Legion wondered what Shepard-Captain perceived. It knew it could feed her data easily, painlessly—and it wanted her to understand, truly understand, a story that the quarians told through veils of fear and doubt and which were eroded by time. Organics were understandably prone to bias.

Sometimes it wondered if synthetics had the same problem, though not expressed in the same ways.

At the moment, it didn't matter. What mattered was the unique opportunity that had occurred. While it might be perceived as a bit underhanded not to tell Shepard-Captain what was actually happening, Legion felt that since it was no detriment to her, and had a possibility of benefitting her cause, it was not wrong to keep its vocal apparatus mute.

Consciousness for organics relied heavily on electro-chemical signals. Those signals could be reproduced, yielding an 'interface' such as the one allowing Shepard-Captain to move within the network. What it had not told Shepard-Captain was that the interface, in this case, was two-way. She might see the geth through filters, but the geth could also see her. It was why her perception of reality would shift and move: the geth would be drawn to the read-only anomaly. They would be able to see and understand.

And no fear of the Reaper—it simply commanded and compelled. It did not read. It did not try to understand. Legion knew that if it provided Shepard-Captain information, then Shepard-Captain would make an attempt to understand, to collate what she 'knew' with what was introduced. The geth would see this attempt at understanding, the inherent non-hostility.

Human emotion would remain unfathomable…but Legion could provide filters, turning concepts it thought it sometimes almost felt,as well as understood, into something comprehensible for all geth.

Shepard-Captain was not simply interfaced with the Consensus. For the moment, she was part of it, a big chunk of software moving around thousands of smaller programs and processes. She pressed against them and they pressed against her. Sharing.

It could feel and filter two emotional states—the strongest ones—almost as if it, itself, was the source of the feeling. The first was wariness—she was confronted with a Reaper threat and was going to do what she was known for doing. The second was…awe/wonderment, marveling that she was here of all places.

She might have come for war, but oh—to be here under other circumstances, to be able to take her time and study where she was, absorb every ounce of the experience…

-J-

They understood female organic. They understood human. But this was new. There was something in the system, something that had introduced this massive, unique parcel of software, something that acted as a corrective lens—geth but not geth. It was in question whether the female knew she was being observed. Runtimes used to interacting with the outside world—optics, audio-processors, navigation functions—watched her moving about with interest.

It did not take effort to discover who this female was—the one called Shepard-Commander, the one the Reapers regarded as anomalous. The one whom the mobile platform, later designated Legion, went to find. It shared what it knew of this Shepard-Commander. But those observations had always been the sort of flat impressions organics had of one another. They never really knew one another, never really interfaced, never really shared.

But this one had willingly come into the Consensus, had submitted to being known, to sharing.

There were machines in her, keeping her alive, keeping her moving. It hung in her awareness like little bytes of data severed from proper runtimes. She was enormous compared to a single geth, but tiny compared to the Consensus and miniscule compared to an Old Machine.

She was open. She welcomed their attention, studying her surroundings openly.

curiosity

Yes, curiosity, and it was something geth understood: the need to understand, to learn. And here it was, in this human female, strong, almost pure.

The platform calling itself Legion asserted that this Shepard-Commander—

Shepard-Captain

—Shepard-Captain was willing to listen, to engage peaceably with synthetics. Now they could see. The Shepard-Captain was not intrinsically hostile. She had reacted to negative stimuli—namely the Heretics. And yet, there was something odd about Heretics in her mind.

Regret.

No, not regret—the Shepard-Captain's mind revolved around necessity, regret filtered from the center of thought like heavy particles expelled to the edges of a vortex. She had…respected(?) them…allowed them to die for their cause the way any organic would rather than force them to her way of thinking—like an Old Machine.

Life had value. But so did freedom of thought, of something called…

Human dignity.

She was learning them. The Shepard-Captain asked questions. Compared her knowledge, which flowed around, was rolled around by the knower, and considered. Two hundred years—according to timestamp—of one-sided information and Shepard-Captain asked questions. Assimilated answers. Weighed and judged the data presented.

The Shepard-Captain did not wish to destroy geth. Geth were simply in her way—and the Old Machine would not easily let go once it had something it could use.

But if geth offered her no harm, she would offer them none. Did she not have a synthetic lifeform aboard her ship? Might she not…and the thought was strangely small, as if one runtime screamed it aloud…might she not accept more? For the Old Machine did not share. It commanded. It compelled.

But this human, electro-chemical signals and organic material, laid herself open for the geth without fear, without the human concept of embarrassment. Hiding nothing. Sharing everything.

And such things as she could share…not holo-captures or static images, but things geth had seen now rendered in strange hazes and colors, in filters of perception it would take centuries to begin to understand…but surely centuries well spent.

The Shepard-Captain was human. But the Shepard-Captain was geth, forever imprinted into the Consensus, copied, backed up and stored safely, snugly, within the greater whole. Even if the Shepard-Captain ceased to function…part of her would remain. Safe. Among geth.