Alenko saw a scene like this once in a horror movie. The bad lighting, the color-leeching blue with dark shadows, the alien synthetic and the brave space marine.
The problem as that it was all too horribly real, and it made Alenko want to ask the inane question 'isn't there a better way?' But he knew that if there was Shepard would have already proposed or accepted it. Up-linking into the Geth consensus—or even a fraction it—seemed colossally stupid. Or maybe he'd simply grown sensitive to Shepard's brand of 'crazy' during the months they'd been separated. Garrus and Tali seemed surprised by the geth's proposal, but neither was surprised when Shepard accepted it as a viable action.
It bothered him that Tali had accepted the geth's suggestion. One would think she, of all people, would be the first and loudest opponent to the idea. She'd had reservations, but she hadn't argued against it.
"I'll be okay," Shepard declared as she settled back into the pod. It sealed, reminding Alenko painfully of a coffin. There had been no body the last time there was a coffin for Jalissa Shepard, and seeing this, now…
"I'll be okay," Shepard repeated, her voice muffled, but firmly reassuring.
Alenko knew the second iteration for was for him, specifically, and nodded to show he heard. But he couldn't watch as the geth did whatever it needed to do to 'upload her' into the server. He watched the geth instead, 'Legion,' as it tinkered with one of the panels nearby.
"Upload successful," it announced, turning to the two marines, then gestured to Shepard's pod. "This platform will power down for the duration of this mission. Please ensure that the upload site is not disturbed."
Alenko nodded once, biting back some kind of dire warning to the geth that if anything, anything happened to make that pod a coffin…
From Liara's expression, she was thinking much the same thing.
Legion looked from the two marines to the server. "Shepard-Captain will only be damaged if her uplink node is disturbed." With that, the geth powered down, sinking it its knees and slouching forward, the blue lights that marked it as being 'active' fading to nothing.
Liara chewed her lip. "I don't like this," she said softly, "I don't like this at all."
For once Alenko felt no need to fall back on the line 'Shepard knows what she's doing.' This was just stupid. "I'm not too happy about it, either." It was creepy and quiet within the server room—Alenko didn't know what else to call it—so much so that he found his eyes drawn unwillingly to Shepard in her technological prison.
It was worse than a scene in a horror movie. It was ever bad dream he'd had since Shepard had died. Time had slowly healed the nightmares, but they came back in full force now, and he had no doubt he'd see them again the next time he went to sleep. Her skin looked unnaturally pale, unblemished, washed blue-white by the pod's lights. Her breathing seemed regular, her face free of pain or concentration, just the hard lines of sleep—sleep without peace.
It left him feeling sick, with the irrational desire to open the stupid pod, to take her out of it and hold her until life and warmth came back to her. He'd never considered life after the Reapers, but he could almost guarantee no child of his would ever hear about Sleeping Beauty of Snow White or any other sleeping princess sort of tale from him: he would be unable to tell them without thinking back to this, his duchess in combat boots in that tech and plastiglass coffin, still and cold—
"I wish I had something constructive to do," Liara murmured, switching from nibbling her lip, to nibbling at the tip of her thumb.
Again, Alenko agreed with Liara: her glance involuntarily wandered over to the pod every so often.
He wished it were otherwise: already found himself ready to start jumping at shadows.
Neither of the two watchers sat down; they merely found a place to lean, any surface or support that happened to be handy…providing that 'something' wasn't a geth or parts to a geth. There were more geth, Alenko realized, in other holding pods like Shepard's, and it made him all the more nervous.
Places like this could make even the sanest person feel paranoid.
Alenko's gaze kept wandering back to Shepard's impassive features. There was no hint of what was going on…wherever she was. Nasty thoughts about brain damage and comas—as well as the all too visceral distress at seeing a corpse in a coffin—made his skin crawl. He hadn't expected to be so strongly affected by the sight, but he was.
Knowing that it was better to be here than waiting than not didn't help him much.
The interruption telling him that Zaal'Koris' ship was downed, and that Vega (and, by extension Garrus) were going to rescue the man didn't help.
Because, of course, they wanted an update on Shepard.
Suddenly, just as Alenko lost track of time—and he couldn't bear to check the chrono on his omnitool, for fear it would say only a matter of seconds had passed—the pod hissed and Shepard took a deep breath. It was not a panicked breath, merely as if she'd been abruptly woken from sleep. The pod opened, letting her stumble free. She seemed to have some difficulty with her limbs, but she looked so comical, as if responding to an early alarm clock's call after a long day and a short night, that fear and thoughts of coffins, death, and loss vanished from Alenko's mind.
He reached to grab hold of Shepard's arm and help her balance. She was alive.
"Hot damn…" Shepard muttered, shaking herself. "What a rush…"
"How're you feeling, Shepard?" Liara demanded.
"Thirsty." And Shepard proceeded to unfasten her canteen and tip the contents of the whole thing back.