That was when Snake and I knew. Vamp’s immortality was not innate but rather granted by Naomi’s nanomachines. If we could only inhibit them, we could restore the inevitability of death.
Raiden descended from REX and joined Naomi, looking at the man he defeated. After Snake had made Vamp human again, he was vulnerable to Raiden. Returned to his natural flesh and blood, Vamp would die now.
In turn, Raiden’s victory evidenced that he was no longer human. Perhaps Vamp had been transformed into a monster by technology. But Raiden was the same. Raiden was now a monster—as was Snake.
But, as with Vamp, Raiden had been the baby of a man and woman like any other. And Vamp, at the end, had been able to regain his humanity.
It shouldn’t be too late for Raiden, I thought. It mustn’t be.
Because Snake, born as a monster, wouldn’t be granted the same good fortune.
Raiden said to Naomi, “Sunny asked me to tell you something.”
White blood still flowed from where Vamp’s knives had cut him.
“What?” Naomi asked.
“ ‘I cooked them right.’ That was it.”
“I see.”
Naomi closed her eyes. Tears silently streamed down her cheeks as she seemed to reach an understanding. Whatever was going through her mind, I sensed there was more going on than satisfaction at teaching Sunny how to make fried eggs correctly. I could sense her emotions of fulfillment and relief, and they unsettled me.
“Good for you, Sunny,” she said. “You finally did it.”
At her feet, Vamp let out a painful moan. Naomi went to her knees and stroked his forehead with the scarred-over bullet wound.
“Doctor,” he said, afraid, “ease my pain.”
Faced at last by the real death he had so desired, Vamp now battled a terror that was hard to contain.
A pitiable sight; all too natural a response for any man.
I had been possessed by the notion that by defeating this monster, by killing this inhuman thing, I would be freed from my hate. But the figure on the ground before me was just a man, tragic in his normality, now nothing more than an inhabitant of a body on its way to death.
I wanted to scream. Why? Why do you have to be like that now? Why do you have to be human again? I reviled you as a monster, and I wanted to kill you as a monster. Why is your face so human with fear?
Naomi took out an autoinjector and said to Vamp, “You must have been so lonely.”
Vamp reached for the syringe, his hand trembling, pleading for the promised land sealed within the cylinder. But Naomi’s hand also trembled.
“I can’t,” she said. “I haven’t earned the right to save you.”
His eyes yearned for help, but Naomi felt too much guilt to provide it. I stole his life, she thought. I robbed him of death. I destroyed within him the peace which no living being should be denied.
Can I grant him salvation?
Who do I think I am? That’s supposed to absolve me of my sins?
Naomi would not allow her hands to provide his mercy. Instead, she came to the Mk. III and said, “You have to trust me, Dr. Emmerich.”
She put the autoinjector up to the robot’s camera. I didn’t know how to react.
“Give this to him,” Naomi said. “Not for revenge, but to put an end to his suffering.”
For a time, I stared at the syringe, unable to move. This man killed Emma. This monster took her from me. Now, I doubted anything could rescue Vamp from his anguish. All that remained was a lonely sinner burning in the blazing flames that lay in the space between life and death.
Still in a daze, I operated the Mk. III’s controls. The next thing I knew, the robot held the autoinjector within its manipulator arm. The misery that had been propelling me was gone now; without it, I no longer knew what to do, bereft of my anger, of malice and the desire for vengeance.
Where had they gone—the anger and the hate? While I struggled with my confusion, Vamp snatched the autoinjector from the Mk. III and jabbed it into the side of his neck.
Vamp began to writhe in agony. The life—and death—long sealed away now raged within his body. He was at the opening of a new life. And with life came the possibility of death.
“Now you can return to your true self,” Naomi said. “You can be at peace.”
“I can … die?”
Though his body contorted with pain, Vamp exhaled in relief.
“Forgive me,” Naomi said.
The nanomachines washed through him and restored old wounds to their rightful places.
Here, he seemed to think. Here is the place I’ve longed for. Dark and painful, and warm.
Vamp’s breath became visible in the cold, his life force taking root in soil long left fallow.
Pain filled his existence—the sweet, precious pain of being alive.
I don’t have to be anymore. I don’t have to suffer in the gap between life and death, refused from either.
In his last moments, his muscles seized tight, and his back arched.
Then, Vamp found what he had been seeking.
Gently, Naomi closed his eyelids, covering the eyes that no longer held fear or joy. For a time, I gazed at the Mk. III’s monitor feed, unable to find the words I should say. I remained empty, a discarded shell.
Vamp was dead. And nothing had changed.
“Why?” I whispered.
But I didn’t have to ask. Everything was clear now. This wouldn’t bring Emma back. This wouldn’t redress all the things I should have done for Emma but wasn’t able to do. Vamp’s death didn’t mean anything. The revelation left me astonished—I should have realized this from the beginning, so why had I never been able to accept it?
Emma couldn’t forgive anyone, not anymore.
Vengeance. I had been looking outside myself, while my true enemy had always been within.
“We can’t erase the past,” Naomi said. “Nor can we forgive it. And so … the only thing we can do is end it.”
I don’t know if she spoke to me or to herself. Either was the same. If only I had understood sooner.
Emma, I’m sorry. Why am I always so foolish?
Retrieving the autoinjector that had delivered Vamp’s death, Naomi stood and faced Snake. Just as I could never receive Emma’s forgiveness, no matter what I had done or might do, neither would Naomi ever find atonement. But she still carried unresolved sins, and her journey was not yet at an end.
“Snake,” she said, “Liquid’s down below us. He’s stolen the Patriots’ System, slipped out of their grasp, and taken their ark.”
“Their ark?” Snake asked.
“A warship unfettered by land, law, country, or computer network. The only place where they are truly released from the shackles of the Patriots. The place where they can be free. Outer Haven. From where Liquid plans to launch the nuke.”
Haven. Drebin had mentioned the word back in South America. Tax havens, data havens—places outside the System, safe from supervision and control.
“Snake,” she said solemnly, “your life has been prolonged so that you may fulfill your purpose.”
Was his accelerated aging a brief stay granted to him to complete his mission? Without it, would he already be dead—perhaps nine years earlier, on this island, stricken down by FOXDIE?