Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (35 page)

“But,” I continued, “one thing’s for sure: she was determined to stop Liquid.”

Snake’s gaze seemed to soften, if by only a bit. I don’t know if he believed me, or if he had simply decided to take the gamble. Naomi was gone from this world; whether he believed in her or in Sunny and me, who had taken up her cause, the result would be the same.

In that manner, Naomi wasn’t unique. Wolf and Emma, and all of the dead—for that matter, the living too—existed in a way, nestled inside other people. I was Wolf, I was Emma, I was Naomi, and I was Snake. I was, in part, all of those gathered at the briefing.

“There’s a saying in China,” Mei Ling said. “When a bird is upon death, its cry is heartbreaking. When a man is upon death, his words are right.”

Even Mei Ling’s formidable command of quotations had misfired here. If sorrow could be found in a bird’s death cry, a person’s dying words were worthy of attention. Perhaps Mei Ling was suggesting we should trust Naomi. But none in the room provided any reaction, not even Meryl or Johnny.

But her words did make me think.

People never truly ceased to be. Like a river flowing through those who speak for us, human existence endured within both the physical body as well as stories passed down. As long as somebody continued to tell our stories, none of us—not Snake, not Meryl, nor any of the soldiers here with us—none would truly go.

His words are right.
What was spoken on the verge of death were not mere words but a facet of our lives, a seedling to sprout branches into the future.

Mei Ling asked if anyone had any other questions, but a dark mood had fallen over the room. No questions were necessary. Snake had said this mission was for a suicide squad, and he was right: some might die. Then, breaking the heavy, seemingly eternal silence, Snake casually raised his hand.

“Anybody got a smoke?”

2

AS WE ALWAYS did before a job, Snake and I walked together.

Where we went was never important, whether a park or the streets near a hideout. Before engaging in a dangerous mission, as part of our anti-Metal Gear or anti-Patriots activities, the two of us went on a walk. As long as the sky was above our heads, we didn’t care where.

This time, we strolled
Missouri
’s
deck
.
I was never a believer in the so-called “good old days,” but the wooden deck was top class and top quality, well polished and pristine. A museum ship in Hawaii until recently, the vessel had been carefully preserved. In terms of pure aesthetics, the meticulously polished deck was in a class apart from the modern metal numbers, slathered with a mixture of shoddy-looking blue paint and coarse sand for better traction.

Snake asked me, “How is Raiden?”

Raiden had severed his right arm to escape the rubble, and the Arsenal had crushed his left. Obviously he wasn’t all right.

“He’ll live,” I said, “but he’s in no shape to fight. Best to let him rest.”

Raiden likely owed his life to his body’s cybernetic tissue closing capability. Losing an entire arm, let alone two, was a potentially fatal wound. But when the flow of blood and energy can be disengaged from the limbs, preventing any further losses, such injuries became vastly preferable to what Vamp had done to him in South America. With multiple stab wounds over his entire torso, closing down those tissues would have rendered Raiden immobile.

Snake seemed relieved to hear that Raiden wouldn’t be joining the fight.

“The only people I have left to rely on,” Snake said, “are Meryl and …”

He looked across the deck’s expanse to the port side of the ship, where Akiba was walking, hunched over and unsteady. Perpetually at the mercy of his bowels, Johnny was a young man in great difficulty.

I shrugged and said, “Kind of an unknown quantity, isn’t he?”

Akiba felt restless because of his ever-worsening stomach, but the other soldiers were similarly ill at ease, nervously fidgeting and glancing in all directions. Without the SOP’s control, they were no longer able to hold back their fear of and excitement for battle.

“Everybody’s losing their nerve,” I said, “without the System to protect them. I hear that a lot of soldiers are deserting because the SOP’s aftereffects are so bad.”

Then I heard a familiar voice. “I hooked Akiba up with a naked M82.”

I turned to see Drebin, sitting above us, atop the massive barrel of a sixteen-inch gun turret, his pinstripe suit appearing entirely out of place.

Drebin raised a can of NARC soda in greeting and said, “Fancy meetin’ you here.”

“What are you doing here?” Snake asked.

“I laundered these guys’ IDs, then issued ’em new, naked guns. Including that catapult you’re gonna be riding.”

Drebin gestured with the can toward a row of what at first glance looked like antiaircraft guns affixed to the wooden deck—the human catapults that would launch the strike team onto
Haven
.

“Business has been slow,” Drebin said, “ever since Liquid got his hands on GW. His extra orders stopped coming in. Now that all the weapons all over the world are locked, the only ones still looking to fight would be you and yours. Apparently everyone else thinks it’s not economical to replace all their useless equipment with my stuff.” He shrugged. “So I made an extra special trip out here, just for you.”

This guy must have some taste for danger
, I thought.

“Drebin,” Snake said, “do you have even the slightest idea what’s going on here?”

“Of course I do.” Behind the sunglasses, Drebin’s eyes narrowed in delight. He held out the aluminum can. “See, when it comes down to it, the world’s like this soda here. Once the fizz is gone, I ain’t got no use for it. It’s got no worth.”

He paused to let his message sink in. “I’m on the side of whoever needs me the most. You dig?”

Then Drebin made his trademark gesture, pointing first at his eyes, then at Snake.

Unable to decide what, if anything, he had up his sleeve, Snake and I left the peculiar man and resumed our walk across the
Missouri
’s deck.

To Snake, I remarked
sotto voce
, “He can’t be here just for business. I shudder to think someone would be here for the fun of it.”

Snake shook his head and said, “I strongly suspect this is more than a hobby for him.”

Why was Drebin following us everywhere we went?

The man certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. But I’d have had to be crazy to think he’d gone across the world and back with us just for fun.

The horizon where Liquid would soon surface was quiet and still, without any large waves, perhaps in awareness of the gravity of the coming battle. As we cut through the peaceful waters, I turned my gaze back to the majesty of the aged battleship.

Maybe she hadn’t half the Arsenal’s stupefying size, but
Missouri
’s superstructure, with a unified bridge, smoke stacks, and rear rangefinder, stood stern and imposing, like a medieval castle. She was the epitome of a battleship, with a fatherly ruggedness—not at all similar to the Arsenal-class
Haven
’s rounded, stealth-oriented design. As befitting a sea vessel,
Missouri
would always be referred to as “she,” but have no doubts:
Missouri
was a man, and a resolute father at that.

The ship carried scars from her many battles. Walking from aft to fore along the starboard side, Snake noticed part of the hull was significantly bent.

Snake patted his pockets for a cigarette. “That’s a fairly large dent.”

I nodded. “A Zero put that there. A kamikaze in the Pacific War.”

“A Zero, huh?”

“This ship has many stories. She’s been around longer than either of us. The Japanese foreign minister signed the Instrument of Surrender on this deck, you know.”

“Where?”

Snake looked across the deck. Several of the ship’s crew were working, busily preparing for the fight to come.

“I think there’s a plaque somewhere,” I said. “Mei Ling would know.”

“A hull bent by a Zero, and a plate to show where Japan signed surrender—marks of the history she’s witnessed …”

“Right,” I said. “Everything has a tale—not just people, but ships, buildings, even simple objects. All of us.”

“And you’ve taken on Naomi’s story. You finished her worm cluster.”

“Actually, Sunny’s the one who finished it. Although she was only one of three to write the code.”

Snake managed to find a cigarette and put it to his mouth. His lips tightened, his skeptical expression asking,
Sunny, Naomi, and who else?

Snake was right to be curious. He knew I hadn’t contributed any of the programming. I took out a lighter and, covering the flame with one hand to protect it from the sea breeze, lit Snake’s smoke.

Then I said, “Sunny went fishing through the Gaudi’s libraries to see if there was any source code she could use to complete the program. What she found was Emma’s worm cluster.”

Snake didn’t say anything but just looked into my face. My sister, a specialist in high-volume data analysis, had written the program to destroy GW. And she knew well how to destroy the AI, having designed it herself.

“Sunny took my sister’s code and worked it into Naomi’s program. I didn’t have time to look over every single line, but what I did see reminded me of Emma—like she had left traces of herself in the way she coded.”

Even programming code could hold a story. Programs were more than numbers and instructions, but records of another world. The cluster was part of Emma’s story—proof that Emma Emmerich Danziger had once lived, and she had told many stories.

Snake, engrossed in my talk, had forgotten to breathe, and began coughing on his own cigarette smoke.

I made a wry smile, patted his back, and said, “But this worm cluster that Sunny created … it’s even better than Emma’s. Sunny’s worm destroys the AI’s intellect by triggering apoptosis. Once uploaded into GW, it should do some real damage.”

I continued to comfort Snake and was again struck by how terribly weak he had become. Touching my hand to his back, I could feel that the strength that had once roused the legendary man no longer remained in this aged body.

“You’re dead set on going to
Haven
yourself?” I asked, but I knew there was no point in asking. When I tried to tell him to give up before we went to Shadow Moses, he wouldn’t listen.
We started this
, he’d said, before descending to the island and the bitter cold his old body couldn’t withstand.

“I still have things left to do besides smoke.”

Snake moved as if to toss his cigarette into the ocean. He returned my disapproving look with a grin and took out his portable ashtray and used it. I hadn’t made a face at his littering, but rather at why this man had to shoulder the sins of mankind, and at why he would be leaving us.

He was the same with Frank. Snake hadn’t wanted things to end that way. Irrational fate brought the two men together, and in the end, compelled them to fight. Snake wasn’t to blame for defeating Frank Jaeger, and Snake wasn’t the one who made Frank the experimental subject for the powered exoskeleton project.

But Snake attracted tragedy. He stewarded the sins of others. At Shadow Moses, he drew Naomi’s hate. And now he was ready to put a conclusion to it all before embracing his death.

Another coughing fit overcame Snake, and when it passed, he remained bent over, hands on his knees. He looked up at me and said, “What about you, Otacon? Have you thought about just leaving the ship?”

Snake had always brushed aside any concern offered him. Even in his current shape, he stubbornly pressed ahead to fulfill his duty. But now with Snake worrying about me, I found myself answering as he would. We were two pigheaded men.

“Stop it,” I said. “I’ve still got things to do myself. And I don’t even smoke.”

“Snake,” Campbell said, “can you hear me?”

On my notebook’s screen the colonel’s face appeared stiff. I had called Snake and Meryl back to the vacant briefing room to hear Campbell’s report. Meryl didn’t like having to meet with the man, even across the computer screen, but Snake asked her, and she couldn’t refuse him.