Nirvanna awoke with a start. He shook his head, wondering where he was, and remembered the events from just hours before. He yawned a bit and stretched, wondering if it all was just a dream. He walked out of the Mako, looking in both directions. To his left, an endless stretch of tunnel, dimly lit by glowing moss. To his right, a clump of roots and grass and flowers, signs of his short battle before. He wondered exactly what had happened, whether he was dreaming or not, and then walked back into the Mako. He hoped the cave would end in daylight soon, and checked the supplies and stats again. He put the pedal to the floor, and drove off down the dim tunnel, towards whatever lay ahead.
He had been driving for fifteens minutes when it happened. Nirvanna spotted movement on his radar, red dots, and gulped. Looking ahead, he saw humanoids running towards him and his light, but dripping green slime from every wound on their bodies. He floored it, recognizing humans taken over by plants from the Thorian he had faced before, running them all over. His tires squelched the plant-filled bodies, and his machine gun mowed them down with well-placed sprays of bullets. He continued to race, realising the tunnel was absolutely filled with the nasties, and rather than waste ammo just ran them down, speeding through the tunnel as fast as the Mako would go. His tires suddenly stopped running over anything, and he saw nothing from the tunnel, so he turned on the lights. He blinked, as the lights bounced off nothing.....and then he realised he had a faint lifting sensation in his stomach. He checked the altimeter, and turned pale as it confirmed his thoughts: he had somehow driven so far he had reached a pit, and was now falling at an incredibly fast rate towards whatever was at the bottom. He didn't waste time screaming, as Tai-nin had taught him never to scream in the face of the inevitable. Instead, he fastened his belt, set the drive core keeping him straight to one hundred and ten percent, and flared the small jets at the bottom of the Mako. He felt it slow down, but it wasn't near enough to keep him from falling, and so the Mako dropped, the Turian inside of it, down the dark cavern it had found itself in.
It was a while before he had heard it. The horrible noise he should never forget to this day. He forced himself to try and make sense of it, a moaning, vibrating, ringing noise as if there was a UFO cutting someone to pieces while they were still alive. He boosted the Mako's jets and slowed it again, continuously doing this until two minutes later he finally touched down. The noise had kept him alive, for if he hadn't heard it he wouldn't have slowed, and even the Mako would have crumpled like an aluminum can. He checked the radar and was baffled, for the entire screen was red and looked like a tv screen that had no channels. It simply made white noise as the red scrawled all over, and he checked out the window. The sound was louder down here, and right up ahead was another tunnel. To his sides and rear was just a room. He thought on how strange this was, for the room was made of some sort of metal and paper, the metal rusted down so much it seemed to bleed. The floors were stone, but even that seemed distorted. He looked behind him again, and saw a hideous something. He wasn't sure what it was, nor even if it was alive, but he knew the weeds were here keeping it concealed. It's body was dressed like a surgeon, a brown sacklike outfit covering it's body and covered by an apron. The feet wore no shoes, but they were blackened with no toes. He couldn't even see it's head, for the mottled green thing atop it's shoulders twitched and pulsed violently. He didn't pause for long, flooring the pedal of the Mako and speeding down the tunnel away from the thing, which he had only just realised was not only making the sounds, but also turning large red valves jerkily, though no pipes showed what the valves controlled. He sped onwards, through the tunnel, which looked as though it were made of pulsing flesh. He suddenly remembered something Tai-nin had said to him, when he had discovered a creature on another planet. Tai-nin had told him that there was an executioner and undertaker so foul, so evil, that it was hidden away in a part of the galaxy where no man or beast or thing had ever been, kept guarded by beings that could spawn millions for every of their number killed. He snapped out of his recollection long enough to find a ramp in the side of the tunnel. Nothing could have scaled it, except for the Mako's treads. He rode on up it, and looked back only once. The creature with the twitching head had somehow kept up with him, and tried to climb up the ramp, but was stuck as the bottom by some sort of goo that the Mako had somehow run right over. The creature made the loudest moaning sound yet, and Nirvanna sped the Mako away, up and up and up, until he no longer remembered just how far down he had been, or how far up he was going. An hour passed, and Nirvanna finally reached the entrance to the cave. He drove out into the night, signifying how long he had been underground, and drove until he reached an open plain, avoiding every tall weed he could find, which were more prevalent around the entrance to the ramp. The moment he reached the clear area, he buzzed Sovereign and got a signal. "This is Nirvanna, I have a code Octagon, repeat, code Octagon, get me the hell out of here!" he shouted into the receiver. He felt a tug, and the Mako was lifted up by the Normandy's tractor beam, Nirvanna sighing a huge breath of relief as he was picked up.
Nirvanna walked over to the hot tub, feeling dazed and light-headed. Nav'Ras was just getting out, replacing his armor onto his scaly body as the Turian removed his own, slipping into the tub and groaning. "Are you all right, Nirvanna?" Nav'Ras asked. "You look a bit pale, like you've seen something horrible." The Turian chuckled at the ironic words, and then remembered something. "Sovereign?" Nirvanna asked. "I would like that planet I was on to be Redmapped with Conceal Code Fifteen. Lock code-" and then he rambled off thirteen completely random numbers, followed by three random letters, and then finished by saying: "As soon as you have commited this code to memory I want you to lock down that planet, Redmap it again, and delete the code so it can never be used again." Sovereign did this, implanted a massive force field around the planet, turning the surface purple with the glow of the shield until it turned invisible. "All codes lost. Planet is now unable to be reached." Sovereign said. "I must inquire why you deemed that neccessary, Nirvanna." The Turian sank deeper into the hot tub, groaning as the hot water made him relax. "Because, Reaper," said Nirvanna, "that planet houses something that never needs to be discovered. Ever again." Sovereign gave a sound of acknowledgement, and flew off to the next planet to wait for Amaranth.
