Shepard stepped out of the Mako, her boots puffing up small clouds of dust as they impacted onto the volcanic soil. She winced as the severe, dry heat of Therum's atmosphere washed over her like a thermal blanket. Glumly, she made peace with the fact that by the end of the day she'd be sweaty as all hell.

Garrus and Jack followed her outside a moment later, the latter swearing loudly to herself loudly about the heat. Shepard ran a critical eye over them both, pleased to see their assorted weapons and gear all looked to be in order. Garrus was sporting his usual combat armor, and Jack had even agreed to wear one of Shepard's spare tank tops rather than just her usual chest harness.

Here's to small miracles, Shepard thought, ruefully glancing at Jack's shirt. She originally had wanted to put Jack in an armored vest matching her own, but Jack had adamantly refused. It was only after a heated twenty minute debate and a grisly explanation from Chakwas about the damage caused to tits from direct lava exposure that Jack had agreed to even just a shirt.

Inside the Mako, Chakwas leaned back from where she sat in the driver's seat to peer towards Shepard with a concerned frown. "Remember, Shepard," she said, "neither your ribs nor your concussion have had time to fully heal yet, so at least try to take it easy, won't you? And I don't want to hear anything about Garrus exerting himself in any way, you understand?"

"I hear you, Doc, we'll do our best," Shepard replied with a rakish grin. "No promises, though."

Chakwas sighed, her face a picture of pure resignation before she closed the door to the Mako. Shepard and the others took a few steps back as the engine rumbled to life, watching together as Chakwas awkwardly drove off across the charred landscape.

"I still don't get why you let her drive that thing," Jack grumbled. "What happened to being 'properly certified' or whatever?"

Shepard started off in the opposite direction the Mako had gone, calling back over her shoulder, "I gave her a few pointers before we landed, she'll be fine. Plus she's the only person on the crew I trust to be responsible with that thing."

Garrus scoffed as he fell in step behind her. "I'm wounded Shepard, truly. How could you not trust us with such competent, ruggedly handsome crewmates around?"

Shepard laughed. "Oh I trust all of you, sure. I just think we all missed the boat on responsibility a couple years back."

Their hike took them across ashy hills and down craggy ridges, forcing them to take their time as they wound across the boiling surface of the planet. Every so often, Shepard saw brief flashes of orange as a nearby lava flow would come into view, only to vanish back out of sight. The heat, however, was her constant companion, and after only a few minutes she found herself wiping sweat out of her eyes.

A focused silence fell over the three of them as they walked, broken only by the sound of their breathing and their boots scuffing the ground. Despite this, Shepard found her concentration wavering as she repeatedly caught sight of Garrus staring towards her with a suspicious glint in his eyes. Finally, unable to take it anymore, she sighed and turned towards him with a skeptical expression. "Something I can help you with?"

Garrus shrugged and turned forwards. "Oh what, me? No, I'm good."

Shepard's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Uh huh."

They walked in silence for another thirty seconds before Garrus looked back over, his mandibles twitching mischievously. "You know, now that you mention it…"

"Yep, there it is," Shepard sighed.

"Chakwas brought me back into the med bay after our meeting last night," he continued unrepentantly, "just to check up on a few things, make sure no wounds were bleeding again, just your usual post-injury visit, right? But while I was in there, I happened to notice that the door to Liara's room had been left open."

Shepard schooled her face into a casually neutral expression. "And that's significant how?"

Garrus flexed his mandibles in what Shepard knew to be a smug grin. "It's significant because the room was empty, Shepard. Our resident archaeologist's favorite spot on the ship, but she was nowhere to be found. Isn't that odd?"

Shepard looked away, stubbornly fixing her gaze on the ground before her. "Huh, weird."

"Exactly, 'weird,' that's what I thought. So then I started thinking to myself, if Liara isn't here, where else might she be?"

Shepard stayed silent, hoping desperately that if she just stopped responding that the conversation might just peter out all on its own. Not to be denied, however, Garrus continued, "So, Shepard, do you know where Liara was last night?"

Shepard sighed, feeling an embarrassing heat start to seep across her face despite her best efforts to hold it back. She briefly glanced back up towards Garrus, only to roll her eyes at the delight clearly sparkling in his eyes. There would be no easy way out of this one, she realized.

She shrugged, figuring that the most direct route would get this over the fastest. "Yeah, she spent the night with me."

Garrus spluttered at her blunt reply, nearly choking in a strange combination of coughing and laughter. Behind him, Jack groaned, "Holy shit, fucking finally. If I had to spend one more day watching you two pine over each other like schoolgirls, I think I'd actually kill somebody."

Blush now burning at full force, Shepard pouted and muttered, "Glad my love life is such a burden for you all."

Still laughing, Garrus clapped a hand onto her shoulder. "No matter how agonizing watching you two dance around each other may have been, we're all just glad to see you happy."

He paused, glancing over towards Jack's skeptical expression, before amending, "Well, most of us, anyways."

Shepard smiled then, clapping her own hand onto Garrus' shoulder as they came to a stop atop yet another ridge. "Thanks, Garrus, really. It means a lot."

The three of them paused together for a moment, taking in how far they still had to cover. After a minute of this, Shepard shifted to suggest moving onwards when Garrus spoke again. "Well," he said, "this brings us to the most important question of the day."

Shepard hiked up a brow warily. "What question?"

"Does she make you happy?"

Liara ducked her head bashfully, smiling at her boots as the answer bubbled up within her. "Perhaps the happiest I have ever been, yes."

Tali hugged her then, nearly bowling the two of them over as she squeezed Liara tightly. "Aw, you two are so cute together already!" she cooed. "We were all just waiting for this to happen, you know."

Liara laughed nervously, her face bright purple. "Thank you, I think?"

Nodding sagely, Tali continued, "There was even a betting pool between the crew over if you two would get together before or after this mission." She paused for a moment, tapping the chin of her mask thoughtfully. "Garrus owes me fifty credits, now that I think about it."

Liara laughed and hugged Tali back with one arm as they walked. They had been hiking together across Therum's inhospitable surface for nearly forty-five minutes, and any moment now they were due to arrive at their location.

"Speaking of Garrus," she said, "how are things going between you two?"

Tali shrugged, adopting a conspicuously casual posture. "Eh, it's alright so far I guess. He's got those lanky turian arms, so it's pretty convenient whenever I need him to get something off of the top shelf in the kitchen."

Liara rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "That is not what I meant."

Tali chuckled and bumped Liara's shoulder with her own. "Yeah, I know," she said, her voice softening into something warm. "It's… we're good. Like it's different, and sorta scary, honestly? But I'm just glad we're both still here to try to make it work."

"I am happy to hear it," Liara said with a wide smile. "Hopefully after this we will all have some time to just relax and enjoy ourselves without any worries of imminent death."

"Oh, enjoying ourselves, hm?" Tali leered. "Liara, how forward of you."

Liara frowned in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I get it," Tali continued. "Shepard's got those big, strong arms that seem just perfect for wrapping around you and holding you close, plus a couple dozen spare abs under that armored vest she always wears. I can understand why you'd want to have some special alone time with her as much as you could."

Liara's eyes widened as the implication set in, her blush going nuclear as she blanched, "Oh, Goddess, no that is– you know that is not what I meant!"

Tali cackled, the bright and happy sound echoing across the barren landscape. "Oh, Liara, never change," she sighed. "You can tell me all the nitty gritty details if you want, though. Do you think she could pick you up with just one arm, or were you too busy last night to find out?"

Desperately casting her eyes around for anything to save her from this topic, Liara noticed a dull orange light glowing from over the top of the next ridge. "Oh look, we have almost arrived!" she blurted. "We really should be quiet and never speak of this again, I think."

Without waiting for a response she sank into a crouch and scaled the last few feet of the ridge, hearing Tali evilly chuckle to herself as she came up behind her. Her mortification quickly faded away, however, as she peeked up over the ridge and froze in place.

"Goddess," she whispered, "there it is."

The ground past the ridge sloped downwards sharply before evening out into a flat plain that extended for several hundred feet. Beyond that, a massive lava flow over half a mile across extended out towards either horizon, boiling and sizzling away under the stark Therum sun. Liara's attention, however, was focused on the massive object perched partially on the bank of this lava flow: a gigantic, vaguely triangular structure made of burnished metal, half submerged into the stream of lava and tilted upwards at a precarious angle.

Liara frowned, taking in the awkward angle of the ruin. It looked almost as if something had taken an entire Prothean structure and tipped it over into the lava flow, but what could have done such a thing? Seismic activity, perhaps? Spectacularly incompetent Prothean engineers?

As she mused on this, a flicker of movement caught her attention. Shifting her focus down towards the base of the structure, her stomach sank as she saw a squad of Cerberus troopers patrolling the area. With a pang, Liara found herself hoping that Shepard's part of the plan went successfully. Otherwise, getting inside without being seen was going to be problematic.

As she mused to herself, Tali inched forwards to be able to see over the ridge herself. She took in the scene for several seconds in silence, then whispered, "Huh, weird. It kinda looks like somebody just dropped it there, doesn't it?" She pointed forwards towards where the structure sat. "Look, it's got an impact crater and everything."

Liara's brow furrowed, her gaze roaming over the trench clearly plowed through the ground underneath the structure. A nebulous idea began forming in her mind, slowly coming together piece by piece as she looked from the structure's odd shape to its placement and back again, until at last the answer appeared before her in a flash of elated understanding.

"This isn't a ruin," she said, suddenly breathless from the truth before her. "This is a crashed Prothean ship."

Shepard knelt at the top of the ridge, scanning the area below with a tactical eye. At the base of the hill she rested on sat what looked to be a large, open-air loading bay. Vaguely square in construction, it looked surprisingly similar to the inside of an average industrial warehouse: towering rows of crates rose up over loose piles of supplies and scattered wooden pallets, all managed by a few harried-looking Cerberus soldiers. Beyond them, she saw several wide conveyor belts leading from the supply stache towards sets of cables staked into the ground at the depot's edge.

Just past the cables, a wide river of lava slowly oozed past, throwing an orange glow and suffocating heat across the entire area. Looking past this, Shepard saw the cables shot all the way to the far bank, each set carrying a tram car over towards the strange metal structure poking up out of the lava.

"Guess that's our Prothean ruin, then," Garrus said from his perch beside her. "I suppose it would've been too much to ask for it to be fully on the ground and not, you know, in a boiling river of death."

"Come on, where's your sense of adventure?" Shepard quipped, a slanted grin on her face. "Just don't fall in and everything's fine."

Garrus rolled his eyes. "You always know just what to say to make me feel better."

Behind them, Jack sighed angrily. "Look, are we getting in there or not?" she asked. "I don't wanna piss around on this dogshit planet any longer than I have to."

Shepard looked back towards the supply depot, scanning her gaze across it for a few more seconds before finding what she needed. Without averting her eyes, she reached a hand out towards Garrus expectantly. "Garrus?"

Garrus twitched his mandibles unhappily. "Do we really need to do it this way?"

Shepard turned towards him then, levying an unimpressed glare towards him until he sighed dramatically. "Fine, take it," he grumbled, unclipping a grenade from his belt and placing it in her outstretched hand. "These things are expensive, you know. Can't you just explode yourself like normal and leave my stuff alone?"

"Nope," Shepard happily replied, placing the grenade into a pocket in her armored vest. "But I appreciate the advice."

She glanced across the lava flow, looking past the Prothean structure towards the hills behind it. Somewhere, she knew, Liara and Tali were waiting for her to make her move. It was time to get to work.

She turned to face Garrus and Jack, her face set into an expression of pure focus. "Alright people, this is where we get serious," she said. "We all know the plan, so we keep everything simple, stick to what we're good at, and watch each other's backs. Nobody's getting left behind this time, alright?"

Her companions both nodded, their posture shifting to match hers as their expressions sharpened into something dangerous. Shepard nodded, satisfied with what she saw. "Good. Let's get it done."

Garrus shouldered his rifle and clambered further up the ridge, leaving Shepard and Jack to scramble down the hill as quietly as possible. As they descended, Shepard found herself looking between the ground below and the half-dozen Cerberus guards with clear lines of sight on their position. If any one of them happened to look up over the next few seconds, getting to the ground without acquiring several new bullet holes was going to be a problem.

After a few tense seconds of sliding and shuffling across the scorched ground, they hit the ground and immediately dove into cover behind the nearest stack of wood pallets. Shepard huddled up next to Jack, both of them holding their breath and waiting for any sign they had been noticed. After thirty long seconds of silence, Shepard nodded to Jack and waved her towards one end of the depot, then turned and quietly moved off in the other direction.

She ghosted between stacks of crates, moving carefully so as to not disturb any piles with a careless step. Her pistol in hand, she carefully peeked her head out around a corner to check for any soldiers, then swiftly moved onto the next bit of cover. She repeated the process, moving stealthily across the depot before at last coming across what she had spotted from the top of the hill: a loosely organized pile of fuel cells.

Gingerly, she picked one up with her free hand, feeling the eezo inside pulse and vibrate faintly through the metal casing. Nodding to herself, Shepard softly replaced the fuel cell back into the pile before stealthing back into the labyrinth of crates before her.

She weaved her way through the maze of boxes before finally coming to a stop behind a row of wooden pallets. Glancing over the top of them, Shepard spotted four troopers at the edge of the depot, all carrying crates over to the nearby conveyor belts. Clearly Coré had them working overtime, as the troopers were nearly tripping over themselves to get everything loaded and sent towards the cables.

Shepard checked her omni-tool and saw that it had been nearly two minutes since she had split up with Jack. Satisfied that she would be in position by now, Shepard crouched back behind the pallets and keyed her earpiece with one finger. "Garrus, time to get the party started," she whispered. "Remember, we need one of them alive."

"I'll try to restrain myself," came Garrus' reply. A moment later and the distant bark of a rifle echoed across the depot, ringing out three times in quick succession. Shepard quickly peeked back out from behind the pallets to see three of the four Cerberus soldiers collapse to the ground, fresh holes punched through their helmets.

Whipping up her pistol, she squeezed out two shots into the remaining soldier's chest, dropping him immediately. As he hit the ground, a massive biotic explosion went off on the far side of the depot, sending shattered crates and screaming troopers alike flying through the air.

Shepard smiled grimly to herself. Jack might have one of the prickliest personalities she'd ever had to work with, but damn if she didn't pack a punch. Maybe, she thought, this plan would work out better than she thought.

Automatic fire shattered her train of thought as a pair of assault rifles went off to her left, shattering the pallets she had been hiding behind into a pile of splinters. Shepard whirled around and snapped her pistol up, firing the rest of her clip blindly towards the soldiers now swarming out from the maze of crates. Bullets kicked up sparks around her feet and whistled past her ears, forcing Shepard to sprint towards a nearby storage container and dive behind its metal walls.

She hit the ground with a grunt, immediately putting her back to the metal as she slammed a fresh thermal clip into her pistol. She briefly peeked her head out around the corner, only to jerk back into cover as a barrage of bullets annihilated the spot she had just occupied. Deciding to try to flank around, she shifted towards the far side of the metal container only to stop as a pair of troopers wielding energized batons popped out and charged her with a yell. Rolling her eyes, she dropped each of them with two shots to the chest.

"Garrus," she called out as she reloaded, "I could use a little help here!"

No response came for several seconds, during which Shepard risked peeking out once more and nearly ate a flashbang for her trouble. Finally, as she blinked the stars out of her eyes, Garrus' voice crackled in her ear. "Stack of crates at three o'clock, ten feet up."

Shepard glanced up at the towering stack of crates across the open space to her left, spotting a whole pillar of supplies all bound together with cording and secured by a metal latch. As she watched, the meaty boom of Garrus' rifle rang out again, followed closely by the sound of metal shattering as the latch promptly exploded and sent the cords it had been holding flying apart.

Shepard grinned, her biotics flaring to life with a roar as she reached up to key her earpiece. "You always get me the nicest things," she said. She stood then, holstering her pistol as she built up a biotic charge with both hands, then flung it up into the loosened crates up above. The bolt of energy ballooned across the entire stack, infusing it with a crackling biotic glow, and without hesitating Shepard grit her teeth, flexed her fingers into claws, and pulled.

The entire column of crates exploded towards her, flinging piles of supplies across the depot like an improvised shotgun. Distorted cries rang out as the massive boxes and containers slammed into the soldiers moving across the open area of the depot, tossing them to the ground like dolls as their own ordnance exploded around them. Leaping back out of cover with her pistol drawn, Shepard swiftly danced between the wreckage and fired shots into anything that moved, then dashed back behind cover once more.

"Heads up Shepard, we got a runner," Garrus warned. Glancing back around the box she kneeled behind, Shepard's gaze fixed onto a lone soldier hauling ass back towards a terminal near the landing zone for the cable cars. Raising her pistol into a firing position, she tracked the soldier's movement as they ran up to the terminal and frantically started typing in a command.

Shepard waited, her finger on the trigger, until finally a piercing siren began to wail out from all around the depot. Immediately she fired, catching the soldier in the side of the head and throwing them to the ground even as the alarm continued to blare loudly in all directions.

Standing up from cover, Shepard holstered her pistol and instead withdrew the grenade from her pocket. She turned to face back the way she had come, jogging back through the depot until she came upon the pile of fuel cells she had found earlier. "Thanks for the donation, Garrus," she muttered to herself as she primed the grenade, then lazily tossed it into the center of the pile.

Liara tensed as the shrill alarm began to echo from across the lava flow. Peering over the ridge she hid behind, she saw the Cerberus soldiers guarding the structure below look at each other in confusion, then turn away from the ruin towards the distant supply depot.

"Is that it?" she whispered. "Is that the signal?"

Tali shook her head, lying just below Liara on the side of the hill. "No, that wasn't it. It wasn't obvious enough."

As if in response, a massive explosion rang out across the landscape like a thunderclap, tinged with the telltale bassy discharge of eezo detonating. The squad of Cerberus soldiers immediately took off in a sprint, yelling at each other in distorted voices as they ran towards the source of the commotion.

"Yeah, that's more like it," Tali sighed. She stood up into a crouch, peeking over the ridge to see the now unguarded structure before them. She tapped Liara on the shoulder, and together they quickly began moving down the hill. This part of the plan relied heavily on good timing and stealth, so together they scurried across the open space around the ruin as quickly as possible.

Thirty seconds later, they arrived at the side of the Prothean structure. The burnished metal hull towered over them, glimmering in the sweltering sun and radiating heat from the nearby lava. Standing in its shadow, Liara realized that this downed ship must be even larger than their scans had suggested.

"Look, that must be the front entrance," Tali said.

Liara blinked, looking back down towards the portion of the hull before them. Instead of a standard airlock, she saw what first glance appeared to be a large mural etched into the metal. Two massive figures had been carved standing side by side, each holding a blade up to the other's throat. Around and between them spiraled countless Prothean glyphs, stretching out across nearly twenty feet of the hull.

Liara frowned. Glancing around the etching, she saw no seams or grooves to indicate a potential way inside. "Are we sure that this is an entrance?" she asked. "Perhaps Cerberus mislabeled it when they discovered the ruin."

Tali shook her head, reading info from her omni-tool as she scanned the hull. "No, this is definitely our way in. I'm picking up mechanisms inside the door that theoretically would serve to open and close this portion of the hull."

She fiddled with her omni-tool for a few more seconds, then deactivated it with a curse. "I can see why our Cerberus friends couldn't find a way inside, though. This thing is a completely isolated system, so even if it had power there would be no way to actually engage the unlocking mechanism."

Liara peered thoughtfully towards the door, her eyes flitting between the Prothean glyphs covering its surface. "Perhaps Cerberus did not know where to look," she murmured.

She opened her satchel and withdrew her notebook, flipping open to the last few pages she had written. Biting her lower lip, she swiftly scanned through her notes from the pyramid on Rayingri, skimming over the descriptions of traps and moving corpses before finally coming to a stop on a small drawing she had made.

As she double checked her notes against the engravings before her, Tali sidled over and peeked towards her open notes. "Find something?"

"Possibly," Liara replied. "Back on Rayingri, Miranda and I found a room full of notes describing the Ring. Much of it was nearly unintelligible, but each section of it seemed to be described by a single Prothean symbol."

Tali crossed her arms. "This door's covered in symbols. How are a few more going to help us here?"

Liara frowned, worrying her lip between her teeth. "I am not sure, to be honest. I just have a hunch that this might not be a coincidence."

Tali was silent for a second, then shrugged. "Well, you're the expert here. Which ones are we looking for?"

Liara smiled, suddenly thankful for how easily Tali seemed to trust her. Shifting her notebook into one hand, she began to trace the other across the metal door. "The first two were power and container, I believe."

Her fingers slid across warm metal, until after only a moment Liara found herself hovering over the symbol for power. She hesitantly applied pressure with the pad of her finger, only to gasp as the symbol sank nearly an inch into the hull with a satisfying click. A moment later, it began to glow an eerie blue as she quickly pulled back her finger.

"This is it!" she exclaimed. "Quick, help me find the next symbol."

She showed the glyph in question to Tali, and together they began frantically pouring over the surface of the hull. After a minute of intense searching, Tali let out a soft cheer as she found the correct symbol. She pressed on it as Liara had, and it too clicked into place and began to glow.

"Alright, what's next?" she asked.

Liara frowned. "I don't know," she admitted. "Some of this information was already destroyed when we found it, so there is really no way to know which…"

Tali cocked her head as Liara trailed off. "Liara? What's wrong?"

Liara, however, was no longer listening. Instead, she was looking towards a golden glimmer that had just appeared on the metal before her, a few feet above the other two glyphs. A mystified expression on her face, she reached for it and found her fingers grazing the Prothean glyph for control.

She let out a shaky breath, feeling apprehension and a dangerous thrill whirl around inside her. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed the glyph down.

A piercing metal squeal rang out from up above, making Liara flinch and step back. Looking up, she saw to her astonishment that what she had taken for a metal engraving had begun to move. Each figure towering over her had started drawing their blades back, slicing them across their counterpart's neck as they did so.

A blue glow began to well up in each figure's neck, slowly oozing down the length of both blades like iridescent blood. From there the macabre light spilled out across the engraving in broad swirls and curves, spreading its way out across the length of the mural. Even in the midday sun, the light began to shine bright enough to cast shadows out across Therum's ashy landscape.

Finally, the blue glow came into contact with the first glowing glyph, which promptly changed color from ghastly blue to a rich gold. Two more gold lines sprouted from this symbol, arching out towards each remaining glyph before coming together to complete a glimmering golden ring in a sea of blue. This gold ring flashed brightly once, then vanished as a loud crack split the silence. Then, ever so slowly, the mural split in two to reveal a yawning passage deep into the ship.

T'Soni…

Liara shivered as whispers danced around the edges of her perception, her skin prickling with goosebumps as icy fingers of fear trailed up her spine. A sudden conviction came over her; whatever else was waiting for her in this place, she knew that the final part of the Ring was here.

Wordlessly, she drew her pistol and stepped forward into the ship. Tali followed a step behind, her own weapon out and ready as they walked. They stepped inside, and together were swallowed into the bowels of the ship.

Shepard charged forward, biotics crackling angrily around her as she bowled over a line of Cerberus troops. She ducked under a burst of gunfire, then lunged to grab another soldier by the faceplate and slammed him into a stack of crates. Popping the release on her pistol's thermal clip, she spun back around into cover and slammed a fresh clip into place.

A fresh group of soldiers sprinted around a corner of the maze-like depot, their rifles raised as they advanced on Shepard's position. Before they could fire, however, a biotic shockwave blasted clean through the metal wall of a storage container and sent them flying back out of sight. A moment later, Jack popped through the fresh hole with biotics raging and a snarl to match. She nodded towards Shepard, then quickly ran off in search of new targets.

Shepard grinned, raising up a hand to key her earpiece. "How we looking, Garrus?" she called.

"Fresh wave of troopers coming in off the trams, ETA fifteen seconds," came his reply. "I'll soften them up for you."

Shepard took a deep breath, then bolted back out of cover towards the front of the depot. The whole area had become a warzone in the last few minutes, with the previously pristine piles of supplies and equipment now a ruined, smoldering mess of smoking rubble and partially collapsed pathways. She dove headfirst into the mess, juking past burning piles of incendiary ammo and slipping past precariously leaning stacks of crates.

Gunfire erupted from somewhere off to her left, but rather than stop to fire back Shepard instead dug her heels into the ground and put on a burst of speed. She slid feet first over a large box labeled 'FRAGILE,' then planted her feet to leap off the far side. Her biotics flared as her boots left the ground, and just as she hit the apex of her leap she charged down a flaming corridor to pulverize a trooper just as he rounded a corner. Landing precariously on one foot, she skidded around the corner and continued onwards.

She burst out from the labyrinth of supplies and into the loading area, finding herself surrounded on either side by several sets of active conveyor belts carrying various containers. Beyond this, she saw two large tram cars just arriving on the bank of the lava flow, each of them packed full of fresh Cerberus goons all wielding stun batons. Two heavy metal ramps fell forwards and impacted into the hard Therum soil, and with angry cries over twenty soldiers all rushed towards Shepard at once.

The bark of Garrus' rifle rang out, firing again and again as troopers were thrown back off their feet. Raising her own weapon, Shepard planted her feet and began firing into the oncoming horde indiscriminately. Soldier after soldier fell, but still the dozen remaining enemies charged ever closer. After only a few seconds her pistol ran dry, her last shot fired into a soldier only fifteen feet away. Grimacing, she quickly jammed the gun back into its holster and flared her biotics as the wave of orange and white troopers bore down on her.

She ducked under the swing of the first soldier's baton, firing back with a biotic punch to the gut and following up with a knee to the face as they doubled over. Not letting her momentum slow, she lashed out with a brutal cross to the face of the next soldier, sending them spinning like a top before they crumpled to the floor.

Shepard's earpiece crackled to life as the next soldier fell to Garrus' rifle, resolving into the sound of Jack's voice between gunshots and biotic explosions. "I could use some help over here! Little bastards are swarming all over me!"

Shepard warily eyed the remaining throng of soldiers before her. "Garrus, cover Jack," she said. "I got things covered here."

"Roger that, Shepard," he replied, the sound of his rifle reporting back moments later as he began picking off Jack's attackers.

Shepard, however, was already concentrating on the wall of Cerberus bodies bearing down on her. Her biotics crackled around her, and in a flash she charged forward and put the leading trooper on their ass. She leapt into the sky, biotics surging with an angry hum, and with a furious cry she slammed back into the ground with an eruption of power that sent three more soldiers flying.

The six remaining soldiers charged together, and in an instant Shepard found herself on the back foot. She backstepped one swing and weaved past another that sliced just past her ear. She went to throw a punch, only to grunt as a blow caught her heavy on her shoulder. The next caught her in the thigh, causing her to stumble backwards as blow after blow began raining down on her.

Desperate for space, Shepard shoved a trooper off of her and back into her other attackers. She retreated a step, then turned and dove over the conveyor belt to her right. Landing in a roll, she popped back up to her feet only to find a soldier already standing before her, hands held high as he swung his baton down towards her like a guillotine.

With a grunt she threw herself backwards to try to avoid the blow. The baton missed her head by mere inches as her back slammed into the conveyor, and as he recovered from the swing Shepard grabbed onto the moving belt with one hand. The soldier whirled towards her to make a second strike, only to miss again as she was dragged just out of his reach.

With a flex of her arms, Shepard hoisted herself fully up onto the conveyor. The motion of the belt nearly threw her off immediately, forcing her to quickly find her footing while dancing over the supplies wheeling towards the trams. Below her, she could hear the angry shouts of the remaining Cerberus soldiers chasing after her as the conveyor carried her away.

A sudden sound of clattering boxes behind her grabbed her attention. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the soldier who had just attacked her was now climbing awkwardly up onto the conveyor himself, his deadly baton still in hand. Petulantly, Shepard kicked a box into his side and grinned as he tumbled back down to the ground with a yelp.

The last five Cerberus troops still standing swarmed around her conveyor belt like a cloud of angry bees, buzzing around her on all sides and lashing out with their batons. Shepard hopped from foot to foot, barely keeping her balance as she tripped over moving crates to keep out their reach. Every so often she managed to lash out with a kick towards a soldier who got too close, but never hard enough to do more than buy a couple seconds.

During this distraction, two of the soldiers managed to climb up onto the conveyor on either side of her. Now thoroughly surrounded, Shepard sighed and rolled out her shoulders once. "You guys sure know how to make a girl feel popular," she drawled.

Without waiting for a response, she lunged into action. She kicked a pallet across the conveyor and into one soldier's feet, causing them to trip, then turned and charged into the other in a blast that sent them flying across the depot. Whipping back around, she ran towards the one trooper still on the conveyor when a baton slammed painfully into her shin and sent her sprawling. Swearing loudly, Shepard rolled onto her back just as the trooper swung down towards her head.

Shepard threw her hands up and caught the trooper's hands between her own, barely stopping the baton from caving her skull in. With a grunt, she simultaneously pulled on the weapon while planting her boots on the trooper's stomach and pushing, effectively ripping the baton from their hands while sending them hurtling back down the belt.

She scrambled back to her feet, baton held tightly in her right hand. An ambitious soldier on the ground stepped forward and swung towards her shin once again; Shepard, ready this time, simply raised her leg and stomped on the baton, trapping it against the conveyor. As the soldier struggled to free their weapon, Shepard relieved them of consciousness by breaking her own baton over their head.

The soldier atop the belt stood back up, and with a yell he charged along with both troopers left on the ground. Shepard yelled back a wordless challenge of her own and broke out into a run towards her enemies. Biotics crackled around her like a small supernova, and as the Cerberus troops closed in Shepard let loose in the strongest nova she could manage.

The blast instantly obliterated the conveyor belt, shredding crates of supplies and sending shards of wood and plastic flying like shrapnel. The three soldiers caught in the explosion were tossed like ragdolls, soaring nearly twenty feet before slamming into the hard soil outside the depot.

Shepard, now partially buried under the debris of the ruined conveyor, extricated herself and stood with a groan. Her ribs twinged as various muscles all across her body made their unhappiness known, promising vengeance in the form of extreme soreness in the coming days. For now, though, she simply shook off the pain. They still had a job to do, after all.

The crack of a rifle split the air, and a split second later something slammed into Shepard's back hard enough to send her reeling forwards. She converted her stumble into a frantic run, beelining for the nearest cover as gunfire shredded what remained of the conveyor belt. Bullets whizzed past as she dove behind a waist-high metal container, her ribs grinding painfully over each other as she hit the ground.

Between the chatter of assault rifles and her own racing heartbeat, Shepard heard Jack's voice crackle in her ear. "Heads up, Shepard, some soldiers split off from me and are heading your way."

"Yeah, they just said hello," Shepard growled. "Any other surprises that I should know about?"

"Tali has the entire Fleet and Flotilla soundtrack memorized," Garrus chipped in. "She's actually got a really nice singing voice."

Rolling her eyes, Shepard popped out of cover just long enough to cut down an advancing soldier at the knees before ducking back behind her crate. "Not helpful, Vakarian."

A biotic explosion across the depot shook the floor and caused a nearby stack of wooden pallets to tip over. "So how much longer do we gotta keep stalling out here?" Jack asked. "Because there are some asses in that place that I'm really looking forward to kicking."

"Liara and Tali need as much time as we can give them," Shepard replied. "The more guards we can get to come out here to us, the fewer they'll have to get past inside."

There was a pause, during which Shepard took out three more troopers trying to creep up on her. Finally, Jack growled out, "Just remember what we agreed. One way or another, I'm getting inside that ruin and hunting down that lying bitch."

Shepard sighed. She had her own reasons for wanting to find Miranda, namely to rescue the person that had helped save her life back on Jiwai. With the complication of her and Jack's past, however, she knew that letting Jack go after her was the only way that she'd agree to a mission like this. Still, she doubted that Jack had much more in mind than a short and violent reunion.

"You'll get your shot, Jack," she said. "Just keep your eyes out for that big metal bastard.

A small object soared over the crate she was hidden behind, landing with a thud a few feet away from her. Looking down, Shepard blanched as she found herself staring at an active grenade. She lunged to her feet, sprinting through a hail of gunfire as the grenade detonated, blowing her cover to smithereens.

She slid behind the first piece of cover she could find, slamming behind something large and bright yellow. Glancing up, she found herself crouched behind the chassis of a large industrial forklift. She grinned, and in one easy movement slipped around the chassis to jump up into the driver's seat.

If they were stalling for time, she might as well make things interesting.

Liara crept through the dark halls of the ruin, her pistol raised before her. Seeing the inside of this huge metal structure had only reinforced her theory that this was a crashed ship of some sort, as a latticework of narrow corridors with stripped and rusted bulkheads wound through the ruin. Each was lit by dim strips of neon teal light that flickered and sparked every so often, with spools of cabling and electrical wires hung from gaps in the walls and ceilings.

On the other hand, several details of the spaces they moved through seemed to have nothing to do with space travel at all. Each corridor started and stopped with ornate arches covered in runes and fine carvings. At each place two hallways converged, Liara found surprisingly large circular chambers with featureless statues set into alcoves in the wall and spiraling lines of eerie blue light casting shadows all around. Even the halls themselves had sprawling engravings across them, hidden underneath dangling cables and centuries of decay, but decadent and beautiful nonetheless.

After a few minutes of quietly creeping past all of this, Liara was nearly vibrating with the desire to stop and record everything she could see. They had already passed enough material to make an entire thesis on Prothean art and archaeology, and that wasn't even considering the potential intricacies of Prothean linguistics that could be derived from the carvings here! Surely only a small pause wouldn't hurt anyone, right?

"Liara, keep up," Tali whispered from up ahead. "We have to keep moving, remember?"

"Right, of course," Liara replied. Surreptitiously, she activated her omni-tool and took a picture of a nearby archway. Then, as quietly as she could, she scrambled forwards to catch up with Tali.

Together they snuck around a corner and down another empty hallway before stopping as voices started to drift through the archway before them. Liara shot a worried glance towards Tali, who simply shrugged. They could backtrack and try to find a way around, but who knows if they might stumble into even more guards?

Liara motioned to move forwards, a determined frown on her face. Shepard, Garrus, and Jack were risking their lives that very moment to help them sneak through this ruin. They couldn't endanger them even further by dithering around and backtracking at every obstacle.

She and Tali inched forwards and tucked themselves behind either side of the archway, then peeked their heads out to look inside. There they saw a large open room with circular walls and a tall, vaulted ceiling. The center of the room was full of blocky stone benches all packed together and angled in towards an open area in the center of the space. The walls were covered in reliefs of gory combat and executions, while faceless stone statues stood with blades raised all around the circumference of the room. Blazing blue light shined down from neon strips set into the vaulted ceiling, all swirling around each other and filling the air with pale light.

In the middle of all this stood four Cerberus troopers, their clunky white and orange armor clashing harshly with the elegant Prothean architecture all around. One of them, their rifle clenched nervously in their hands, asked the rest, "Isn't this all just a drill? How could anyone have even found us all the way out here?"

Another guard shook their head. "Who gives a shit? If the boss says that we got intruders, then we got intruders. All that should matter to you is going where you're told and shooting what needs shooting."

The first guard nodded meekly, while a third piped up, "So what should we do?"

"We're redeploying," replied the apparent leader of the group. "You two go down to the Heart and reinforce the troops there, while Davis and I head up to guard the package back up on the bridge."

Each soldier nodded, then split off into two groups. The first headed out through an exit at the far side of the room, while the lead trooper and the remaining soldier left through an archway to the right. The sounds of heavy boots on metal floors stomped off into the distance, before silence crept back in to fill the air.

Liara and Tali slowly crept forward into the chamber, weapons up and heads on the swivel for any lingering guards. When they found none, Liara allowed herself to relax and instead ran a critical eye around the room they stood in. She had never seen anything of the sort in any ship she had been in, and as she looked around she could think of no practical reason for such a space to be built. If anything, it reminded her more of a religious cathedral of some sort rather than something inside a spaceship.

"So what do you think?" Liara turned to find Tali looking towards her expectantly. "Follow these guys to the 'Heart' or whatever, or check out the bridge?"

Liara bit her lip thoughtfully. "Either place could be where we need to be," she said. "Without any further information, I would say that this 'Heart' sounds like a place one might store a Masterwork. At the same time, though, a package on the bridge could just as easily be exactly what we are after."

Tali tapped on the chin of her mask for a moment. "If this is a ship, the Heart could mean the engines too," she said. "I could go that way to check, while you head up to the bridge?"

"I do not think we should split up," Liara said with a frown. "Being here on our own is dangerous enough."

"Yeah, but taking too long checking every room one at a time isn't going to be very safe either," Tali countered. "We don't really have the option to play it safe anymore."

Liara sighed glumly. "I suppose you are right."

Tali patted Liara on the shoulder. "Cheer up, we'll be fine," she said. "Just another day in the office, right?"

She hefted her shotgun and moved out towards the far door, then paused just before going through it. "See you in a bit!" she called, and then she vanished through the doorway.

Liara watched her leave, her mouth curving downwards into a pout. "Just another day in the office," she repeated to herself. "I am spending too much time around mercenaries."

After double checking that her pistol was loaded and the safety was off (then triple checking just to be sure), Liara set off through the other door. Beyond lay more tubelike corridors, which she moved through as quickly as she could without making too much noise. A thrill of fear shot down her spine as she passed side passage after side passage. What if she couldn't catch up to the guards she was supposed to be following? What if she had already passed them somehow, and now they were circling back in on her for the kill?

As caught up in these cyclic thoughts as she was, she turned a corner and nearly stumbled directly into the troopers she was supposed to be trailing. Just before she simply walked fully into view in the hallway behind them, she managed to swing her momentum around and fling herself behind a thick pile of cables hanging down from the ceiling.

The soldiers stopped just as Liara thumped into place up against the wall, barely concealed by the wires in front of her. Her heart hammered in her chest as the lead trooper turned around, cautiously looking directly towards her position with his rifle half-raised. He advanced a step, then another, before grunting and lowering his rifle.

"Whatever," he muttered as he turned around. Walking back past the other guard, he said, "Come on, we're almost there."

Liara waited a full thirty seconds after they walked out of sight before emerging, both to build a solid gap between them and to allow her racing heart to settle. Once their footsteps had nearly faded out of hearing range, she set out after them with shaking hands and frazzled nerves.

She pursued the troopers from a healthy distance, her heart thudding loudly in her ears as she trailed them through the corridors of the ruin. Every nerve in her body was sizzling with tension as her chest heaved with each breath. Each shadow she passed seemed darker and more menacing, all deep enough to be hiding any number of unknown enemies.

Liara shivered. More than ever, she wished that she had protested more against splitting up. How would she know what to do if something went wrong? Who would save her if she got stuck once with no easy way out? Was she even capable of going about this alone? She was just an academic, after all, stuck in an enemy ship and in way over her head. How could she possibly have split up from the one friend she had to help her?

A memory lept unbidden to the forefront of her mind in the form of a slanted smile and a warm, husky voice. Behind you all the way, T'Soni, it seemed to say.

As if opening a floodgate, a torrent of images began to punch through the fear clouding her mind and swirl all around her. Shepard standing confidently before her, Shepard clapping a hand roughly onto her shoulder, the way her eyes creased when she laughed and burned when she fought. The color of her lips, the taste of her skin, the resolute determination that glowed in her mind like a star.

Liara remembered the absolute conviction of purpose Shepard seemed to carry into everything she did, from fighting to talking to making love. She remembered the bliss of Shepard's mind interwoven through her own, and how for just a moment she could feel for herself how it felt to be brave.

She latched onto that feeling, grabbing that stubborn fearlessness and shoving it as deep into her own chest as it would go. If Shepard and all of her new friends could believe in her, Liara would simply have to start believing in herself.

Bolstered by this new forced optimism, Liara peeked around a corner to see the two soldiers she had been trailing come to a stop. In front of them stood three more troopers, all looking tightly wound and armed to the teeth. Behind them all was a wide metal door blocking off the corridor, a dull red indicator blinking every so often in its center.

The three guards greeted the two new troopers, and in tense voices they all began discussing the fight raging outside. Liara, however, ignored them, choosing instead to focus on the thick metal door behind them. She was willing to bet that the bridge of the ship lay just beyond it, but how could she get past without getting noticed?

She glanced upwards, her gaze fixing on one of the many thick spools of cables hanging loose from the ceiling. Behind it, dozens of holes of varying size and shape riddled the ceiling, creating a patchwork of gaps into the crawl space above. An idea already forming in her head, Liara grabbed the nearest clump of cables and tugged. To her satisfaction, the wiring gave only a few inches before coming to a stop. She tugged once more to the same result, then nodded to herself. This will do nicely, she thought.

Giving herself no time to overthink things, she leapt up and grabbed the clump of cables with both hands. Now dangling several feet off the floor, she then flipped up her legs and wedged her feet into the nearest gap in the ceiling, effectively flipping herself upside down as she hung from just her toes and her fingers wrapped around the cables. Next, she shimmied her hands up the cabling to pull her torso closer to the ceiling, before finally coming close enough to grab the gap with one hand. Then, with one final effort, she levered her legs and hoisted herself fully up into the crawl space.

Liara found herself in a rectangular tube only three feet high, covered in dust and blanketed in what appeared to be centuries worth of cobwebs. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she began crawling forward as carefully as possible. What would her colleagues back at the university think if they could see her now, she wondered.

She scoffed to herself quietly as she turned a corner in the crawl space and began moving in the direction of the locked door. They would never have made it one day with Shepard, she thought with some bemusement. An image of some of the stuffier matriarchs she worked with huffing and puffing as they tried to outrun some devilish Prothean trap ran through her mind, and with a shudder she shook her head. No, it is better that they stayed home.

Inching her way forward, Liara peeked through the next hole in the crawl space floor only to see a Cerberus soldier directly beneath her. Around them, the other four troopers spread out in a loose defensive formation, their weapons clearly primed and ready to fire. She froze, her breath stuck in her throat as she waited on pins and needles to see if the soldier would look up. You need to move, she thought, frantically trying to will her uncooperative limbs into carrying her forwards. Any time now would be ideal!

The soldier shifted, briefly hoisting their gun upwards with one hand while they shifted their chestplate with the other. Liara, now staring directly down the barrel of an automatic rifle, suddenly found her body willing to listen to her again, and as smoothly and quietly as possible she slithered her way through the crawl space and out of the line of fire.

The next several feet of the crawl space were oddly intact compared to the rest of the floor, allowing Liara to put on a burst of speed as she crawled. After crawling nearly fifteen feet uninterrupted, she paused to look around and gather her bearings. Surely, she must have passed the door by now, but what was on the other side? Even if it was the bridge like she hoped, how would she get down unnoticed?

The dusty walls of the crawl space seemed to hold no answers for her, so with a shrug Liara carried on. Even if she was over the bridge now, it wouldn't hurt to put as much space between her and the guards outside the door just in case something did happen. Confidence was one thing, but self-preservation could never be ignored, after all.

As she crawled, thoughts of her colleagues and fellow historians began creeping back into her mind. I can think of at least ten people who would give up an arm to be where I am right now, she mused, if not the entire Archaeology Department.

A bubbling ball of excitement began to gather in her chest as she mused over the inevitable reaction from the university after she returned from this adventure. Surely her fellow historians would have to listen to her theories on the Prothean Masterworks, now that she had found so much concrete evidence that they existed. She had already held fragments of one in her own two hands, for Goddess' sake! Finally, people might look past her age and her reputation and instead look at the work she had done!

Even mother will not be able to downplay this one, she grumbled. I'd like to see her try to call this 'just playing in the dirt like a ch–'

With a crash, the rusted metal crawl space below her gave up the ghost and split open, sending her careening to the deck nearly ten feet below. She landed flat on her stomach with a pained grunt as the air blasted out of her lungs like a popped balloon. She lay still, mouth flopping open like a beached fish for several seconds, before finally her torso unclenched and she began to breathe as normal once again.

Staggering up to her feet, she unsteadily whirled back the way she came with her pistol raised to shoot anyone chasing after the racket she had caused. To her surprise, however, she found nothing but the opposite side of the large metal doors she had just circumvented, the lock icon still pulsing a dull red. Slowly, she lowered her gun and relaxed just a hair. Perhaps she had landed more quietly than she thought, she supposed.

Turning around, Liara found herself rooted to the spot. Her mouth fell open, unable in her shock to say anything other than a mumbled, "Oh, Goddess…"

All around her was what could only be a Prothean command center, full of elegant consoles and minimalist workstations all powered up and flashing with various symbols and blinking lights as information scrolled at frantic speeds across their screens. All around these consoles were piles of much clunkier Cerberus tech, with laptops, data pads, and power cells scattered over, around, and between nearly every piece of Prothean technology in the bridge. Massive viewing screens covered the far walls, all dark save for rotating Cerberus logos dominating each screen, and massive coils of cables seemed to occupy every open spot of floor.

In the center of this room, around which all workstations and consoles seemed to orbit, was a single straight-backed chair. This chair, unlike the rest of the gleaming metallic technology in the room, seemed to be cut from a single block of stone, giving the seat an unyielding and severe look. Even with how primitive it seemed at first glance, however, Liara saw that thin cables ran up the spine and down the arms on either side, and set into the left arm was an entire suite of readouts and displays.

Her gaze, however, was locked onto the hologram beaming up from the right arm of the chair. The shape was shifting and uncertain, constantly flickering and changing as it hovered a few inches over the projector set into the chair. The hologram itself was vaguely circular and a mere two feet in diameter, but its presence seemed to dominate the room.

"Asari," it said, voice uncomfortably artificial yet still unsettlingly organic. "Come closer and listen carefully. There is much that must be done."

A/N: happy new year gang! this one deffo took a bit to write, but i had some other creative projects that had to take priority over this for a bit so oh well i guess. but more importantly, welcome to part one of the finale! i had to get a bit wacky and wild with the perspective shifts on this one to be able to include everything, but hopefully i haven't thrown off your groove too much or anything lmao. anyways im actually really pumped with how close we are to the end and i hope you are too! here's to catching you all in the next chapter!