Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (31 page)

Vamp was dead. And nothing had changed.

“Why?” I whispered.

But I didn’t have to ask. Everything was clear now. This wouldn’t bring Emma back. This wouldn’t redress all the things I should have done for Emma but wasn’t able to do. Vamp’s death didn’t mean anything. The revelation left me astonished—I should have realized this from the beginning, so why had I never been able to accept it?

Emma couldn’t forgive anyone, not anymore.

Vengeance. I had been looking outside myself, while my true enemy had always been within.

“We can’t erase the past,” Naomi said. “Nor can we forgive it. And so … the only thing we can do is end it.”

I don’t know if she spoke to me or to herself. Either was the same. If only I had understood sooner.

Emma, I’m sorry. Why am I always so foolish?

Retrieving the autoinjector that had delivered Vamp’s death, Naomi stood and faced Snake. Just as I could never receive Emma’s forgiveness, no matter what I had done or might do, neither would Naomi ever find atonement. But she still carried unresolved sins, and her journey was not yet at an end.

“Snake,” she said, “Liquid’s down below us. He’s stolen the Patriots’ System, slipped out of their grasp, and taken their ark.”

“Their ark?” Snake asked.

“A warship unfettered by land, law, country, or computer network. The only place where they are truly released from the shackles of the Patriots. The place where they can be free.
Outer Haven
. From where Liquid plans to launch the nuke.”

Haven. Drebin had mentioned the word back in South America. Tax havens, data havens—places outside the System, safe from supervision and control.

“Snake,” she said solemnly, “your life has been prolonged so that you may fulfill your purpose.”

Was his accelerated aging a brief stay granted to him to complete his mission? Without it, would he already be dead—perhaps nine years earlier, on this island, stricken down by FOXDIE?

Naomi continued, “When all of this is over, you’ll have no choice but to accept death. We are given life only so that we can atone for our sins. Your life was created for that very purpose.”

Gently, she touched her hand to Snake’s burned cheek and said, “We ourselves must atone for our sins. We must not pass them on to the next generation. We must not leave them for the future.”

Tears falling from her eyes, Naomi looked like Mary Magdalene at Golgotha, witnessing the agony of the man crucified for all the sins of the world.

“That is your true fate,” she said. “One that cannot be defied.”

She put the autoinjector to her neck. With her thumb, she pressed the button, sending nanomachine inhibitors into her blood just as they had been sent into Vamp’s.

“Naomi?” I said.

I sensed something was wrong. From her peculiar calmness when she reported Sunny’s words to her handling of Vamp’s passing, Naomi seemed to be settling her unfinished business one piece at a time. I turned the Mk. III’s camera to her and caught a fleeting, contrite smile.

“Snake,” she said, “Vamp and I are the same … living corpses, bodies kept barely alive by nanomachines.”

“Then you …”

“Cancer. I shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“What?” I yelled. I remembered shivering at the touch of her lips inside the helicopter, wondering,
Why is she so cold? Why is her skin so lacking in warmth?

But when I had joined my body with hers, I fled into the reassurance of feeling loved by someone, and I pushed any such doubts aside.

“The nanomachines kept my cancer from progressing,” she explained. “But there’s nothing more they can do. With the nanomachines gone, my time will unfreeze and begin to flow again.”

Her breath had become visible in the frigid air.

Just like Vamp. Life blighted her body. The nanomachines that had once sealed away the realities of life and turned aside death’s gaze were now swiftly stripped from her lungs, her organs, and her arms and legs.

“Goodbye, Hal,” Naomi said, hugging herself as the frozen air of Shadow Moses robbed what little warmth remained from a body that should already be dead. She held herself as if cherishing the cold.

She smiled at the Mk. III and said, “Give my best to Sunny.”

Far removed from Shadow Moses, I was helpless. I couldn’t hold her steady, and I couldn’t put my arms around her. “Naomi,” I yelled at the computer screen, “don’t do it!”

I cried and I screamed, unreservedly; it was all I could do. Racked by feelings of powerlessness, I could only observe through the Mk. III’s video feed.

Why? Why did you betray us, to die so selfishly?

Ignoring my tearful cries, Naomi gave herself another nanomachine injection. She slumped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. At last, her body had regained its natural state: inflicted by a cancer, spread from lungs to liver to lymph nodes to everywhere else—a cancer that should have long since killed its host.

I brought the Mk. III to Naomi’s side. With effort, she lifted her head and touched a finger to the robot’s flip-out screen, tracing my face on the mini LCD.

“You have such beautiful eyes,” she breathed.

I choked up. Through the Mk. III’s cameras, our eyes met.

“Forgive me,” she said. “And forget me.”

Deep down, I refused to accept it.

I can’t.
It had been the same with Emma, and with Wolf. Not once had I been able to save anyone I loved. Not when Snake and Wolf battled on that snow field, not when Emma was stabbed on the Big Shell.

What was I fighting for when I couldn’t protect a single person important to me?

Then, as if in disregard for my despair, a wall I thought I’d blocked off with REX’s missiles burst open. Raiden turned to see a leg protruding lazily from the rubble, large and still like an elephant’s. A Gekko had self-destructed to reopen an entrance.

“Now go!” Naomi said, pushing away the Mk. III with the last of her strength. For a moment, I thought the robot might tip over, but somehow I maintained balance. I tried to send it dashing back to Naomi, but Raiden had seized the tiny machine. I moved the MK. III wildly, but its legs only flailed at the air.

Keeping his gaze on the advancing Gekko squad, Raiden warned, “Snake, we need to hurry.”

The leg of the exploded Gekko was tossed into the air like a chicken bone—one of its comrades had kicked its remains aside to clear a path into the space.

Why does it always end this way?

I stared at Naomi’s motionless body, frozen by feelings of powerlessness.

Just when I thought I was ready to fall in love.

Just when I thought I could protect her.

“They’re coming!” Raiden shouted.

Snake took the Mk. III from him and sprinted toward REX. I could only watch Naomi pass into the distance.

The three of us reached the Metal Gear and clambered into the cockpit. I helped Snake start up REX, while sadness, and the magnitude of all I had lost, crushed down on me, relentlessly.

I understood that the instant I allowed my concentration to falter, I would break down into despair.

Certainly I knew what I had to do. I had already lost two people close to me—if I hadn’t grown accustomed to loss, I at least had learned how to endure.

I could calm my emotions—to a certain extent, at least—simply by closing my eyes and steadying my breath. Emotions follow the flesh. The minds and bodies of man possessed an inherent, and perhaps cruel, insensitivity. I felt a fleeting yet fierce contempt for myself for not being any different.

“I understand,” I said. “I haven’t lost everything yet.”

From REX’s cockpit, I connected to the facility’s network and sent the command to open the supply tunnel door. I remembered something else I learned through all my losses.

Those women were real. They were a part of this world. Emma, Wolf, and Naomi. Everything I gained through them—the sadness, the joy, the hate—proved that they had indeed lived, and now they continued to exist in a different form inside me.

Regret didn’t have to mean being imprisoned and paralyzed by loss. By holding onto these thoughts—of what I hadn’t been able to do for Wolf, what I hadn’t been able to provide Emma—I could keep the women alive inside myself.

And as I did, my duty of regret had another purpose: to ensure I wouldn’t repeat the past.

“Snake,” I said, “I’ve still got a job to do.”

Naomi still existed within me. Her life might have been gone, but my love for her remained.

For now, that was enough. Later, there would be time to spare for tears. I’ve had nine years of many battles to learn how to stave them off a little bit longer.

Snake nodded at the Mk. III. “That’s right. We need you.”

“I’m done crying. My tears have dried up.”

Then Naomi’s body disappeared within the stampede of Gekko.

I had to move forward. There was no stopping here.

I went back to my efforts to bring REX back to life.

To keep giving meaning to everyone I’d lost.

To preserve the meaning of their existences.

4

I OPENED THE Mk. III’s storage port and withdrew a modified video game controller. I had already revised REX’s control programs, discarding any functions not immediately required, and mapped the rest to the controller’s limited inputs.

“Let’s go,” I told Snake.

Gekko swarmed below, their heads packed with high explosives. We didn’t have time for a leisurely explanation of the controls.

“I’ll fill you in as we go,” I said, and Snake faithfully took the controller in his hands.

At the push of a button, REX sprang to life, bypassing any typical warm-up maneuvers, and the sudden acceleration slammed Snake’s back against the pilot’s seat. Considering its massive size, the Metal Gear moved with incredible speed. REX, the slain dragon now ridden by the hero who had vanquished it, steadily ascended the slope of the supply tunnel.

REX continued to gain speed, trailed by the pack of Gekko, with one particularly impetuous machine leading the rest of the herd. Raiden leapt from the Metal Gear’s back, and his sword flashed in midair.

The leading Gekko’s head slid to the ground and exploded amid the trailing swarm. The robot’s legs, seemingly unaware they had lost their head, continued to run for a few seconds, then faltered, and finally went limp and fell.

With a laugh, Snake said, “Not exactly an intelligent bunch.”

From the other end of the tunnel more Gekko appeared in small groups. I fired missile salvos from the Metal Gear’s knees while Snake used the twin XGAU-8R rotary cannons to dispatch the distant foes. I wished I could do more, but I had my hands full keeping the wrecked robot together. To keep REX operational, I had to coax cooperation out of components that either kept breaking down or would cease to function altogether.

As REX rushed onward, Raiden and his sword managed to stave off the Gekko behind us. He leapt from one charging machine’s back to another like a ninja, sinking his blade into sensors and core systems.

“Otacon,” Snake shouted, “help!”

I looked at the monitor to see that one Gekko had slipped past Snake and Raiden’s defenses and was nearly upon us.

The machine was so close it had evaded the field of fire of the twin cannons. REX had a single weapon suited for close-range combat, and I had chosen it: the free-electron laser, which had caused Snake considerable grief nine years ago.

The self-diagnosis program reported that the weapon, my version of a lightsaber, was still operational. Whether I believed that to be the case or not, I didn’t have any other options.

I fired the laser.

The beam of amplified energy pierced through the head of the suicidal Gekko, and REX stomped on the robot to finish it off.

Each of us faced a challenge. Snake urged the faltering Metal Gear forward at full speed, while simultaneously operating the twin cannons to deal with the Gekko ahead. Behind us, Raiden leapt from back to back amid the stampede, dispatching one machine after another.

And while I wasn’t there with them, I was glued to my monitor, struggling not to get washed away by the waterfall of data streaming from REX.

We were like pieces of an airplane split apart midair yet still somehow managing to fly. As the self-diagnosis program squawked at me every few seconds, I sorted through the torrent of damage reports, closing off circuits and rerouting systems to mitigate the damage.

I wouldn’t be able to keep up like this. Bookkeeping can only do so much.

About to exhaust the very limits of my ability to sustain concentration on the data and to keep my fingers flying across my keyboard, I heard Snake shout, “The surface!”

At the top of the ramp, I saw sky and the gray clouds of the Aleutian Low.

Snake squeezed even more speed out of REX, sending the Gekko scattering. Two clawlike appendages at the base of each foot dug into the metal floor, providing the Metal Gear’s giant-sized legs purchase on the incline. Leaving a trail of pockmarks in the supply tunnel ramp, REX scrambled out into the open.