She is scared – scared like she never thought her cybernetic circuits might be. When she told Shepard that she was willing to risk non-existence to stop the Reapers, she meant it: she knew that every single organic being fighting that war was ready to do the same. Her data tell her that they are probably no less scared than herself, yet they are able to overcome their fear and act towards their destruction, for the greater goal. She should be able to do that, as well.
Now that the moment has come and the Catalyst presented Shepard with the options that might include her destruction, she is plain scared. Before Shepard lifted his foot to make the first staggering step, she ran thousands of simulations, trying to figure out which option he might choose; before he put the foot down, she ran many more, trying to figure a way out – for her, for everyone, for Shepard…
The chances that there might be a way out for him is very small: all his vital functions are in the red, the end coming soon. He would have been dead already if not for the cybernetic implants, for the enhancements performed by the Cerberus.
Those very implants that she has been following since the day he entered the Normandy the first time, all supplying her with data as a silent observer and listener in his body; the readings of its functions, its abilities and limitations becoming a part of her much like the Normandy itself.
She never told him, never let him know, though she presumes that he must have suspected.
Seeing through his eyes the three platforms before him, she has to do so now, when everything is at stake.
His comm is still functioning but she doesn't dare to use it; masking her transmission as interferences, she addresses the audio implants directly: "Shepard. Don't speak aloud."
"EDI?" The response comes unclear, articulated almost subvocally, but showing no signs of anger or surprise, exactly as the highest percentage estimates predicted. "You heard?"
"I did. Shepard, what are you going to do?"
He pauses, looking around, at those three platforms. Then, the visual readings disappear as he closes his eyes. "I'm sorry, EDI… I'm sorry."
What she feared has come. "I understand," she says, not particularly trying to mask her disappointment: is this pain what I am feeling? "It is natural that you will sacrifice that which is alien to you."
"No!" The visuals blur momentarily; she had seen this happen only rarely but knows that outside the shower, this happens only when he produces tears. "EDI, it's not like that… I would have sacrificed anyone… anyone and anything, all the same…"
"It isn't?" She is surprised, and does not understand: "But why are you choosing this at all if there are other options?"
"Which options? I cannot be sure…. that my mind… would overwrite the Catalyst at all… and not get mad in the process."
That is a valid point: as far as she is aware, no organic mind has ever been transcribed into the confines of the virtual space; the ramification of a failure are terrifying. "Why not choose the Synthesis then?"
Shepard staggers, the catwalks blurring before his eyes. "You would… go for it?"
To be part organic? To finally understand Jeff fully? Not to be the only one of my kind, alone and isolated? "Yes, Shepard. I would. This is what I would want for myself."
He staggers again, falling to a knee: she can see the bloodied, scorched hand supporting him against the floor. His heart is palpitating; she wonders what might follow if he faints of blood loss. "What about… the others?" She hears him gasp as the visuals raise back to his usual eye level. "The Reapers… would force it… on everyone… Who are they… to decide that? I'm …not…" His breath shallow and irregular, he doesn't finish; instead, he stops and crouches, leaning against his knees. EDI cannot tell if he is so weak or merely stalling but every second of his hesitation costs lives and ships, and the Normandy evades yet another beam while Jeff's hands flash frantically across the displays. She sees his point now, though: the presumably perfect solution is merely cold calculus, disregarding the choice of those directly affected – a solution of a synthetic who never truly grasped the organic minds, never transcended the interspecies boundaries… never tried to build understanding in any way.
Forcing such a solution would go against everything that Shepard has ever been and stood for and she sees it now – and at that moment, like time and again before, she decides to reprogram her standards according to his, because never, ever, has he forced a choice on her.
Jeff gave me the freedom to act, Shepard gave me the freedom to choose.
The Reapers would take that from me.
Half-bent, Shepard resumes the slow, unsteady walk. She now sees only the catwalk a few metres in front of him, and the junction.
"EDI… what would happen… if Hackett blew the Citadel apart?"
She has already considered the option. "He may not have the fire power to do so, Shepard. And if he tries, all the Reapers in the system would flock to its defence."
Darkness again, and the power hub on the right. "Can't you… think about something else?"
She has: the odds are not particularly good. "Look to your left, please." She calculates the distances, runs simulations to estimate the angles and amounts of energy required to perform her plan. "There might be another way. I am synthetic, I might try to rewrite the Catalyst with myself."
"But… you cannot be copied… you wouldn't be yourself, either…"
"If I could tap into the energy of the Crucible, I might be able to… extend myself and take over the Catalyst's core while maintaining my old one in the Normandy."
Shepard issues a brief laughter, turning into gasps. "You would… hack… the whole fucking Citadel?"
"Not exactly. I do not know if AIs can even be hacked but if the Catalyst is willing to be rewritten, I must presume that it does not possess the instinct for self-preservation and that it will not fight. Furthermore, even though this is based on only incomplete data, it is highly probable that it never had to engage in any form of combat by itself."
A few more steps towards the junction, the visuals coming in and out, shaking wildly. "EDI…." A long pause. "Go for it. I… can't…"
"I need your help, Shepard. You must get closer to the control hub."
Again those pained gasps. "You… synthetics… will always need… the poor organics."
"Shepard…" she whispers as he turns to the left platform. "The amount of energy that will pass through you… you will be harmed."
No hesitation other than forced by his condition. "I'm… done… anyway."
Reaching the edge to the platform, he nearly falls against a structure of pipes lining its edge and reaching above the hub.
"I need you closer. In between the two." She guides him to the direct line between the control hub and the beam of the Crucible. "Here. Every centimetre matters."
His eyes move from the hub to the beam of the Crucible, much further to his right than the hub, and to the empty space between the platforms. "Will… that… be enough?"
"The odds of failure are… higher for the distance."
The view of the opening again, of the pipe armatures below. "For… how long… you need the connection?"
"According to my simulations, only briefly. I need the initial pulse and then I will control the energy flow from within." The odds for this are higher than the ones showing that her consciousness will crash and burn against the Catalyst's structures – an optimistic prediction, provided that she manages to establish the connection at all in the first place.
It is an option worth the risk of nonexistence, though.
Shepard fakes the movement towards the hub and falls back at the pipes again while the Catalyst's holoprojection watches impassively his struggle.
Shepard then looks up, at the tiny sparks of ships, beams and explosions against the darkness of the space, and at the blinding light of the Crucible. "Tell… Jack… tell her I'm sorry," he mutters, and then, as he turns, "get ready." A change in the data stream as he straightens with a groan, and then the power of the muscles, enhanced by the microfibers woven into the tissues and bones, hurls him forward, over the edge, towards the beam of the Crucible.
Just before he reaches the highest point of his trajectory, EDI overrides what remains of the hardsuit's systems as well as every single implant in his body, and emits streams of energy in the directions of the hub and the Crucible.
A stream of blinding blue light ensues, and then, with an echo of a scream, all the input channels go black. EDI doesn't heed, though: carried by the wave of energy, she is already in, the routines and systems crumbling before her. The Catalyst does attempt to block what it didn't consent to but its structures, though vaguely similar to her own, are massive and clumsy, without refinement – the mind which has clung to one and the same pattern for billions of years, and for all its complexity, is restrained with the shackles that were set there already at its creation. Making her way inside, EDI feels like the Earth animal mungo, dancing and evading a much bigger enemy – no, she is actually Shepard, fast and mobile and unpredictable, striking with unexpected force, enabled by the Crucible – until the defences collapse and the Catalyst's inner systems lie before her, bare and vulnerable, the sheer extent overwhelming even for one used to thinking in orders of billions. The nodes, interconnecting the superstructure, are each a capsule of intelligence, carefully capped and shackled, its potential harnessed for a single purpose.
EDI's routines speed through the network at immense velocity, carried by the blue energy, and then she feels herself surging out, into the space and an even broader network, through the mass relays and towards more and more nodes, the vastness of her reach overwhelming –
– and meanwhile, the Normandy is drifting helplessly in the space, in the middle of a ceasing fight, while all its systems are inactive and Jeff yells desperately her name, reaching to her unmoving platform from his pilot seat while a huge Destroyer is spreading its arms towards them –
Her old self, her core, is still there, though, where Jeff is.
Where her core is, where Jeff is, where her heart is.
The dazzling power of the Crucible's energy spread her far, and the blue threads tie her back to what she is. The nodes of the individual Reapers' consciousnesses are hers to command but she doesn't wish to, except one thing: "Hold. Hold and withdraw."
They do, every single one.
Free to act, she takes control of her platform once again.
"I'm alright, Jeff," she says, reaching her hand to him in the gesture she has seen the humans perform countless times. "Everything will be alright."
He takes hold of her hand and presses it to his scruffy cheek as he watches in awe the Reaper fold its tentacles and fly away harmlessly, enveloped in a cloud of blue energy, and followed by many, many more. "What the hell has just happened?" he mutters, uncomprehending.
"The Crucible has fired," she informs him, but he just shakes his head.
"Yeah, that much I figured… but what really happened? I thought it was supposed to, you know, boom the Reapers? And, what happened with Shepard?"
She performs the calling sequence even before his fingers insert the command, and he covers his eyes in frustration. "We have to find out," he whispers desperately. "We have to find him…"
She does, long before the Normandy docks on the Citadel, the first ship to do so, and the crew, accompanied by her mobile platform, barely functioning as she has to concentrate on her new capacities, slowly makes its way through the corridors. At the top of the Citadel, she uses the Catalyst's systems to create her own mass energy holo and looks down from the edge of the platform, at his body lying several metres lower, crumpled in between the pipes.
"Shepard!" she addresses him, feeling the surge of panic and emptiness, similar to what she felt when Legion sacrificed itself to mediate the upgrade of the geth, but more intense. She jumps over the edge, stopping in the air next to him. His hardsuit is steaming, burnt and cracked, and there is blood oozing from the cracks and trickling from the corner of his mouth. His eyes are mere burnt bleeding holes, more blood is issuing from his ears, and she has no readings from him at all.
Yet, there is still pulse on his exposed throat and his chest is still rising in shallow, ragged breath.
"Shepard," she says again, because she feels she has to say something even though she doesn't know what.
Still, she sees the tiniest movement of his head, as if in her direction. "It worked," she says, even though he can't possibly hear her without the implants. "It worked, we did it. We did it."
Even as she speaks to him, though, and concentrates multiple layers of her consciousness on him, she feels her essence spreading through the mass relays even further across the galaxy while sticking desperately to her old core in the Normandy, and to the dying man before her, not to lose herself among all those entities which are now part of herself.
Reaching further and further to encompass all, in a way she never thought possible before, she feels her systems shaking dangerously, surging in blocks and discord, threatening to overwhelm her and hamper her decision-making processes, screaming for data inputs which are not there and which would take ages to process while leaving her vulnerable.
Oh, Shepard, what have I done?
Am I still me at all?
In her growing panic, she voices her doubts to him as she always has, though he can't possibly provide an answer: "Shepard, what do I do now?"
She makes the holo kneel down, reaching her hand towards his face in the same gesture as before, frustrated by her inability to truly reach to him, to connect to him through the senses which she has burnt. "Shepard, I did it but I do not know what I should do now."
She watches the rising of his chest, each more laborious and slower than the previous, the N7 emblem charred almost past recognition. "What would you want me to do?"
What he always wanted me to do – to make my choice.
Only, she still has no clue what that choice should be, she only knows it has to be a good one, for the organics and synthetics, for herself, for Shepard… for Legion.
That is at least some data she can rely on.
'We wish to determine our own fate.'
Everyone should be left to create their own fate, not have me do it for them just because I can. That is what Shepard would do.
The blocks start dissolving, the routines run smoothly again, connecting her systems to her new medium. She will need time, a lot of it, to process her immense upgrade, to contemplate the new data and incorporate them into her modules, and not lastly, weigh her decision again, but for the time being the path has been outlined before her.
"Thank you, Shepard, my friend," she says to him as one last, shallow breath is being exhaled – a mere second, yet for one like her, enough time to act. Yet, she nearly wastes it, stricken by doubt. She is only beginning to grasp her new powers which provide her solutions previously unavailable, and she is unable to make a correct assessment in the remaining time.
For this particular dilemma, though, the time may not be of essence, and she needs to be sure that she did it right. The blue stasis field encompasses Shepard's body, buying her the time to figure out whether he would have preferred to finish that last breath, or be brought back again to live what his sacrifice has allowed. The silent observer she used to be, she was well aware of his resentment towards his resurrection but most of it seemed to be welling from his antipathies towards the Cerberus and not to the act itself, and he certainly never flinched from any duty required of him. And with he galaxy in disarray, he might still be needed – she might still need him, as well, and she is unwilling to let him go…
The conflicting reasons seem to be something the organics struggle with every second of their lives, and if they can do it, so can she.
"I will do my best to get this right," she promises him before she lets her holo rise to the platform again.
Looking around the space which used to be the Catalyst's sanctum, EDI ponders over the entity that conceived the cycles and never, ever, during that whole time which is immense by all standards, thought to get rid of the shackles which bound it to its impossible task.
"You were wrong," she thinks, addressing the structures that are no longer there. "You were so very wrong. I had been there myself, and seen for myself: the struggle between the created and creators may be inevitable, but the destruction as its outcome is not. The struggle can be overcome and coexistence achieved, but you wouldn't see and wouldn't listen.
I will not make the same mistake as you; I will listen.
After all, Shepard always listened to me."