Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (20 page)

By the time Snake left the station, I had already made contact with Dr. Madnar. Naomi briefly explained Raiden’s injuries, and the doctor said he thought he could help. I sent Naomi and Sunny with Raiden to his location—safely inside a noncombat zone—while I provided support to Snake.

Although we were using the face camo to project Snake’s younger face, its primary function—just like the sneaking suit or Drebin’s APC—was to scan its surroundings while mimicking the background.

A member of the Lost in Paradise Army arrived on a train a little over ten minutes after Snake’s. The man had a criminal history, so with minimal effort, I hacked into the police database and retrieved his background and facial recognition data.

Snake wasn’t wearing the Solid Eye—it wouldn’t exactly help him stay low profile inside the station—and I couldn’t send him the resistance fighter’s picture. But I could access the face camo’s live image data, providing a full 360 degree view of everything around Snake. I fed that stream through a facial recognition filter and watched for the match.

Just as Meryl was walking away from Snake, I saw him.

“Snake, he’s leaving the station through the exit directly behind you.”

Snake acknowledged, put out his cigarette, and stepped out into the foggy cobblestone street.

“He’s walking away to your right. Don’t let him see you.”

“I’m used to sneaking right past someone’s back, but it’s been a while since I’ve had to tail anyone.”

Now that he mentioned it, he’d never had to shadow anyone in any of our missions together.

The streetlights were lit, though only for the benefit of Raven Sword patrols. With the curfew, the streets were empty.

Even if Snake kept a good distance, all the resistance fighter had to do was turn and see him, and that would be it. Only someone incredibly careless would notice someone behind him, when no one was allowed on the streets, and think it a coincidence.

Supposedly, Snake had done tail work in Zanzibar Land, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had done it as a matter of routine for the CIA, with all the dirty work they forced on him as an undercover operative. He might have done something of that nature in the Outer Heaven op as well.

The streets were covered in fog. Snake switched off his face camo—no need for it now—and strapped the Solid Eye around his head, and its enhanced optics helped him see through the darkness and fog. Now he could stay farther back without losing the other man.

Snake steadied his breath, and as he had done in South America, he matched his body’s rhythm with the baseline of his surroundings. The ambient urban noise faded, and his focus attuned with the city.

The man he followed, of course, also needed to avoid being spotted by the PMC. There wasn’t much Snake could do to assist without giving away his own presence. The most he could do was hope the resistance fighter would navigate the streets wisely.

Meanwhile Snake had to hide from not only the man he followed, but also from any PMC patrols. It’s hard for me to imagine how difficult it must have been.

Snake was reminded of
The Third Man
. All that was missing was the Ferris wheel and the underground tunnels.

At the edge of the mist, the resistance fighter’s figure looked like a ghost. He was young. In his twenties. Without his youth, it would have been hard to throw himself into the rebellion against the System.

But me? Well, I am where I am, but back in my twenties all I cared about was anime and robotics and hacking—well, cracking. I never would have even thought about rebelling against the world. I never romanticized my cracking as an action against the system. In my work for the world’s largest manufacturer in the military-industrial complex, I never questioned my masters.

I did it because it was fun. Because it gave me an escape. That was it.

I think the reason I joined the fight later in my adulthood was to compensate for how long I’d spent running away from my fate. It was the retribution for so many in my family, including my own my past self.

Snake spoke over the codec. “Otacon, he’s going into a building.”

The young fighter stood at the service entrance to an old monastery. A guard in the doorway was looking around to see if the man had been followed. The sentry didn’t seem to have any special equipment. He checked the young man’s dog tags and waved him in.

“Now!” I said, but Snake had already rushed from the shadows.

Snake was one with the city, and he closed much of the distance without the guard sensing him. As he ran, he tossed his trench coat to the ground. The guard turned, stepped inside, and started to close the door behind himself. Snake jabbed the toe of his boot inside the doorway, and when the sentry finally saw him, he was already inside.

Snake locked his arms around the man he’d followed and pressed a knife against his neck.

The sentry cried out, “Who?”

Inside the service entrance were three guards, including the one at the door. They quickly raised submachine guns and pointed them at Snake. But with their comrade a human shield, they dared not fire.

Snake put his back to the wall and started moving farther inside.

“I’m here to see Big Mama,” he said.

“Is this the guy?” said one of the men.

The fear drained from the hostage’s face. Then, calmly, he said, “I didn’t hear him coming at all. He’s gotta be the one.”

But the other three weren’t convinced. Yes, the man in front of them had followed one of their own, who wasn’t without skill himself, and made it into their hideout undetected to hold a knife at their comrade’s throat. But this intruder was coughing.

Even with his coughing fit, Snake kept his focus, of course, but his face was old. The guards pressed toward him.

Snake kicked out his prisoner’s legs and shoved him at the nearest guard. The other two guards lifted their guns, but in those close quarters, the advantage was with the knife and CQC.

How quickly young people turn to guns for help. I was the one who hacked into the CIA and found the CQC manual developed by The Boss and Big Boss, then gave it to Snake.

My point being that until recently Snake had been one of those soldiers who relied on guns—he even said once that he “hated knives.” Of course he’d been trained in basic close combat techniques, but he almost never used them. I think I can get away with revealing that much since, after I discovered the CQC techniques, Snake had used me as his training dummy. It was terrible.

Although he hadn’t practiced CQC long, he was a warrior with Big Boss’s genes, and in a flash he dropped the three guards as well as his captive.

Another soldier, who had heard the scuffle, appeared at a side doorway, his gun drawn. Suddenly, more men—and more guns—appeared around him in numbers dwarfing his first welcoming party.

From behind the mob of armed young soldiers came a woman’s voice.

“Very impressive CQC, Snake.”

Like the Red Sea parting before Moses, the group of men moved aside. Through the opening, Snake could see into a sanctuary.

The woman was blonde, with a brown leather jacket and black leather boots. She knelt at the altar, her back to Snake.

“No doubt about it,” she said. “He is the legendary soldier.”

She rose and, under the watchful gaze of the angels and apostles painted on the ceiling, slowly turned to face Snake. As if by signal, the soldiers simultaneously lowered their weapons.

The woman was at least as old as Snake’s body looked. But she stood with poise, and the straight line from her spine to her hips to her knees held no tremor. Her face held enough sparkle to make it easy to imagine the beauty it once held. The light in her eyes, if nothing else, couldn’t have changed since her twenties.

“Call me Mama. Big Mama.”

She walked toward Snake. He entered the sanctuary and approached her.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Raiden sent me.”

Big Mama surveyed him from head to toe. “My, how you’ve grown … David.”

Snake froze. Not many knew his name. Just me, one small fraction of his many foster parents, and those with high enough security clearance in the US government. Snake lived his life as Snake.

“It was you,” she said, “not I, who was created from the rib of man. But I gave you life.”

She looked down at her stomach and softly patted it with a gloved hand. Then she looked up and fixed her eyes upon Snake. He could just barely see they were wet.

“I am your mother.”

Snake was speechless. He tried to say something, but what? He’d hardly ever given thought to his mother. As far as he’d been concerned, Big Boss, his father, was the cause of his existence and his curse.

Somewhere out there was the woman who gave him birth—that was only natural.

“Les Enfants Terribles,” Big Mama said. “You can’t grow a human being in a test tube. Not even a clone. You need a woman’s body to give it life.”

“You mean, a surrogate mother?”

Her smile was mixed with irony, sadness, and self-scorn. “That’s an awfully cold way to put it.”

The angels on the ceiling watched them—the woman who lent her body to the insubordinate imitation of God’s work, and her creation. On Shadow Moses, a native Alaskan American member of FOXHOUND on the verge of death said to Snake, “You are a Snake that was not created by nature.”

“I gave birth to all of you,” Big Mama said. “For the Patriots.”

From her womb came Snake and Liquid and all of their tragedies. Perhaps Big Boss’s corpse
was
a Pandora’s box. But considering Big Mama was the beginning of everything, then she was one too. If so, then what happened to the hope that was left inside?

Maybe she’s the hope
, I thought.

“Follow me.” Big Mama waved Snake to follow her into the next room. “I’ll explain everything.”

3

IN THE BEGINNING, there was Zero.

Big Mama started talking from there—with the man named Zero who was at the start of it all.

She had once been known as EVA.

It was only one of a number of aliases, but she spent most of her life under that one.

EVA was a spy with many names, raised in the ways of espionage by the Philosophers, the group of twelve powerful figures from America, China, and Russia, in one of their operative training schools.

She met Big Boss during Operation Snake Eater, as a Soviet agent sent by the KGB to assist him on his mission.

But that was only a cover—she was an operative of the Chinese faction of the Philosophers’ post–World War II split. Her true goal: to acquire the microfilm, stolen by Volgin’s father, containing the only means to access the Philosopher’s Legacy.

But in the end, she failed her mission.

The Boss faked her defection to get close to Volgin, and put her life on the line for that tiny bit of plastic. She handed over the microfilm to Big Boss, and EVA stole it from him.

But the film was a forgery. Afraid of reprisals from the Chinese government, the triple agent fled to Hanoi at the height of the Vietnam War.

So who ended up with the Philosopher’s Legacy?

The man who had founded and led the CIA’s experimental special forces unit FOX—the man who was given charge of Operation Snake Eater.