Tali jogged at the front of the group, her shotgun pointed down the tunnel as it wove in a three-dimensional roller coaster. Cole's feed thudded right behind her, blue light crackling from his hands. This tunnel was a different color, more silver and less brown than the previous one. A few smaller rust creatures started to form, Thane's biotics blowing them apart before they could threaten the trio.

Ten minutes of running later, they finally came in view of the end. Light came from something within, accompanied by a deafening noise. Before they reached the end, Tali stopped, turning up her suit speaker to maximum. "We won't be able to hear each other in there," she shouted.

Frowning, Thane swapped over to armor and helmet, granting him some respite. Cole just shook his head, making several hand motions. Sighing, Tali shrugged back at him, and he pushed past her into the lead. One last monster emerged from the mouth of the tunnel, disintegrating under biotic assault, and they emerged.

It wasn't a ski-ball machine they stood in, but a ticket counting one. Gears whirled and clacked, and a veritable ocean of orange and red paper spun and tossed below them. As though sensing the intrusion, strands of tickets started to rise from the paper sea, ends wrinkled and torn. "Amonkira protect us," Thane said, even the helmet comms were almost drowned out by the noise.

Frowning, Cole leaped aside as one paper serpent struck down towards him, paper dust flying on the air as the first ticket-length shredded. His leap took him sideways onto one of the gears, clutching to it with one hand as he hurled several lightning bolts at another serpent. Holes scorched in the length, but ultimately failed to catch fire. "I find myself wishing Mordin had come with us," she cried, opening fire on another serpent. Confetti flew on the air as her shots obliterated three tickets, but it continued to grow from the depths below.

Thane switched his sniper rifle for a pistol, blasting away at any delicate-looking gear or spring, and the machine noise quickly tripled in strength. Metal flew through the air, some of it piercing through the colorful monsters. Tali leaped away as three of them converged simultaneously, hurling herself onto a horizontal gear, and summoning her drone behind her.

Somewhere above her, a massive bolt of electricity lit up the machine. Molten blobs of metal splattered everywhere, and a gear large enough to park the Hammerhead fell into the paper sea, dragging down two of the serpents, but more formed around the edge of the obstruction. "This isn't working!" she shouted.

Thane started to say something, but at that moment a serpent struck from behind him, wrapping itself around his leg. His pistol blazed away, but by the time he freed his legs from it, another one was wrapped around his torso, and a third one recaptured his legs. Biotics ripped down the length of one serpent, but they had the scent of blood now, and every writhing strand of paper converged on the unfortunate drell, dragging him over the edge from the platform and into the depths of the sea.

Tali looked up as the sky lit up again. Cole was falling towards the ocean of paper, his entire form covered in electric streamers. They tore through the serpents imprisoning Thane, leaving both of them to tumble the rest of the way into the pit. Free of threat for the moment, she jumped back to the platform and looked down.

Thane and Cole both stood on the remains of the gear. The paper tickets were beginning to burn quite merrily now, and Cole was coughing harshly. Unable to speak over the continuing din, Thane grabbed the conduit by the arm, making a number of gestures. The smoke was getting thick enough to start sending warnings through her suit.

Suddenly, Cole came flying through the smoke, landing heavily on the platform. "Tali, if Shepard does not succeed, tell her she is now responsible for Kolyat," Thane said through the comm.

"Thane? You want her to take care of your son?" she asked in disbelief.

"Perhaps the thought of real responsibility will finally make a difference," he said. "The inferno is beginning to degrade my shields. Farewell, wanderer, and good luck." The channel cut with a bang and a wash of static.

Numb, Tali stood at the edge, staring down through the smoke, until Cole grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to the tunnel mouth. Once they had moved far enough for the noise to drop from instant hearing loss to merely obnoxious rock concert, or perhaps busy airport runway, he pointed at her shotgun. "Put that away and hold on to me," he shouted.

"What? Why?" But used to obeying Shepard's occasionally irrational orders, she was already complying, attaching the shotgun to the back of her suit where it belonged. He turned his back to her, watching over his shoulder as she approached.

With a little miming, she put her arms over his shoulder, clasping her own wrists tightly. Bracing himself against her weight, Cole started forward, moving up into a slow run, then threw his hands backwards, lightning bursting from his palms. Suddenly, they were shooting forward, his feet steady as though on wheels, cruising along twice as fast as she could run. "Why didn't we do this before?" she screamed, fighting desperately to keep her legs from touching the ground.

"Because I didn't think about it! We're inside power cords, so I can use my power glide! Hold on tightly, this might get a little rough!" She turned her eyes front, instead of staring at his profile.

A full crowd of the rust monsters had formed, five or six dozen of them forming a mob blocking their way, ranging in size from volus to Ralph. Grinning like a maniac, Cole lunged to the side, his glide continuing even as he cruised up the side of the wall. Tali locked her legs around his waist, screaming profanities in her native tongue as they blew past the monsters nearly upside down on the ceiling of the tunnel.

Once past them, he slowly careened down the wall until they were back on the floor, and the end of the tunnel approached. Cole slowed down, dropping to a run and then a walk, depositing Tali back on her own shaking feet in the massive chamber. "You alright?"

"We're going to do that again, aren't we," she said, planting her butt against the wall and bending over as she took deep breaths.

"And soon, before those monsters can catch up to us," he said. "I can't hurt them, and your drone can only hold the attention of so many. Without Thane, we can't put them down long enough to risk a fight." His face was grim as he stared at the other three tunnels. "I just have to hope they don't cling to the walls the way I do, or the next machine we sabotage will be the very last one."

She said nothing, just turning to stare down the tunnel where Shepard, Kessler, Mordin, and Miranda had vanished. "Let's hope they can get the power turned off in time, then."

Mr. Litwak unlocked the door to the arcade, whistling happily to himself, only to stop in shock. His ticket-counting machine - the brand-new one he'd bought just three weeks ago, all fancy with the transparent panels so the kids could watch the gears and the optical sensor counting out the tickets – was currently on fire. And the fire alarm wasn't going off.

Keeping his keys out, he ran into the back room, dragging out the fire extinguisher in his other hand. Setting it in front of the inflagration, he yanked out the pin according to the directions, then unlocked the box. The flames jumped up as soon as he opened the lid, but several quick bursts of carbon dioxide took care of that.

Backing away while waving a hand in front of his face, he stared at the ruined mess of his machine. "Well, at least it's under warranty. But man, what a bad start to the morning. Well, now I know nothing else can go wrong." Pulling out his cell phone, he flipped it open with a quick flick of the wrist. "Hello, I just had a small fire in my arcade. What? No, it's out now, but I need the fire department report to include with my warranty claim."

As he gave her data, he peered inside the machine. It looked like some kind of electrical short, from the scoring and melting of the gears and springs. "Shoddy merchandise," he muttered. "Huh? No, nothing. Just complaining about this top-of-the-line product."