Mass Effect Game Guide

To Rift Station

Regardless of your choice, head through decontamination and head through to the Rift Station. Only the Science Station lab elevator will be working, so head on up. Speak to Captain Ventralis here to learn more about the situation, and receive an access card that will let you move on. He'll also tell you that Matriarch Benezia is in the Hot Labs. You may want to check the merchant nearby before moving down though; he may be inaccessible to you later.

Quarantine

Before attempting to complete the main mission here, head down to the medical bay behind Ventralis and talk to Dr. Cohen. He'll give you the Quarantine quest; he wants you to head to the quarantine lab and help find a cure for the sick scientists. You'll need to talk to Ventralis again and convince him to let you into the lab.

After speaking to Ventralis, take the elevator to the Quarantine Lab/Barracks and speak to the guard outside the lab; he'll let you through. Head in and use the terminal to make the cure. The minigame here is simple: press A to start it, then press the highlighted button when the meter is in between the two arrows on top of it. Do this a few times and you'll have your cure.

Unfortunately, the Asari you saw earlier comes to assassinate you here. Kill her, then return to Dr. Cohen with the cure. He'll let you access the maintenance areas if you wish; that will let you avoid the Hot Labs. Doing the Hot Labs as well will simply mean a lot of extra experience, though, so it's worth doing.

The Hot Labs

There are plenty of parts to the Rift Station that you'll want to explore here, but for now, you can head down into the Hot Labs by returning to the tram station. You can find the elevator that leads to the Hot Labs in there. If you speak to Yaroslev Tartakovsky inside, he'll tell you all about the Rachni, and the need to arm the neutron purge that will eliminate all life from the Hot Labs. He'll give you the keycard required to initiate the purge, but is killed before he can input the code into Mira. D'oh!

Grab the codes from his body, then head to the Mira terminal in the back room here. If you start the neutron purge, you'll have two minutes to return to the elevator before you all get wiped out. There will be a bunch of Rachni waiting for you in the room where Tartakovsky was sitting, so you'll have to fight your way through them to the elevator, but you should have enough time to do so.

You can return to Ventralis' station now; he's moved back a bit into the Rift Station. When you reach him, he'll open fire on you under orders from Benezia. No choice but to take him out! Ventralis himself has a pretty nasty weapon, so try to nail him with a Singularity or Lift to keep him incapacitated while you deal with his soldiers.

Finding Benezia

Benezia is somewhere in the labs: that much seems clear. It seems likely that she's in the Secure Labs in the center of this complex. You can check the Medilabs here for some items, as well as the Guard Barracks. When you're ready to move to the Secure Labs, you have two options: you can either head north through Security and reach them directly, or take the elevator to the Quarantine Lab, which will let you move through the back corridors of the facility. The former route will alert the guards in the Secure Labs to your presence, while the latter is considered "sneaking in" and may let you fight fewer guards. Since we like a fight, we took the former route.

Fighting Benezia

Regardless, when you enter the Secure Labs, you will indeed encounter Benezia. (Try to loot first aid kits from the area before heading in, as you'll likely need them.) This boss fight is a multi-phase encounter; she won't engage you directly at first, but will instead bring in Asari commandos and Geth warriors in shifts.

You begin this fight in the northeastern corner of the lab area. The first wave of enemies will come from your south, then from the northwestern corner. What you may find helpful here is to head to the northwestern corner as soon as the fight begins, then move down to the middle-western walkway. You won't have much cover, but since Benezia doesn't move, she won't be able to fire on you or use her biotic powers on you through the cage that holds the rachni queen.

The last encounter here will take place with groups of enemies in the northwestern and southeastern corners. Use grenades and area-of-effect abilities to take them down, then deal with Benezia herself. She'll give you the location of Saren's next objective, the Mu Relay, then turn on you and attack with some powerfully bad voice acting. It's difficult to overcome, but it's doable. When she attacks again, quickly use your powers on her, bust down her health, then take out the Asari commandos in the room to finish the fight.

Approach the rachni cage here to deal with the queen. You can choose to let it go for paragon points or burn it up, presumably for renegade points. With that done, check the area for crates, then head back to the tram via the shortcut nearby and get back to your ship.

Return To The Normandy

Head back to the ship to talk down the mission. If your character has been carrying on romance plots with more than one teammate, they'll likely come to a head now; Kaiden and Liara both confronted our character, for instance, forcing us to choose. Regrettably, a menage a trois situation doesn't seem to be very palatable to anyone. Make your choice and move on.