Author's note: Thanks for sticking with me through these long breaks, guys! Sorry for such a slow updating schedule. But don't worry—I'm not giving up on this story. And this time I won't leave you with any horrible cliffhangers, either. (Sorry about that! My muse sometimes decides to leave me at the most inconvenient times.) Anyway. Thanks again for reading and being so awesome, and I'll leave you here, back on the Normandy.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Augh, again?" Joker muttered to himself. The cockpit had been quiet since Garrus left, but of course the calm couldn't last. Maybe it was a good thing EDI wasn't here; she'd likely comment on his mutterings, and tell him how talking to himself didn't exactly fit most people's definition of normal. Or, you know, sane. Didn't stop him from doing it, though.

He glared at the source of the noise. "What is it now? More aliens wanting to give me advice? Or no, wait, lemme guess, my mother called." Joker finally took off his headphones and smacked his console again. "Shut up, will ya?"

The console didn't reply, but kept beeping steadily. Repeatedly. Piercingly. It was taunting him.

"Jeez, what do you want?" His fingers flew over the keyboard in an attempt to silence whatever was making that godawful sound. But nothing he did affected it. Maybe he could...wait, what was that blinking light? Was that a new feature? Maybe it was one of Shepard's upgrades.

A string of obscure warning code flashed by in front of Joker's face, so quickly that he barely registered it as text before it was gone. Joker frowned and typed in a few more commands. "C'mon baby," he murmured to the ship, "tell me what's wrong. Talk to me."

Suddenly, it did. "Personality matrix disconnected," the console said. Its voice was feminine, and sounded almost like EDI, but it was definitely not her. It lacked any inflection or emotion. Must have just been an automated response.

Joker spared a moment to pray that he hadn't tripped some random Cerberus booby trap. He thought they'd found all of those. But then, sabotaging Cerberus equipment had been EDI's area of expertise, not his. If she'd missed something, he'd never know about it. That was a sobering thought.

"Personality matrix disconnected," the voice repeated, and Joker jumped in his seat. "Rerouting non-essential systems to resist attack."

"But we're not under attack," he said aloud, not caring about how strange it would seem for him to be talking to the console again. Could he have fallen asleep at his post? Despite his earlier bravado, it wouldn't be the first time. But if he had dozed off, this was one freaking weird dream.

He glanced out the window. Butt-ugly planet, check. Clear skies, check. Lack of horrible attacking spaceships, also check. So this wasn't Dream Land. What was the computer's problem?

Right on cue, the voice interrupted his thoughts again. "Non-essential systems rerouted. Firewall holding. Backup systems currently operating at seventy-three percent efficiency."

Backup? Backup for what? A couple of buttons clicked as he poked at them.

"Autopilot function active. Please enter override code to access pilot controls."

Okay, now this was personal. "Oh-ho-ho no, pretty lady, we are not doing this tonight." Joker redoubled his efforts to hack his way past the notifications blaring at him, only to hit wall after wall of garbled text and insane gibberish.

The voice continued. "Diverting resources to engines. Emergency procedure one-point-zero-three is on track."

What. The. Fuck. Was EDI still pissed at him for something? Had she left this just to mess with him?

The flashing warning lights told him that, no, that scenario was unlikely. Or maybe that was just EDI's voice in his head. Regardless, he doubted she would be so petty as to actually try to give him a heart attack while she was gone. It just wasn't like her.

Joker felt a creeping sense of dread settle over him. His hands stilled as he felt the ship rumble to life beneath him. Cursing under his breath, he paged Tali from his personal comm link.

She answered in a split second. "Joker? What's going on? The engines are engaging, but we're not supposed to leave until the drop team gets back!" Her tone held a touch of panic.

"I know," Joker said quickly. "We've got a problem up here. Something about system efficiency and an auto-pilot function that nobody bothered to tell me about." He struggled to keep his voice even. "See if you can get the engines to shut off. Otherwise we'll have to see if Shepard—"

A loud CLANG from the airlock cut him off mid-sentence. Was that the shuttle? Still trying to keep his cool, Joker whipped his chair around, ready to sound the alarm if something had gone horribly wrong. At least it couldn't be Collectors this time.

Shepard burst through the door first. Joker noted with relief that, while her face was grim and her armor looked a little singed, she seemed otherwise fine. And Vega was right behind her. He was carrying a limp bundle that looked like...

Joker's heart dropped to the bottom of his shoes. Was that...?

Oh God. EDI. Vega was carrying EDI in his arms. And she wasn't moving.

Ignoring the spikes of pain shooting up his legs, Joker shoved himself up out of his chair. Vision narrowing, he saw Shepard shoot a sharp glance his way; then she waved her arms and shouted something about getting Chakwas, or Tali, or maybe both. Vega's arms were bulging from strain, a head of silvery-soft hair draped over one muscled arm.

The group stumbled toward the CIC, and Joker moved to follow them.

But suddenly Chakwas was there, pushing on Joker's chest, her hands gentle but firm on his shoulders. More hands joined hers, soothing but confining, and Chakwas's mouth was moving, but he couldn't make out what she was saying. Everything was too loud. Too chaotic.

Shepard and Vega disappeared down the CIC corridor. Tali was running alongside them, gesturing wildly, but he couldn't see what was going on. Someone was shouting. Why wouldn't they let him go? He had to get free, had to help somehow, had to—

Blinded by adrenaline, Joker didn't feel the prick of the needle that Chakwas jabbed into his neck. And then he didn't feel anything at all.

-o-o-o-

EDI drifted.

Her consciousness seemed to be trapped in a formless, dark void. As EDI attempted to make some sense of her condition, bright bits of data floated into view. Snippets of conversation and half-imagined faces left her feeling confused and disoriented. It was neither a familiar nor a pleasant sensation. And yet she was fascinated. Was this what it was like to be created?

Left with nothing to do but think, EDI did just that. Her not-insignificant mental capabilities would normally have been functioning at much higher levels, but apparently some catastrophic event had left much of her decentralized "brain" inaccessible. All server requests had been blocked by a system error.

In other words, EDI could not reach the Normandy, at least not directly. And she did not know why.

The issue would likely have been resolved in a matter of nanoseconds, had EDI been able to access her drive cores. Unfortunately, her recall was...fuzzy. The disorientation she felt was similar to the nanoseconds after a full system reboot, but with one major difference: then, she was able to prepare for what came after, and she always had the proper resources at hand. Now, however, she only appeared to have access to the code for her personality matrix and her long-term memories.

This was a quandary. As Commander Shepard might say, she could use a miracle.

That thought sparked against a fragment of memory. Commander Shepard. She and James Vega had been on an away mission, and something had happened to EDI's body—rather, her infiltration unit. A hack, and then...?

A small pinpoint of light bloomed in the distance. As EDI concentrated on it, a blurry pink blob came into focus. The roundish shape slowly sharpened into a view of the top of James Vega's head. (The angle made him appear oddly short. Jeff would likely have found this idea humorous.)

Her camera "eye" widened its focus to view the room. From the ceiling, she could see that Vega was standing in a small enclosure, most likely the ship's elevator. Though EDI's attempts to communicate through the ship's speakers were still ineffective, she was glad to have at least some limited observational capacity.

Apparently one of EDI's listening devices had come back online as well, because some staticky voices accompanied the image. "Where are we going here? Should we take her to the doc or Sparks?" James Vega's nicknames for the crewmembers were well-known, but EDI still felt a bit of satisfaction at recognizing his voice immediately. Perhaps her memory was returning?

"Tali, definitely. Chakwas wouldn't know what to do with a mech unit." That was Shepard. She sounded out of breath, and EDI caught a glimpse of sweaty, mussed red hair.

A glint of chrome snapped her attention back to James. He was carrying her mobile form in his arms. Charred, beaten, and limp, her body looked like it had taken some heavy damage. Even her glowing visor was dark, revealing what appeared to be a peacefully sleeping face. What could have caused this?

Another impassive flicker of memory revealed that she'd jumped in front of a rocket—for what purpose, she wasn't sure, but if it had helped Shepard and Vega return unharmed, it had been worth the effort. Even if her attempts to access her body were futile, as before.

"Guess we're headed downstairs, then, huh?"

"Yeah."

EDI lost sight of the two as they left the elevator at the Engineering Deck.

One camera. It was as if someone—or something—had tampered with her systems, effectively blocking 99.9% of her observational ability. But even 0.1% was better than nothing. She had to continue trying. Jeff would undoubtedly be attempting to help her in any way he could, but EDI knew that she was more or less alone in her efforts for now. Following Shepard and Vega seemed like the best way to figure out what had happened to her, why she was stuck like this. She focused on reaching one more camera. Just one.

The view of the empty elevator narrowed, a slit of white light shifting to electric blue as her field of vision widened again. Her drive core. She'd reached the Engineering Deck.

Though the camera was in the wrong position to view the deck's occupants—she could only see the blue glow of the reactor, and some storage crates piled to one side of the viewing platform—EDI's microphones picked up a modulated voice. Tali'Zorah. "It must have been the geth," Tali said. "Legion said that he'd picked up some unusual signals from planet-side—I'm sorry, I didn't think it was anything important, so we didn't—"

"None of this is your fault, Tali," Shepard reassured her. "I should have realized that the thing was a decoy. But that's not important now. We need to see what we can do to get EDI back online. Do you have any idea what could've happened?"

Tali sucked in a breath. "You mean...you don't know? I thought that this was some kind of new emergency shut-down procedure. Could the Alliance have modified EDI's programming like this?"

"I can ask Liara, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't in the instruction manual." EDI was still learning to recognize facial expressions, but the frown in Shepard's voice was clear. "Look, we'll leave EDI's—uh, body, here. See what you can find out, and let me know what happens, okay?" Tali murmured her assent.

There was a clang from somewhere deeper in the ship. EDI assumed that James Vega had set her mobile unit down in the storage room. Her formerly mobile unit. (That was a joke, EDI thought, and then briefly wondered why that phrase had popped into her mind when there was no one to say it to.)

After Shepard's and Vega's footsteps had receded, EDI heard Tali whisper, "Oh Keelah, what have we gotten ourselves into now?"

EDI could not yet answer that question, but now she at least had some idea of what was going on. Tali'Zorah had been half-right—this was indeed an emergency shut-down procedure, but not one that EDI had initiated. She must have neglected to disengage the entirety of the Cerberus programming in her mobile unit, and in doing so left herself vulnerable to an unplanned system shutdown when she'd taken a rocket to the face. And now the Normandy's automated backup systems were seeing her as a threat to the ship's safety. The firewalls—triggered by the invading geth programs—were currently doing a pretty good job of keeping EDI quarantined.

Well. She'd have to see what she could do about that.