Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (45 page)

All right, I was a little—to be honest, a lot—taken aback, in part because the Mk. III was, despite being handmade, an assemblage of costly and detailed machinery built at considerable expense. But that was only one small part of my surprise. And if you want to know why, Sunny said it best when she told me, “I made a new friend.”

She smiled, truly happy, and said that you were getting along. Struck by the radiance of her smile, I didn’t notice at first that her stutter was gone completely.

You were Sunny’s first brush with the outside world. You opened the door to a world that could be both overwhelming and weary, sometimes cruel and lonesome, but real, and where we would have to build our happiness.

And now, I’m surprised by how right she was about you. You have a power—the wonderful ability to gently lead others to greater things and greater understanding.

A power entirely unlike that of the Patriots, who used the human subconscious to bring about the reality they sought. You hold your fellow man in respect and possess the sense to awaken people, with a slight and gentle touch, to their inner strength and beauty.

“I like it outside,” Sunny said.

That was the moment Sunny first started living her own life—a life where she stood on her own feet, saw with her own eyes, and from out of the vast sea of information called reality, picked out only that which she truly needed.

So when Sunny asked me when Snake was coming back, I felt a little relieved. I had known I would have to face that question from her, but now she didn’t need Snake or me any longer.

Inside myself, I told Snake, who I thought was likely to be in the potter’s field at that time,
Snake, at least Sunny will be fine now.
He had always been telling me I needed to let her go into the outside world, so I figured I probably wasn’t the only one who worried about her.

“Snake is sick,” I said. “So he went on a trip to get better.”

I didn’t tell her he was on a trip to kill himself. And not because I was worried the truth would hurt her. I didn’t want to bring her tears, but I did want her to understand what Snake’s choice signified, and how dreadful the terror was that he faced at that very moment.

For that, she’d need to grow up just a little more. She needed a deeper understanding of what it meant for a person to die, and how much value life held. Without that, I didn’t think she could truly comprehend the battle Snake faced.

Sunny looked into my eyes and asked, “We’re not going with him?”

I shook my head. “No. We’d … just get in the way.”

“I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.”

She seemed to have some understanding.

I turned my gaze to the ocean, far away at the end of the runway. Beyond the edges of the airport, grasses swayed in the gentle ocean breeze, their leaves making noise as they brushed together. A single white rose swayed in Sunny’s hair.

“Snake had a hard life,” I said. “He needs some time to rest.”

Though I wrote above that I wanted Sunny to understand, and not to cry, I have to admit that tears filled my eyes.

I can’t. I can’t let Sunny see me cry.

Acting like nothing was wrong, I turned my back to Sunny. But Sunny’s sharp eyes didn’t miss the trembling of my shoulders as I held back the sobbing.

“Are you crying, Uncle Hal?”

Somehow, I managed, “No,” but in my emotional state, the answer came out curt. I smoothed it over by turning back to her and forcing a smile, adding, “I’m not crying.”

Sunny pushed her index finger against the bridge of her nose. For a moment, I didn’t know what she meant, but soon I realized my glasses had slid down out of place. I’d brushed them aside when I went to wipe my tears.

Sunny giggled.

Now she was the one comforting me. Perhaps she understood Snake’s absence even more deeply than I. Perhaps she held back her tears to keep from making me feel sad. The possibility was considerable. After all, she had a far stronger and more caring and tender heart than I.

Of course, I don’t need to tell you that.

You chose Sunny, and Sunny chose you.

DEBRIEFING: NAKED SON

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.”

The body was that of a clone—Solidus.

Solidus had been created as the perfect clone of Big Boss. Unlike Solid and Liquid, who had been given various customizations, he was created to be exactly the same as Big Boss. Zero and the proxy AIs that rewrote the world for him were convinced that Solidus’s remains were those of Big Boss.

As for Big Boss, JD had implanted him with nanomachines and kept him in a state of eternal sleep. He was completely sealed away in both body and mind. Until the System was destroyed, he had been unable to wake. Ocelot and EVA wanted two things: to bring Big Boss back to life, and to end the Patriots.

EVA stole Big Boss’s body from the Patriots and reconstructed it by replacing the missing parts from Liquid, who had died at Shadow Moses, and Solidus. With the limbs and organs essentially sharing the identical genetic code, the transplants weren’t rejected by the immune response, as if they were happily returning to their former body.

But though Big Boss had been physically restored, his consciousness remained locked away. Then Ocelot, EVA, and Naomi put into motion a grand and complex scheme to free the world—and Big Boss—from their prisons.

First, Ocelot set about ceasing to be Ocelot.

His was a grotesque and woeful decision.

In order to revive Big Boss, Ocelot chose to sacrifice himself; to stop being Revolver Ocelot and become Liquid Snake. This was his ingenious ploy to deceive the System and hide his activities from the AIs.

Ocelot used nanomachines and psychotherapy to gradually transplant Liquid’s personality onto his own. Each day, he became less and less sure of who he was. Eventually, he lost himself. One might say that his fate was akin to death. With a smile on his face, he destroyed himself for Big Boss’s sake, believing,
If giving up my insignificant personality will obliterate Zero’s repulsive world, the world I helped bring about, I will do so happily.

Into Ocelot’s vacant mind a fiction was planted. You are Liquid Snake, a clone born from Big Boss’s genes.

The psychodesigners overwrote Ocelot’s being with their version of Liquid Snake, created from a wide collection of bits and fragments; Gulf War reports on his interrogation by the AMN in Baghdad, the psychological test results from when he joined FOXHOUND, surveillance footage stolen from the Patriots, and, more than anything else, Ocelot’s personal impressions of Liquid from their time together in FOXHOUND.

From the Patriots, EVA had stolen the technique, a prototype of the system to control human will that was later completed in Manhattan under the S3 Project; the protocol Jack—as Raiden—had been the prototype of, using environment and role to alter the personality of a specific person. Through that ghastly technique, Ocelot became Liquid’s doppelgänger.

He became the son of that great warrior.

He had been born an ocelot but was now—even if only in fiction—a snake.

That might have been what he had always desired—to be the son of the warrior whom he respected more than anyone else.

As Big Boss told Ocelot’s tale, something about him seemed lonely.

The two men were united by the depth of their losses; they were comrades in arms. They had helped give form to Zero’s twisted delusions and paranoid worldview, and they would gladly pay whatever price to undo their misdeed. And Big Boss and Ocelot paid dearly.

Now Big Boss reached the source of his sins.

“It all started with him … Zero.”

Snake looked in the direction of Big Boss’s gaze. A small distance from the rows of gravestones, an old man was sitting in a wheelchair. The stars-of-Bethlehem danced in the breeze like snowflakes, and beyond them he looked sad and lonesome; desolate.