Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (13 page)

Granted, Snake’s aging was far more rapid than that of other people. But as long as that aging was a process already etched inside his DNA, he wouldn’t be able to escape it.

As Naomi ran Snake’s body through her tests, she explained this to him.

Through the codec, I despondently listened to her talk. Had I been alone, I might have cried. I might have been unable to hold back the welling tears. I might have thrown my head on my desk and wailed. But Sunny was with me, and I didn’t want to do anything to upset her. So I held my eyes on the monitor and silently listened.

Naomi’s news didn’t get any better.

At the end of chromosomes are segments called telomeres, and these determine how many times a cell can divide. The telomeres consist of repeated snippets of buffer code, and with each division of the parent cell, a little more of the buffer is lost. Once the telomere is completely gone and the chromosome exposed, the cell will cease to divide.

Snake’s body, created as a clone of Big Boss, contained telomeres intentionally engineered to be short. The same was true for Liquid and Solidus.

And even though all three were the same age, Solidus had looked a decade older than Solid and Liquid—something that helped give him a presidential air suited to his office. It seemed he had been created with an even more fleeting life span than the other Snakes.

The Patriots’ project, Les Enfants Terribles, sought to mass produce copies of history’s greatest mercenary, Big Boss. The Snakes were warped, artificial creatures created for one purpose—war.

The clones were to designed to be saleable commodities, and in order to prevent misuse by clients or theft by enemies, their life spans were limited and a terminator gene inserted to prevent natural reproduction. None of the Snakes could ever father a child, and even if they survived their battle, they didn’t have long for this world. It was a safety mechanism to prevent the sons of Big Boss from escaping the control of the Patriots. A cruel fate written into Snake’s body.

Snake sat up on the CT scanner’s bed.

“The truth, Naomi,” he said. “How long is my body going to hold out?”

Naomi looked at the floor. “Your cells, blood, organs, nerves, skeletal system, muscle tissue—every part of your body is aging rapidly. If you were an ordinary man, by now? You wouldn’t even be standing. The only thing keeping you together is your strength of will.”

Snake was tired of roundabout answers. “How long do I have?”

“Half a year.”

I gasped.

The doctor had said one full year, and now it was half?

She knew more about the Patriots, about Big Boss, and about Snake’s body than anyone. My heart sank.

With the doctor’s opinion, there had still been room for hope. Yes, we had to prepare for the worst, but he didn’t really understand Snake’s body. Snake was special. Not ordinary. The doctor’s calculations—or his diagnosis—could have been wrong. To tell the truth, that’s the hope I’d been clinging to, an excuse to turn a blind eye to my friend’s fate.

Snake, on the other hand, took the news as coolly as ever. He took out a cigarette and searched for his lighter. I’d been ignoring his fate, sheltering myself from it, but Snake had accepted it. Of course, I couldn’t claim to really know what was going on inside his head. It could have been Snake putting up another of his strong fronts, like with the injections.

Whether he truly was steadfast or was just shielding us from his inner turmoil, I didn’t know. But wouldn’t either option require the same strength and kindness of will?

Naomi looked away from the test results on her computer screen and back at Snake.

“Listen,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Now what?”

“FOXDIE only kills its victims when the infected person’s genetic code fully matches the genetic sequence programmed into the virus’s receptors. In other words, it only attacks targets with specific genes.”

We knew that already without her having to tell us again. That was what killed both the AT president and the original Liquid.

“Yeah,” was Snake’s empty response. He had found a light and raised the cigarette to his lips. Naomi snatched it out, and Snake dejectedly watched as she threw it into the trash bin.

“The receptors on the FOXDIE virus inside your body are breaking down. The rapid aging process is changing the environment within your body, and as a result, the virus is starting to mutate.”

Two microscopic images appeared side-by-side on the display. In one, the object was smooth, but the subject of the other image was broken down. Mutated.

“This mutated version of FOXDIE could activate even if the infected person’s genetic pattern doesn’t perfectly match the receptors. Which means the virus will begin to indiscriminately kill the infected.”

I was dumbfounded. Snake had unwittingly spread FOXDIE all over Shadow Moses, but the virus was programmed to kill only FOXHOUND and the AT president. By working alongside Snake, both Meryl and I had likely contracted the virus ourselves. The only reason we didn’t suffer the apoptosis, the heart attack, and the death, was that we weren’t its targets. FOXDIE (which was just a tiny little bit of protein, if you thought about it) was clever enough to discriminate between its intended victims and everyone else.

And it was losing that ability.

And it was happening right now. Inside Snake.

His body was an incubator for history’s deadliest virus, one to which there were no antibodies and no cure.

“How long,” Snake asked, “will it take for the receptors to wear down?”

I noticed the question wasn’t
Will the virus go away after I die from old age?

“Three months.”

Snake gasped.

Naomi looked away with a pained expression. “Ironic, isn’t it? You’ve spent your whole life saving the world from Metal Gear—from nuclear annihilation. And now you’re becoming a doomsday device yourself. If it were up to me, you’d be quarantined already.”

Snake said nothing at first. He looked out the window at the carpet of blue flowers. A vase of the roses sat on Naomi’s desk.

“It’s just like me,” Snake said. “The botanists of old obsessed over creating a blue rose. But roses lacked the capability to produce the color blue. Thanks to advances in biotechnology, now there are fields of blue roses, created from the mixing of rose genes with those of other species of flowers.”

Blue roses were impossible. So the existence of blue roses was proof of the impossible made possible.

“Unnatural flowers. Unnatural Snakes. We’re all the same,” he said to Naomi.

“It’s not over yet,” Snake said. Not to Naomi, but to himself.

She nodded. “I know. You still have a job to do.”

We couldn’t quit yet. Snake had to banish his sins. And the sins of his brother by blood, Liquid. And the sin of my participation in the creation of Metal Gear REX.

“I have three months,” said Snake. “If I choose death first, will that stop FOXDIE from spreading?”

“If the host dies, the virus dies with it. You’ll have time to think once this is all over.”

There, waiting ahead of what I’d thought to be the worst possible fate, was an even worse one.

For the first time, Snake looked truly shaken. He retrieved another cigarette from his breast pocket, and as he held it, his fingers trembled. And not because of old age.

Because of fear.

But then he regained his calm. Who could consider ending his own life and not be terrified of it? Even beset by unnatural aging, Snake had never contemplated suicide. No matter what form it took, death would come by the hands of his genetic destiny.

And now that comfort, cold as it was, had been stolen from him.

By then, I was already in tears.

Why?

Why had he been burdened with such a cruel, terrible fate? He’d saved the world. Not just once, but many times over. He ushered the people of the world past the threat of nuclear war.

I was biting my lip so hard blood began to flow. But it was a necessary pain to keep my cry silent. Sunny was on the second floor and I didn’t want her to hear. Not my crying, not my tiny, tiny scream.

As my tears fell, I bit my lip hard.

Snake lit his cigarette, and this time, Naomi didn’t stop him. I just prayed the smoke would grant him some peace.

“Snake,” Naomi said. “Tell me one more thing.”

He simply looked at her.

“Have you been to a hospital lately? Been given an injection?”

“Why?”

“Take a look at this.”

Naomi brought up another microscopic picture on her computer screen. The object looked like FOXDIE.

“Isn’t that just FOXDIE again?” Snake asked.

“It’s a new strain of FOXDIE—one I’ve never seen before. Someone must have put it in you recently. Do you have any idea who?”

What, you don’t like shots?

Snake put his hand to his face and groaned.

“Drebin.”

“The new FOXDIE strain is starting to multiply rapidly. I can’t say what’s in it for sure without further tests …”

Naomi walked to a medicine cabinet and withdrew a syringe like the one she’d injected herself with in the Middle East. She tossed it to Snake.

“Here, take this. It contains the same substance the soldiers’ nanomachines secrete inside their bodies. It’s a drug that inhibits the nanomachines’ ability to regulate the senses.”

“But I’m not linked to the SOP.”

“Interference with the System can cause the older generation of nanomachines within your body to malfunction. That’s what happened to you in the Middle East—the malfunction manifested itself as a seizure. Give yourself a shot whenever they get bad.”

Snake stared at the autoinjector in his hand. The cylinder was divided into blocks, each a separate use.

“It’s potent, so use it sparingly—unless you want to end up an invalid.”

Now Naomi gazed out the window. “I’ve been a fool,” she said. “I let myself drown in nanomachines, and now I’m trapped by them. I can’t escape my fate.”

Snake grabbed her firmly by the arm, as if to pull her free.

“Then I’ll free us both. Where’s Liquid?”

“He left last night. As for where to, I can’t tell you yet. Not until you free me.”

“Do you even know?”

Naomi brought her lips to Snake’s ears and whispered, “Liquid has altered his plans.” Snake frowned. The room was bugged. “Removing the System will only cause his army to collapse from within. So he’s chosen to seize control instead. Liquid’s objective is to hijack the SOP System. He’ll use it to create the ultimate army of perfect soldiers and launch his insurrection against the Patriots.”

She paused, then solemnly said, “He calls it ‘Guns of the Patriots.’ ”

“Guns of the Patriots?”

Directly between them, something rolled to a stop on the floorboards.

A grenade!

“Naomi, run!”

He dove for her and pushed her aside. But before he could get away himself, the grenade went off. A flash of light. An earsplitting burst of sound. A flashbang grenade, like those favored by special ops forces on rescue and capture missions.

Snake knew he had roughly half a second to act. For the moment, he was blinded, but still conscious. He dropped to the floor and, bullets sailing overhead, rolled into the next room.

Over the ringing in his ears, Snake heard a voice say, “This place isn’t safe. Come with us.”

He poked his head up through an interior window but was forced back down by another wave of gunfire. The barrage threatened to tear through the wooden walls like paper, and Snake sought cover behind a metal desk.

In the brief moment he’d been at the window, he saw a Pieuvre Armement mercenary ushering Naomi out of the building.

Snake raised his M4 above his head and fired his own burst in the general direction of the window.

An eerie calm fell over the clinic. The PMC didn’t fire back.

Were they gone? Snake gritted his teeth and stood up from the desk.

Nothing. He ran from the building and past the rose garden to see a steep slope leading down. The medical facility was atop a tall hill with a good vantage over the forest below, where a Pieuvre Armement APC roared down the winding path away from the building.

“This sector has been brought under the complete control of Pieuvre Armement. Pieuvre Armement, for all your future needs. Pieuvre Armement. Unfailing soldiers, unfailing strategy.”

The infomercial voice echoed from the distance. Snake squinted at the retreating vehicle, sighed, and half ran, half slid down the nearly vertical slope.

5

SNAKE CAME OUT onto the road as another armored truck drove up, then skidded to a stop in front of him. The camouflage pattern on the side of the vehicle faded to reveal the words
EYE HAVE YOU
!

“Yo, Snake, need a lift?”

Drebin popped halfway from the top hatch, can of NARC soda in hand. For some reason, the man looked goddamn merry. An honest-to-God jack-in-the-box.