Liara never had a chance to see anything about the planet they were on. She had been injected with some sort of anesthetic - which she didn't resist, as she had found long ago how futile any resistance could be - and then she had woken up inside the ship. It was small, very small. There were two bunks in the lone room at the back, a pilot cabin with two seats, a narrow workshop/engineering area at the back next to the bunk room, and a single living area in between. It was comfortable enough though. But with no kitchen, all they had were pre-packaged meals, and very little in terms of entertainment.

Still, after the poor and very irregular meals she had been given during her time in captivity, regular pre-packaged meals and sleep felt like a luxury.

The most disturbing thing was still Shepard. She had been assigned one of the cots, the other one being used by Miranda, and so far Liara had no idea what Shepard did with her time. She never seemed to sleep. She never seemed to eat. She would wake up in the middle of the night to visit the restroom, and she'd be there, sitting on the sofa in the living area with a datapad in hand, following her every move.

Shepard read a lot. She hadn't ventured a glance over her shoulder or anything like that, but every time she caught a glimpse of the datapad it had something different on. Asari physiology. Electronic schematics. Language. She was learning High Thessian and Thesserit, yet the human had never tried speaking it with her.

She didn't speak much at all.

But even then, when Liara hadn't done anything to attract attention for a while, when she was distracted, she caught glimpses of something else behind Shepard's eyes. Beyond the anger. Rage even. No, there was pain. There was also a forlorn look, like that of someone who didn't have anything at all.

"We're approaching the coordinates," Miranda called from the cockpit.

Liara hesitated, but Shepard didn't even move a muscle, her eyes fixed on the datapad. With a slight hesitation, Liara made for the co-pilot seat.

"Where are we?" She looked at the map, and took several confused seconds to think. It was the middle of nowhere. No star system nearby. "Are we looking for a rogue planet of some sort?"

"Not exactly," Miranda replied.

It took a while, but after several scans, and increasingly wide circular flybys, the instruments finally picked up something. Liara recognized the signal easily enough, but her astonishment didn't let her brain process it at first.

"Is that..."

"A relay, yes," Miranda said, already directing the ship to signal lock.

"It's active?!"

"Do tell, doctor. What relay can you think of that was lost but known to be active, and is related to the protheans?"

"I..."

She couldn't think of anything. Miranda gave her a somewhat disappointed look, and continued her relay approach. For some reason, that look of disappointment stung.

Prothean relays? The protheans built... What am I saying, they didn't so why...

They hit the relay transition and the map quickly updated their galactic position, the VI calculating the relative position of the known galactic markers. She brought up the map legend and gasped.

"Ilos..." she said, the wonder in her voice showing how quickly she had forgotten her previous misadventures.

"It would have been more impressive before the transition," Miranda said evenly. "Starting scans."

Scans. Who cared about scans. Liara wanted nothing more than to go down to the surface and start exploring. Ilos. Deep in the Terminus, no known relay that would grant access to the riches inside. Every prothean cache of any worth found through the centuries had included a reference to Ilos. The Refuge.

Her imagination made her thought that maybe they could even find the protheans living on that planet. So lost and so far, it might have survived the cataclysm that destroyed the protheans. Initial scans, however, quickly disabused her of that notion. Fires raged through its reddish, dry surface. Lightning cracked over the atmosphere, speaking of planetary disruption of the natural cycle. There was still life on that world, but it had been ravaged beyond habitability. It was a dying planet.

She drank the data with all the curiosity that had driven her career to the ground. Miranda, too, spent countless hours going through the data. But she was looking the the needle in the haystack. Liara just wanted to examine every single bit of hay.

Shepard continued to be as uninterested as she had always shown herself to be. She still ghosted Liara every step she took.

But on the third day, Miranda stuck gold.

"I believe I found an active power source," she had said.

Shepard had lost all interest on her datapad at that.

Incredible. We finally know what they looked like!

Statues. A bit weathered, for sure, but protheans knew how to build and make it last. The complex Miranda had found was incredibly large, much larger than the initial scans had predicted. Much of it had been buried underneath soil and the surviving vegetation that still clung to life in that hot mess of a planet. Average temperature was nearly 40 degrees centigrade, and they were approaching 50 in that part of the planet. Luckily, she had been given an envirosuit to wear, and it was keeping her cool enough.

They found an active recording in one of the buildings. It was somewhat garbled, and she couldn't understand a word.

"All prothean language found has been written," she said, after looping the same recording for probably the twentieth time. "I've never heard it spoken."

"Learn fast, Doctor," Miranda replied, with an air of humor in her voice she didn't quite understand.

They found a door off the open area where they had parked their small ship. The underground tunnel was very long, and it took her a good two hours to make their way through.

"Goddess!" Liara shouted, pointing towards the upper part of the walls. "Pods! There are pods!"

"I can see them," Miranda said, not slowing down. "No power going through them."

"There might be remains inside. Remains of protheans..."

"I'd call that grave-robbing at this point," Miranda said.

Liara looked at her and grumbled, but said nothing else. She couldn't understand the complete lack of interest from those two. There had found the lost world of Ilos! There were surviving structures there, better preserved than anything she had ever seen before. How could they be so... so... unsurprised about everything?

"What the..."

Finally! What did she- "What's that?" Liara gasped.

"Looks like a barrier."

It was. A thick kinetic barrier had closed off the large corridor, completely cutting their advance. Fifty thousand years, and a barrier was still functional. Incredible!

"We should find the power source. To have lasted this long, it's extraordinary! How- Eek!"

She squealed when she heard a loud clanking sound next to her, and to her right, a door opened with what could only be a lift.

"What's this?" Miranda said, looking inside. "Almost feels like an invitation, doesn't it?"

Liara peered inside from the open entrance, but as she was about to step back, a firm hand landed on her back and gave her a shove forward. She stumbled, took three steps, and ended up on the platform. She turned around and her protest died in her mouth. Shepard had been the one to shove her, one hand resting on her pistol.

After nothing came out of the shadows to eat her, the other two joined her and they started their descent. As soon as they arrived, a terminal at the end of a platform came to life.

"You are not prothean," a voice said, while a garbled holographic construct flickered on and off on the terminal. Liara gasped, and she heard Miranda do the same.

"N-No, we are-"

"You are not machine either," the construct continued. "This eventuality is one of many which was anticipated. This is why we sent our warning through the beacons. I do not detect the taint of indoctrination in you. Perhaps there's still hope."

Before Liara could respond, she heard the unmistakable sound of a gun unfolding behind her, and turned slightly to see Shepard pointing a gun at her head. She felt the blue drain from her face.

"What..."

"Are you sure about that? She's not indoctrinated?" Shepard called out loud.

"My kind became quite adept at detecting indoctrination," the construct said, its voice even. "Even in species other than our own. There is no mark in any of you."

Shepard didn't seem convinced. Almost like she didn't want to be convinced. But after an interminably long pause, she finally lowered her gun.

And Liara let go of the breath she had been holding the whole time.

"All right Liara," Shepard said. "It's your show, miss protean expert."

She gestured towards the construct and, after taking a moment to regain her composure, Liara walked to the terminal and looked at the construct.

"Please. Tell me everything."

They were there for almost six weeks, the time it took for them to salvage and transfer the VI, Vigil, to their ship. The VI did, indeed, tell Liara absolutely everything she wanted to know, and when it was all said and done, she wished she had never heard the first word of it.

The galaxy was going to end, and only the three of them were on the side that wanted to stop it.

On the plus side, she finally was freed of the inhibitor shock collar.

Author's Notes: Soooo, Ilos. It doesn't seem like much, right? Well, go back to the first and second chapter, read the note Roy left for Shepard, and what Miranda and Shepard agreed to on the second chapter, and you'll realize that this moment will change... everything.