DEBRIEFING: NAKED SON
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INSIDE THE CHAMBER, the metal pin struck the primer at the base of the cartridge.
The primer burst and ignited the powder charge, triggering an explosion inside the metal cylinder.
The explosive energy filled the cartridge and pressed against the rear of the bullet.
The projectile struck by the pin gained spin from the barrel’s rifling, and therefore aerodynamic stability, and flew straight toward the muzzle.
The pistol, having fulfilled its purpose, slipped from Snake’s hand and fell to the earth. The bullet, not hitting anything, not smashing anything, disappeared into the graveyard sky. Snake slumped forward onto his hands, feeble wheezes escaping from his worn-out body.
He couldn’t do it. When the gun fired, it had been outside his mouth, the muzzle flash barely singing his cheek.
“Shit. How many times am I going to have to do this before I can finally die? How much practice does it take for a man to off himself?”
Exposed to this much fear, even old, dry, leathery skin formed beads of sweat. Cold sweat formed on his forehead and ran down in icy trails.
“Can I die?”
Snake never thought he would ask the same question that had plagued Vamp, even if the meaning behind it was different.
Snake was ashamed at the part of himself that felt relief now that the fear had lifted.
“What did I come here for today? If I can’t pull the trigger now, when will I? If I put it off until tomorrow, then the next day, and the next, then one moment, my procrastination will bring me across the threshold, and my body will strew the deadly virus. The unpreventable, untreatable, heart-stopping virus. I suppose I’d be dead by then, but it would be a selfish death too late for the rest of the world.
“Life’s more than just a game of win or lose, didn’t you say, Otacon? Now I understand. Trying to compare yourself with someone else, competing for a victory like squawking myna birds is foolish. But in your inner struggle, victory and defeat do exist.
“And right now, I’m losing. I’m yielding to the terror that comes flooding from within.
“I don’t believe in God, Otacon, so you’re the only one to whom I can pray. Give me strength to do this now. Give me the resolve to protect the paths you and Sunny will take through life, and the world Meryl and the rest will build.”
Battling the relentless, overpowering fear that beset his determination, Snake reached for the dropped pistol, when he sensed someone standing behind him and lifted his head.
“That’s right,” the man said. “Good. No need for you to go just yet.”
For a second Snake thought he was seeing himself. The man’s face was identical to his own aged countenance.
I know this man.
Ever since I was sent into Outer Heaven as a rookie in FOXHOUND nearly twenty years ago, my brothers and I fought within his gravitational field. Running from the fate left to them by his genes, Liquid and Solidus had been reduced to live grotesque existences.
“It’s been a long time … Snake,” the old soldier said.
But he was missing his iconic eye patch. He had lost his right eye during a mission in Soviet territory, yet here that eye was, right in place, and staring Snake down. His arms and legs and right ear, which had been lost in his battle to the death with Snake in Outer Heaven, were all firmly attached. I saw it all through the Solid Eye’s feed later, as though it weren’t a vision or a delusion, but a simple reality. And it was.
Maybe this man wasn’t Big Boss but another clone hitherto kept secret—and who had been sent to kill Snake. But the Patriots had been wiped from the global information networks—what point would there be for the assassin to come out now?
Big Boss wore the long coat of the FOXHOUND unit he’d once commanded. The stars-of-Bethlehem parting at his feet like the Red Sea before Moses, he approached Snake with slow, deliberate steps. From neither his eye that shouldn’t exist nor his shoulders that should have lost their arms could any malice be sensed.
But Snake saw the outlandish gun dangling from Big Boss’s right hand. The man hadn’t raised the weapon at Snake, but Snake sprang to his feet and reflexively aimed his pistol at Big Boss—the same pistol he had meant to use on himself only minutes before.
Big Boss, seemingly unconcerned with the muzzle pointed in his direction, drew in on Snake without faltering. He took one step, then another. Snake replaced his weapon’s magazine. Then, just inside CQC distance, Big Boss stopped.
Snake’s reason told him that Big Boss’s eyes held no sign of violent intent. Even his unconventional weapon remained down at his side and pointing at the ground, utterly unthreatening.
Yet Snake was unable to lower his gun.
No matter what story Big Boss’s lack of apparent aggression told, a former foe approaching, weapon in hand, posed threat enough. Odd for a man who had just been agonizing over his inability to die to find himself pointing a gun at his enemy. But such were the instincts of a man who had lived his life as a warrior and now approached his death as warrior.
Then Big Boss’s gun fell to the sea of flowers.
Unable to comprehend Big Boss’s intentions, Snake was confused. But before he had time to ask himself why Big Boss had dropped his weapon, the man who had created CQC alongside The Boss had his hands around Snake’s pistol. Taken by surprise, Snake attempted to counter the maneuver, but Big Boss pulled Snake’s arm, drawing him close.
Big Boss hugged Snake tight, his strength far greater than Snake’s despite their bodies being genetically identical, save for the telomeres and marker genes.
“Let it go, my son,” Big Boss said. “I’m not here to fight.”
Snake was dumbfounded. First the man showed up armed before the son who had supposedly killed him, and next he discarded his weapon and gave him a fatherly embrace. Still not understanding what Big Boss was after, Snake tried to resist, but Big Boss’s arms were like metal hoops around a barrel and permitted no escape.
“Or should I call you brother.”
“What?”
“It’s over,” Big Boss said softly. “Time for you to put aside the gun and live.”
With that, Snake too let go of his gun. Now that both were unarmed, Snake finally accepted he had no reason to resist.
Big Boss hadn’t come to fight. He hadn’t come here to kill Snake.
Though the world had changed greatly with the destruction of the Patriots, Snake hadn’t been able to escape the sins of the past. He pointed my gun at his former enemy, even though the causes that forced us into opposition were in that past.
As if sensing Snake’s feelings, Big Boss patted Snake on the back, as if to say, It’s over. This was all the fault of us old fools anyway.
“The old leaders have all passed away,” Big Boss said. “Their era of folly is over.”
Big Boss released Snake and looked at a gravestone that stood behind his brother—Big Boss’s gravestone. The grave that should have held his bones.
“I’m the only one left,” he said, “and soon … I’ll be gone too.”
His consciousness imprisoned by the Patriots, Big Boss’s brain-dead body was supposed to have been incinerated by Liquid in Eastern Europe. We had secretly transported the charred corpse to America and buried it next to The Boss’s resting place. With Mei Ling, Meryl, and Campbell’s help, we had no trouble hiding his body among the coffins of the other victims and flew it from airport to airport beyond the reach of customs.
But this meant that those cinders hadn’t really been Big Boss.
“How can you still be alive?” Snake asked.
“That body Liquid burned on the Volta wasn’t mine.”