Scanning showed that the thickness of the doors is about half a meter. Such a mass of metal is difficult to cut through with conventional equipment. But the salarian wasn't bothered. He took out some kind of cutter, turned it on and cut a hole in the metal with glowing blade just in five minutes. Here it is - a technique on the verge of fantasy.

With a loud hoot, a thick slab of metal fell out of the passageway.

"Well, at least this cutter earned its cost.” Tria said, assessing the thickness of the obstacle.

"I told you." The Salarian remarked, carefully placing the cutter on the platform. “All of this equipment is absolutely necessary for conducting archaeological excavations.”

"Even that holoprojector with the free porn database of all races in the galaxy?"

“I already explained, the videos were a free app to the projector. And we may need it to organize a communication channel or connect to a computer.”

This seemed to be a sore subject for Okren, because there was a hint of desperation in his voice, while the rest of the team smiled at something funny.

"Yes, Yes, and the moment I caught you watching sex between a krogan and a salarian, you were just checking the equipment.”

"Umm, Yes!”

“Okay, rest is over. Go on.” Tria commanded, peering down the aisle and lighting her flashlight.

Krogan was able to squeeze through the opening with difficulty, so by the time the rest of the party was ready to continue, I had already moved forward and looked into the next room.

"That reminds me something." I remarked as the others joined to me to examine the room.

"Stasis capsules?" The salarian suggested.

“Exactly! However, the contents are somewhat rotten.”

The room was long and narrow, about twenty meters high, and its walls were lined with many rounds of sarcophagus. I went to the nearest one and lit up the frosted glass. The outline of a humanoid figure shone through it.

More precisely, it was difficult to make out, because for so much time, the glass lost its transparency. But the ultrasound sonar showed me that there was a corpse inside with a lot of metal inclusions. Oddly enough, the body's tissues remained plastic, although there were traces of rotting or some other destruction of organic matter. I could tell they were dead, though. None of the bodies had any traces of the etheric energy characteristic of living organisms. There was also no sign of ghosts or spirits.

The salarian carefully cut the cap of one of the capsules and removed the glass. We saw a hideous-looking corpse that looked like melted ice cream.

"Are these your zombies?" Krogan asked, poking the corpse with the muzzle of his blaster.

"We'll have to do an autopsy to find out for sure." Okren fired up with enthusiasm.

“But only after we've examined all the rooms.” Tria broke off his zeal. “We need to find the main computer, the reactor, and the labs, if there are any. First of all, we are interested in technology.”

Everyone took their eyes off the corpse and looked around for something more valuable than a pile of organic matter. I also paid attention to local equipment. However, the passage of time was ruthless to the legacy of the Forerunners, and workable electronics were not observed around.

Judging by the shape of the bodies in the capsules, this was the base of Inusannon, the most advanced civilization of the previous cycle. That is, this dungeon was more than a hundred thousand years old. If steel doors have been deformed during so many years, what can we expect from microelectronics?

I went to one of the stasis pods and began to scan it in every way I could. But all I could find was a small amount of the Element Zero. This heretical form of matter served as the basis for any local equipment, so I had already learned to identify it by scanning the flyer, blasters, and equipment on the transport platform.

In fact, the entire capsule was now a caked, monolithic mess, with barely discernible wires running through it. I decided to track down where all these electronics were connected. The capsules had a tree-like connection system. Several neighboring stasis devices were connected to a common node. Then the wires from the nodes went to the larger node, and so on.

Following this structure, I came to an unremarkable spot between two capsules. Then I had to use barbaric methods to rip out a wall panel, dig out a whole pile of garbage, which turned into wires, and in the end my prey was a rectangular block the size of a brick. Apparently, this thing controlled all the pods in this room. The wires from it went somewhere deep into the wall, most likely to the main computer of the complex.

"What is it?" The salarian asked, interesting in my actions.

"Looks like the control computer for these stasis pods." I said, seeing no reason to hide the obvious.

A scan of the device showed that it still had crystal inclusions and a general structure, but I honestly didn't know how this thing could be made to work, or if it could be made to work at all. After saving the scan results in my body's memory, I handed the' brick ' to Okren.

“Take. Can you figure it out and read its memory?”

The salarian took the device carefully, treating it like a shrine.

"I'll need equipment from my lab on the ship." he said, packing up the loot and placing it on his cart. "But according to the omnitool, the computer is in acceptable condition and working on the technologies that I know. Probably, I can read the most contents of the long-term memory.”

“Wonderful. Send me a copy of the data later.”

“Certainly”

I went on looking for something interesting, and the salarian began to dig in the niche where the computer had been located. Judging by his muttering, the scientist was interested in the wiring diagram of the equipment.

This room with high-tech coffins was not the only one. In total, I counted exactly four thousand stasis capsules, of which about fifty were free. Also, there was another staircase leading down. There was nothing else interesting on this level, so in fifteen minutes our procession moved on.

When we descended, we found ourselves in the technical rooms, where most of the place was occupied by the reactor. It was the source of the radiation I registered. However, the salarian said that the reactor has not been working for a long time. Moreover, judging by some signs, it was some kind of sabotage or emergency shutdown. I scanned the reactor and memorized its general layout, then decided later to ask Okren how it worked.

Another room we entered with bated breath was the server room, where the main computer was supposed to be located. But here us waited a bummer. According to the footprints, someone detonated a bomb in this room, which literally destroyed all equipments, turning them into a mess. Only at the edges of the room we could you find twisted and compressed remains of machinery.

"It looks like everything was destroyed by the explosion." The salarian confirmed my thoughts.

"Or not all of them…" I said thoughtfully, analyzing the scanner readings.

There was another source of strange quantum effect nearby. I went to the right place, launched a magic scanner, and found a suspicious object, mostly made of metal, under the layers of debris. In a couple of flicks of my hands, I removed the obstacles and pulled out a metal cube with a side of ten centimeters, on the surface of which transparent letters glowed slightly.

"What is it?" Tria asked, glaring at my find.

“Judging by the internal structure and connectors, this is the Central Core of the computer, which has its own power source on the zero element.” I gave my opinion. “I'll keep this thing.”

Asari opened her mouth to contradict me, but I put the device to my stomach, which it immediately sank into. Thus, it became clear to everyone that the trophy can only be taken from my corpse.

“You have a whole reactor and thousands of stasis chambers.” I replied to the unspoken claims. “I think you can find something for yourself.”

Tria swallowed my words, glared at the salarian, clearly accusing him of being slow in finding trophies, and then left the room. While the black archaeologists were looting the base, I started researching the computer. Unlike the other artifact I found, the entire structure of the device was in a state of perfect preservation. Apparently, this had something to do with a working power source that provided self-healing equipment.

Pretty quickly, I was able to find the sequence of signals that this device responded to, but the result of such testing surprised me greatly. I felt the computer send a wave of energy into the surrounding space, and just a dozen seconds later, an astral entity that was already familiar to me looked into the light and began to search everything around. I immediately isolated the computer and my body with special shields, but this did not reduce the Reaper's interest in what was happening.

The first sign of impending problems was the hum of the reactor. Under the surprised cries of the salarian, the power source went back to normal operation. Literally before my eyes, the' burned-out ' computer circuits were restored and began to process information flows. Regular lighting turned on, ventilation started working, and then a natural zombie apocalypse began.