Naomi continued, “When all of this is over, you’ll have no choice but to accept death. We are given life only so that we can atone for our sins. Your life was created for that very purpose.”
Gently, she touched her hand to Snake’s burned cheek and said, “We ourselves must atone for our sins. We must not pass them on to the next generation. We must not leave them for the future.”
Tears falling from her eyes, Naomi looked like Mary Magdalene at Golgotha, witnessing the agony of the man crucified for all the sins of the world.
“That is your true fate,” she said. “One that cannot be defied.”
She put the autoinjector to her neck. With her thumb, she pressed the button, sending nanomachine inhibitors into her blood just as they had been sent into Vamp’s.
“Naomi?” I said.
I sensed something was wrong. From her peculiar calmness when she reported Sunny’s words to her handling of Vamp’s passing, Naomi seemed to be settling her unfinished business one piece at a time. I turned the Mk. III’s camera to her and caught a fleeting, contrite smile.
“Snake,” she said, “Vamp and I are the same … living corpses, bodies kept barely alive by nanomachines.”
“Then you …”
“Cancer. I shouldn’t even be alive right now.”
“What?” I yelled. I remembered shivering at the touch of her lips inside the helicopter, wondering, Why is she so cold? Why is her skin so lacking in warmth?
But when I had joined my body with hers, I fled into the reassurance of feeling loved by someone, and I pushed any such doubts aside.
“The nanomachines kept my cancer from progressing,” she explained. “But there’s nothing more they can do. With the nanomachines gone, my time will unfreeze and begin to flow again.”
Her breath had become visible in the frigid air.
Just like Vamp. Life blighted her body. The nanomachines that had once sealed away the realities of life and turned aside death’s gaze were now swiftly stripped from her lungs, her organs, and her arms and legs.
“Goodbye, Hal,” Naomi said, hugging herself as the frozen air of Shadow Moses robbed what little warmth remained from a body that should already be dead. She held herself as if cherishing the cold.
She smiled at the Mk. III and said, “Give my best to Sunny.”
Far removed from Shadow Moses, I was helpless. I couldn’t hold her steady, and I couldn’t put my arms around her. “Naomi,” I yelled at the computer screen, “don’t do it!”
I cried and I screamed, unreservedly; it was all I could do. Racked by feelings of powerlessness, I could only observe through the Mk. III’s video feed.
Why? Why did you betray us, to die so selfishly?
Ignoring my tearful cries, Naomi gave herself another nanomachine injection. She slumped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. At last, her body had regained its natural state: inflicted by a cancer, spread from lungs to liver to lymph nodes to everywhere else—a cancer that should have long since killed its host.
I brought the Mk. III to Naomi’s side. With effort, she lifted her head and touched a finger to the robot’s flip-out screen, tracing my face on the mini LCD.
“You have such beautiful eyes,” she breathed.
I choked up. Through the Mk. III’s cameras, our eyes met.
“Forgive me,” she said. “And forget me.”
Deep down, I refused to accept it.
I can’t. It had been the same with Emma, and with Wolf. Not once had I been able to save anyone I loved. Not when Snake and Wolf battled on that snow field, not when Emma was stabbed on the Big Shell.
What was I fighting for when I couldn’t protect a single person important to me?
Then, as if in disregard for my despair, a wall I thought I’d blocked off with REX’s missiles burst open. Raiden turned to see a leg protruding lazily from the rubble, large and still like an elephant’s. A Gekko had self-destructed to reopen an entrance.
“Now go!” Naomi said, pushing away the Mk. III with the last of her strength. For a moment, I thought the robot might tip over, but somehow I maintained balance. I tried to send it dashing back to Naomi, but Raiden had seized the tiny machine. I moved the MK. III wildly, but its legs only flailed at the air.
Keeping his gaze on the advancing Gekko squad, Raiden warned, “Snake, we need to hurry.”
The leg of the exploded Gekko was tossed into the air like a chicken bone—one of its comrades had kicked its remains aside to clear a path into the space.
Why does it always end this way?
I stared at Naomi’s motionless body, frozen by feelings of powerlessness.
Just when I thought I was ready to fall in love.
Just when I thought I could protect her.
“They’re coming!” Raiden shouted.
Snake took the Mk. III from him and sprinted toward REX. I could only watch Naomi pass into the distance.
The three of us reached the Metal Gear and clambered into the cockpit. I helped Snake start up REX, while sadness, and the magnitude of all I had lost, crushed down on me, relentlessly.
I understood that the instant I allowed my concentration to falter, I would break down into despair.
Certainly I knew what I had to do. I had already lost two people close to me—if I hadn’t grown accustomed to loss, I at least had learned how to endure.
I could calm my emotions—to a certain extent, at least—simply by closing my eyes and steadying my breath. Emotions follow the flesh. The minds and bodies of man possessed an inherent, and perhaps cruel, insensitivity. I felt a fleeting yet fierce contempt for myself for not being any different.
“I understand,” I said. “I haven’t lost everything yet.”
From REX’s cockpit, I connected to the facility’s network and sent the command to open the supply tunnel door. I remembered something else I learned through all my losses.
Those women were real. They were a part of this world. Emma, Wolf, and Naomi. Everything I gained through them—the sadness, the joy, the hate—proved that they had indeed lived, and now they continued to exist in a different form inside me.
Regret didn’t have to mean being imprisoned and paralyzed by loss. By holding onto these thoughts—of what I hadn’t been able to do for Wolf, what I hadn’t been able to provide Emma—I could keep the women alive inside myself.
And as I did, my duty of regret had another purpose: to ensure I wouldn’t repeat the past.
“Snake,” I said, “I’ve still got a job to do.”
Naomi still existed within me. Her life might have been gone, but my love for her remained.
For now, that was enough. Later, there would be time to spare for tears. I’ve had nine years of many battles to learn how to stave them off a little bit longer.
Snake nodded at the Mk. III. “That’s right. We need you.”
“I’m done crying. My tears have dried up.”
Then Naomi’s body disappeared within the stampede of Gekko.
I had to move forward. There was no stopping here.
I went back to my efforts to bring REX back to life.
To keep giving meaning to everyone I’d lost.
To preserve the meaning of their existences.
✦ ✦ ✦
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