"I think we found our energy signature." Shepard remarked as she consulted her omni-tool, a cheerful note detectable in her voice through the tinny distortion of her helmet's audio system. For his part, Vandas simply gave a tired grunt, not sharing the commander's enthusiasm as he stole a glance at the time on his HUD.
It had been the better part of two hours since they'd climbed into the lava tube and started the winding journey out of the deepest parts of the cave system, and although it was easier going without knee-deep ash to wade through, heat and fatigue were still taking a toll. The recycled air in his helmet was thick and stank of sweat, and between dehydration and the battering he'd taken when he fell, the medic's pace had slowed to a stiff trudge.
Shepard was faring only slightly better, stubbornly trying to push herself through the mounting signs of heat exhaustion while the medic kept a close eye on here. It was mostly little things—a breathy huff here, an occasional misstep there—but it spoke to the commander's exhausted state. She'd also gradually become less talkative as they'd continued and Vandas was surprised to find that he sort of missed the small talk, deciding he preferred the redhead's probing questions to the suffocating silence of the tunnels.
Nick had insisted upon a few breaks along the way so they could catch their breath and he could check on her head injury, but it was hard to justify lingering for long—far from the mine's ventilation system, the air in the tunnels was stagnant and unbreathable. While there was no immediate fear of running out of air, he couldn't fight a looming sense that they were on borrowed time—a feeling reinforced by two additional tremors that had shaken the tunnels.
With their objective finally visible as an artificial glow only a few hundred meters farther ahead, it seemed the commander felt another break was well earned, and she stiffly took a seat against the tunnel wall, signaling for Vandas to do the same.
The corpsman gladly obeyed, seating himself in a spot where he could watch the other direction as he stretched his cramping legs out in front of him. "How're you doing on water?"
Jane snorted, the light from her helmet lamps dancing across the wall as she shook her head. "The valve on my hydration pack cracked when I fell," The spectre replied with a rueful chuckle. "So, I've got about a liter of water sloshing around in my undersuit if you want to share, but that's it."
"Don't tempt me."
"Gross." Jane laughed hoarsely, easing her head back against the wall. After a moment, her eyes drifted closed, so bone-tired that even the volcanic rock made for an appealing pillow.
Nick fell a similar urge to close his eyes, but instead looked around for something distract himself with. However, surrounded by nothing by darkness and the rough stone walls of the tunnel, his bored gaze inevitably fell upon his lightly dozing commander. Even in the dark tunnel, the dull red stone reflected just enough light from her headlamps that he could see the light grey gouges in her armor and the small, glistening beads of omni-gel seeping from the crack in her helmet, and the reminder of their close shave on the catwalk brought a small frown to Vandas' lips.
He worried about Shepard.
A great deal of that came naturally with his role as the squad's medic, but he could admit a fair part of it was rooted in a sense of admiration towards her. Despite the commander's unusual degree of familiarity with her subordinates and a few—Nick struggled momentarily to find the right word—eccentricities, he could see why she'd been chosen to be a spectre. She was smart, driven to a fault, and a born leader. The Normandy itself was a testament to her abilities—she been given command of an unproven prototype and a skeleton crew, and she was well on her way to transforming her ragtag bunch of oddballs into a crack squad ready to take on the biggest threat humanity had ever faced on the galactic stage. More than that, though, Shepard had unique sort of confidence—even fearlessness—about her, and they'd sorely need it in the months ahead.
Nickeli felt no shame in admitting that the mission against Saren scared him. He'd already spent more than one sleepless night in his rack with his thoughts lingering on the glowing, inhuman eyes of the geth and the black, skeletal talons of the thorian's thralls. He could still recall in vivid detail the savaged corpses of the Alliance soldiers he'd stumbled across on Eden Prime and the terror of being hunted through the woods by a pack of roaming husks.
The galaxy's bogeymen had come out of the dark, and there was a sort of budding, inescapable horror to it all that he couldn't quite put a name to. They were on the frontlines against a ruthless enemy that, in its infancy, had reduced the quarian people from a major galactic power to a roving band of survivors and scavengers, and for all its might there was no guarantee the Alliance wouldn't find itself similarly overrun. It was a prospect that weighed heavily upon every man and woman aboard the Normandy.
Everyone except Shepard, it seemed. No matter how impossible the odds seemed or how dire the situation became, he'd never seen her flinch. When things were at their toughest, the spectre just sort of lowered her head and kept charging forward, wearing that self-assured little smirk of hers all the while. Following her was like getting caught in the middle of the thunderstorm, or being swept up by an avalanche—you found yourself carried over any obstacle by sheer momentum.
Here they were, cut off from the Normandy, separated from the rest of the team, and lost in the uncharted depths of a volcanic cave system that stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction, and Shepard hadn't batted an eye. She'd just dusted herself off and started marching in whatever direction made the most sense. If Jane Shepard could stand, she was on her feet, and if she was on her feet, she was moving forward.
And as much as he admired her for it, Nick supposed it was also what worried him.
The universe played with a stacked deck. Near misses eventually found their mark. Luck ran out. Entropy won. Cowards or heroes, good or bad, soldiers or innocent bystanders—it didn't matter. The odds had a way of always catching up with you, and he'd seen the aftermath firsthand a dozen times over in Afghanistan.
So what then, Nick wondered, studying the hairline crack in the commander's helmet. What happened when the universe caught up to Jane Shepard? Would it be him standing there to pick up the pieces?
"What? Is there something on my face?" The redhead asked curiously, seeming somewhat perturbed to have opened her eyes to find the medic's featureless faceplate staring at her in the dark.
"Nah, it's nothing." Nick dismissed quickly, getting back to his feet as he turned his attention back to the situation at hand. His worrying wouldn't help anyone. "Anything from Garrus and Alenko or the Normandy?"
He'd been getting nothing but static since the fall, but as an officer, Shepard's armor had better communications gear than his, potentially powerful enough to get through to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, Jane shook her head, having had no such luck. "Nothing. Just some weird interference as we've gotten closer to this energy reading."
Nick gave a thoughtful grunt. "You think we're getting jammed?"
"Maybe?" The spectre shrugged helplessly. "It's hard to say. With the mine's signal boosters offline, we haven't got a prayer of reaching the Normandy, but there's enough rock and volcanic activity down here that we might not be able to contact the others either."
They were on their own, in other words. They'd just have to hope the others were still homing in on the strange signal like they were.
Reminded of their objective close by, Nick made a quick check of his pistol. Dropping the magazine and ejecting the round from the chamber, he carefully tucked both into a pouch on his chest before thumbing the disassembly lever and removing the slide, holding it out in front of him where he could inspect it in the beam of his flashlight.
After the damage his rifle had taken in the fall, Nick was keeping his sidearm especially close to hand, but it wouldn't take much of the fine volcanic ash they'd been kicking up to work its way into the wrong place and cause a jam. He could break down his pistol for a thorough cleaning once they got back to the ship, but for the time being his options were a little limited.
He dug through his assortment of pouches and produced a rag he'd pilfered from the Normandy's workshop, wiping out the larger globs of ash and gun oil that had formed. The lack of lubrication wouldn't do his pistol any favors in the long run, but at least it would be less likely to jam for the time being.
Shepard sat quietly, watching the corpsman tinker in the light for a bit until he was apparently satisfied, slotting the slide and magazine back into place. When he finally snapped the chamber shut with a satisfying clack, the spectre rose to her feet.
"Ready?"
A strained smirk crept onto Nick's face. Knowing the kind of trouble Shepard tended to find, he almost certainly wasn't, but looking down the tunnel towards the pale blue glow at the end, he couldn't see any alternatives. "Yeah, let's go."
With a nod, the pair doused their lights. Shepard's ash-cloaked form disappeared in the darkness, and even when Nick switched to his helmet's low light mode, he could only see a black, featureless silhouette ahead of him against the bright backdrop of the ominous glow in the distance as the quietly crept forward.
They crossed the remaining distance in silence, and the medic gradually became aware of a peculiar hum that resonated through the volcanic rock beneath his feet. The vibration seemed to dance up through the soles of his boots and make his feet tingle with pins and needles, and he found himself trying to fight off the sensation as he walked.
Distracted, the chirp of his radio barely registered. "Huh?"
"I said, tell me what you see." Shepard repeated, her voice hushed over the link as the medic abruptly realized he could no longer see her dark form bobbing ahead of him now that they'd neared the mouth of the tunnel.
Straining his eyes, Vandas spotted the slightest flicker of moment and realized the commander had tucked herself into a small recess on the wall, reducing her to a little more than an irregular bump against the inky black contours in the stone. The broader shouldered marine found it much harder to vanish into the darkness in the same way that the spectre had, but nevertheless did his best to remain unseen as he inched forward for a better look.
"Big chamber. Raised catwalk on the far side. Lots of mining equipment around. Can't see where that light's coming from, though." Nick observed matter-of-factly. It seemed the pair had found their way back to the mining operation, but as much as the medic wanted to feel relieved, there was still the eerie blue glow he couldn't account for. The humming he'd heard before had grown louder now, rumbling in his ears like the steady roll of a drum, but he couldn't see the source and Shepard didn't seem alarmed, so he did his best to ignore it. Still, Nick couldn't fight a sense of growing unease. "Lots of places to hide—good place for an ambush."
Shepard's helmet scraped quietly against the rough volcanic stone as she nodded her head in agreement, and he heard the telltale click of her rifle unfolding. "Just what I was thinking. Follow me, we'll stay in the shadows behind those crates to the side."
"Right behind you."
The pair stayed low as they moved swiftly from the mouth of the tunnel, finding cover behind a row of metal boxes and pausing for a moment to survey their surroundings.
The area was packed with heavy mining equipment and storage containers, arranged in messy rows along a set of rails that snaked between stacks of crates up to the catwalk that connected to tunnel on the far side of the chamber, giving the Nick the impression that it was some sort of storage or staging area. However, of far more interest was the source of the peculiar blue light that faintly illuminated the cavern.
The tall, boxy tower rising out of the stone floor like a massive obelisk wasn't exactly what jumped to mind when the briefing had mentioned an archeological site, but the medic's experience with Prothean ruins was admittedly limited. Whereas he'd been expecting carvings on the stone walls or perhaps gutted, crumbling structures like the team had encountered on Feros, the buried tower's pale exterior didn't look all that more dilapidated than the battered mining scaffold that had been erected along the front of it.
A rusty metal catwalk bridged a wide trench in front of the tower and stopped at a large doorway where a translucent wall of shimmering energy barred the way, the barrier shimmering and shifting like water. The interior of the tower was faintly visible on the other side, and he could make out a large orb that seemed to hover in place with a dark, murky form visible inside.
With a nod from Shepard, the two carefully crept forward through one of the aisles between rows of crates. The hum he'd heard in the tunnel had grown even stronger, now an unpleasant buzz behind his sternum that made his chest feel constricted within the confines his armor.
Nick found himself trying to fight off the sensation, sucking in deep breathes as he told himself it was just exhaustion and nerves playing tricks on him. It was a mine, after all. Machinery vibrated, rocks shifted. He'd run out of water over an hour ago, and in the heat of the tunnels he was almost certainly bordering heatstroke by now. Add to that the battering he'd taken earlier, and he was starting to imagine things. It was just exhaustion and dehydration. This was no time for him to start jumping at shadows.
Vandas found himself dragged back into the present by the scuffle of the commander's boots as she abruptly came to a halt ahead of him, and he felt a surge of adrenaline as she gestured for him to take cover.
Quickly tucking himself into the shadows between a pair of cargo containers, he spotted the redhead's dark silhouette doing the same on the opposite side of the small aisle they'd been walking down.
Apparently not trusting her radio, the spectre communicated with a pair of quick hand signals that he could barely make out in the darkness. Look. There.
With some confusion, Nickeli followed her signal in the direction of the barrier and suddenly felt a knot form in his stomach as his gaze once again fell on the bubble just beyond it. The dark shape they'd spotted earlier had resolved into a distinctly humanoid form, hovering limp and motionless half a dozen feet above the ground.
The pair stayed in covered as yet crept forward, and the medic felt a sense of cold dread wash over them as they slowly drew closer. It was still hard to make out any detail, but the still silhouette seemed to have a feminine slimness to it. Nick swallowed the lump forming in his throat, hoping they hadn't come this far just to discover they were too late.
He found himself holding his breath as the pair silently emerged from the darkness, the pale glow of the energy field illuminating their ash-covered armor and giving them a strange, almost ghostly appearance. By the time the form in the bubble jerked in surprise at the sight of them and began squirming weakly, he felt like he'd aged half a decade as he started breathing again.
"You out there! Can you hear me?! I'm trapped! I need help!"
An asari in a form-fitting scientist's jumpsuit hung suspended at the center of the orb, her arms and legs spread wide and apparently held in place by the force field.
After a moment, the captive's demeanor suddenly shifted as the two drew closer to inspect the force field, disbelief replacing alarm. "You... you're not real, are you?" Shepard and Vandas paused, exchanging a look. "No, no of course not—don't be stupid, Liara. The miners have all gone—nobody knows you're down here." Her tone bordered frantic, tearful desperation. "Goddess, I'm going to die here."
"Doctor Liara T'Soni?" Jane asked, as if there was some doubt.
The asari hung her head in defeat, at least in so far as her restraints allowed. "Yes, of course you know my name—you're a hallucination, why wouldn't you?"
Behind his visor, an expression of mixed amusement and concern crossed the medic's face. While the archeologist certainly seemed alive enough, he wouldn't have gone as far as to call her "well." The lines of exhaustion that creased her face and her unfocused gaze spoke to the countless hours she'd spent enduring heat and dehydration. Given the state of the bodies they'd discovered, she'd likely been in there for days, and whatever Jane and Nick were feeling after a few hours in the caves, she must've been experiencing tenfold.
Jane blinked, obviously baffled by the asari's behavior, but continued after a moment. "Doctor, I'm Commander Shepard with the—"
The doctor interrupted, mumbling loudly to herself. "No, no, Liara—don't be ridiculous. The miners have gone. No one is going to come looking."
She was no longer staring at them and had instead started to survey the chamber she was trapped in, apparently in search of a means to release herself. It seemed that as hallucinations, the pair didn't warrant any further acknowledgement.
"Uh... Nick?"
The medic shrugged helplessly as he racked his brain for an explanation, sounding nearly as bewildered as the commander. "Dehydration, I guess? Hypoxia? Sounds like she's been in there for a while, Commander."
Despite Chakwas' ongoing lessons, xenomedicine was still mostly unknown territory to Nickeli, but fundamentally most races had similar biological necessities—food, water, a breathable atmosphere, and tolerable temperatures.
It so happened that the asari were generally closer to humanity in those regards than most races, and if the archeologist had been stuck in this broiling heat for an extended period of time, then they were definitely fortunate to have found her alive. Some minor hallucinations were probably to be expected, the corpsman supposed. Still, now that they'd found the doctor, there was still the matter of reaching her.
Shepard inspected the energy barrier. "Doctor, how did you get trapped in there? Is there a way for us to get to you?"
"Ah, yes. The figment of my imagination wants me to retrace my steps to see if I can figure out where I went wrong."
Shepard frowned and looked prepared to object, but after a moment her shoulders went slack with an exasperated huff. It seemed they were stuck playing the part of the asari's imaginary friends for the time being.
"When I entered the ruins, I believe I woke some sort of security system that guarded them. It raised these barriers and when it began taking control of systems throughout the mine, the miners fled. It trapped me in this containment field while I was searching for a way to bring it offline, and I suppose it is content to let me die in here."
A Prothean security system. If it was possible, Nick's mouth suddenly felt even drier and that lump he'd had in his throat returned the size of orange. Glancing to his left, he found Shepard looking a similarly troubled.
There was a malevolent AI running loose in the mine's systems, and here the team had been blundering through the tunnels, restoring power and overriding lockdowns. They'd been looking for evidence of some kind of attack on the facility from the outside, and it had blinded them to the signs that the danger had come from below and that it was still there.
The sealed doors in the tunnels. The runaway hauler. The desperate attempts by the remaining workers to cut power to the processing plant above ground. It seemed so obvious.
It had suffocated the miners and had been trying to dispose of the team since they'd arrived, and now that they'd restored power to the facilities on the surface, there was no telling what kind of havoc the ancient computer could wreak with the resources they'd unwitting put at its disposal.
Another tremor suddenly shook the chamber and in an instant the unpleasant buzz Nickeli had been trying to ignore spiked to a grinding screech, and it felt as though his skull was about to split open from the inside as surge of pressure grew behind his eyes. The only thing he could think to compare the pain to was having his arm shattered, but tenfold—it was like someone had jammed a screwdriver into the base of his skull and started pouring molten lead into the hole. The medic doubled over and felt the air pushed out of lungs, wavering unsteadily on his feet with one hand pawing at his forehead as the edges of his vision darkened.
Shepard's gloved hand landed on his shoulder, but her voice registered as nothing more than a muffled burble as she asked if he was alright, and he could only mutely shake his head, too busy trying desperately not to pass out or vomit inside his helmet to speak.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the tremor ceased and the sensation suddenly retreated until it was once against nothing more than the same annoying hum as before.
"Nick?" Shepard chanced.
"M'alright." Vandas managed as his vision began to clear and his stomach settled.
After a few seconds, the room no longer seemed to be spinning, and he tried to straighten back upright only to realize that his statement may've been somewhat premature. His balance failed with the sudden head rush as he stood, and he abruptly plunged headlong towards the glowing blue force field.
To his relief, the energy field held firm as he caught himself against it, feeling like a piece of cool, thick glass. Pushing himself back to his feet, felt the hair on his arms stand upright, like there was a charge hanging in the air. The sensation built for a moment until the energy field pulsed, rippling outward from where he was touching it like the surface of a puddle. He retreated a step, watching the ripple settle and musing unhappily that if the rogue Prothean system hadn't been aware of them before, it certainly was now.
However, after a moment, curiosity won out over caution and against his own better judgement he reached out towards the field again. Rather than creating another ripple like he'd expected, he was shocked to watch his fingertips push effortlessly through the surface of the blue force field.
The barrier felt icy cold. Not the muted chill of a cold day through the layers of his armor, but a sensation like dipping his hand in freezing ice water, and Nick barely kept himself from recoiling in surprise. The feeling travelled up the length of his arm as he extended it farther through the barrier and the corpsman twisted and flexed his outstretched hand, examining it from the other side of the force field. There was the rapidly fading sensation of pins and needles in his fingers and the inexplicable cold where the barrier bisected his arm, but otherwise the extremity felt completely normal.
Glancing back at Shepard, who was now starting at him with something approaching blank incomprehension, the medic offered a nervous shrug before stepping forward.
The barrier seemed ripple slightly as he passed through it, and he felt a shiver dance through him as the same icy sensation flowed across his face and bare chest, seemingly unaffected by his armor.
A moment later, he was on the other side, finding himself surrounded by walls made of faded white tile instead of rough stone as the pins and needles feeling danced through his entire body.
"Now I know I'm hallucinating." Doctor T'Soni murmured, staring at Vandas from her perch with wide, bleary eyes.
Nick suppressed a shudder as the inexplicable chill began to fade, replaced by the familiar swampiness of his sweat-soaked undersuit. The wall of energy hadn't passed around him as much as it had simply passed through him when he'd stepped through it, and the sensation had been indescribable, but uniquely unpleasant.
A moment later Shepard followed, and as she made contact with the barrier Nickeli watched her expression from to curiosity to alarm, before finally settling on a look of vaguely uncomfortable confusion.
"Well, that's the weirdest thing I've done in a while." Jane commented, only to receive a sideways look from Vandas. After a moment's consideration, the spectre shrugged. "Fine, maybe not, but it was still pretty weird."
Nick could agree with that, at very least. They were barely into their third week hunting Saren and were already on pace to outdo his two tours full of bizarre shit in Afghanistan. He hesitated to think what manner of strangeness the Normandy team would find itself wading into in three months' time.
"Air in here's clean." Shepard announced, popping the seals of her helmet and removing it. As he'd expected, the spectre was a mess underneath, sporting a dark patch in her red hair where it had become matted with dried blood and an ugly gash in her lip where she had bitten into it during the fall. Despite this, Jane seemed pleased that the mission was finally starting back on track, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her cuff and leaving behind a streak of ash.
"Well, you got us inside," She remarked, tucking her helmet under her arm. "Any suggestions on freeing her?"
"Looks like there's some kind of control panel over there." Nick pointed out, careful not to sound like he was volunteering to investigate. He wasn't keen to go burning up all his good luck pushing random buttons on the strange Prothean computer that had already killed two dozen miners. For the same reason, he'd left his helmet on despite the noticeable drop in air temperature inside the ruin—that last thing he needed was a lungful of broiling sulfur if the VI decided it had had enough of them.
Shepard, however, seemed to have no such concerns, clipping her helmet to her belt and striding over to the console to examine the holographic controls. "What is this place, doctor?"
Finally faced with a question she seemed to have an answer to, the archeologist perked up once again. "While it is commonly accepted that most of the Prothean ruins on this world are simply old mines, I believe this particular site is part of a research facility of some kind, and have a theory as to its purpose." The asari explained, twisting as best she could to look at the commander. "There are a number of shafts like this one scattered across Therum, and while this one is the deepest and most intact one that has been discovered, there is evidence that others might run far deeper. I believe the Protheans might have been developing a planet-wide system to tap into this world's geothermal energy on an almost unimaginable scale."
The spectre glanced up from the console, looking genuinely astounded. "Is that even possible?"
"The Protheans built the mass relays." Doctor T'Soni stated as Jane turned her attention back to the controls. "Doing so would have required incredible amounts of energy, and it is possible that they harvested it from planets like this one in order to—"
The asari abruptly gave a startled squeak as the force field trapping her abruptly vanished, and an equally surprised Vandas quickly rushed forward to try to catch her.
The medic managed to catch her around the hips as she fell, and the disoriented asari fell backwards across his shoulder, her weight pulling at the medic's stiff back and nearly sending him teetering off-balance. Narrowly avoiding toppling over backwards, the medic began to slide Doctor T'Soni off his shoulder and back onto her feet. When it became clear the exhausted doctor wasn't prepared to stand, he carefully eased her to a sitting position on the ground and knelt down at her side.
"Well, I'd call that progress." Shepard announced from the console, looking rather pleased with herself.
Nick, busy unclipping his medical bag from his back, was less impressed. Given the number of unpleasant surprises they'd already encountered today, Shepard could've warned him before dropping an archeologist on his head.
Dusting a bit of ash off of his medkit, Vandas unrolled the bundle of supplies inside and got work. Doctor T'Soni, still rather dazed and now sporting a wide stripe of grey ash across her stomach and chest, sat quietly staring off into space, occasionally looking back and forth between Nick and Shepard with silent bewilderment as the asari tried to make sense of it all. Meanwhile, the medic had found the seam near her elbow and peeled off one of her long gloves to place a small oximeter on the end of one blue fingertip. Consulting the flashing digits on the device's small display after a moment, Nick turned back to his bag and quickly exchanged his armored gauntlets for a pair of clean exam gloves.
Despite a bit of delirium, the doctor vitals were still good. Though she was suffering the effects of dehydration after being trapped for so long, the cooler air inside the ruins meant she'd been safe from the dangerously high temperatures of the mine, which the medic imagined would have killed her long before the Normandy team had arrived.
Nickeli took the opportunity to pull a datapad from his bag and quickly consult the care notes that Doctor Chakwas had provided him on asari physiology. The doctor was proving to be an excellent teacher, but the corpsman still had a great deal to learn—while his trauma care in the field was generally excellent, xenomedicine was a new field of study for him. Chakwas had pulled out a stack of dusty medical textbooks and dropped them in the medic's lap, but he still had a long way to go before he was completely confident tending to Garrus or Tali in the field. For the time being, however, Doctor T'Soni's condition didn't seem likely to require anything more dramatic than fluids and careful monitoring, so Nick felt comfortable he could handle treating her until they returned to the ship.
The corpsman was in the process of digging through his medical bag for a sterilizing swab when a dirty blue hand suddenly smacked against his visor, groping inexpertly at his concealed face as a familiar oximeter clicked against the armored glass. "Uh, Doctor T'Soni?"
"You... you're real." The archeologist murmured with astonishment.
"Yes, doctor." Vandas assured somewhat awkwardly, gently removing her hand from his face. It left behind a smudged, five-fingered handprint in the thin layer of ash on the glass. "I'm Private Vandas, I'm going to be your corpsman today. You were in that bubble for a while, so things probably don't make a lot of sense right now, but you're going to be alright. I'm going to get you started on some fluids and we'll see if that doesn't get you feeling a bit better."
The asari nodded slowly as she contemplated this, a hint of clarity slowly beginning to return. "I don't understand, why are you here? Did the miners send a distress signal?"
"We came looking for you, doctor." Nick replied distractedly, preoccupied using a salt solution to adjust a bag of saline to the proper concentration for asari physiology. "The commander would be able to explain better than I can." Carefully inserting the IV near her elbow and securing the line in place with a bit of medical tape, the medic spared a glance in the spectre's direction. "Shepard, how're we looking?"
As if on cue, the ground began to shift, though Vandas quickly realized it wasn't merely another tremor—the entire platform they were standing on had begun to rise, the ancient mechanisms groaning and grating as they awoke.
"Commander?" The medic asked urgently. If this was the Prothean VI's doing, he didn't care to stick around to find out where it was taking them.
"I'm making progress." Jane declared from the console, though there was hint of doubt in her voice. "I think. Most of these controls don't make a lot of sense." The redhead looked to the asari. "Doctor T'Soni, do you know what's at the top of this shaft?"
"Please, just call me Liara." The archeologist answered, her voice sounding steady and focused for the first time since they'd found her. "And no, I do not. I theorize it could run all the way to the surface, but I never had the opportunity to investigate."
"Well, we're going to find out." The spectre replied, continuing to work the controls. After a moment, the energy barrier across the doorway flickered out. Almost immediately Nickeli's HUD flashed as two small bars in the top corner swapped from red to green, indicating his connection with the rest of the team had been restored.
Shepard had apparently also noticed, bringing one hand to the side of her head. "Alenko, Garrus, this is Shepard, do you copy?"
"Shepard!" Garrus' voice crackled over the radio. It sounded like he was running. "What's your status?"
"We've located Doctor T'Soni in the Prothean ruins and we're making our way up some kind of shaft. There was a VI blocking our comms and turning the mine's systems against us, but it's been shut down. Where are you?"
"A few levels above you, in another part of the ruins. A pair of energy barriers activated and trapped us a bit ago, but they just went down." A hint of urgency entered the detective's voice. "Listen, Alenko and I managed to get the mine's relay system back online a while ago and contacted the Normandy before we got trapped, and it's all bad news on the surface. They detected an enormous energy signature from beneath the mine and whatever the hell it was blew the top off of a massive volcano a few hundred kilometers from here. They're tracking a pyroclastic surge three kilometers high, and it'll be on top of us within an hour." The turian reported, his voice grim. "Unless you want to get buried here for someone to dig up in a thousand years, we need to get out of here."
"Understood. Can you link up with us?"
"Actually, I think we already have." Alenko chimed in. "We found that shaft you mentioned. Look up."
Turning his attention upward, Nick spotted a recess in the wall of the shaft a few stories above them where two humanoid figures cautiously leaned over the edge and into view, backlit by the light of the corridor behind them. The larger of the two figures waved. "We see you, commander." Garrus radioed. "Looks like you're our ride out."
The medic felt himself crack a smile beneath his helmet, the sight of his missing squadmates sending a wave of relief through him. There was no guarantee this elevator would convey them safely to the surface, but he couldn't help but feel some measure of security knowing that the team was united once again.
Nick turned his attention back to his asari patient, noting a gradual improvement in her vitals with satisfaction, and after a few more minutes, the elevator had reached the ledge where Garrus and Alenko were waiting. The pair stepped aboard the lift as it continued its steady journey upwards and moved to join them near the center of the platform.
From her spot at the control console, Shepard smiled at the sight of them. "I'm glad to see you two are still in one piece."
Garrus snorted in disbelief, flashing a toothy grin and clapping Vandas on the shoulder as he walked by. "You're glad? We watched you two disappear over the edge of a cliff."
The redhead gave a helpless shrug, as if their plunge had been nothing more than an unavoidable inconvenience or a minor detour. "When were you last in contact with the Normandy?"
"About fifteen minutes ago—our comms were jammed when those barriers went up. You might be able to reach them now."
The spectre nodded, bringing one hand to her ear. "Normandy, this is Shepard, do you read me?"
After a few anxious moments, the channel crackled with static, followed by the calm voice of one of the ship's communications specialists. "Commander Shepard, this is Normandy. Be advised, you are coming in weak but readable. What is your status?"
"Package is in hand and verified. We're returning to the surface for extraction. Acknowledge."
"Roger that, acknowledged you have the package and are returning for extraction." The voice answered steadily through the static. "Standby for traffic from XO."
After a moment, a more familiar spoke. "Shepard, this is Pressly. We've got a situation up here."
"So I hear." Shepard answered, her voice carrying an exhausted chuckle. "How's our exit looking?"
"Dicey. Let me show you what I'm seeing."
Shepard's omni-tool flared to life, projecting a holographic representation of the area's topography with a small red dot marking their position in the lowlands near the foot of a large mountain range. The entire western half of the holographic map was covered by an advancing wall of brown, representing the forward boundary volcanic eruption bearing down on them.
"That plume from the eruption is spreading across our approach. Joker says he can get us in there, but if we miss our window, it'll be half an hour before we can orbit and get another shot." The Normandy's flightpath appeared as a dotted blue line, dipping down from space and skirting the edge of the advancing eruption to reach their position just before the surge overran them. Nick couldn't say it inspired much confidence. "Even if everything goes to plan, we'll be cutting it close—that pyroclastic surge will be right on our tail. We'll make it in if we can, but you'd better be waiting for us, Commander."
"We won't be late, then. Shepard out."
The channel closed and the holographic image flickered before winking out, leaving the team standing in anxious silence. Garrus opened his mouth to speak and a few heads turned his way expectantly, but he lamely snapped it shut a moment later. Given that they were facing down the imminent possibility of being wiped out by a volcano, the detective found it understandably difficult to muster a joke to lighten the mood with.
"What do we do if we the Normandy can't reach us?" Alenko said, asking the question everyone had been turning over in their minds, and the team looked to Shepard with grim anticipation.
"We'll head back into the mine and ride it out until the Normandy can come dig us out." Shepard answered coolly, though she must've known how hopelessly optimistic it sounded. The eruption would probably flatten the mining site and most the surrounding area, and even if the team managed to escape into the tunnels, they'd find themselves entombed under layers of ash and volcanic rock—it'd be days or even weeks before someone managed to dig them out, and Nick seriously doubted they'd survive that long. However, since the alternative was conceding that they were completely doomed, the uncomfortable details went unmentioned, and the team maintained the pleasant fiction that there a plan.
Rather than dwell on it, the medic turned his attention back to his patient, preoccupying himself with monitoring her vitals and ensuring the saline was continuing to flow steadily.
Soon enough, a rumbling from above turned the team's attention upward, and they watched as the roof of the shaft began to shift. The ancient mechanism groaned to life as ceiling split at the middle and slowly began to retreat into the wall of the shaft to clear the way for them to the surface.
"Incredible, the Protheans must have built countless redundancies into this facility for so many systems to still be functional after so long." Doctor T'Soni remarked. Nick didn't share the asari's sense of wonder, his thoughts turning to the two dozen miners that had had the misfortune to stumble across the ruin's functional security system. Still, at least it meant the team had a way out.
The elevator slowly emerged on the surface as the team found themselves standing atop a featureless plateau, the distant lights of the mining site faintly visible in the valley below. Above them, the sky had turned a dark, earthy red and the wind had picked up, whipping up a blinding haze of fine sand that battered against their armor and cut visibility to less than a hundred meters.
It was dark out—far darker than it should've been, Nickeli realized with confusion as he checked the time. Scanning the distant landscape through the haze, the medic found his explanation. "Holy shit."
A plume of black ash dominated the horizon, billowing upwards to block the light of the planet's star and slowly spreading like an approaching storm. Enormous bodies of red dust shifted and roiled along the skyline, and Nick couldn't but help watch dumbly as bolts lighting stabbed intermittently through the column of smoke and ash. The tower volcanic surge loomed like a vertical wall that seemed to stretch endlessly from the ground towards the sky. It was majestic and awe-inspiring in a way that stirred a deep, primal sort of terror that made him want to dig a hole to escape from it. The rational part of him knew it was a just volcanic eruption, but standing there, that close, he would've sworn on his life that it was the end of the world about to come crashing down on their heads.
"How close is that?" The medic asked over the radio in a small voice.
"Forty kilometers at best." Garrus reported grimly, tapping at the rangefinder built into his helmet. "And you wouldn't believe the size of the infrared signature, even from here."
"There!" Shepard called suddenly, pointing towards the sliver of sky visible above the plume.
The Normandy appeared as a tiny streak of silver against dark backdrop of the advancing surge, diving steeply like a bird of prey before pulling up, looking as though it might brush the ground. The ship was upon them with startling quickness, and the howling of the wind was drowned-out by the roar of the ship's engines as the team found themselves standing in the blinding beam of a searchlight. The bay door opened like a great maw to reveal Williams and a handful of marines in dark blue armor visible at the top of the lowering ramp, the light of the whirling orange warning lights dancing across their armor.
Having already hastily packed his medical supplies back into his bag, Nick urgently lifted Dr. T'Soni to her feet and started for the ship, the archeologist using him is a crutch as the pair hobbled along. It would've been quicker to carry her, but the medic simply didn't have the strength left. Fortunately, Alenko appeared on the other side of her and the two men picked the asari up, starting up the boarding ramp along with rest of the squad as Williams and the Normandy's marines rushed to meet them.
"Inside! Now!" The gunnery chief barked simply, finding no argument from the exhausted ground team.
Staff Sergeant Khang and Private Tolo met Nick and Alenko, quickly taking Liara from the two exhausted marines and rushing back towards the hangar with her, where Vandas had no doubt Doctor Chakwas would be waiting with a stretcher.
It took the medic a bit longer to reach the top of the ramp, his exhausted legs stretching the last dozen yards to safety in miles. He suddenly felt a strong tug on his left arm and was mildly alarmed to see that Brice was now hauling him bodily to the towards the hangar, Nick having somehow failed to notice the sergeant until the massive Pole had practically tucked him under his arm. The pair hurriedly retreated into the cargo bay, Brice only releasing his hold of Nick once they'd passed the kinetic barrier that marked the entrance to the hangar.
"Thanks." Vandas offered wearily. The sergeant gave a wordless nod, heading over to where the other marines were congregating and giving the medic a moment to collect himself.
Nick pulled off his helmet, savoring the cold air on his sweat-slicked face and lingering smell of cleaning solution the constantly permeated the hangar and was becoming increasingly familiar to him. He started for the row of lockers to stow his gear as the flashing orange warning lights faded, and the tired marine felt his balance shift slightly as the Normandy banked and started burning hard for orbit, cutting through the buffeting gale of the volcanic storm. After a few minutes, the turbulence settled as the ship escaped the planet's atmosphere and, even as exhausted as he was, Vandas couldn't help but feel a surge of relief knowing that the scorching, red hell of Therum was finally behind them.
A/N: A longer chapter for everyone this time. Despite knowing what I wanted to do with it, I still hit a few blocks here and there, and while I'm still not certain that I'm 100% happy with it, I am happy to have Therum done. Chapter 25 will be a little more lighthearted and character-centric. But until it's ready, I'd like to wish a happy Independence Day to all my fellow Americans, and a fine July the 4th to everyone else.