Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (12 page)

The militia was gaining momentum.

The rebel howitzers launched a barrage against the line of PMC forces at the perimeter of the villa’s sizable garden. Snake steeled himself and moved onto the battlefield. As the relentless rain of shells tore chunks out of the earth, he advanced in a running crouch.

Snake’s back gave out, and he lurched forward. Luckily, he regained his balance, avoiding a fall. As if the artillery fire and swarms of bullets weren’t bad enough, now Snake had to worry about his back killing him first.

All he could do was grit his teeth and keep moving. He didn’t have any other options.

Pushing aside the intense pain in his lower back, Snake resumed his advance. He was used to ignoring pain. Put in enough years on the battlefield and you developed the ability whether you wanted to or not. The trick was to separate the sensation of pain from your consciousness.

But the pain of old age wasn’t like the sharp pain of a bullet or knife wound. It was dull, heavy. It reverberated. Compared to the many battle wounds Snake had endured, this was much harder to ignore.

Bullets whizzed past Snake’s ears, but he was too preoccupied fighting back his pain to spare any room for fear.

Then there was the air. The air quality of the battlefield was, as one might expect, far from wonderful. Dirt flew, and clouds of powder smoke hung in the air, along with all the terrible smells of battle—burning houses, burning vehicles, burning people—and you didn’t have to be there to know it wouldn’t be easy on the lungs. Making things worse (and this he brought on himself), Snake was a heavy smoker.

Hacking and coughing, Snake somehow made it to the rear of the villa. Snake climbed into the house through a window on the terrace. Inside, PMC forces were rallying against the rebel army. The soldiers were exchanging shrill jeers with rebels outside—but their behavior was clearly different from the combat high combatants sometimes experienced. Each seemed unusually excited. Some leaned out front windows, wildly spraying bullets, with what any soldier would recognize as not the right timing.

“Otacon, something’s strange about these guys.”

“Yeah, the PMC troops have been operating at high altitudes for a while now, and we have reports that it’s starting to upset the balance of the nanomachine control system. The change in concentration of oxygen in their blood seems to have an effect on the nanomachines—it’s leading to heightened aggressive tendencies.”

Perhaps that was another weakness in the System. At the very least, these soldiers were clearly not completely under its control. Nature was causing interference in the SOP. Unlike ID guns or ID vehicles, the human body contained too many unknown elements.

“Get to the basement,” I told Snake. “There should be an underground tunnel that leads to the research lab.”

The mansion had a definite South American air to it, with touches of Spanish Colonial architecture all over. The quaint appearance of the villa formed an odd juxtaposition with the sight of the armed soldiers holed up within, where they fought their pitched battle.

Sneaking around inside confined quarters was Snake’s strong suit.

He easily passed behind the line of soldiers and made it to the long underground tunnel. Snake was far more at ease with this sort of infiltration than he was with sneaking around in the middle of an open battlefield. He completed mission after mission via secrecy and stealth.

The tunnel was supported by wooden beams, and after some distance it ended in a vertical shaft with a ladder leading up. Snake climbed it and cautiously lifted the trapdoor at the top.

He was outside an isolated medical laboratory in the middle of a forest. Snake slowly clambered up to the surface, and alert for any disturbance in the baseline, he advanced toward the building. In stark contrast to the villa, the lab was a ramshackle wooden structure with exposed boards and peeling paint. But it wasn’t unkempt. The grounds were clean and looked cared for—an impression certainly aided by the ring of blue flowers around the building.

Blue roses.

Snake pressed his back to one of the building’s walls and looked in through an open window.

Most notable was the imposing GE-brand CAT scanner. Such a large and expensive piece of equipment was out of place inside the lonely clinic. In a country like this, that sort of machine might not be found in even the capital’s university hospital or medical facilities for the very wealthiest. Everything else inside the shack, for that matter, was clearly state of the art, with high price tags and high precision.

This had to be Naomi’s research center. Or, I should say, Liquid’s research center.

Someone moved in front of the window. Snake ducked down.

It was Naomi Hunter.

“Yes,” she said into the cordless phone at her ear, “the next test. And things on your end?”

Letting the M4 hang from its sling, Snake drew his Operator and stepped in through an open doorway. Slowly, careful not to make noise on the floorboards, he moved to a room where he could better hear Naomi’s conversation. She was in the connecting room, her back to him.

“I see. We’re on schedule here as well. I know. Me too. Until then.”

She hung up the phone. Suddenly, she gripped the edge of the desk and gasped as if struggling against something. Her shaking form revealed deep agony. Without stopping to think, Snake rushed forward to support her, but before he made it, she withdrew a syringe from her lab coat—the same type as the one she’d left in the Middle East—and jabbed it into her neck. Snake froze.

Finally, she took in a deep breath. For a time, at least, her pain had left.

“Naomi,” Snake said.

Having only just caught her breath, she jumped back in surprise at her visitor’s sudden appearance. When she saw it was Snake, relief flooded her face, but the coldness remained.

“Snake, I knew you’d come. You and I … neither of us can escape our fates.”

Snake looked at her. Nine years since they’d last met, yet she still had that bewitching beauty behind which she kept her feelings deeply hidden. The sight of her conjured the words
femme fatale
in Snake’s mind.

Was that sadness filling her shining eyes? Was there any truth behind her words?

Snake had been completely outfoxed by Naomi on Shadow Moses. He couldn’t blame her for it, though. In Zanzibar Land, he had crippled her brother, Frank Jaeger, code name Gray Fox.

After the battle, Frank had become a test subject for an experimental exoskeleton. He had to be pumped full of painkillers to endure the searing pain as artificial muscles were grafted to his body. Armed with superhuman strength and speed, he escaped his confinement with one purpose—to find Solid Snake. His journey took him to far-off Shadow Moses Island.

Naomi used to hate Snake, the man who killed her brother. Perhaps she still hated him. Or perhaps, having learned that Frank gave his life to protect Snake, she’d forgiven him.

Snake asked, “Who were you just talking to?”

“Liquid. Although I suppose he’s really Ocelot, from a medical standpoint.”

“So he’s not here then.”

Naomi nodded.

Watching the video stream, I could only sigh dejectedly. Sunny stood behind me, worrying for me though unaware of what to say. I turned to her, saw the plate of fried eggs in her hand and sighed again.

“Don’t worry, Sunny. It’s nothing. I’m in the middle of a mission right now, so I’ll eat later, okay?”

Sunny climbed back up the gangway, the concern still upon her face. I turned back to the monitor.

“Where are all the guards?” Snake asked.

“They know I won’t escape.”

“Tell me, Naomi. What happened in the Middle East?”

The chaos. The world falling apart.

It hadn’t affected only him. All of the Praying Mantis soldiers had languished there, and some of them died. If Liquid were trying to seize control of the SOP, was that test a success, or was it a failure? Did Liquid already have the SOP within his grasp?

“What you saw was the soldiers’ emotions run amok.”

“Another product of the System?”

Naomi shook her head. “At first, Liquid thought—we thought—the SOP was an ID control system designed primarily to maintain order and control in battle. And we were right. But only partially. SOP has another function: to control people’s senses.”

Snake had seen Meryl’s behavior—that sudden unnatural calm as the System automatically adjusted her emotions to their optimal state. With that amount of emotional control, the System would also be able to create artificial combat highs to increase combat effectiveness, as well as to dispel any bouts of panic during a battle.

“The skyrocketing demands of the war economy,” Naomi explained, “have fueled the demand for more soldiers and more fighting. The System ensures a steady supply of battle-optimized soldiers at minimal cost. But you of all people surely understand …”

“That unlike combat technique, a soldier’s senses can’t be taught—only earned through experience. Does that have something to do with that test of yours?”

“At first, our goal was to release the soldiers’ nanomachines from the System. But we didn’t know about the mental control.”

“And the nanomachines went berserk?”

Naomi shook her head. “No. Our test was a success. At least, it confirmed our hypothesis at the time.”

“Confirmed it?”

“Just as we predicted, the nanomachines stopped functioning, and the PMC soldiers were freed from the grips of the System. But the moment the System stopped … all the pain, and fury, and sorrow, all the trauma and stress, all the hatred, regret, guilt … all the sensations that had been suppressed were unleashed within their hearts.”

That chaos was the result of being freed from the System.

With the spell of the nanomachines broken, the emotions simmering below the surface erupted all at once. The soldiers’ memories, unlike their senses, weren’t erased. Each enemy soldier they’d killed, each lost comrade, each threat of violence against the innocent. The emotional consequences of all of their actions had only been restrained, not eliminated, by the technology.

“In suppressing the user’s mind,” Naomi said, “the nanomachines exact a heavy burden on his heart. The user’s body begins to reject the nanomachines; this reaction must then be suppressed with drugs. Before the user knows it, his mind is in complete shambles.”

The instant they’d been freed from the SOP, the soldiers had been brought down by their own humanity. A chill ran down my spine.

Once Liquid’s plans came to fruition, the hundreds of millions of green-collar workers around the world, wherever they might be, would all simultaneously be thrown into madness.

“Snake … remember Frank.”

The sudden mention of his name took Snake by surprise.

Snake’s superior, Snake’s enemy, Snake’s friend.

Naomi’s brother.

“They twisted his body for their experiments and suppressed his broken heart with nanomachines. SOP has taken it even further and applied it to people with flesh and blood. The war-guilt these soldiers carried assaulted them in the form of unimaginable shell shock. The purpose and the methods of war may have changed, but the battlefield itself hasn’t. Until the SOP was removed, those soldiers waged war as if it were a game. And then, suddenly, reality came crashing down upon them.”

But what about Snake, then? No one could say that the legendary hero had made it through his battles unscathed. Even the “man who made the impossible possible” had suffered his share of setbacks. But Snake made it through his own doing, not thanks to nanomachines. Just like every other warrior of the previous century—no, every other warrior since man first made war.

Snake must have been having similar thoughts, because he asked Naomi, “But what about me? I’ve never been under the System’s control.”

Naomi nodded.

“That’s why I want to examine your body. You need to know too. All right, Snake. Undress.”

Old age comes to everyone.

There isn’t a single human, mammal, or vertebrate who can escape old age. Not the rich, not the poor. Not the president, not the peasant. Death by old age is a protocol of life.

Aging primarily originates from what’s essentially a self-executing program in the DNA. One’s environment and lifestyle certainly have an effect, but improvements in those areas will never be able to entirely eliminate aging or death. The word
grow
is just another way of saying “age.” To grow, to learn, to mature, is to age.