Chapter Eight: Reclamation
Jack moved through the corridor with uncharacteristic caution. The geth had found an abandoned Alliance frigate still in Earth orbit that scans revealed might still have "adequate facilities." Clarification came later from Tali when she had approached Jack privately to ask for help. There was a functioning medbay, she said, one with equipment necessary for an experiment she was working on. The only problem was that the frigate was crawling with mechs, ones that had apparently gone rogue and attacked their human counterparts not long after the Citadel exploded.
For two months, everyone had been busy with clean-up of London just so that they could have a stable base of operations. The only reason why Hackett had even approved Jack leaving planetside to check out this bit of not-quite-wreckage was the fact that Reaper presence in the city was believed to be at a minimum. Moving rubble and other debris with her biotics didn't have nearly the appeal as blasting things to smithereens did. This was the compromise. Jack wasn't stupid. She knew that Tali's suggestion came as an alternative to the biotic getting bored and causing more harm than good, especially as her students were still lending aid where they could.
She could do some good here. Of that she was certain. A single shockwave down this corridor alone had eradicated the LOKI mechs patrolling it with ease. The YMIR mech at the far end was a separate issue.
"Small One, get down!"
Jack didn't hesitate. She quickly took cover as Grunt went storming past her, lining up a concussive shot to shatter the robot's armor. His aim was true, and there was the satisfying sizzle of frying circuits.
"It's gonna blow!"
They both hunkered down in anticipation of what was to come. A high-pitched whine that bordered on a shriek reverberated off the metal walls that confined them, and Jack couldn't resist the urge to cover her ears. At last, the blast came, shrapnel flying down the corridor and pinging off the walls and ceiling. When the barrage stopped, Grunt nudged the woman that it was safe for them to stand again.
Jack's eyes immediately went to the charred wreckage of the YMIR where it lay beneath a massive black scorch mark burned upon the wall. The heavy and angular limbs twitched as electrical sparks continued to pop and fly. A pale, greasy substance pooled upon the floor beneath it. Grunt shot the thing one last time in the central core as if to make sure it wouldn't get up again.
"Was it just me...or did that thing scream before it blew?" The woman's eyes went from the faint hint of iridescent green upon the white surface of what remained of the mech to the same pattern now etched into her own skin. Maybe letting Tali convince her into taking a sip of turian brandy before riding the shuttle up here was a really bad idea. It was supposed to have been bracing, the quarian insisting that Jack's stomach could handle it. Her stomach had weathered it just fine. Her perception might not have.
"They've all been screaming," Grunt replied in an almost disinterested tone as he moved to manually force open the door in front of them. Its own circuits had gotten fried in the blast, rendering the mechanism useless. "We started noticing it near that place you humans call Piccadilly Circus. A bunch of mechs had holed up there like they were defending it. We never did find out who was controlling them...because no one was."
"So the mechs just up and decided to take a defensive position? Against what?"
Grunt shouldered his way through hanging debris. The corridor beyond where they had just been was in much worse shape as if it had taken damage from external hull damage. It wasn't much further to the medbay according to the schematics, but they might have to find themselves an alternate route if this chosen path proved impassable.
"Husks, other mechs, us." Grunt shrugged and primed his assault rifle. "Especially us."
"The primary memory bank of Shepard Commander has revealed no new information."
Geth Prime had himself partially hooked up to the mainframe of the geth ship they had grounded shortly after Hyde Park had been deemed a truly safe zone. Other geth were diligently working to fix the structural damage to the entire ship while Tali and her team, comprised of Geth Prime and a small handful of quarian engineers, worked to get the computer systems fully online again. More than that, Tali was using the computing power of the geth ship to dig as deeply as she could into the Citadel records she had at her disposal to learn everything extant about what might have happened after the Reapers had taken control.
"There's got to be something, Prime," she replied. "My dreams, your dreams-and you have access to Shepard in a way that no one else does. There's got to be something she can tell us."
"We have learned no more than you, Creator Tali'Zorah," Geth Prime replied with a twist of his head so that his eyelights were able to take her in. "She is conscious within us. She is aware. But she has no tangible memory after witnessing Anderson Captain be shot by the Illusive Man."
Tali rubbed at her eyes. It had been Shepard's urging in one of the now-familiar vivid dreams that the quarians make the attempt to acclimate to Earth's atmosphere and biology. It had taken days more for Tali to even garner the courage to try, remembering her bold move on Rannoch and deciding (after exhaustive sampling and testing of local particulates) to let faith have its chance. Without proper transport, there was no getting back to Rannoch, anyway. There was not enough left of the Flotilla to support all remaining quarian life. Whether they lived or died rested on a hope and a dream.
Shepard hadn't been wrong. Tali found breathing outside of her suit a little more difficult and would still replace her mask from time to time, but she could see that adjustment was possible. Sometimes there was lightheadedness. Sometimes it was worse, dizziness and nausea, and once she had almost blacked out from pushing herself too hard.
All of that made her convinced that Shepard was still alive somewhere. For her to be strictly a program meant she was getting all her intel from geth observation and interaction, but what Tali was learning in her dreams meant that such couldn't be the only answer. Shepard had a very odd sort of omniscience, but it was greatly hindered in certain situations. She didn't know where she was, how she got there, or even how the situation might be resolved. She was caught somewhere between life and death, it seemed, and only just beyond reach.
"Help me search these data archives, then," Tali said at last. She was tired. She'd been staring at log after log from the Citadel computers in hopes that something would hint at something else that might link them to anything they could use to learn what had happened to Shepard. If program she was, they might need to defragment what was available. Tali made a face. It was hard to think of a human-a friend-like she were little more than a common AI. But...that's what she was until she proved otherwise. Without a body, all they had was data peppered throughout the most massive memory bank in the galaxy. "I'm starting to think we are actually drowning in too much information rather than not enough."
"The correct algorithm could narrow down the files to only those that pertain to Shepard Commander. You knew that already." Geth Prime's head plating moved apologetically as if the concept of stating the obvious was new to him. "After that, we filter for only what we really need to find-which would be health records and her genetic profile from C-Sec security scans. We compile this with all correspondence to and from Cerberus and the Alliance and the Normandy."
Tali blinked at him, her face scrunching up in confusion. "Prime, what...what are you talking about? If you're thinking about the Lazarus Project again, I told you that it wouldn't work! EDI has everything, and that Cerberus facility was destroyed by the Illusive Man."
"Not the Lazarus Project. The Lazarus Project was imperfect, incomplete. Geth technology is far superior to Cerberus, but you knew this already, also. We have not been researching only this one dilemma, Creator Tali'Zorah. All our minds are still one, and a drastic change has been noted in the anatomy, physiology, and overall biology of all living things. Geth and quarians no longer have a perfect dichotomy. There is no synthetic. There is no organic. All are changing. All are becoming one. Your single mind is slowly joining our many-and-one. Just like Shepard Commander, you will be a part of us, and we will be a part of you."
The geth reached over for a few more cables, carefully attaching them to different sockets built into his armored plating. As she came to grasp the meaning of his words, Tali watched the sinewy tissue beneath that plating, musculature that had been made to look organic but was anything but. Beneath it pumped a white lubricant that on any living being would have been blood. But, for a geth, it was oil; it was coolant; it was conducive to electrical current.
Geth Prime's motions had become significantly more fluid over the past few weeks. She hadn't noticed. She should have. The sounds of his hydraulics were all but nonexistent. His eyelights were not merely empty whiteness. They weren't blank and expressionless, but how they conveyed expression defied explanation or even proper description. And it wasn't just the moving headplates.
"What are you suggesting?" Tali's gut told her that she already knew, and she wasn't sure if actually hearing the answer would make her feel any better about it. She stared at the glittering green circuitry under her skin as if that could in any way be a comfort.
"We-the geth-have been researching the Reaper presence in the galaxy for many cycles. The Collectors. The Protheans. Their collective history. Shepard Commander was aware of some of this, but she did not know the conclusions we have reached. When the Reapers returned, there would be limited options available to all sentient life in the galaxy. Even more limited options for synthetic. What has happened is...curious...but we have determined that it is the best possible solution. Shepard Commander deduced correctly if these results are in any way a reaction to her choice-if she made a choice at all. From what we have observed of her behavior in the mainframe, a choice was made, but she does not remember it.
"To learn the choice that was made, to know what all the options truly were, we must return those memories to Shepard Commander. Cerberus was able to accomplish this once before with the Lazarus Project. But, the Lazarus Project is no longer good enough."
"Why do we need to know the choice?"
"Full information retrieval cannot happen without a precise query. A reaction cannot happen without an initial action. What is happening to all of us, Creator Tali'Zorah, is a reaction, a result drawn from a query. It is impossible to fully understand this change without first knowing the catalyst." Geth Prime's headplates move again, rising as if with surprise and revelation. "The Catalyst. The Catalyst exists deep in the Citadel digital infrastructure. We encountered fragments before. There was a query. There was a response. There was change."
Tali came over to stand next to the massive geth as he continued to hook himself up to the ship's mainframe to better search the geth network. "Prime," she couldn't help the flutter of excitement stirring in her heart, the adrenaline pumping through her body and making her hands shake, "tell me what you are going to do."
Geth Prime turned his head to look down at her, his eyelights the brightest she had ever seen them.
"It is the simplest solution to a complex problem, Creator Tali'Zorah. A program processes best when housed on its own memory core. We will build Shepard Commander her own. And, then, when Subject Jack and the krogan Grunt secure the Alliance medbay, we can rebuild her. Geth technology. Human genetics. Superior to Lazarus Project, for the results must match the change in all of us."