[Shattered Soul] 9 – Feros Part 2

As the group made their way up the stairs, fighting a few more Geth units, I continued to fend off the Geth programs that relentlessly battered my firewalls. What made it worse was that with each Geth platform we destroyed, the Geth programs jumped to the other platforms nearby, making them more dangerous with each platform destroyed. However, after routing all of the processing power the Omni-tools could use, I was able to do more than defend now. I could prod the Geth Pogramms defenses, splitting their attention from Shepherd and the others and myself.

I also noticed something. The Geth? They were halfway to the point of being full AI, and because of that, they were having extreme difficulties defending themselves against my attacks. I'd even go as far as to say they were semi-AIs, close but not quite. With Tali's specialized Omni-tool, I found a significant amount of data on how the Geth worked and how they'd respond to stimuli. With her Omnitool and the data, I was beginning to be able to push even harder against their defenses, forcing more Programs to focus on me. I even managed to break through their firewalls a few times, causing one Platform to fall over, another to miss their shot, and my third to have its optic sensors glitch and cause the Geth Platform to go 'blind,' not that it helped much with the Geth Network allowing the Geth Programs to essentially see through the optics of all the Platforms at once.

Surprisingly, Garus was the first to notice my attacks, shouting, "What's happening to them? I thought Geth were not supposed to glitch out like this!"

"They don't!" Tali shouted over the gunfire, taking a few potshots with her small pistol toward the Geth.

Wrex charged forward, his Biotic barrier flaring to life, absorbing the dozen shots from the Geth as he charged direction into a Geth Platform, sending it to the ground where he stomped on its head, destroying the Platform before raising the shotgun in his hands towards the Geth Platform by his side and pulling the trigger. A thundering bang echoed across the area as the Geth's barrier shattered in an instant, and its chassis was turned into metal slag covered in holes. After the platform's destruction, the only noise that could be heard was Wrex's laughter as he stepped off the Geth Platform he stood upon, leaving behind a rather significant dent where his foot once was.

"What happened back there?" Shepherd asked, turning to the group.

"It was me," I spoke out, appearing on his omni-tool.

"You?" Shepherd asked as Tali examined her Omni-tool, having noticed the discrepancies.

"Yes. I connected to all of your Omni tools and used them to start hacking the Geth while simultaneously defending myself from their attacks," I began, only to be interrupted by Tali, "How? The Geth only becomes harder and harder to hack when more programs move and shift between Platforms; with how many must have been in the last few of the group, you must have been facing nearly ten thousand Geth Programms!"

"Less than that, more around seven thousand," I shrugged, "Not like it was much of a challenge once I had enough processing power from connecting to all of your Omni-tools, especially yours, Tali," I answered, focusing on the alien in a space suit.

"But-" Tali began, only to be interrupted by Shepherd, "Not now; we need to move! Zhu's Hope is still under attack by the Geth!" 

With Shpeherd's words, Tali went quiet as the group got a move on, rushing up the stairs where we began to hear more firing in the distance, only for it to stop abruptly.

The group rushed up the flight of stairs and through a corridor, straight into a line of Colonists with their guns raised; just behind the Colonists was Zhu's Hope, where we could see men and women going about their work very calmly despite the attack that was mere minutes before. That was...strange. Looking into the details further, I noticed more things wrong with the Colonists. Slurred reaction times, erratic and lethargic movements, stoic expressions with eyes that gazed off into space. The Colonists acted more like machines than flesh and blood. What was going on here?

The longer I observed the Colonists as they interacted with Shepherd, the more inhuman they seemed to the trained eye. It was as if each of the Colonists were heavily drugged. 

As the team moved across the small Colony of two dozen individuals, they managed to find Fai Dan, the 'mayor' of Zhu's Hope, and through some questioning done by the Commander, I learned that the colony was funded entirely by a company, one Exogeni. The company even had a branch on the planet a few miles away from Zhu's Hope, connecting the colony and company branch through a skyway. 

If the Geth were after anything, it was more likely that it was something in that ExoGeni branch than the Colony; otherwise, the Geth would have wiped the colony out in one fell swoop instead of constantly prodding at the Colony.

"Tali, Wrex, Kaiden, you're with me. Garrus, Ashely, you stay here and help the Colony," Shepherd ordered, moving past the Colonists he was talking to and rushing over to the other side of the compound through one of the habitation units. While they left, Garrus and Ashely asked around, finding that there were a few things the Colony needed help with.

These include restoring the water supply, hunting some barren and bringing it back to the colony for food, finding a power cell to restore power to the colony, and clearing out the Geth from tunnels around the Colony. It was a lot, but the two could handle it since Shepherd and the others drew most of Geth's attention, not to mention my distractions that also took Geth's attention.

While the team split up, I managed to keep my connection to both teams by relaying a signal to the Normandy that constantly pinged their Omni tools. This allowed me to transfer myself and simultaneously keep track of both teams. I kept the line secure or as secure as I could, but so far, the Geth hadn't detected it. If the Geth did detect the signal, I could quickly shut it down.

While Garrus and Ashley split off from the group and headed deeper into the tunnels, Shepherd and the others took an elevator and found themselves in a large chamber leading to the skyway.

"Joker, we need the Mako," Shepherd spoke, raising his hand to touch a hidden earpiece.

"You got it, Commander, powering up the Normandy now," Joker's voice buzzed before cutting out, leaving Shepered and the others to wait for the Normandy. 

"Shepherd, you seeing this?" Wrex asked from atop a pile of rubble before walking down.

Climbing up, Shepherd looked out to the Skyway, where Geth seemed to have begun setting fortifications along the skyway, with even a few Geth Armatures stomping around.

A single Geth Armature was a walking tank with a powerful plasma cannon that would destroy a Mako in one hit if hit directly, not to mention the anti-personnel weapons that would mow down any that came near and with the Armatures having an automatic repair function if it wasn't wrecked, it could get back up in a few hours to cause more trouble, and from what Shepherd could see, there were three of them, and more than two dozen Geth Platforms surrounding them.