Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (30 page)

Snake’s knife was only a front.

Hidden in his other hand, the autoinjector was Snake’s holy sword and holy water—perhaps even the stake to drive into the vampire’s heart. Snake stuck the needle into Vamp’s exposed neck. Compressed air pushed the piston down, and the swarm of nanomachine inhibitors rushed into Vamp’s bloodstream.

Taken by surprise, the bloodsucker leapt back. He put his hand to his neck and, with agony in his expression, dropped to one knee and said, “What have you done?”

“There,” Snake said. “Now you’re a dead man too.”

He displayed the autoinjector to Vamp before putting it back in his pouch. Vamp didn’t seem to yet know what was about to occur within him—only that something was changing inside his body; something long asleep was awakening.

Could this be … life?

As the frozen life began to stir, Vamp looked afraid.

I took Vamp’s moment of confusion to slip the Mk. III inside REX’s cockpit, where I connected the robot’s manipulator arm to a data port on the side of the control stick. This could work.

The moment I initiated REX’s boot-up, the south wall crumbled like cardboard, and a Gekko lumbered like an elephant into view. The machine had crashed through the composite partitioning wall.

“Snake,” I said. “Look out! They’re rigged to self-destruct.”

Snake looked from the Gekko back to Vamp. Though Vamp had been momentarily discomposed when the nanomachines thawed his frozen life, now he slowly arose, ready to fight. He put his hands behind his back, then, after only an instant, they reappeared wielding knives.

Not even Snake could hope to stand against both Vamp and the Gekko. He was trapped. The muscles of his half-burned face tensed. The Gekko lifted one sausagelike bird leg and stepped over the rubble and into the room.

Then the robot’s head and legs split apart.

The cut was that of a master swordsman slashing through a bundle of straw. The Gekko’s head, packed with explosives, slid lopsided down its back. The robot, its sensors disconnected, inoperative, could no longer determine when it should explode.

A figure alighted on REX’s back. His right hand grasped the sword that had split the Gekko in two.

Raiden.

“Snake,” he said. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Raiden flourished his large sword as if it were a baton, then slid the blade into its sheath. No trace of confusion remained in Vamp’s expression—only rapture:
If it isn’t the man I’ve been waiting for
 …

“You ready for this?” Snake asked with worry in his voice.

“Yeah,” Raiden said. “Sunny gave me the go-ahead.”

With a freakish cry, Vamp jumped to REX’s knee, then he was atop the steel giant with Raiden. He presented Raiden a heartfelt grin and said, “How about it, undying man? You want to die too?”

“Sorry,” Raiden said, his eyes locked on the vampire’s, “but I can’t die just yet.”

“Then … kill me!”

Vamp drew throwing knives from their holders at his forearm and thigh and displayed them, fanned out between his fingers like a magician’s deck of cards. Raiden grasped his sword sheath.

“Wait,” the nosferatu said. “They say you consider yourself some Native American scout. Knives, then? Let us duel with knives.”

Raiden released the hilt of his sword and, keeping his eyes on Vamp, withdrew his
yoroi-doshi
, a thick, straight-edged dagger. He held the weapon in a reverse grip and pointed the blade’s tip at Vamp.

“Snake,” he said, “this one is mine. You keep those Gekko at bay.”

From behind the Gekko destroyed by Raiden came reinforcements. Snake readied the sniper rifle he’d purchased from Drebin in South America, pulling back the bolt and sending the first round into the breech. If he could hit the Gekko in their comparatively weak armored heads and sensory equipment, he might be able to stop them.

“Otacon,” Snake said, “we’re gonna buy you some time.”

I went back to work. I needed to get REX’s systems back online to stop the oncoming Gekko.

“Kill me,” Vamp said. “Kill me!”

With a scream, Vamp unleashed a volley of knives from both hands. Raiden, unable to dodge or deflect, took the weapons into his body, the knives sinking into his sides, his shoulders, and his arms.

Raiden used his free hand to swiftly pluck out the daggers, returning them at Vamp with machine-gun speed. The bloodsucker dodged them with his characteristic ballet grace and unsheathed his finest and largest knife from its sheath on his thigh. He smoothly transitioned forward, and Raiden, reading the nosferatu’s movements, rushed in to meet him.

Their blades crossed. The sharp clang of metal on metal resounded through the space, their music reaching even Snake’s ears below.

Suddenly, the concert cut silent. Raiden and Vamp separated and stared each other down, ready to make their next clash the decisive one.

Now.

The two flung themselves forward as if propelled by magnetic force. Directly between them, their swords flashed one final time, and in each man’s chest, a blade sank deep into flesh. White blood dripped from Raiden’s wound, dark red from Vamp.

For a few seconds, neither moved.

Vamp’s lips formed a taut grin, no longer the hopeless smile of an immortal that might suggest,
Not even this will kill me
. No, Vamp felt pain now. He felt life pouring out of him.

This smile was from surprise, and from happiness.

The two men separated, and Vamp breathlessly pulled the yoroi-doshi out of his chest.

“This thing spouting from my chest—this, this is my life.”

As Vamp fell from REX and down to the floor, his thoughts ran to the life force flowing from his wound.
Where have you been hiding? If you’ve been there all along, why have you denied me death and decay? Don’t you know how much suffering you’ve inflicted upon me?

I shouted, “Snake, get down!”

Snake dove away from the partitioning wall the Gekko continued to smash through. The next instant, missiles I fired from REX slammed into the top of the wall.

The concussive blast and debris rushed past Snake. He lifted his head to see the destruction, the mountain of rubble blocking any surviving Gekko from getting inside the supply tunnel entrance.

Surprised myself, I said, “This thing might come in handy after all.”

Snake had thought REX utterly destroyed, and sure enough, the radar dome and cockpit interior had been largely done in. But when the Mk. III ran a system check, I found the joints and support systems at nearly full strength. Even the cockpit’s manual controls appeared to be operable, provided I could reassign the control systems among any remaining functional input devices.

To give Snake room to fit inside the cockpit, I steered the Mk. III back down to the floor and found Naomi standing there, solemnly looking down on Vamp as he contorted in pain. Snake put away the sniper rifle and went to her side.

Through the Mk. III’s camera, I stared into the face of the monster who took my sister’s life. But the face was no longer that of a monster but of a human, fragile. No longer a nosferatu, no longer a monster, now a man once more. A mere man, as he had been born.

I had reviled him as a monster, but this ordinary man left me bewildered.

“Vamp was never immortal,” Naomi said. “His natural healing abilities were enhanced by the nanomachines inside his body. But after so many battles, he’s finally reached his limit.”

She didn’t have to tell us. We had already realized this when, inside the helicopter escaping from South America, she confessed her sins, saying,
I’m responsible for Vamp
.

That was when Snake and I knew. Vamp’s immortality was not innate but rather granted by Naomi’s nanomachines. If we could only inhibit them, we could restore the inevitability of death.

Raiden descended from REX and joined Naomi, looking at the man he defeated. After Snake had made Vamp human again, he was vulnerable to Raiden. Returned to his natural flesh and blood, Vamp would die now.

In turn, Raiden’s victory evidenced that he was no longer human. Perhaps Vamp had been transformed into a monster by technology. But Raiden was the same. Raiden was now a monster—as was Snake.

But, as with Vamp, Raiden had been the baby of a man and woman like any other. And Vamp, at the end, had been able to regain his humanity.

It shouldn’t be too late for Raiden
, I thought.
It mustn’t be.

Because Snake, born as a monster, wouldn’t be granted the same good fortune.

Raiden said to Naomi, “Sunny asked me to tell you something.”

White blood still flowed from where Vamp’s knives had cut him.

“What?” Naomi asked.

“ ‘I cooked them right.’ That was it.”

“I see.”

Naomi closed her eyes. Tears silently streamed down her cheeks as she seemed to reach an understanding. Whatever was going through her mind, I sensed there was more going on than satisfaction at teaching Sunny how to make fried eggs correctly. I could sense her emotions of fulfillment and relief, and they unsettled me.

“Good for you, Sunny,” she said. “You finally did it.”

At her feet, Vamp let out a painful moan. Naomi went to her knees and stroked his forehead with the scarred-over bullet wound.

“Doctor,” he said, afraid, “ease my pain.”

Faced at last by the real death he had so desired, Vamp now battled a terror that was hard to contain.

A pitiable sight; all too natural a response for any man.

I had been possessed by the notion that by defeating this monster, by killing this inhuman thing, I would be freed from my hate. But the figure on the ground before me was just a man, tragic in his normality, now nothing more than an inhabitant of a body on its way to death.

I wanted to scream.
Why? Why do you have to be like that now? Why do you have to be human again? I reviled you as a monster, and I wanted to kill you as a monster. Why is your face so human with fear?

Naomi took out an autoinjector and said to Vamp, “You must have been so lonely.”

Vamp reached for the syringe, his hand trembling, pleading for the promised land sealed within the cylinder. But Naomi’s hand also trembled.

“I can’t,” she said. “I haven’t earned the right to save you.”

His eyes yearned for help, but Naomi felt too much guilt to provide it.
I stole his life
, she thought.
I robbed him of death. I destroyed within him the peace which no living being should be denied.

Can I grant him salvation?

Who do I think I am? That’s supposed to absolve me of my sins?

Naomi would not allow her hands to provide his mercy. Instead, she came to the Mk. III and said, “You have to trust me, Dr. Emmerich.”

She put the autoinjector up to the robot’s camera. I didn’t know how to react.

“Give this to him,” Naomi said. “Not for revenge, but to put an end to his suffering.”

For a time, I stared at the syringe, unable to move. This man killed Emma. This monster took her from me. Now, I doubted anything could rescue Vamp from his anguish. All that remained was a lonely sinner burning in the blazing flames that lay in the space between life and death.

Still in a daze, I operated the Mk. III’s controls. The next thing I knew, the robot held the autoinjector within its manipulator arm. The misery that had been propelling me was gone now; without it, I no longer knew what to do, bereft of my anger, of malice and the desire for vengeance.

Where had they gone—the anger and the hate? While I struggled with my confusion, Vamp snatched the autoinjector from the Mk. III and jabbed it into the side of his neck.

Vamp began to writhe in agony. The life—and death—long sealed away now raged within his body. He was at the opening of a new life. And with life came the possibility of death.

“Now you can return to your true self,” Naomi said. “You can be at peace.”

“I can … die?”

Though his body contorted with pain, Vamp exhaled in relief.

“Forgive me,” Naomi said.

The nanomachines washed through him and restored old wounds to their rightful places.

Here
, he seemed to think.
Here is the place I’ve longed for. Dark and painful, and warm.

Vamp’s breath became visible in the cold, his life force taking root in soil long left fallow.

Pain filled his existence—the sweet, precious pain of being alive.

I don’t have to be anymore. I don’t have to suffer in the gap between life and death, refused from either
.

In his last moments, his muscles seized tight, and his back arched.

Then, Vamp found what he had been seeking.

Gently, Naomi closed his eyelids, covering the eyes that no longer held fear or joy. For a time, I gazed at the Mk. III’s monitor feed, unable to find the words I should say. I remained empty, a discarded shell.