiny, black and blue chunks of what looked like rotten flesh. Then, rushing her faster than she could pull her weapon, it pushed her up into the corner, its needle-sharp claws slamming into the wall on either side of her, trapping her in with its long, ghastly, skeletal arms.

Three beady, glowing blue eyes bored into her from the sunken, almost mummified flesh of the Adjutant's bulbous face, its luminous mucous sac swaying and pulsing with its sickeningly loud heartbeat, making a sloshing noise like the sound of water hitting the side of a boat. Blue bile dripped in a steady stream from its mouth, which was overrun with tentacles and tubing so wrapped up around one another it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began, spraying in a noxious arc every time the creature breathed out. Shepard gagged, dazed by the overwhelming stench, and slapped a hand to her mouth and nose, protecting them from the infectious liquid. Pulling up her gun, she fired once into the creature's mass, bursting what appeared to be an exterior organ and eliciting an ear-piercing shriek from the Adjutant.

Bile gushed from the open wound, the burnt edges of the organ flopping, useless, between its widely-spaced legs, but this only seemed to make the creature angrier. Giving another deafening howl, the Adjutant slammed its hand into the wall again, barely missing Shepard's face as she ducked out of the way. "Shepard, take cover!" Nyreen called, getting her attention, and Shepard quickly tucked her head into her arms, curling up to make herself as small an armoured ball as humanly possible. A piercing shot rang out, and Shepard could smell the harsh, acidic odour of the blue bile from the creature's sac as the sickening sound of it bursting reached her ears. Barely a second later, she found herself covered in slick, blue gunk as the towering form of the Adjutant collapsed in a mass at her feet, causing the grate under her to shake with its weight.

Pulling a stringy black entrail she hoped was not part of its tongue out of her now-soaked hair, Shepard tossed it to one side, brushing the rest of the slimy, rotten-smelling brain matter from her shoulder-guards and stepping quickly over the headless corpse of the Adjutant, making her way back towards the rest of the party. "I hate those things," Nyreen breathed, inspecting her handiwork and wrinkling up her lined nose at the Adjutant's stench.

"Hate should make you deadlier," Aria reminded her. "That looked like fear to me."

"Let's just get to the elevator," Shepard suggested, still breathing heavily, trying to reign in the conversation. Suddenly, the sound of another loud shriek coming from somewhere beyond the hole the first Adjutant had made caused them all to look up again, startled. Shepard made a quick, indicative motion with her hand towards the ladder. "Now," she pressed. "Let's go now."

"Good idea," Aria agreed, not even bothering to come up with a snide retort. "I know the way back to the elevator from here. Just follow my lead. And try not to get lost, Shepard. If you fall behind and get caught by an Adjutant… you're on your own."

"Thanks, Aria," Shepard returned, sarcastic. "Good to know you have my back."

"I never said I'd have your back," Aria told her, frankly. "Now let's move out… before more of those things come around. You already smell bad enough as it is."