Shepard's ground team hit the ground on the heretic station, quickly and quietly like only the best pilots in the Alliance could manage. Landing was the easy part, because windows were still not a part of the equation, and for now they could count on being undetected. The rest was up to her.
The three of them wandered around carefully, taking in their surroundings for a lay-of-the-land assessment. She wasn't quite sure what she was expecting – a lack of development compared to last time or the exact same setting – but everything looked painstakingly familiar. There probably wasn't much room for improvement after installation, when it came to reaper tech evolved to perfection.
"You know, I'll give the geth this – their ships have got the silence going for them. You don't hear everyone and their uncle pitching in hot takes every other second."
Kaidan's comment made Shepard grin, but it rubbed Tali the wrong way. "Excuse you? Is that a roundabout way of telling your entire crew to shut up?"
"Well, not the entire crew. Shepard is more than welcome to express her opinions," he decided playfully.
"Glad I have your permission."
Tali huffed. "See if I stop geth from shooting either of you."
"I bet Liara won't like your rules." Joker predicted over the comm. "Neither will Williams."
After a moment of thought, Kaidan seemed to arrive to the safest conclusion. "They get waivers too."
"So if I ask, do you think they'll side with you over me, Alenko?" Tali said shrewdly.
He fell silent, conceding the joke, and Joker snickered over the comms.
Trying for focus, Shepard gestured sharply for her squad to follow her over a corner and down a pathway. "Will you comedians please be quiet? We're supposed to be infiltrating, not bulldozing."
Tali tossed her head, unconcerned. "Not like that'll last. We can't access the data from anywhere but the main terminal, and we can't get to the main terminal without punching through most of the station."
"We can at least delay them sounding the alarm, can't we?"
They seemed to accept that, and a radio silence settled that Shepard knew wouldn't last, for all of Kaidan's claims. The path to the heart of the station was littered with geth hubs that they destroyed for their own convenience as a preemptive attack. Kaidan demonstrated some curiosity about the heretics, asking questions that hadn't originally occurred to him when he'd met Legion. Shepard let Tali answer them, soon enough caught up in recollections of the final sprint of their stint with Cerberus.
"So this is kinda – brain-washing? Almost makes killing them seem more humane."
"I don't know. Giving them a chance to live lets me sleep better at night. Maybe that says more about me than anything else."
Shepard said nothing to Tali's disgruntled words, and Kaidan let the matter drop. The silence held until they reached their destination, where a horde of geth began encroaching on their position in short order, trying to keep them from gaining any more ground.
"Rocket trooper to your left, Shepard, watch it!"
"I've got it." There was a blue implosion and a fizzling sound, before several metal clicks settled into silence. "Those things over there are in a pack, someone overload them."
"Hunter inbound, Alenko, pay attention to your own surroundings!"
"That thing's been dead for five minutes. I'm about to tell it. Watch."
Soon enough, the waves of geth being thrown at them broke, and in the minute of respite, Shepard approached the console, accessing the relevant systems without much resistance. Maybe the geth hadn't expected anyone getting this far.
"EDI, I'm making you a backdoor. Can you get in?"
"One moment, Shepard." Shepard took one step to her right and then paced right back to face the terminal, figuring that was long enough. "I have full access."
"Atta girl. What's the what?"
"The virus is not yet complete, as we expected. I can finish development, and it will only take me a brief minute to download the relevant data. I recommend you backtrack your way out to the Normandy in the meantime. I don't believe your position will be secure for much longer."
"Got it. Moving out."
"What's the over-under that the way out is unblocked?" Kaidan wondered, following her to the exit. Shepard unstrapped her sidearm as an answer. "Alright then."
They had no time limit to find their way off the station this time, but the stragglers mobilizing on their position were there just the same. It was a little conflicting to fight geth again after all was said and done, but they didn't leave her much of a choice when they started shooting.
They rushed out of the station under heavy fire, and Joker sped away the second the airlock locked behind them.
"Why is it that we're always escaping bombs or gunfire?" Kaidan complained, freeing his head from the confines of his helmet. "You never take me anywhere nice."
"Go put away your gear before I make you check if what's outside the airlock is nice, Alenko," Shepard shot back, grinning only a little.
"I heard worse threats as a teenager on Jump Zero," he cajoled, but complied, following Tali down to the lockers. Shepard trailed after both of them.
"You two have a weird definition of what constitutes flirting."
"Oh, you're one to talk, Tali," Shepard said, indignant.
"Shh."
A few hours later, weapons in their rightful places and wearing the casual uniform she favored aboard the ship, Shepard wandered over to the crew deck for a snack. As though to cause her pain in immediate impediment of her plans, the loudspeakers crackled to life the moment she took a step toward the kitchenette.
"Commander, EDI's picking up some hostile signals on our route," Joker reported over the comm. "Geth."
"They trying to ambush us? What, do they want retaliation?" Shepard asked, confused. She was pretty sure the geth didn't much engage the concept of revenge.
"Dunno. She can't clear it up well enough. It's far out, I think we can avoid whatever it is entirely. Re-routing through the Omega Nebula just in case, with your permission."
"Granted," she approved.
"Aye aye. I'll give 'em the turn-around in the Amada system," he gloated preemptively.
"Don't count your chickens before they hatch, Joker," Shepard ribbed.
"Don't what now?"
"Never mind."
It didn't take Joker long to make his detour, bypassing the relay that would force them straight through the source of the signal EDI had identified. Instead, they took the only alternate route, using the Omega Nebula relay. Something about this rubbed Shepard the wrong way, for some reason – but there was no active threat she could think of that she should be worried about, so she pushed the strange feeling away.
Joker was going to take precautions anyway, it wasn't like someone could force them onto a predetermined path – he'd run around systems until he felt safe to proceed. Her pilot knew to keep the Normandy's exact location a complete secret at all times, given the unreasonable number of enemies she collected on a daily basis.
Naturally, it took a single FTL jump for her suspicions to materialize in EDI's form.
"Shepard," came the AI's casual voice from the loudspeakers, "you should be advised I am under attack."
"Come again?" Shepard requested alarmingly, having trouble reconciling EDI's tone with her words.
"A geth infiltration worm attempted to breach my defenses. It then escalated to far more brazen attempts, though nothing is getting past the firewalls."
"Geth again?" Shepard muttered, and was hurrying in the direction of the bridge without quite realizing it. "Wh-"
"I recognize this particular signature, Shepard. And there is no reaper code contamination. If I am not mistaken, this is Legion's idea of first contact."
Shepard practically skidded to a halt behind Joker's chair, gaping between him and EDI. "Are you serious?"
"You'd think," Joker answered, looking over his control display critically. "We should land, Commander."
"Yeah, this is why that signal blocked our original route. They want us to land," Shepard concluded confidently.
"… But we're doing it anyway?"
She nodded assertively. "Bring us in, Joker."
"It is unnecessary," EDI protested. "I have the situation under control."
"EDI, you just focus," Shepard ordered firmly. Joker straightened. "Where are we headed, Joker?"
"You're not gonna fucking believe this, ma'am," he said, sounding incredulous himself. "Prepare for emergency descent into Alchera."
"Oh, fantastic."
"We still don't have to land," EDI reminded pointedly.
"Yeah, we do," Shepard disagreed, tone changing immediately. "Can you tell me anything about what's going on?"
EDI let a silent pause go by for a few seconds, during which Joker and Shepard exchanged uneasy looks. "Yes. Legion is on Alchera himself."
"What?"
"We still don't have to land," the AI repeated once again.
"No, no, this is good," Shepard realized, thinking fast. "This might be our chance to establish contact with the geth."
"And did it have to be Alchera?" Joker complained. "Seriously. Alchera."
"Heard you the first three times, Joker. I'm sure it's just a coincidence," she dismissed.
"More like a fucked up plot point for someone's fucked up sense of humor."
Shepard rolled her eyes and turned back to EDI. "Is he trying to tell you anything?"
"Not particularly. Unless my interpretation heuristics are not yet capable of decoding his harmful data streams for some other communicative purpose."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's not it. You're sure we won't run into hostile firepower on atmospheric entry?"
EDI shook her head. "I don't believe so, Shepard."
"Then I'll go out and have a chat," she concluded. "Keep the comm. channel open, I'm grabbing my gear."
Shepard left the bridge at a brisk pace and only managed to get a hold of her helmet by the time part of her squad tracked her down in the cargo hold. Unsurprisingly, no one looked amused.
She sighed as Garrus crossed his arms at her. "Alchera? Seriously?"
"It's Legion," she explained.
"Well, that just about explains everything, doesn't it?"
Shepard pulled a face at Kaidan. "Yeah."
"Not funny, Shepard," Liara reprimanded. "What's going on?"
"Why's everyone freaking out about this specific planet instead of, y'know, the geth?" Ashley wondered, looking around in bewilderment.
James bumped her arm with his own, gently. "OG Normandy got struck down somewhere around here. Went down in this rock's gravity field."
"Oh, wow, okay. Never mind me asking."
Shepard reached under her chin to clasp the headgear into place, and rolled her shoulders. "Quit being a bunch of crybabies. I'm the one who died here, remember?" she provoked, trying to snap them out of their funk.
It worked. Tali scowled, presumably because she'd been extensively offended. "Fine, you mighty hooligan," Nihlus said drily. "Try not to get yourself killed."
"Can I go with? I'll punch him for you."
"No, Grunt, we're not here to punch him," Shepard explained patiently. "And no one's coming with."
There was no further argument after that.
Stepping out into the freezing cold of the planet wasn't welcoming, nor did it fill her with any particularly good omens. As expected, Legion was waiting, standing quite still on the ice and out of range of the Normandy's weaponry. Shepard's train of thought was momentarily derailed by the sight of him, without a rifle hole in his chest or half-assed patch job made out of borrowed N7 armor. He looked a lot like a regular geth unit – but the 'eyebrow' panels, rising as soon as she was in sight, and single antenna gave his unique identity away.
Shepard shook it off and strode forward. "Mind stopping the DoS on my AI?" she demanded the instant she was within earshot.
The panels on top of his head lowered significantly. "Our attempts are not so crude."
"That's true, Shepard. What he is doing is not DoS, it's-"
"Thanks, EDI," Shepard interrupted monotonously. "I was just making a point."
"I see. His attack has ceased, I should note."
Shepard relaxed. "Good."
Legion's lights blinked twice, and he seemed to decide he wanted to move on from a discussion that was going over his head. "You are Shepard-Commander," he greeted. "Thank you for landing."
"Yeah, that's not gonna cut it. What the hell were you doing to my ship?"
Legion shifted with a few clicks. "The intention was never to cause harm. We wanted to convene with you, but did not imagine you would be trustful of a geth platform."
"So your plan was to attack one of my crew? How does that earn my trust?"
Legion's artificial eyebrows lowered significantly. "You refer to the AI."
"Her name's EDI."
"Acknowledged. Our intention was to set down the ship safely and engage in dialogue," he explained. "The objective was achieved."
Shepard wearily rubbed the back of her neck. "Gods, Legion," she muttered. "That was one hell of a first impression."
The geth's lights flickered at her several times. "'Legion'?" he echoed in confusion.
Shepard bit back a swear word. "Metaphor, bible, whatever, EDI can explain it to you later. Let's just- find somewhere to talk. Actually, not somewhere. Come aboard. I have oxygen and room temperature in there," she joked. He stared. Shepard sighed and beckoned him after her.
"Understood. We will follow you. There will be no hostility from your allies' part?"
That was insulting. "I'm inviting you aboard in the spirit of friendship," she stressed. "What the hell do you think of me, that I would betray you into an ambush?"
"We are miscalculating a lot of your expected behavior," Legion noted. "We apologize. We will alter parameters to distinguish you further from your fellow organics."
Shepard cringed at that and said nothing, just gestured for him to go through the airlock.
Tali was waiting anxiously when they stepped inside, hands flying to her mouth – or where her mouth would be – when Legion walked in, probably to keep herself from exclaiming something along the lines of 'you don't have a giant hole in your torso and you're not dead'. For his part, Legion seemed to tense, and Shepard glanced back briefly to find him eyeing Tali like he expected an attack.
She cleared her throat. "This is Tali'Zorah. She is an ally and no threat to you."
The geth walked forward at the reassurance, and he and Tali stared each other down. "We had heard of your involvement with Shepard-Commander, Creator Zorah."
"Tali," she corrected quickly.
"Will there be a conflict due to our presence?" Legion asked, ignoring her.
"No," Shepard answered in Tali's stead, gesturing toward the CIC. "Both of you, come on. There's a lot to explain."
"Lead the way, Shepard," the quarian said uneasily.
In the comm. room, Tali and Shepard sat, but Legion remained standing for reasons Shepard couldn't be bothered to question. She leaned forward to get his attention. "Let's start with this – what was the idea? Deviating me from route so I'd pick you up?"
If he was surprised that she'd worked out his strategy to bring her to Alchera, he didn't comment. "The geth have been monitoring your actions for some time, Shepard-Commander. When we realized what you had done at the heretics' station, the need to establish contact became urgent. We had to get you within range."
"So that's a yes, then."
"We were not expecting to board. But we wanted to meet you."
"Alright. We've met. Now what?"
Legion leaned forward. "We wish to explain to you the heretics."
Shepard hesitated, and chose the lie. "The heretics?"
She decided to feign being in the dark for several reasons, the most important one being that she wanted to be seen as a reliable ally and not a short-circuiting one. Legion talked about his origins, the geth consensus and their current situation, just like he had last time – nothing much seemed changed, near so far as Shepard could tell, beyond the fact that Legion hadn't found his way to Alchera by following her trail. Apparently, it really was a coincidence. A disturbingly ironic one, but Shepard still chose to put it out of her mind.
"What did you salvage from the station the old machines gave the heretics?" was the question he ended with.
She answered with another question. "Why? Is there something you wanted from there?"
Legion was quiet for a few seconds. "We have some suspicions regarding data that may be stored there."
"That's not very specific," Shepard replied just as evasively.
"The probability is low that your mission was simply entering and leaving again without dealing any significant blow to the geth, beyond some structural damage," Legion reasoned. "There was something salvaged."
"Yeah, there was. A virus," she finally admitted.
"To rewrite the geth," Legion confirmed. "This is consistent with our intel."
"Where'd this intel come from?"
"Several months ago, you made a significant amount of the old machines' stored data cashes freely available, Shepard-Commander. The geth commandeered it to draw conclusions."
Shepard reeled back. "I don't remember that being among the data I shared with allies. It was supposed to be preventive, help develop technology for the fight against the reapers."
"Its intended purpose was served. The geth were merely able to process the data in different ways. You may not have seen it, but we could infer it. We assume the data you did not share alerted you to the existence of this virus." Shepard didn't confirm it but also didn't deny it.
"You mean you intercepted our communications," Tali said drily.
"Organic communications in general," Legion confirmed. "We know of this virus' existence, but not of its exact nature or developmental stage. We request clarification in that regard."
"I can show him, Shepard."
Legion turned to the speaker from which EDI's voice was projecting. "You are not allowing the establishment of connection protocols."
"It's untoward to exchange data in silence in front of people."
"I do not understand. This analogue mode of communication is inefficient and connectionless, not suited to this environment."
"I prefer it. And I am still waiting for Shepard's orders."
"You have left my handshake hanging," Legion said, and Shepard could swear there was an accusation in his voice.
"What's happening?" Tali murmured, and Shepard shook her head in response.
"Can we all just settle down?" she demanded, and Legion turned back to her. "EDI, go ahead and give him the data."
For a full minute, the geth went still and there was complete silence. Then, Legion's eyebrow pates rose steadily. "We have completed our analysis of the recovered data."
"So?"
"We understand its purpose. It is not fully developed."
"I can assist you in doing so."
Legion's eyebrows went back down. "Clarify."
Shepard cleared her throat. "This virus was meant for you – the geth that didn't judge to follow the reapers."
"Correct."
"So could it be repurposed?"
Legion stared at Shepard for several long seconds. "We will work with the Enhanced Defense Intelligence to fulfill development of this virus."
"It's EDI."
"Acknowledged." Legion's lights flickered briefly. "We believe this would be accomplished more effectively if we remained aboard the ship with privileged connection bandwidth, Shepard-Commander."
Tali's eyes jumped from Legion to Shepard continuously, and she knew the quarian was just waiting for her commander's approval so she could engage in a lengthy discussion on quarian-geth relations with Legion. Shepard stood and offered him her hand, which he took, form as terrible as the first time around.
"Welcome aboard, Legion."
"Alliance's got a lock on that reaper, Commander. Joker says ETA fifteen minutes," Kaidan said, poking his head into Shepard's cabin, where she was distracted by another batch of useful Cerberus data Miranda wanted her to forward to the Alliance. Developing a relationship between those two entities was going to take effort.
She set aside the datapad immediately, following him out. "You're on the landing squad. EDI too."
"I'll be right down, Shepard," EDI promised.
Kaidan nodded at the assignment. "Aye, ma'am."
"Ma'am," she echoed, amused.
He retaliated it with a shove at her arm. "Just keeping it professional. Is it bothering you?"
"Say it again," she suggested in lieu of answering.
A grin appeared on his lips instantly. "That's inappropriate," he complained, "ma'am."
Before Shepard had the chance to do anything about it, he stepped out of the elevator toward his locker, and she headed toward the bridge, where EDI was waiting by the airlock.
"How's Legion settling in?" she asked while they waited, leaning heavily against the wall when the familiar turbulence began.
"He is devoting extensive processing power to the task at hand. Little else is occupying his primary memory structures."
"Is that a way of saying he's too focused on the virus to pay attention to anything else?"
"Yes."
Kaidan's footsteps sounded to their left just as a jolt nearly knocked them both on their asses. Joker yelled a half-hearted apology and Shepard rolled her neck.
"What's with the chop?" Kaidan asked by way of greeting, pressing a hand against the wall too.
"Winds," Shepard explained shortly, craning her neck to get an eye through Joker's windscreen. "Guess conditions didn't improve here. We should get inside the reaper's mass effect envelope soon."
"It's still got one? How long's it been dead? Are we sure it is dead?"
"It's dead, Lieutenant," EDI confirmed. "But dead reapers are dangerous too."
On cue, the ship stabilized, and Joker gave them the green light to get going. "Yeah," Kaidan muttered, taking up position to Shepard's right. "I get that."
The airlock announced they could exit with a synthetic noise, and Shepard stepped out into the dead ship with some trepidation. She'd made it out once, she told herself dubiously. The feel of the place was still creepy.
"The lack of previous Cerberus presence eliminates the possibility of husks, correct?" EDI wondered hopefully.
"You would think," Shepard agreed.
Kaidan groaned. "Urgh, husks? I didn't know there could be husks. I hate those things."
"Shepard, the ship is orbiting the brown dwarf, like last time," EDI noted. "Extraction will be hasty once again."
"So we can't salvage this thing for the Alliance?" Kaidan concluded, looking around critically. "Could be useful to study the tech."
Shepard shook her head, pressing forward. "Neat idea, no valid execution. They still haven't invented a way to move, let alone dissect, a thing of this size in a lab. And I'll be damned if I'm letting anyone else step foot inside, not unless I want a repeat experience of what happened to that Cerberus science team. Speaking of which, stay away from any whispery shadows trying to indoctrinate you."
"I do not believe that is the actual scientific process by which indoctrination happens."
"Yeah, well, it doesn't sound like science anyway. Besides, this thing has to go. It's about to throw up kinetic barriers and it's the only way for us to get out."
Like the reaper had been waiting for her to say it, there was a violent jolt and she stumbled. "And I'm guessing that was it," Kaidan concluded warily. "Thanks for the warning."
They made their way toward the core with no opposition, just with the uneasy feeling of something bigger and better than them bearing on their back. The effects of indoctrination attempts were easier to recognize after so long dealing with these things. Kaidan spent the whole way taking in the interior with an expression of growing dismay. The dragon's teeth affected him particularly. "This is awful."
"Yeah. And you haven't even seen the worst of it."
"Sometimes I feel like I need to keep apologizing for not being her-"
"If you do, I'll just keep reminding you you are now."
He seemed to accept that, going silent. EDI tactfully pretended to not have heard a thing.
"Is that the core?"
Kaidan's question came when the answer was obvious, the three of them standing in front of a giant, metal eyeball-lookalike. Shepard's way to the heart of the reaper had been uneventful, but the oppressive atmosphere had muted any conversation quickly. She was still feeling trigger-happy at the unusual lack of hostiles, at any rate, which was probably influencing her squad.
"Yes," EDI replied. "But we have still not located the IFF, so we cannot yet destroy it."
"It wasn't where it was last time," Shepard elaborated distractedly, taking in the room with a keen eye.
"Cerberus probably unearthed it, before," EDI reasoned.
Kaidan glanced at his commander. "So, we're just – gonna hang out?"
"I'd strongly advise against that. I believe it would negatively affect Shepard's morale if you defected to the enemy due to indoctrination. And what's bad for Shepard's morale is bad for everyone's morale."
Kaidan laughed, but Shepard found it less amusing. "Sounds like it's in the galaxy's best interests that we find this thing, fast," she said drily. "Get cracking."
EDI instantly headed for the main terminal under the core, and since neither Kaidan nor Shepard felt they'd be much help there, they chose to look for the device the old-fashioned way. Wandering away, she started to check nooks and crevices, she wasn't quite sure what for. It was pretty pointless to search for something so disingenuously in such an ingenious environment.
Kaidan seemed to reach that conclusion faster than she did. He approached her lazily, eyes scanning the reaper inner plating. "Creepy design."
Shepard gave up, glancing at him. "This is where I first met Legion," she noted, staring at the open strip of floor where he'd originally collapsed.
Kaidan followed her gaze. "What were you shooting and how many were there?" he joked, but not really.
"Ugh, husks. So many goddamn husks. I can't even see the humor in it."
"Well, at least Cerberus hasn't fed this thing, this time," he comforted. "We're good."
"Small mercies."
His gaze turned critical as he analyzed the lay of the land. "Legion's a sniper, right? Can't have been much help here. No man's land."
"He was out for the count anyway," she dismissed. "Those things overwhelmed him. Took out a few earlier, though, back there," she gestured vaguely in the direction from which they'd come. "When we were on our way. Even offered a polite greeting when I saw him. Didn't stick around. I was probably not trustworthy at the time."
Amused, Kaidan dropped it, eyeing EDI. "So, if it took Cerberus a whole science team and several weeks to get that IFF-"
"Should take EDI a couple of minutes," Shepard finished, in agreement.
"I appreciate your confidence, Shepard," EDI thanked with a small smile.
"Empirical evidence is the best teacher."
"Is that what you tell yourself to justify getting shot on the daily? You're doing it for the experience?" Kaidan proposed.
"Keep talking and maybe I'll make it mandatory training. For everybody."
"You mean it isn't already? What the hell am I doing here, then?"
"You haven't even gotten shot at today," she exclaimed.
"Was that- was that an actual argument?" he asked tentatively. "And can I tell Ash you really uttered the sentence 'you haven't even gotten shot at today' out-loud, for real?"
Before she could answer or even scowl murderously, EDI piped up. "Shepard, I have located the IFF."
She snapped straight back to business mode. "Where is it?"
EDI gestured to the console, so Shepard approached to get a batter look. "It has its own processing unit. It is located near the hull, surprisingly close to the surface."
Shepard took a look around. "This ship is several kilometers long, EDI. Where exactly?"
In response, EDI looked up – way up, to the ceiling, and unless Shepard was very mistaken, past it. "Almost at the top of the hull, in fact."
"Alright. Ways to get there?"
"Cerberus got it out somehow," Kaidan reasoned. "Can't be inaccessible."
"It's not," EDI confirmed. "There is a disabled pipeline running the length of the reaper. It will get us there, though we'd have to make our own way into the chamber where the IFF is stored. Unfortunately, gravity protocols are keeping us parallel to the pipe, which will make it difficult to reach our objective."
"And taking down the gravity fields-"
"Will also require us to leave this ship if we do not wish to share its fate into the brown dwarf."
"We could make a run for it," Shepard suggested, by which she really meant 'I could make a run for it'.
"No, we can't," Kaidan denied immediately. "It's at least a full kilometer from here to there. You'd take a full seven minutes, minimum."
"I could run really fast."
"You'd also need to come back out with the thing and evacuate in time," he pointed out impatiently.
"… Ah. Yeah, you've got a point."
"How did Cerberus do it, then?" Kaidan questioned, changing the subject at his victory.
"With elaborate safety measures and construction that we do not have the opportunity to set up," EDI said.
Shepard was frowning at the metal structure over her head, thinking. "What was the pipeline for?"
"I'm not certain. My most immediate guess is for a power source, but I have no concrete evidence to support it."
"Did Sovereign have something like it?"
"The damage done to Sovereign at superficial hull areas was severe. There was no way to tell."
Shepard acknowledged that with a hum, pacing slowly. "What're you thinking?" Kaidan asked curiously.
"If it's a pipeline, stuff was either going top-down or bottom-up," she thought out-loud. "If it's the second, we can catch a ride. If it's the first-"
"No luck."
"But it's disabled. The reaper's dead."
Shepard shrugged. "We can jumpstart whatever system that is, just a bit, can't we?"
"That's the worst idea I've ever heard."
She rolled her eyes. "We're not resurrecting it. It's like if you shock a dead body. The muscles will react, but not because the brain's sending out impulses anymore."
EDI was already bringing up the console again, even if Kaidan still found the idea unappealing. "How can you guarantee getting in there will be safe?"
"Well… It should be as safe as most things I do."
"That's-" He sighed despondently. "That's accurate."
"I believe I have a way to put it in motion," EDI announced. "Unfortunately, it appears as though the direction of the pipeline is indeed top-down. However," she continued before anyone had time to lament, "a severe strain on one of the secondary processing cores attached to the pipe, right around the middle, will reverse the process. It has all the indicators of being a rollback mechanism."
"Okay," Shepard assented, mind racing. "So we get inside, and force a strain on that core somehow-"
"And then wait for normal function to resume to come back down," EDI finished.
They followed the AI toward the far wall, their access point to the pipeline. EDI considered the solid metal plating for several moments before requesting Shepard's grenades, which she provided willingly.
"Where's the core and what kind of strain are we talking?"
"The easiest course of action, I believe, would have Joker aim the Normandy's cannons," EDI replied casually, sticking the explosive in strategic points across a two-by-two meter grid. "Of course, the strike would have to be very precise, lest we get caught in the blast."
Kaidan's opinion of the plan was deprecating each second, so Shepard hurried to press two fingers to her ear and call up Garrus. "Vakarian, do you copy?"
"Need me for something, Shepard?" he greeted immediately.
"EDI's gonna send you the exact coordinates of a core I need overloaded but not overly damaged. She'll notify Joker. And please remember we're still inside, so take care with that Thannix, would you?"
"You know what, I'm not even going to ask questions anymore. Give me three minutes," he promised, and the comm. clicked out.
"Please give the explosion site at least three meters of area of effect space," EDI requested in a friendly, mall-VI kind of voice, because she was really putting some work into her humor heuristics.
The three of them walked away briskly to get behind cover, and it wasn't long before the wall came apart in a near-perfect square walkway, beyond which Shepard could see a slightly elevated metal platform of some sort. They left cover, approaching the smoking debris cautiously.
EDI brought out her omnitool. "Jumpstarting the system."
With a pleasant hum, what Shepard had called a platform began lowering, and another appeared at the top just in time, taking over their sights and revealing itself to be a perfectly shaped cube. It too vanished under the floor, and yet another appeared overhead.
"What are those things?" Shepard asked, frowning.
Mystified, Kaidan shrugged. EDI tilted her head. "Highly reactive metal, extremely energetic, but stable in current conditions. Unknown purpose."
"If it's solid and can handle our weight, it's good enough for me."
Shepard's comm. came to life. "You ready?"
The three of them hurried to clamber onto one of the blocks, quickly becoming enveloped in darkness as it made its way down the pipeline. "Do it, Garrus."
"Where are they going?" Kaidan murmured in the ensuing quiet.
"Deposit somewhere at the bottom of the ship?" EDI theorized.
"Heads up," Garrus warned, and the following rattle nearly knocked them on their feet. Shepard grabbed onto Kaidan's upper arm when the cube stopped moving abruptly and started upwards much faster than it had been going down, the disorientation proving too much for her equilibrium to handle. "Everyone alright?"
"We're fine," Shepard replied, letting go of Kaidan once she'd found her legs. They passed their original entry point and kept ascending. "Good work," she praised.
"This is what these guns need calibrating for," Garrus stated, pleased with himself.
"Yeah, yeah. Save it for your self-evaluation essay, will you?"
"Those aren't real, are they?"
"They are if I want them to be." The comm. died without another word.
Shepard had to bring out her heavy weapon to shoot up a charge that would get them inside the tight chamber EDI pointed out. A few dozen meters away from their destination, she aimed and carved out a crude doorway, moments before they arrived and jumped out of their makeshift transport. The IFF was there in plain view, trapped and tangled in several ports and wiring that EDI disconnected easily. There wasn't much room for maneuvering, but since their mission was wrapped up quickly, they only had to wait for the pipeline to switch directions again.
"How long do you think it'll take?" Kaidan said, awkwardly pressed against the plating to avoid shoving against either woman.
"It shouldn't be too long. For efficiency's sake, the corrective protocol can't- ah. There we are."
EDI's pleased tone-switch coincided with the metal blocks silently beginning their descent again, a good deal slower. They immediately climbed over the opening to one of the cubes, and settled down for the ride, the IFF in their possession.
"Look at that. A mission without bombs-"
"We blew through two walls."
"-Without running on a timer-"
"We're gonna send this thing into a star, which means we'll have to haul ass to get out anyway."
"-Without hostiles-"
"There's still time."
"Fine, Shepard, I give up," Kaidan relented, throwing in the proverbial white flag. "You bring chaos with you wherever you go. It's inevitable. Quintessential."
Shepard shrugged helplessly, having nothing to say to that.
They jumped through EDI's much better pathway, heading directly toward the core. It went down easily, particularly without the distraction of swarming husks. "Joker, you ready?" Shepard called, hesitating before discharging her last shot.
"Start running, Commander."
She aimed, and the bullet slammed onto the sizzling body of energy with an impact. Kaidan and EDI were already quickening their step in the direction of the exit, and she joined their rear hastily. They still had to jump onto the airlock, but at least the reaper was roiling away toward the star, and the Normandy could speed away with them safely inside.
