But Liquid stepped onto the lowered hook and parted from the quay. Like an ascending angel he gazed down at Snake, then, with a triumphant pointing of a finger, he said, “But as for you, brother … You’ll stay here to mark this island’s watery grave.”
Snake gritted his teeth and forced strength into his wavering legs to somehow raise the M4 and stop Liquid. He wrung out the last of his stamina and planted his feet.
Suddenly, his windpipe went into a violent fit.
He coughed with no sign of stopping, as if to expel every last gasp of air from his lungs. Every muscle in his upper body, from his back to his chest to his sides, already ached from all the coughing induced by the harshly cold air since he’d set foot on the island. Now it felt like his muscles were tearing themselves off his bones. As Snake began to black out from the convulsions in his chest, Liquid slipped into the ship.
Snake slumped forward, clutching at his chest, helpless, while Liquid’s voice boomed, announcing the death sentence: “I’ll crush you with Haven!”
Just then, a deep explosion like that of a launching firework went off in the distance, followed by the high-pitched sound of an object cutting through air.
A white pillar of water burst into the sky just off Haven’s starboard.
The spray fell in a downpour, drenching Snake. Cannon fire. Coughing, Snake lifted his head and looked to the horizon line, where the cloudy Aleutian sky met the Pacific. He could see the outline of a single ship. Judging from the size and distance, the vessel had to be quite large. Two more shots landed right next to Haven.
The projectiles belonged to the three-gun, sixteen-inch, fifty-caliber cannons mounted on Mei Ling’s Missouri. The battleship lacked digital navigation and relied on last-century analog fire control computers to direct the main battery.
I wondered if Liquid realized the unfavorable situation he was now in. Not even Haven’s double-layered submarine hull could take a sixteen-inch shell unscathed. And Missouri’s initial attack hadn’t even been intended to hit target, but were test rounds fired to determine distance, air pressure, and wind speed. If Haven remained still, the next volley might well hit.
Haven’s canopy hurriedly began to close. If a shell through the hull would be bad, a direct hit on the exposed interior would be disastrous. Then there was the all-important railgun. The Arsenal’s bridge closed, and the vessel pulled away from the dock at full speed.
Snake, still coughing, raised his M4 and aimed at the quickly receding Outer Haven. Blood flowed from a cut on his forehead and stained his face red. He used one hand to wipe the blood from his eyes, but his vision remained blurry, and he couldn’t tell what he was looking at.
Then something deep within him snapped.
Something that had been barely holding together his overburdened body.
In a terrible spasmodic fit, Snake dropped the rifle. Unable even to fall over, he stood there in a daze, watching the indistinct outline of Outer Haven turn back toward him. He realized the shape was growing larger. The ship had returned to smash through the harbor—and Snake with it.
Missouri opened fire, but Haven moved too quickly. The giant steel whale charged between columns of spray. I didn’t think the impact with the harbor would put a scratch on Haven’s hull.
The harbor would be crushed—and the frail human body standing upon it.
I urged Snake to run, but he appeared not to hear anything. He stood frozen, like a scarecrow, with no prayer of moving, fettered by fatigue, injury, and age.
The rumble filled my ears. Snake closed his eyes and awaited the final moment.
“I’m a loser. I’m no one’s hero. I’m defeated.”
He accepted his humiliations.
“Liquid was right nine years ago. I can’t protect anyone. Not even myself.”
Then came the scream. Surprised the voice wasn’t his own, Snake slowly opened his eyes.
Even after all the incredible events he’d witnessed over the years, Snake still couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing between Haven’s bow and the crumbling quay was Raiden, feet planted wide, his back holding the ship at bay. He only had one arm, having severed the other to free himself from the rubble.
“Raiden,” Snake said.
The sight was incredible. Who could have believed that—even with the powered exoskeleton manifesting strength beyond compare with a normal human—a lone man could halt a vessel two thousand feet long? And yet Snake had seen something similar before. He knew this. He’d been saved like this before.
Shadow Moses, nine years ago. When Liquid went to crush me with REX’s foot, Frank saved me like this. My comrade in arms, code name Fox. Naomi’s brother.
Resisting the vast mass of Haven, Raiden said in a guttural voice, “S-Snake, hurry.”
“He’s right,” Snake said. “I can’t die yet. I can’t give up here. I can’t concede to humiliation or defeat. At least not yet,” he said to me over our link.
“I have been granted an extended life so that I can atone for my sins. That’s what Naomi said to me. Maybe she was right. Maybe I continue to live so that I may fulfill my fate. But don’t I carry an even more serious debt—an incontrovertible duty I had to see through more than any abstract concept such as fate or sin?”
Then, Snake spoke to himself, or to someone long dead. “Frank, I wasn’t able to protect your sister. I couldn’t free her from the bindings of her fate. The one thing I cannot do is betray her wishes. You saved my life; to betray you further would be unforgivable.”
As Haven’s prow drove into the crumbling concrete, what propelled Snake to escape didn’t come from some reserve stamina or mental fortitude, but rather pure duty. Snake’s body moved out of an unfulfilled responsibility to the man who’d saved his life, Frank Jaeger.
Raiden’s cybernetic frame shot out sparks like it had gone haywire. His powered exoskeleton had twisted in places and been crushed in others. Sent down pathways with no destination left to receive the energy, volatile electricity arced across the outside of his body. His back and his left arm, bearing the full force of Haven, strained to withstand it. If he kept holding back the ship much longer, his body would be crushed along with the quay.
Liquid’s mocking voice came from a loudspeaker on the side of the ship. “Give me a good show at the end, like Frank did.”
Snake’s blood boiled with rage. But as he called out to his friend, Raiden’s powered exoskeleton finally exhausted the last of its strength. Raiden collapsed, electricity discharging in a violent cascade of sparks. His arm fell slack, outstretched, wedged between Haven’s hull and the crumbling pier.
Snake shouted, but his voice disappeared within the rumble and the screams. Raiden’s fingers snapped, his hand squashed, his wrist crushed, then his elbow, then his entire arm. This pain wasn’t anything like the brief instant of fire when he cut his own right arm off. This pain, the meat grinder slowly working its way up from his fingertips, exceeded anything he’d ever experienced.
Not even Vamp skewering him like a shish kebab compared.
Flesh fused with bone, and his shoulder was pulverized beyond recognition. Bathed in white blood, Jack screamed a name.
The place he belonged. The woman he belonged with.
Jack called out the name that hadn’t passed his lips in years and fell into darkness.