6. Access Denied

"Get in! Move!" Shepard winced as a large slab of rock came loose and smashed itself to pieces on the sheer cliff wall as another aftershock rolled through the ground in waves. He called up that familiar electric feeling, watching a faint shimmer of blue deflect some scattered rocks away from the group as Ash ducked past him into the half buried building. Miranda brought up the rear and through her visor he could see sweat soaked hair clinging to her face.

Whatever the explosion had been, it had boiled off a good chunk of the atmosphere letting damaging UV rays from the system's sun bake the ground. Ilos had an irregular orbit, more of an oval shape than a circle, coming closer to the sun then sling-shotting away in a wide loop before being drawn back in. He knew enough about astrophysics; it was probably inching closer and closer to the sun, that oval getting narrower and narrower. If he thought it was hot now, wait until the planet hits 'summer.'

"There is a lot of radio static, Commander. I can't hail the other team."

He nodded, sweeping his eyes over the ancient complex for any signs of hostiles. Nothing on radar. "Keep trying."

Pitfalls, falling cliff sides, structures that looked sturdy at first until a quake rolled through and then they crumpled like a house of cards, you know, if he didn't know better he'd say they were unwelcome.

The inside of the facility had that stale, musty 'old' look to it with dust everywhere and aggressive plant growth breaking through. Strangely, a few lights blinked on throughout the room. This place still had power? The hell kind of batteries did the Protheans use?

"Welcome to the archives." A synthesized feminine voice greeted them. A terminal flickered to life at the far side and a badly degraded deep red hologram swirled into existence. The only feature visible was a single, unblinking eye. "You are the first organic life forms to tour this facility in fifty one thousand seven hundred and five years. May I receive your clearance code?"

From slightly behind him, Williams hummed. "Red is a color reserved for offensive VIs. But," she came up to stand next to him looking at the terminal. "Offense for an archive? Something isn't…right."

Shepard was more concerned with something else. "Is it just me or is it speaking English?"

The woman blinked. "Alright, disturbed now."

Miranda's voice cut across their frequency. "Saren, we got something here in the right most complex, what is your position?" There was no response. "Saren! Do you copy? I repeat, do you copy?"

Dead air.

He heard Lawson shift uneasily behind him. "We made adjustments for background radiation." The radio squeaked and popped with static. "The initial scans showed the standard composites in Prothean ruins," she said quietly. "It's-It can't be the walls." The floor rumbled, shaking streams of dust from the ceiling and walls.

"You are associated with the one known as 'Saren'?" The VI asked. It's hard light display pulsed.

Shepard's eyes narrowed. Why would a fifty thousand year old prothean virtual intelligence care? "Maybe."

"Wonderful," the VI chirped, its voice suddenly emotive. "That's all I needed to know."

He got as far as yelping, "Wha-" before a loud clank drowned him out. The three of them whirled around just in time to see the door they came through slam shut. One by one the lights winked out until there was just the malevolent red glow.

"My designation is Veto."

There was the familiar sound of mechanical whirring and crunching coming from all directions. The sound of auto defense turrets. The sound of being in the center of a kill box.

Shimmering blue flooded over his vision.

"Access denied."

He was already moving.

"Cover!"

Shepard ducked back behind the pillar. The vibrating whine of mass accelerated ammunition splitting the air screamed past him, sharp clangs of the ricochet. He still had his barrier up, stubbornly, feeling the beginnings of a building heat in the base of his skull. He knew from experience those errant pieces of flying metal could dip below the speed threshold for his kinetic barrier.

And it wasn't going to do shit for whatever kind of round those turrets were spitting.

He was pretty sure this wasn't a Geth trap. It still could be, violent artificial intelligences were kind of a Geth thing but genuinely homicidal violent artificial intelligences was kind of new. And he was intimately acquainted with the novel brands of murderizing.

Rachni. Plant zombies. Thresher Maws. Broken steering systems on Makos. Bureaucracy.

Shepard leaned out, then flinched back as an uncomfortably large caliber slammed into his barrier. He sighed. "Fuck my life."

"Commander!"

He ducked, low, scrunching his center of mass as close to the ground as he could while still being on his feet. The damn thing, the VI, was aiming the ricochets at him. And he needed to let go of his biotics, yesterday.

He heard the tell tale 'whonging' sound of impacts on a barrier and then suddenly Miranda Lawson was beside him.

"Give it a rest, Commander." Her head jerked in a reactionary flinch as a corner of the pillar exploded out towards her face and scattered over her barrier. And in a move he'd only ever seen Asari commandos pull off, she bent her barrier into a more triangular shape that smoothly deflected incoming fire. "I'm better than you at this."

Well.

She didn't have to say it quite like that.

"Where's Williams?" His implant was uncomfortably warm, hissing with vented heat as he let his muscles relax. Door they came through, closed. Naturally. Other door, twenty, thirty yards deeper into the complex, sparse cover but some. That half fallen pillar looked promising...

"By the door. She's alright." Lawson paused for a second, then snuck a glance. "I think."

Shepard leaned out, taking potshots at one of the automated guns imbedded in the walls. "How long can you keep this up?" One down.

"How long do you need?"

Useless answer. "Give me a number!"

Miranda was tense but doing her damnest not to show it, purposely keeping her arms loose and knees flexed. But he could see it in her face, the furrowed eyebrows and tight set of her jaw. The dim blue glow of some sort of cybernetics just barely peeked over her customary high collar. "Five minutes. Tops."

He was grudgingly impressed. Saren knew how to pick them. "Let's make them count. You get Williams, I'll deal with the VI."

The look she gave him clearly said 'You're crazy.'

And in response, Shepard palmed a concussive grenade. Well, maybe he was a little crazy. And called out, "Think we got off on the wrong foot! How about we just, talk this out, huh Veto?"

There was a lull in the shooting, followed by the sound of loud, heavy clanks.

"Oh, I'd love to talk!" Veto chirped. "But there is a small matter of linguistic fluency. Slaughter, motherfucker. Do you speak it?"

"Do I want to know what it just pulled out to kill us with?" Shepard asked calmly.

Miranda looked over his shoulder, around the pillar and from the way her barrier suddenly doubled in thickness, he knew he wouldn't like the answer.

"Missile incoming!"

Primal fear screamed down his spine, the burning tingle of his brain stem activating everything attached to his nervous system, the implant 'popped,' a blob of biotic potential flickering into view and then-

Impact.

The concussive force blew his reflexive barrier to pieces, the feedback seizing his muscles as he felt his feet leave the floor, saw the pillar in front of him literally explode-

"-ander! Commander!"

His own breathing was too loud. The radio signal crackled and spit, biotic aftershocks skittering down his spine to just a point above his hips. Below that, he felt nothing.

"Commander! Are you alright?" Lawson's voice screeched and jumped in the audio. "Can you hear me? Please be alive, please-"

"I hear you, Lawson." Speaking hurt and he chinned the HUD display on his helmet, a body image and red splotches depicting empty medi-gel packs springing into view as the rubble above his head shifted. For a moment, he thought he saw four eyes and a slitted nose staring through the window on the black haired woman's helmet but he blinked it away. Ilos, not Elysium, right, right.

He tried very hard not to think about how he was still trapped.

"Williams with you?" He choked out. He could see the ceiling now, that was good. Now if he could just move.

crackle "Yeah," That was Ashley's voice, strong. "What's your condition?"

Shepard gave the HUD his attention again. "All my central armor packs are dry, got soreness, cracked a few ribs I think." He closed his eyes and tried to wiggle his toes. Don't think about it, just report. Don't think, don't think. "Legs aren't responding."

"Well, fuck."

Miranda didn't say anything.

He could hear the two women moving around, the sound of pebbles coming loose and bouncing along, grinding of metal.

"Do you see any-"

"Floor's clean, it's this big one right here, can you-"

"Shepard," Lawson again. The audio was stable now, with only a background static threading through the speakers. "Give us a count." And then to Ashley, "I will lift this, be ready to grab him."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Three," Shepard called out suddenly, partially because he didn't think she would need that much time to prepare a Lift but mostly because he was struggling to hold on to his wits. He was trapped, had a fucking missile shot at him, he couldn't feel his legs-

"Two." Breathe in, breathe out. With a faint whoosh, he felt a bit of the numb pressure on his lower back ease.

"One."

And then Shepard's world exploded into blue stars and scorpions tap dancing on his nerves, he could have screamed at the white hot tingling pain but it was a familiar feeling, so he bore down, gritting his teeth through it. It felt like burnout, that wake up call that said you pushed beyond the implants and the feedback started ripping the nodules apart.

But he could move his toes.

Hoo Fucking Rah.

With a great amount of effort, he rolled off his stomach and gingerly wiggled his foot to show that he had feeling again.

"Good shit, skipper!"

"Well, that is a bit of good news." In spite of her more subdued reaction, he could almost hear the Intelligence Officer's sigh of relief. "Unfortunately, we need more of it. I am still unable to contact the other team."

Shepard grunted, gently flexing to make sure everything still worked. Must have just compressed the spine, pinched the nerve. Walking was going to be a bitch. "Why aren't we dead?"

"I..." Miranda looked around the room self consciously, lingering on the silent turrets embedded in the walls. "I don't know..."

Reassuring.

"The VI?"

It was Ashley who answered, her voice flat and distant like someone reciting something they learned a long time ago, or maybe like someone grappling with a stubborn memory. "The explosion knocked out the terminal it was using but there's more. In a complex this size? There's always more."

He sighed. Always something. "Alright, help me up."

It wasn't until Shepard got a good look at the damages that he realized why they weren't all dead. The exit door was completely trashed, the bulk of the rubble burying it. The angle at which some of the support beams and chunks of ceiling fell at, their positioning, it must have just been convenient acting like it's top priority was killing them all.

'Last thing we need is a psychotic VI capable of playing mind games.'

Not that trapping them was that much better.

He nodded in the direction of the only way out of the room, a single door with a diagonal red line glowing malevolently in the center. "Keep your guard up. Williams, cover our rear. Lawson, I'm suffering from burnout so we're going to depend on your for any biotics, understood?"

"Aye, Commander."

crackle "Yes sir."

And on the other side of the door, stood a rotating cylinder dais projecting a large red eye.

Veto spoke smoothly, without a hint of synthesis. "Still alive?"

Lawson's voice spat over the speakers, "That was a voice imprint, that wasn't created by a sound algorithm, this thing was created recently-"

"This is an acceptable outcome." Back to artificial tones. "The testing can continue."

When nothing immediately popped out to kill them, Shepard let himself passively scan the room. It was more like a foyer, branching in three directions and overgrown with the local fauna. He'd seen tree roots burrow into concrete and Feros was the epitome of aggressive plant life, but to crack through whatever alloy the Protheans used? That was ridiculous.

Miranda stepped forward. "What's your directive?"

The eye blinked. "The Conduit is not to be accessed."

Shepard thought he saw an easy out. "We don't want to access the Conduit."

"Of course you don't." The Intelligence agreed. "The dead don't want anything."

Well. With logic like that-

A gunshot rang out, slamming Shepard's heart into his throat and bringing up his rifle, whirling on the source- he hesitated. "Williams. Really?"

The dais smoked and sparked behind him.

"That conversation wasn't going anywhere, sir." The words were nonchalant, but her voice was almost thrumming with tension. Ex Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams was spooked. "The Archives hold everything the Prothean Empire ever knew," She spoke fast. "The records, the timelines, the history. It's our culture, it's our innovations, it's our minds-"

"Our?"

At that simple reminder, her head jerked as if he had slapped her. "They," she breathed. "Sorry, sir."

"I think," Lawson began. " that what she's getting at is this thing is going to be very well defended."

Shepard took a shaky step. Pins and needles. "Then we need to find another way out. Ideas?"

"Door A, B or C?" The woman hummed, shifting.

crackle "And," Ashley interrupted. "You know what I want to know? We weren't the first ones here, where are all the Geth?"

Shepard stilled.

"That," he murmured. "Is a very good question."

An exploding planet, a booby trapped facility they only went to because of Geth presence...

Ilos was a fucking trap.

And they had walked right into it.

"Keep trying to hail the other team," Shepard said eventually. He checked over his weapons and went back to dig through the rubble for his concussive grenade. His back was still screaming, strobes of pain radiating out from the pinched nerve and concentrating in small nodules of agony. It'd be a while before he'd be able to do anything as simple as a Barrier. He found it. Lawson and Ash were waiting. He shouldered his rifle and rolled his shoulders.

He chose Door B, the long dark corridor in the center poorly lit by sick yellow emergency lighting. An earthquake rumbled below their feet.

"Let's move."

Into the breach.