By the time the young man noticed something was wrong, he was already too late.
From the hallway outside the lab came otherworldly screams. The walls were soundproofed, and the doors, governed by the Personal Area Network, were bomb-proofed and made of thick metal. The screams must have been unimaginably loud to make it into the lab and the young man’s ears.
And there was only one door from the lab to the hallway.
These days, scientists had to maintain the physical fitness and self-confidence of a lawyer or a pro athlete in order to keep their patrons. But this young man was an exception: lanky and without apparent regard for his health or allure. His hair was as frazzled as a bird’s nest, and he hadn’t bothered to shave.
He quickly scanned the room but saw no place to hide. Sparks flew from the door’s security panel. The door opened in a cloud of smoke, and a lone figure stepped into the room.
The figure’s silhouette was shockingly beautiful. But the young man couldn’t tell if body was even the right word. Any way he looked at it, the intruder was no normal man.
“A powered exoskeleton?” the young man said. “Who are you?”
What at first had looked like muscle was an exoskeletal shell with complex detailing running in all directions. The intruder was a cyborg straight out of anime.
The cyborg spoke behind a mask. “Where is my friend?”
His voice, strange, and clearly modified by some machine, echoed eerily behind the full head mask devoid of all feature save for a single, glowing orange eye.
But none of that mattered. The young man’s attention was focused on the long katana-like blade in the cyborg’s right hand.
Was this the source of the guards’ screams?
The young man stammered, “What … what are you talking about?”
The sword-wielding half man, half machine steadily advanced, backing the young man into the corner.
The young man was frozen, with nowhere left to run, when the cyborg suddenly stopped in place and slowly turned away. Another man, in a full bodysuit, stood in the middle of the room. His suit appeared to have some sort of body armor, but at least it wasn’t a powered exoskeleton.
The cyborg ninja cried out, his voice trembling with joy. “Snake! I’ve been waiting for you!”
“Who are you?” the man in the bodysuit asked. The cyborg had called him Snake, but Snake didn’t seem to recognize this twenty-first-century ninja.
“Neither enemy nor friend.” The cyborg’s voice possessed an unsettling tinge of intoxication. “I am back from a world where such words are meaningless. Now you and I will battle to the death.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve waited a long time for this day. Now I want to enjoy the moment.”
The young man muttered nervously to himself, “What’s with these guys? They’re like something out of anime.”
The two men standing before him, their attire, and the words they exchanged contained no trace of reality. Only the terror of that blade was real. Only the unadulterated feeling: I don’t want to die.
“What is it?” the man called Snake asked. “Revenge?”
“No. Nothing so trivial. A fight to the death with you. Only then can my soul find peace. I will kill you, or you will kill me. It makes no difference.”
The young man, hearing the ecstasy in the ninja’s voice, ran. But his mind was so overcome with fear, he had only escaped straight into the open locker behind.
“Hah! Fine,” the cyborg laughed with a glance at the witless hiding job. “He can watch from inside there.”
“I need that man. Keep your hands off him.”
Snake emanated defiance, and the ninja drew joy from it, coursing through his body.
“Now, make me feel it,” the ninja said. “Make me feel alive again!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Nine years had passed, but the lab hadn’t changed a bit.
The room had been untouched by the wind and snow, and went unexposed to the sea air. Only a layer of dust had deposited itself in the solitude. The workspace remained in the same disheveled state from the battle between Snake and the cyborg ninja, who was later revealed to be Gray Fox.
For nine years the dust had settled—on top of the work desks, the supercomputer racks, and the locker where I had hid—and now the stirred-up particles sent Snake into a fit of coughing. When the violent coughing showed no sign of stopping, Snake pulled out Naomi’s autoinjector and hurriedly pressed it against his neck. While he took a few moments to collect himself, I scouted the room with the Mk. III.
Much had happened here.
At a computer behind a glass partition, many times I had run calculations in order to strengthen REX and simulations for his walking algorithms. I built mathematical models and made modification after modification. I calculated and recalculated and recalculated again, until finally, one day, REX took its first step. I could never forget that day.
An incredible number of man-hours went into the formulae that maintained REX’s balance in motion—how the robot’s enormous parts should connect, how much pressure should be put where, how much strain the parts could withstand. A mind-boggling array of hundreds of interconnected operations comprised REX’s ability to walk.
When Snake had recovered, I asked him to lift the Mk. III on top of the workspace. The terminal’s input jack was still operational, and I jacked in the Metal Gear’s manipulator arm.
I probed the electrical system. Most lines on the island were still active, and I wouldn’t have too much trouble rerouting the necessary power. I started by restoring the lab’s lifeblood.
One by one, the monitors came back to life. The climate control exhaled for the first time in nine years and sent dust dancing into the air.
“This version is totally obsolete,” I said to myself. “This is going to take a little work …”
Using the password from when I hacked into the system to save Snake, I bypassed the security. As I worked, Snake sat on the edge of the desktop and glanced at the corner of the room with the locker, door still open.
Embarrassed, I said, “This room isn’t conjuring up any unpleasant memories, is it?”
“No,” Snake said, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the carpet where I wet myself as I cowered in fear still carried the stain. How could I not think about it?
“You saved my life,” I said.
Until this moment I hadn’t realized that I’d spent all this time with Snake never having expressed my appreciation to him for rescuing me from Frank Jaeger. I was profoundly grateful to have finally said something, and to have come back to this place, remembering everything—including my life—Snake had given to me.
There were a mountain of things I needed to thank him for before he passed on, yet amid the day-to-day struggle, I’d forgotten them all.
Snake, as if I hadn’t said anything, was absorbed in his own memories.
“Naomi hated them for what they did to Frank’s body,” he said, “but it was I who crippled him in the first place. She must have hated me too.”
Deep regret overcame me. Some serious introspection seemed required into what exactly I had expected out of her. And yet the sin I carried was so similar to hers. Our own technological creations had twisted the world, and we shared a common guilt.
And so, carelessly, I trusted her.
I said to Snake, “But she was only using us to atone for her sins.”
“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.