Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (6 page)

Once out in the open air, we saw that this was only half the roof—another partial floor occupied the remaining space. Taking care to walk silently on the balls of his feet, Snake stepped inside and into a room littered with empty bottles of liquor, formerly a bar. Snake passed through and saw his destination.

His rifle trained in front of him, Snake carefully pushed open the door to the room. Thankfully, the hinges were mostly free of rust, and no squeak broke the quiet. Through the crack in the doorway, Snake peered into the room. It seemed empty.

Just as he set foot inside, Snake sensed someone behind him and turned.

From behind the doorway stepped a soldier, armed and with his gun pointed at Snake’s head.

“Drop your weapon!”

The soldier’s voice sounded young.

Snake glimpsed the man’s weapon out of the corner of his eye. It was trembling.

He was reminded of an incident on Shadow Moses. It was just like when Snake had first met Meryl. She resisted alone against the rebel FOXHOUND unit—maybe she was trying to live up to the memory of the man she believed to be her father, the Gulf War hero. When she saw Snake, she didn’t know if he were friend or foe, and she’d held a trembling FAMAS at his head just like this man was doing now.

Snake dropped his Operator, raised his hands, and turned to face the soldier.

“Don’t move!”

The man’s voice was as shaky as his gun. Snake couldn’t help but grin—this really was just like before.

“You haven’t even taken the safety off, rookie.”

“Careful, I’m no rookie! I’m a ten-year vet!”

Snake deliberately flicked his eyes to the safety on the soldier’s XM8.

Lacking the confidence to see through Snake’s bluff, the young man nervously glanced at the side of his rifle. The safety was off, but he didn’t have time to bask in satisfaction. By then, the veteran Snake had already made the young man pay the price for letting his guard down.

Snake grabbed the XM8 and yanked the rifle forward. The young soldier lost balance, and Snake connected his elbow to the man’s face. He hooked his leg around that of the soldier and, still gripping the rifle, sent him flying to the ground.

CQC—short for close quarters combat—was the hand-to-hand fighting style developed during the Cold War by The Boss and her disciple, Naked Snake, aka Big Boss. Snake had mastered it.

Not one second after he had dropped his guard, the soldier was staring up the barrel of his own rifle.

This was a ten-year veteran? How the hell had he ever survived that long?

“Don’t move!”

Now another gun was at Snake’s head.

Snake’s eyes moved up the ridiculously large barrel of the gun to find, with no great surprise, a Desert Eagle. The weapon was tremendously powerful for a handgun, but if a weaker female attempted to fire it one-handed, the recoil would probably snap the bones in her wrist.

But the voice that now spoke to him was definitely that of a woman.

“CQC … a real Big Boss, huh?”

Snake kept the XM8 pointed at the soldier on the ground as he eyed the woman with the Desert Eagle. She wore a balaclava, which hid all of her face except for her eyes.

“Lower your weapon!” she ordered. “Slowly now. I wouldn’t try anything funny if I were you.”

Snake noticed that there was more pointed at him than this woman’s peculiar choice of a firearm. Two laser dots held steady on his chest.

Judging from the gear worn by the woman and the younger soldier, the two were likely with the CID special ops unit. No matter where the battlefield, Americans stood out. Then Snake noticed the emblem sewn onto the woman’s combat chest harness.

A sharp-eyed fox holding a combat knife in its mouth.

“FOXHOUND?” Snake said.

The woman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but soon a look of surprise washed over her.

“Snake?”

She lowered her weapon and pulled off her mask, revealing a familiar face. She had grown up since Shadow Moses, and no youthfulness remained in her appearance. Only her chic hairstyle was unchanged.

Meryl Silverburgh.

Colonel Campbell’s so-called niece who had fought alongside Snake on Shadow Moses Island.

“It’s been four days,” Meryl said, “since Liquid arrived in the area.”

She handed Snake a photograph. He squinted and moved the glossy paper closer and farther from his eyes, trying to find the sweet spot where the photo wouldn’t be blurry. Meryl looked away.

I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t recognized him at first—the aging had been so fast and severe, he looked like a different person than he had only years before.

When he told her about the disease, she couldn’t hide her shock. Since she was little, she’d fondly listened to stories of the legendary man, and when she’d met him on Shadow Moses, her feelings toward him grew. Now, seeing the unthinkable transformation of the man she’d once fallen for, she seemed truly disturbed.

Though Snake could understand her feelings, he also knew there was nothing he could do about them. What surprised him most was that beyond the initial and short-lived shock, she was handling the news so well. She seemed unnaturally calm.

The picture was of a man once known as Revolver Ocelot.

An agent of the Patriots and a former FOXHOUND member, Ocelot had lost his right arm on Shadow Moses and had the limb replaced with one belonging to the fallen Liquid—some even thought that Liquid’s personality had taken over through the transplanted arm.

Meryl gave Snake another photograph. The subject seemed to be a woman, although her face wasn’t clear—not only was she wearing a hood, the picture was out of focus.

“This woman’s been with him the whole time. She doesn’t look like a combatant. Probably some kind of advisor. Maybe a scientist.”

Meryl leaned forward to get a closer look at the picture. Her face was near Snake’s now, and close-up, the affects of his aging were undeniable. His skin was dry and mottled and blotchy, and innumerable wrinkles creased the corners of his eyes. She could even hear his wheezing breaths.

She began to tear up, and gently placed her hand on the shoulder of the man she’d once loved. But Snake shrugged her off. He would soon reach the end of his life, but he couldn’t endure her pity. He’d hurt enough people already.

He tried to soften his rebuff, saying, “You’ve become a fine soldier.”

But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear—not some praise about her abilities as a soldier. “Maybe it’s because someone taught me well. A certain legendary hero who suddenly disappeared?”

Snake never did know how to talk to women, despite how talkative he was over the wireless codec. (I even grew to think of him as a big mouth.)

“You quit the unit,” she said. “Me … I never gave up on you—or on FOXHOUND.”

She might have even been wearing the emblem of her own accord. I doubt the army had acknowledged its use, seeing the FOXHOUND Special Forces Unit was still kept secret.

“Snake … back then, I just wanted you to accept me. I wanted you to turn around and see who I was. But I’ve put the past behind me. I’m done playing at romance.”

Meryl regained her composure. Snake looked pained, but just when I thought he might let his emotions come through, his face went blank. Every time his feelings began bubbling up, something seemed to crush them back down.

“C-Commander …”

It was the soldier who had surprised Snake from behind the door.

Without looking at him, Meryl sighed. “Akiba, what is it? The bathroom again?”

“Y-yes, ma’am. My stomach hurts again …”

“Is your stomach ever normal?”

“Y-yes, well, I think so … I’m sure it’s been at some time, although I can’t remember …”

Meryl had heard enough and waved Akiba off. Hands clutched to his stomach, he moved as stealthily as he could and still reach the toilet in time.

“He’s a handful,” Snake said.

Meryl put her head in her hands. “His name’s Johnny Sasaki. But everybody just calls him Akiba. He handles traps, sensors, and cyber combat. He has a wearable computer on his right arm.”

“I’ve come across a number of soldiers with bad stomachs,” Snake said. “It must just be my luck. Maybe I had some taste for bizarre foods in a past life and now I’m doomed to encounter the scatological.”

“Maybe it’s been the same soldier all those times.”

“Yeah, right.”

They both laughed. Then Meryl asked, “So … what are you here for?”

“Threat assessment—the PMCs.” That was partly true, at least, thought Snake. To discover Liquid’s intentions, he would have to discover the threat posed by his PMCs.

“Really? Because I hear a rumor there’s an assassin out there targeting their leader.”

Snake feigned surprise. “Well, that’s some rumor. I’m only here because the UN wants me to assess the impact and effects of PMCs on their refugee protection efforts.”

“That’s all?”

“More than enough for a retired vet like me.”

Meryl sighed and, seeing she wasn’t going to get anywhere, returned to the subject at hand. “I know he’s plotting an insurrection. But as long as AT Security’s System is in place, there’s no way he’ll succeed.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“They’ve implemented a system that monitors in real time every single soldier engaged in combat action—whether he’s state army or PMC. Each soldier has been fully ID-tagged with nanomachines injected into their bodies for that purpose.

“The AI at the System’s core not only collects data on the state of their bodies and the battlefield, it also monitors sensory organ data showing strong emotions such as pain and fear. This data is monitored at HQ to enable command to make quicker, more precise, and more rational decisions. It also enables crisis management for each individual soldier.”

“Battlefield control …”

“It’s being used by the US military, by state armies in allied countries, by PMCs. Even police agencies are starting to adopt it. Unless they agree to implement the System, PMCs aren’t permitted to send troops anywhere.”

Snake made a connection with something strange he’d sensed in Meryl’s behavior.

“You’ve got these nanomachines in you too.”

“Of course. Our unit plays by the rules, same as everybody else. It was creepy at first—knowing you’re being watched twenty-four seven—but I’ve gotten used to it. It gives us a lot of advantages in the field too. We get a clearer picture of what’s going on around us, so there’s less confusion during missions. And our nanomachines communicate with each other, making teamwork a lot smoother.”

Snake had sensed right.

Her unnatural calm—as if something inside her quelled her rising emotions.

Nanomachines. Nanomachines, and their link with the System, constantly scanned her mental state. They found an emotional instability and automatically stabilized her.

“And that’s not all the System does for us,” Meryl continued. “It’s also a security guarantee against the PMCs.”

“A security guarantee?”

“The PMCs don’t fight out of nationalism or for a cause. They’re just bodies, fighting on someone else’s behalf. They’re mercenaries. A commodity—it’s easy to imagine them betraying their clients by joining the enemy or refusing to fight … or committing humanitarian atrocities. To keep these things in check, the System ensures that no one can use firearms or military vehicles without the proper System ID. It’s true for every piece of equipment out there.”

“So if the PMCs tried to mount a terrorist attack or coup d’état—”

Meryl cut in. “Right. They would automatically find themselves locked out of their weapons and equipment. They wouldn’t be able to move, attack, or engage in combat of any kind.”

Snake wasn’t convinced. “What if someone tried to circumvent the System by getting the nanomachines out of their bodies?”

She chuckled. “They’d be losing their IDs in the process—so they wouldn’t be able to use their weapons.”

“We’ve progressed too far,” said Snake. “We can do too much now.”

The more impossible circumventing the System for Liquid seemed, the more uneasy Snake felt. The System appeared to be perfect, but there had to be something he wasn’t seeing.