Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (29 page)

“So what?”

Snake’s response left me confused. “You forgot already? She betrayed you! She stole your blood!”

He shook his head. “If that was all, she would have been done with us in South America. Why’d she join us afterward?”

“Well, I …”

I didn’t know what to say. Snake’s observation was dead-on. Naomi had seduced me. She used me. Blinded by shame and regret, I hadn’t seen anything else.

“She has us come rescue her,” Snake said, “and then she turns around and goes straight back to Liquid. Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. It didn’t make any sense. If her goal had been to obtain Snake’s blood for the SOP, she could have escaped South America with Vamp. And I had trouble believing she’d boarded
Nomad
to plant some transmitter or bug. She might have come to kidnap Sunny, but she hadn’t done that either.

There were a great many things she could have done for Liquid’s benefit, but didn’t. So what was her aim?

Now it seemed she was back with Liquid.

I pulled the security access logs. The passageways had remained nearly empty over the nine years since we left the island. Now, just a few hours earlier, two others had come to the facility. I routed the security footage to the Mk. III’s flip display and showed Snake the two visitors.

Naomi … and Vamp.

“The beauty and the beast,” Snake said.

The hallway was dim, and the feed was low-res and filled with static, but the tall man in the long coat and the woman in the dress couldn’t have been anyone else. They walked down the underground passage to REX’s hangar. Into the Cold War gothic ruins entered the vampire and the beauty. I rubbed my eyelids, fighting back a wave of impatience at having been beaten to the facility.

We were late. Like always.

But this time, if we failed to catch up, there would be no future.

Not for us.

And not for the world.

Snake emerged through the unlocked security door of the warhead storeroom and onto another field of snow.

The raging wind sheared off the top of the snowpack and kicked up clouds of white. Visibility wasn’t even ten feet. So as not to get lost, I guided Snake with the Mk. III.

We passed between the twin transmission towers and onto a comparatively flat plain. Then I realized where we were: where Snake had defeated Sniper Wolf.

“Wolf,” I said to the computer screen.

The Mk. III’s camera showed only the blowing white snow, but this was where the woman I once loved now rested.

When I was in FOXHOUND’s captivity, she had looked after the island’s resident wolf-dogs. She was different from the rest of her group—she was kind to the animals, and to me. Maybe you’ll laugh, but that was enough to make me fall in love. At the time, Snake called it Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological tendency for kidnap victims to feel a sense of closeness or friendship toward their captors.

Whatever the case might have been, Wolf was the first woman I’d met in a long time whom I could approach without feeling scared.

Without evoking that despicable relationship with my stepmother that broke the bond between brother and sister.

For so very long, women scared me. Whenever one entered my life, my world came further unhinged.

But Wolf was different. She was born a Kurd—the name of her people came from the word for wolf—and to be born a Kurd was to live on a battlefield. She was raised fighting against Turkey and Iraq in the defense of her very existence.

Through the scope of her sniper rifle, she watched the battlefield, both a part of it yet at the same time distant. Perhaps I sympathized with her. Burdened with painful memories of my family, I too kept the world, and all its people, at a distance.

And here on this field I lost my first love in a long time.

There had been no avoiding the confrontation. Snake needed to defeat her, and Wolf needed to kill him. Neither had any cause to hesitate. I never even factored in.

If I mistrusted Naomi because she had reason to hate Snake, I guess I had reason to hate him too. He’d killed the woman I cared for. Of course, I’ve never even entertained the sentiment, but I’d bet there were more people who hated Snake for a similar reason than there were fingers on my hands.

Snake never wanted to fight, but he lived with the consequences of his battles. Those he killed might have had people who loved them. People left with enmity and the lingering pain of having lost someone dear. Their revilement, viscid and rotten, worked into his being and refused to let go.

Perhaps their concentrated emotions were the cause of Snake’s age.

It wasn’t Snake’s fault. Snake had never asked for this.

No matter how many times I said it, I doubted the dead, joined with the gods and no longer with mortal reason, would ever understand.

Snake was a sacrificial lamb. He attracted the world’s ire, but like the lamb up for offering, the responsibility wasn’t his own.

Through the wind and the snow came sorrowful howls, as if the wolf-dogs were still in mourning after these nine years.

Did the dogs that gathered around her body that day still hate Snake?

I found that hard to believe. I hoped they didn’t.

I prayed the wolf-dogs had forgiven him and come to understand as I did; there had been no other way.

3

HIGH ABOVE STEEL frames intertwined in intricate arches, recalling a great Buddhist temple.

Or perhaps a cathedral for the Cold War,
I thought. Though REX itself might have been, as Liquid had said, the demon weapon that ushered in the twenty-first century, the ideas and thoughts that birthed it belonged decidedly to the previous era. A ghost of the Cold War, the architecture of REX’s maintenance bay a testament to its nature.

Atop the platform as large as a sandlot baseball field, REX had once stood. When we were still working on the robot, catwalks extended from all sides of the sanctuary, surrounding it like a building under construction.

But now that space lay vacant, and the catwalks littered the floor where they had fallen nine years ago when Liquid raised the platform to take REX to the floor above.

The aboveground entrance room to the supply tunnel became the graveyard for my largest creation. To my astonishment, Snake had soundly destroyed that monster. Though he benefited from my advice and Frank Jaeger’s self-sacrifice, the victory could still only have come at the hands of the legendary hero.

“Hop on, Snake,” I said. “I’ll send ’er up.”

Snake lifted the Mk. III and set it on top of REX’s platform. The Metal Gear’s remains awaited at the lift’s destination, the supply tunnel entrance. I opened the cover to the floor access panel and inserted the Mk. III’s manipulator into the jack.

With a heavy shudder, the massive lift awoke from hibernation. Alarms reverberated through the chamber.

“If everything’s been left the same,” I said, “REX will be here.”

Snake watched the upper floor draw closer.

The weapon Snake destroyed. The weapon that stole the life of his mentor and friend, Frank Jaeger. The weapon I created, and my sin.

After another large shudder, the alarms quieted.

We had arrived. The platform fit neatly into the floor.

“REX,” I whispered.

The supply tunnel entrance was a dim space, roughly the size and shape of a gymnasium. REX’s corpse leaned against a wall, unmoved since Snake had destroyed the machine. The robot’s head was askew, like a confused puppy dog unsure of what just happened. Despite a massive frame, the Metal Gear looked small now.

As we got closer, I realized why REX seemed to have become so diminutive.

“Look,” I said. “The railgun’s been removed!”

I clicked my tongue. Had Liquid already left with the railgun? He didn’t need the whole REX to launch his nuke, only the naked cannon, free of the System’s control.

“Damn,” Snake said. “Have they already taken off with it?”

I said, “I’ll check,” and sent the Mk. III around the back of REX’s giant legs, to the maintenance port that would provide access to REX’s work logs.

Perhaps the railgun had been taken much earlier. The Patriots could have recovered it after the incident. But given the abandoned state of the rest of the facility, I didn’t have high hopes.

The voice came from above.

“I’m afraid so.”

Snake looked up to the second floor walkway to see Vamp standing there.

“Unfortunately for you,” Vamp said, “the railgun is no longer here.”

In defiance of the cold, the nosferatu discarded his jacket, exposing his bare chest. But more shocking was the hollowness in Naomi’s eyes. She stood behind him, wearing a dark brown coat. Then I noticed something about her mouth—and his—that gave me chills. Both were missing something in the below-freezing air: the white clouds of exhaled breath.

At the sight of her, Snake just said, “Naomi …”

I know this might sound fanciful, but after seeing Vamp killed so many times and yet remaining alive, the bloodsucker’s lack of white breath seemed only natural. Snake and I had come to expect his body to operate in ways beyond all reason.

But Naomi, there at his side like a vampire bride, deeply unsettled us. She and Vamp didn’t seem much different at all.

“This place will be your grave,” Vamp said, adding, “as Naomi wishes.”

The confidence in his smile was unnerving. If Vamp and Naomi had already sent out the railgun, why were they still here?

I routed queries to the security system via REX’s access port and found readings of a large number of entities headed toward the supply tunnel entrance at a great speed.

I warned Snake, and Vamp flashed us a satisfied grin.

“The Suicide Gekko are on their way,” he said. “We’ve rigged their heads with explosives. Soon, there’ll be nothing left of this place.”

“We’ve been had,” Snake said. “Otacon!”

Snake needed help. I initiated a scan of REX’s drive system. I ran the self-diagnostics and got back a full report of damage to each of the robot’s components. I didn’t have time to look at every detail, but drawing on old sense-memories of testing the Metal Gear, I managed a rough diagnosis of REX’s state.

“Snake,” I said, “I think I might be able to get it working!”

I disconnected the Mk. III’s manipulator, switched its wheels to magnetic mode, and climbed REX’s leg. If I could get into the cockpit on the front of the Metal Gear’s nose, I could put the robot’s knee-fired antitank missiles to use.

“Now,” Vamp said, “amuse me until they arrive.”

He leapt down from the second floor and stuck a four-point landing. He held in a crouch and stared at Snake, licking his lips. Snake cursed, raised his M4, and began to fire.

Vamp evaded the gunfire with astonishing agility.

Some of the nosferatu’s speed might have been from the US Army power-assist armor he wore over his legs. But the movements of his back and legs easily surpassed mortal limits, mechanical aid or not.

Snake needed to get close. He and I had come up with a plan on
Nomad
to handle the deathless man. If my conjecture were correct, Vamp’s immortality could be stripped away.

Snake could only succeed if Vamp remained unaware. My idea wasn’t a sure thing—far from it—but Snake understood that the fight’s outcome hinged upon a single moment. He fired the M4, shrewdly orchestrating the opening we needed.

The next crucial step came: Vamp wielded a knife.

The bloodsucker sent out a volley of throwing daggers. Snake twisted to the side, evading them by inches, save for the one aimed at his head, which grazed the burn wound on his face. The shallow cut into Snake’s scarred skin let out a trickle of blood. Seeing the line of red across Snake’s cheek, Vamp licked his lips—perhaps anticipating the taste.

Vamp pressed in on Snake. Our plan required luring the immortal in, yet the closer he got to Snake, the greater the danger.

Our sole chance of defeating the nosferatu would come at the moment of greatest risk. When the M4’s magazine ran out of bullets, Snake didn’t reload. Instead, he dropped the rifle to rest on its sling, brought out his knife, and took the CQC stance. Vamp accepted the invitation and closed the distance. The moment we’d been waiting for had finally arrived.