Sunny told me what happened later. At a full-length mirror set up in the cargo bay, Mei Ling and Sunny adjusted Meryl’s wedding dress. Her body was built to handle the terrific recoil of her Desert Eagle, with wide, firm shoulders and a well-muscled back. But replace Meryl’s uniform with a dress, and her firm, utilitarian body flourished. Her well-honed figure was fundamentally beautiful.
“You look amazing,” Mei Ling admired in wonder, her eyes tearing.
Campbell stood behind his daughter, cane in hand, watching over her as she prepared to embark upon her new life.
After Meryl returned from our battle alive, the colonel continued to avoid any opportunity to talk with her. Tortured by doubt—Can I say to her face what I was able to over remote video? Would she even listen to what I have to say?—Campbell remained unable to speak out to his daughter on her wedding day.
Perhaps acutely sensing the colonel’s timidity, Meryl faced his reflection in the mirror. She took a step forward, her face devoid of expression. Intimidated, Campbell reflexively lowered his head.
There was something in his face. I can’t look away, not now. Somehow Campbell found the courage to look at her face, ready to accept whatever she had to say and whatever words she would use to rebuke him.
What he got was a gun barrel pointed at his head.
Mei Ling and Sunny gasped. The Desert Eagle’s frame formed a straight line that pointed directly at his temple. Campbell’s eyes widened in astonishment, but after a moment, he closed them and waited for the muzzle to erupt.
“Colonel,” Meryl said. “You’re going to walk me down the aisle.”
With the faint sound of metal rubbing past metal, the magazine released and dropped into Meryl’s open hand. Campbell’s eyes fell to the container. Not a single shell was inside. She slid open the action and displayed the weapon’s empty chamber.
Then she took Campbell’s hand in hers and gently deposited the Desert Eagle there.
“You’re not angry anymore?” the colonel asked. The gun felt heavy. The pistol had a recoil strong enough to break the wrists of an average woman. Thick metal provided a frame and chamber suitable for powerful cartridge rounds. When considered in the context of modern close combat situations, the firearm produced excessive force and was too hard to wield. The Desert Eagle could only be called an unnecessary weapon.
To continue her soldier’s life, Meryl had to carry such a thing. This was the weight she had borne until this moment.
“Oh, I’m still mad,” she said. “But now … you’ve got a chance to win me over.”
Campbell looked up from the pistol and returned his gaze to Meryl. Yes, there was still hope. As long as he could make that first step to change something. And this was his first tiny step—toward a new goal, and a new life. It was never too late for a new beginning.
“You’re right. We have plenty of time now.”
Campbell tucked the gun away at the small of his back, took Meryl’s hand, and walked with her down Nomad’s cargo ramp and onto the tarmac. A wide red carpet led from the plane’s hatch all the way to Johnny Akiba, waiting in a white suit, flowers in hand.
Johnny first met her nine years ago on Shadow Moses. Yet I doubt she even remembered. As a member of the Next-Generation Special Forces participating in Liquid’s action, Johnny had been assigned guard duty on Meryl’s holding cell.
The soldiers of the Next-Generation Special Forces had been brainwashed by FOXHOUND psychic Psycho Mantis. Because their participation in the Shadow Moses takeover had been unwilling, the Genome Soldiers were never officially prosecuted, but all either faced discharge or transfer to inconsequential duties. Johnny drifted from one armed force to the next, including a Russian mercenary group, until finally landing with the Army CID’s PMC investigation unit, where he was reunited with the detestable gorilla of a woman who had once knocked him out and stripped him of his uniform.
Of course, she wasn’t really a gorilla, and the moment he saw her again, he realized his feelings for her. But, hating needles, he ducked out of the mandatory nanomachine injections. Without the SOP, he could never keep in sync with the team. With Meryl only ever angry at him, Johnny remained unable to reveal his feelings.
If only he’d had the SOP, he could have controlled his weak bowels, and he wouldn’t have been the target of laughter and disgust whenever he rushed to the toilet. His alienation from his squad had been a direct result of his refusal of the System.
But ultimately, his exclusion from the SOP saved his comrades—including Meryl—in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Only Johnny kept his head through the chaos of the Guns of the Patriots tests.
During the fight on Outer Haven, Johnny was finally able to confess his love. After Snake disappeared behind the portal, Johnny woke up and helped Meryl defend against the Haven troopers. There, she realized that this man—who had already once rescued her in Eastern Europe and, only moments before, flung himself over her, snipers be damned—could be someone she could spend the rest of her life with.
Trailing the bride and her father, Sunny and Mei Ling descended from Nomad. Jonathan, Ed, and I stood on each side of the aisle and greeted Meryl with applause. Some distance away, on the side of the runway, a young boy watched, having been drawn in by curiosity. He must have been coming or going from the ocean and carried a fishing rod and a basket.
I noticed bells ringing. Was there a church on this island? But then I realized that the peals were growing louder. Ed and Jonathan also heard the sound and were looking around.
“The bells are getting louder,” Johnny said. Then he saw something and surprise entered his voice. “It’s coming closer!”
We turned to face the oncoming sound, and above the tarmac, the shimmering heat waves seemed to bend. Then, as if teleporting in, an armored vehicle appeared, first spreading from a single floating point, then quickly revealed in entirety as its OctoCamo deactivated.
The bell rings came from speakers on the outside of the Stryker APC. Having dropped its camouflage skin, the vehicle barreled straight toward Nomad. Just as the wedding party began to step back in alarm, the Stryker’s mighty bulk turned into a drift and slid to a stop beside the red carpet.
I caught sight of the words EYE HAVE YOU! stenciled on the vehicle’s side. The hatch opened, and Drebin appeared.
“Just in time,” he said.
The green of the APC’s armor was a little out of place amid the celebration. Though astonished by his showy entrance, I frowned, thinking, Couldn’t you have done something about that car?
Drebin pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and said, “And I brought gifts.”
He waved the cloth, and the Stryker’s green became the pure white of a UN vehicle—a wedding-themed OctoCamo pattern. Even Drebin’s slogan changed to read DREBINS—WE HAVE YOURS. He touched the vehicle’s rear hatch and looked over his shoulder at us with a smile.
Flower petals burst out from the open hatch.
“Incredible,” Mei Ling admired.
They were white roses. Fans inside the APC sent white petals rising through the tropical sky.
Flowers blanketed everything around us—the runway, even Nomad; their pure white standing out all the more where they settled on the red carpet aisle.
“A shower of flowers, compliments of DREBINS. And—”
Drebin caught a single fluttering petal and closed his hand around it. He opened his fist again to reveal a dove, which took to the air.
“—a little something extra from me.”
Then, Drebin’s words a signal, in an instant the fluttering petals all became doves. The flock flew together, through the blue island sky, toward some distant place.
As the white birds danced past her, Meryl looked around for Snake. She wanted him to witness this moment over anyone else, but among the faces there, his wasn’t to be found—even though she had the ceremony held in this Pacific haven, where no nation’s laws would reach, so that Snake and I could be present.
Amid the applause, a trace of unease tinged Meryl’s expression, and Mei Ling, the sole other woman here, was the only guest to notice. Mei Ling moved close to my ear and whispered for no one else to hear.
“Where’s Snake?”
I faked a wry smile. I couldn’t tell anyone he was still fighting a battle. This time, his opponent was himself, and this battle was far more difficult, tragic, and lonesome than any that we’d made it through in the past.
Now, Snake was about to face his last battle alone.
And so, just as Naomi had done, I lied—to keep secret Snake’s battle; to let Snake slip off alone. This was our toughest choice, but we both understood it was for the best.
“Who knows?” I said. “That guy always keeps you waiting.”
I didn’t think for one second that Mei Ling believed a lie like that. I did my best, but I’m not an actor by anyone’s standard. I made an attempt at a grin, but I couldn’t help my lips from going taut. Only Campbell saw my oddly rigid smile and knew what meaning it held.
Campbell gave his unspoken words to the doves to carry with them to the heavens.
Thank you.