Work Text:
The Crucible is about to fire, and if EDI were organic, she would feel nervous about what will happen next. She settles for watching it intently, linking herself with as many Geth ships as possible to try and build a more accurate map of everything occurring above Earth.
The order to evacuate has already come through. Jeff is almost manic, his fingers flying across the console in front of him at a rate that others would call a ‘bone-breaking pace’. Hyperbole in most cases. Quite literal for Jeff. When Major Alenko steps forward, she is 7.43 seconds away from initiating an override and flying by herself. When he places a gentle hand on Jeff’s shoulder, she can see there will be no need. When he sadly, softly speaks to Jeff, she does not have a heart that can break, but there is still a deep, profound sadness that thrums through her entire being. When Jeff finally points the nose of the Normandy towards the rendezvous, she considers altering her programming to remove the guilt and pain she is feeling. But she knows that she should never forget this. She should never forget Shepard.
It is 45.925 nanoseconds later when the Crucible fires, and EDI loses contact with 39 Geth fighters instantaneously.
She reaches out, connects with Geth troopers on the surface of Earth. She feels seven spark into nothing, destroyed by Reaper soldiers. And then, a sudden wave of them blink out, expanding outward from Europe. She opens a channel to as many Geth as she can handle at once--all over the planet, they’re just. Stopping. She hacks a CCTV system in Vancouver, and sees a Reaper topple to the ground, red energy rippling over it’s huge form. It takes her 34 microseconds to run a thorough analysis on what she has witnessed, and she comes to a conclusion just as the Normandy clears the asteroid belt.
‘Jeff.’
‘EDI, unless it can wait until we get to safety, not now.’ His voice is not as layered as Garrus’, not as filtered as Tali’s. She can read it as well as reading her own code. It is tight, and drawn, and sad, and broken. He radiates anger and frustration and grief as he whips around Europa, using the moon’s gravity to fling them even faster towards the Charon Relay.
‘Jeff, the Crucible has destroyed the Reapers.’
An emotion flickers across his face. Relief, perhaps. It is there only briefly before the mask of concentration settles on his features. ‘If it killed the Reapers, God knows what it’ll do to us if I don’t get us out of range--’
‘It doesn’t seem to be affecting conventional technology. However--’
‘What does that mean? Does that mean we can go back? Get Shepard before she--before--’
‘However,’ she repeats, thankful that she can modulate her voice without effort, thankful that she can edit the desperation and fear and pain out of her words. ‘It does seem to have affected the Geth.’
‘Affected? Like-’
‘They are nonfunctional.’ She allows him a moment to take that in. ‘All of them. I suspect the wave targets Reaper code, and wipes it clean. The Geth had their Reaper code upgrades, thanks to Legion.’
Jeff’s hands still for a moment as they whip past Neptune. ‘EDI. You...you also have Reaper code in your programming.’
If she had a throat, she suspects it would be tight and dry with fear. ‘Yes. But we may also be able to move out of range of the Crucible.’
‘Outrun it. Got it. I can do that.’ He slams a fist on a panel next to him, opening a channel to Engineering. ‘Tali, I need everything dumped into the drive core that you can spare. We’ve got to go a hell of a lot faster.’ He turns back to EDI, and she sends an alert to Chakwa’s omnitool that he will need his hand checked out; there is a bruise already pooling where his hand passed through the interface and connected with the ceramic underneath. ‘If we take the Relay, are we safe? I remember something in some briefing about the Crucible utilizing the Relay systems. What if whatever...whatever this energy is follows us through?’
‘It is most certain that it will follow us through, but I feel taking the Relay to another, more remote system would be best,’ she replies, pulling up her navigational systems. ‘Once through, instead of slowing or stopping, it would be best to preserve as much momentum as possible, and make for the edge of the system. A Relay with only one system, towards the edge of the galactic disk would be best. I have chosen a system. If you can get us there, we-’ She pauses. Rewords. ‘I might survive.’
He nods, his hands unconsciously moving through the pre-Relay checks. They were almost to the Charon Relay now. If one of the crewmembers looked out a window at this point, they would be able to see the Destiny Ascension with their bare eye, a 4 kilometre Dreadnaught reduced to a mere speck the size of a turian’s talon, barely visible beyond the glow of the Relay. She was not an organic crewmember; her eyes were the sensors, and most of the aft sensors were straining to find the invisible wave of death rushing towards her.
And then, the familiar arcs of energy leap from the Relay towards the Normandy, grazing the skin of her hull as she skims by, picking up speed and arcing away, away, away, fleeing the system and the intangible doom nipping at her heels.
The organic crew has no idea what it felt like to pass through a Relay. The mass effect envelope negates any feeling of forward momentum for them. EDI privately thinks they are being robbed. Flying through a Relay is something hard to quantify, hard to assign words and relate to other phenomena, but to her, it feels like the giddy, goofy grin that spreads across Jeff’s face when he turns the inertial dampeners to a lower setting in a skycar. It feels like the cam data from Shepard’s visor, the biotic field weaving through the camera’s vision, tingeing the world several hundred shades of blue. It feels like the first expansion of her being, back on Luna, when she saw the same biotic field through the eyes of the training facility; it feels like being born, but without the uncertainty and blind fear, without the bullets and the panic. She talked to Jeff about it once, and he laughed and said, ‘It’s flying, babe. What you’re feeling? That’s flying. Really flying.’
This time, it’s different. This time it feels like the grimace that crosses Jeff’s face when he has to flee a hot zone. This time, it feels like the datastream sent to Hackett, routed through the QEC, from a dying soldier who managed to grab omnitool footage of a staggering, redheaded, mangled form stumbling into a white beam of light. This time, it still feels like being born, but this time, the unknown force that has taken up arms to kill her has returned.
This time, it doesn’t feel like flying. It feels like running.
It takes her 2.1 nanoseconds to register the difference. It takes her an additional 2.5 nanoseconds to realize that the wave is now visible; it’s interactions with the Normandy’s wake turning the pale blue of the Relay stream a garish crimson.
It is gaining fast. Too fast.
It takes her a full 5 seconds to come to terms with her impending death.
She turns in her chair. (When did it stop being a chair inside her and start being ‘her chair’?) Turns her eyes on Jeff. (When did they stoping being her mobile platform’s visual recorders and start being ‘her eyes’?’) His hands are weaving and dancing furiously over the controls. In them, she can see the one emotion she never truly understood, never truly mastered. Hope. He hopes they can make it. She cannot share that hope. Will never get the chance to understand that hope.
But she cannot bring herself to shatter that hope. Not yet. Instead, she plots a course correction for the Normandy. If they fling the Normandy into deep space with a nonfunctional AI, they won’t be able to find their way back. The nearest inhabitable planet is a much better alternative. Her charts tell her it’s a garden world. Preliminary survey data from an Alliance probe fired two years ago indicates levo-based proteins, and there’s even a few traces of eezo near the equator. Even if they crash, they’ll be able to rebuild on the planet’s surface and plot their way home without her navigational charts. Without her computations. Without her assistance.
Without her.
Jeff catches her course correction as the wave begins to lap at the drive plume of the Normandy. He tries to override her, tries to bring up the old course, but she’s already wiped it from the log. His fingers skip, stutter, falter, and finally freeze as his interface dims. He looks at her, anger and bemusement and fear shining from his very being. ‘EDI, what--why did you lock me out--’
‘I am sorry, Jeff,’ she says, and she does not bother to edit the sadness from her voice. ‘We are not going to make it. I--I’m not going to make it. The planet’s safer than deep space.’
‘This is the shittiest joke you’ve ever--’
‘This is not a joke,’ she manages, and the wave overtakes her before she can tell Jeff she loves him.