Taken by surprise, the bloodsucker leapt back. He put his hand to his neck and, with agony in his expression, dropped to one knee and said, “What have you done?”
“There,” Snake said. “Now you’re a dead man too.”
He displayed the autoinjector to Vamp before putting it back in his pouch. Vamp didn’t seem to yet know what was about to occur within him—only that something was changing inside his body; something long asleep was awakening.
Could this be … life?
As the frozen life began to stir, Vamp looked afraid.
I took Vamp’s moment of confusion to slip the Mk. III inside REX’s cockpit, where I connected the robot’s manipulator arm to a data port on the side of the control stick. This could work.
The moment I initiated REX’s boot-up, the south wall crumbled like cardboard, and a Gekko lumbered like an elephant into view. The machine had crashed through the composite partitioning wall.
“Snake,” I said. “Look out! They’re rigged to self-destruct.”
Snake looked from the Gekko back to Vamp. Though Vamp had been momentarily discomposed when the nanomachines thawed his frozen life, now he slowly arose, ready to fight. He put his hands behind his back, then, after only an instant, they reappeared wielding knives.
Not even Snake could hope to stand against both Vamp and the Gekko. He was trapped. The muscles of his half-burned face tensed. The Gekko lifted one sausagelike bird leg and stepped over the rubble and into the room.
Then the robot’s head and legs split apart.
The cut was that of a master swordsman slashing through a bundle of straw. The Gekko’s head, packed with explosives, slid lopsided down its back. The robot, its sensors disconnected, inoperative, could no longer determine when it should explode.
A figure alighted on REX’s back. His right hand grasped the sword that had split the Gekko in two.
Raiden.
“Snake,” he said. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Raiden flourished his large sword as if it were a baton, then slid the blade into its sheath. No trace of confusion remained in Vamp’s expression—only rapture: If it isn’t the man I’ve been waiting for …
“You ready for this?” Snake asked with worry in his voice.
“Yeah,” Raiden said. “Sunny gave me the go-ahead.”
With a freakish cry, Vamp jumped to REX’s knee, then he was atop the steel giant with Raiden. He presented Raiden a heartfelt grin and said, “How about it, undying man? You want to die too?”
“Sorry,” Raiden said, his eyes locked on the vampire’s, “but I can’t die just yet.”
“Then … kill me!”
Vamp drew throwing knives from their holders at his forearm and thigh and displayed them, fanned out between his fingers like a magician’s deck of cards. Raiden grasped his sword sheath.
“Wait,” the nosferatu said. “They say you consider yourself some Native American scout. Knives, then? Let us duel with knives.”
Raiden released the hilt of his sword and, keeping his eyes on Vamp, withdrew his yoroi-doshi, a thick, straight-edged dagger. He held the weapon in a reverse grip and pointed the blade’s tip at Vamp.
“Snake,” he said, “this one is mine. You keep those Gekko at bay.”
From behind the Gekko destroyed by Raiden came reinforcements. Snake readied the sniper rifle he’d purchased from Drebin in South America, pulling back the bolt and sending the first round into the breech. If he could hit the Gekko in their comparatively weak armored heads and sensory equipment, he might be able to stop them.
“Otacon,” Snake said, “we’re gonna buy you some time.”
I went back to work. I needed to get REX’s systems back online to stop the oncoming Gekko.
“Kill me,” Vamp said. “Kill me!”
With a scream, Vamp unleashed a volley of knives from both hands. Raiden, unable to dodge or deflect, took the weapons into his body, the knives sinking into his sides, his shoulders, and his arms.
Raiden used his free hand to swiftly pluck out the daggers, returning them at Vamp with machine-gun speed. The bloodsucker dodged them with his characteristic ballet grace and unsheathed his finest and largest knife from its sheath on his thigh. He smoothly transitioned forward, and Raiden, reading the nosferatu’s movements, rushed in to meet him.
Their blades crossed. The sharp clang of metal on metal resounded through the space, their music reaching even Snake’s ears below.
Suddenly, the concert cut silent. Raiden and Vamp separated and stared each other down, ready to make their next clash the decisive one.
Now.
The two flung themselves forward as if propelled by magnetic force. Directly between them, their swords flashed one final time, and in each man’s chest, a blade sank deep into flesh. White blood dripped from Raiden’s wound, dark red from Vamp.
For a few seconds, neither moved.
Vamp’s lips formed a taut grin, no longer the hopeless smile of an immortal that might suggest, Not even this will kill me. No, Vamp felt pain now. He felt life pouring out of him.
This smile was from surprise, and from happiness.
The two men separated, and Vamp breathlessly pulled the yoroi-doshi out of his chest.
“This thing spouting from my chest—this, this is my life.”
As Vamp fell from REX and down to the floor, his thoughts ran to the life force flowing from his wound. Where have you been hiding? If you’ve been there all along, why have you denied me death and decay? Don’t you know how much suffering you’ve inflicted upon me?
I shouted, “Snake, get down!”
Snake dove away from the partitioning wall the Gekko continued to smash through. The next instant, missiles I fired from REX slammed into the top of the wall.
The concussive blast and debris rushed past Snake. He lifted his head to see the destruction, the mountain of rubble blocking any surviving Gekko from getting inside the supply tunnel entrance.
Surprised myself, I said, “This thing might come in handy after all.”
Snake had thought REX utterly destroyed, and sure enough, the radar dome and cockpit interior had been largely done in. But when the Mk. III ran a system check, I found the joints and support systems at nearly full strength. Even the cockpit’s manual controls appeared to be operable, provided I could reassign the control systems among any remaining functional input devices.
To give Snake room to fit inside the cockpit, I steered the Mk. III back down to the floor and found Naomi standing there, solemnly looking down on Vamp as he contorted in pain. Snake put away the sniper rifle and went to her side.
Through the Mk. III’s camera, I stared into the face of the monster who took my sister’s life. But the face was no longer that of a monster but of a human, fragile. No longer a nosferatu, no longer a monster, now a man once more. A mere man, as he had been born.
I had reviled him as a monster, but this ordinary man left me bewildered.
“Vamp was never immortal,” Naomi said. “His natural healing abilities were enhanced by the nanomachines inside his body. But after so many battles, he’s finally reached his limit.”
She didn’t have to tell us. We had already realized this when, inside the helicopter escaping from South America, she confessed her sins, saying, I’m responsible for Vamp.