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MGS Fanworks (Blind) Round Robin! (SS Timeline)
Here's where the story went!
fireholly wrote:
Snake felt the snap of the mechanism before the sudden jolt of animal terror made his eyes flash open. Instinctively, he grabbed at the autoinjector and pulled it from his neck, fumbling at it with shaking hands.
It wasn't nanomachines; just epinephrine. His heart was stuttering away in his chest like a distant machinegun, but it couldn't have felt further from a combat high otherwise - instead of the mixture of hysterical fear and total serenity, it was a purely physical response, purposeless and unfulfilling. He forced himself to regulate his breathing, and as the high wore off he noticed a dull throb on his hairline. So the blood everywhere was his, he realised, wiping it out of the indentation under his eyebrow with his thumb. Perfect.
"Otacon," he said. "Thanks."
Otacon, Snake noticed, had backed away from him after setting the injector to go off, a long-distance detonation of a bomb capable of killing in blind panic.
"Snake," he replied. "There's been a change of plans - wait, don't stand up yet - "
Snake was already straightening his knees. He staggered a little; the air around his head twinged, and a cold whistle started in his ears, but he made it onto his feet.
"Don't worry about me."
"I don't try to, geez. You're just always getting yourself into these situations."
Otacon gave a wan smile - it seemed genuine, but Snake could hear that his breathing was quick and irregular; see the puffs of cold air mushroom from his nose and mouth too fast.
"I noticed you weren't responding about fifteen minutes ago," he carried on, without waiting for Snake to ask. "I don't have bio-feedback records at the moment, so I can't check exactly how long you were out."
He approached Snake, his feet moving over the noisy corridor steel so slowly as to make hardly a sound. When they'd first started the organisation together after the full enormity of Otacon's mistake had hit them, it was something they'd done because it was the best way to carry out their personal duties, with no other reason; and they'd both been wary of each other, until time had gone on and they'd both realised they trusted each other too much for that. Seeing Otacon's reticence now made Snake very aware of what kind of a state he must have been in.
With a little amazement in his voice, he asked, "Who did this to you?"
"Don't remember."
"Oh."
"Think whoever it is must have got the jump on me."
"But how? You go into full guard mode if you hear so much as me getting up to go to the bathroom."
Otacon chuckled, a little too loudly, and then turned slightly away, hand to his eyes. He held like that for a second, and then turned back.
"Whatever happened," he said, in a slightly choked voice, "we've got to get out of here, as soon as possible."
"Why?"
"I just told you, weren't you listening? There's been a change of plan."
"Otacon - "
Otacon adjusted his glasses, and gave a sigh.
"I wasn't able to get any more information on the slush fund than we already had. The way it transfers money is absolute genius - it's all tied up in the stock market and sold off algorithmically in ways that appear random to anyone analysing the stocks themselves, but serve to keep all those billions under the control of - whoever's fund it is. Actually - there was one thing. I thought at first it was a botnet doing everything, but now I'm pretty certain that it's based on predicting financial trends."
"Predicting financial trends?"
"Yeah. The majority of stock trading takes place automatically, governed by AIs working faster than the human mind ever could. So to be able to manipulate money that exactly without being in control of every single machine, the owner of the slush fund needs to have information on the workings of every AI and know how to exploit them to get them to move money to exactly where the owner wants it."
"We already knew they were high up."
"Yeah, but not this high up. In fact, I don't even believe any one organisation could have enough information to build an AI like that. The owner of the fund is either a huge group of organisations all working in perfect lockstep, or - "
" - Or an AI itself," Snake finished. "But we knew that's what our 'generous friend' would be, anyway, once we found out how long he'd been dead."
"See what I mean? Useless. I was hoping to be able to find some evidence of what the trading algorithms were that were being used to keep the fund alive, but I didn't have any luck. It seems like all that information is being hosted somewhere away from the main bank - it's being sent these blind, encrypted instructions from some server that's completely impregnable, and trust me I don't say that lightly."
"So the fund was a dead end," Snake said. "What about Jack? What happened on his side?"
"That's the other thing. Jack disappeared just a little while before you did. He went off-radar, too. Didn't say anything to me about it. I've got no idea where he is."
"Why'd you come after me and not him?"
Otacon gave him an innocent look. "I thought he'd be with you."
Snake folded his arms.
"So we can't get any information on the AI that's feeding us funds, Jack's missing - "
"And there's someone here who was able to sneak up on you," Otacon carried on. "Even though the security in this place is mostly automatic - "
In the spaces between Otacon's words, Snake detected the tell-tale sound of a gun-camera motor at the end of the next corridor, and froze.
"How'd you get past all the sentries on your own?"
Otacon hesitated.
"Well," he said, "I - I had my ways. Okay?"
"You had to do something you're not proud of, huh? What is it that you can't trust me with it?"
"Don't worry. It's all taken care of now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's not supposed to mean anything!" Otacon said, in a slightly petulant voice that made Snake immediately know he was acting offended to prevent pressing. "I hacked into the security system, okay! None of the gun cameras can recognise us as targets. No more trouble for us."
"Thanks, Otacon," Snake said, trying to sound gentle - Otacon reeked of sweat and nervous energy, and now would be a bad time for him to crack. "But I wish you'd done that earlier. Getting past those things earlier wasn't the best experience I've ever had."
"You made it past, didn't you?" Otacon said, nudging his arm affectionately. "You don't really need my help."
"Don't be stupid," said Snake. "I need all the help you can offer. Especially right now. We've got to get hold of Jack somehow before we bail."
"Yeah."
"You put a passive transmitter in him, right? He should be on the Radar."
"Well," Otacon admitted, "I was going to. But he asked me not to."
"What?" Snake clenched his fists. "Why would he ask you to do that? Privacy concerns?"
"Uh. He didn't give me a straight answer. But you know what he's like." Otacon hesitated. "I didn't think it would be a big deal. I mean, he still had the active biofeedback transmitter running so I thought it would be fine. But either something's blocking his reception or he's switched it off."
"Why?"
"I don't know why."
"I don't want to speculate about this," Snake said. "But he could be planning something."
"That's what I was wondering," Otacon confirmed.
Snake looked at Otacon's face and the red rings around his eyes, thinking hard about what the hell Jack would want.
"Snake," Otacon started, "do you think Jack could… sneak up behind you?"
"No," Snake said. "He can't be the one who knocked me out. He's on our side, and we know it."
"I don't want to suspect him either. But he's got the skill - "
"He was probably concerned about someone else picking up the signal. Right now, let's worry about things in front of us." He took his hand off his hip. "Where was he when he disappeared? The East Wing?"
"Y - yeah. Like you, he was searching for - well, you know."
Snake paced down the hallway, deactivated gun cameras bowing their heads as they passed, like vassals. He strained his ears to hear enemy movement, but heard nothing, except for a subsonic throbbing he could feel in the sound traps on the soles of his silent-boots. Otacon carried on after him, each step hard and reluctant. Four years, and he still wasn't cut out for combat zones, Snake rationalised.
The card key door leading to the 5F Central Plaza was in front of him, white sprayed metal decorated with a yellow sign insisting those without proper clearance could not enter. Snake could make out the sound of the fountain, vomiting an endless stream of bubbly water into the plastic plants on the ground floor. When the civilians evacuated this place, they'd done it in a hurry enough not to care about turning it off and saving the power bill.
"Through here," Snake confirmed, waiting for Otacon to get over there with his hacked PAN card, weight on one foot.
"I - I don't want to go that way."
"It's the quickest route to the East Wing. Jack might need our help."
Otacon attempted to steady his breathing.
"Otacon! What's gotten into you? Hurry it up!"
"I'm sorry," he said, taking the transparent card into his hand and approaching the doors, which parted.
Snake noticed the smell of blood even before he realised the walkway was lined with the dead bodies of security personnel, slumped, some hanging over railings, others with hands bent backwards bleeding through the stamped holes in the metal floor. There were at least six on the walkway itself, and others, behind the glass walls of the offices, and lying in a constant stream of blood on the staircases like huge beads strung on a thin red string. Behind Snake, Otacon gave a strangled sob.
"Not cut with a sword," Snake said, which was the first thing he thought. The bullet holes were clear, punched obviously in the thick grey uniforms of the security staff. "A machine gun. Otacon, did Raiden do this?"
"Snake - I'm really sorry."
"What do you mean?" Snake snarled. At the same time, his eyes ran between each of the gun cameras studded on the pillars and the roof.
"I - it was the only way to get to you."
"The gun cameras!"
"Snake, I didn't do it like that, not really - "
"Otacon! What the hell did you do - "
And as Snake turned, the entire front wall of the building exploded.
Instincts in control, Snake grabbed onto Otacon's side and pushed him back towards the door as the heat blazed against his face. There was a yawn of surrendering metal. The walkway sagged, and as Snake pulled Otacon through the doorway, keeled, tearing itself free of the walls. Drywall melted inwards, cameras sucked into the long void of the hub, and both men dashed down the hallway as the outer wall, its black0ut-glass no longer supported, collapsed under its own weight in a shower of glass. They passed office cubicles and server rooms, the floor leaning outward further and further; Otacon, grabbing at Snake's arm, pulled him into a long room, going further back in the building. He dived for cover behind a desk - Snake pinned himself to the opposite wall, and watched until the collapse stablised.
The sky outside was orange, smeared with stripes of featureless yellow cloud, and against the sunset Snake could make out the hunched, black, froglike shape of the Hind. Snake's tinnitus finally melted into the clamour of the rotors, ringing from the walls underneath.
Otacon crawled out from under the desk, the wind drawing a glittering stream of dust from his hair.
"What's happening?" he shouted.
Not answering, Snake stood at the edge of the gaping wound in the building, twisted iron and crumbling plaster splayed around around his feet, bent like a frozen wave. White cement dust flowed over the edge, bright against the faint night-blue band at the edge of the sky, and all of a sudden Snake was thinking of snow, and a Hind piloted by someone else, someone who survived only by clinging to someone else's life.
"Who are you?" he roared at it, voice immediately absorbed by the pounding of the Hind.
The Hind hovered. Snake's Codec flickered into life.
"Snake, it's me," said the voice in his ear. "I know the circumstances between us, but I'm here to help the two of you. The situation is worse than you think."
adrikyn wrote:
Somehow, through coaxing and reassurance and no other way out, nowhere else to go, Snake and Otacon ended up on that Hind. "Liquid" wasn't piloting, which left him to pace around the midsection of the vehicle and gesture enthusiastically as he explained the situation.
"The culprit gathering funds from the stock trade--you were right, Brother. It's an AI," Liquid smirked, folding his hands behind his back as he came to a half in front of the two men. His eyes gleamed something dangerous.
"But I bet what you didn't know why you were getting a cut of that cash, or their goals," he chuckled, Snake grumbled, Otacon crossed his legs uncomfortably and adjusted his glasses. The Hind's propellers still blared and thrummed rhythmically outside.
"Go on," Snake knew his brother only wanted to goad him, make him beg for the information, but he wasn't going to. Liquid wouldn't have contacted him like this if he was only planning to withhold; this fund transfer obviously involved him too somehow.
"Another army, Brother! And you were doing all the work for them. Destroying Metal Gears only wiped out the competition, like a bacteria only getting stronger when you wipe out the weakest kin. You, Brother, cut them down to the strongest few and allowed those to breed and fester. You gave them the advantage to encroach in and dominate the market," Liquids arm were held out by now, a large, sweeping gesture. The man was begging the world to come weeping into his arms.
"Cut to the chase, Liquid," Snake's voice was a gruff bark. Knowing everything he'd done to help had only done the opposite--it wasn't pleasant, and unless Liquid was just here to rub it in his face, he expected a suggestion to a solution.
Liquid lowered his arms, clasping his hands once more behind his back, "They're not just after Metal Gears, and they weren't just funding your destructive natural selection. You were all guinea pigs, being trained and used to gather data--that friend of yours, the weird...feminine blonde one?"
Otacon and Snake both had their attention piqued (Snake in particular thought Liquid was one to talk about weird blondes). Otacon sat up slightly, nervous and adjusting his classes again, "You mean Jack?"
"Yeah, that one, they took him too."
*
The air was palpable, thick and ripe with sweat and blood. Something warm and wet stuck to his wrist and wreaked of a metallic odor, but not blood.
"Handcuffs...," and a moving truck, light stropping through the small spaces between the top of the car and the canvas serving as the roof. Last time he checked, he was inside the East Wing of the building he and Snake were infiltrating.
There was a sharp pain on the back of his head, so he reached back with both hands to give a feel. Dried blood, hair sticking to the wound. This wasn't good. From the looks of it, he hadn't been the only one captured either.
On either side of Jack were a few more men, some still passed out, others awake but clearly just as confused as he was. He was about ready to suggest they just jump out the back, it was only canvas after all, when he spotted the guards armed with AK-47s and some futuristic armor. There were so many grooves, joints, and sensors attached to them, joined seemingly to the skin--it looked almost like they weren't wearing armor at all.
"Cyborgs...," Jack found himself muttering under his breath.
*
"Do you know where he is?" Snake gruffly barked, rising to his feet and having had just about enough of Liquid.
"Now, now Brother," Liquid motioned for Snake to sit, a sneering smirk on his lips, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Isn't that how it works?"
khronos_keeper wrote:
"You'll get more than a scratch if you keep playing me like this." Snake's voice held tight anger, barely controlled aggression, couched below the rasp. "Where is he; who's got him."
Otacon's voice, never more than a decibel away from hesitance, interjected. "Snake..." Twin pairs of flat blue eyes slid to him, accompanied by silence. The scientist cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses. "Liquid has a point. Everything has it's price, right?"
A savage smile seared across Liquid's face, teeth glinting fragments of light. "How right you are, Dr. Emmerich. Everything has it's price." One broad, blunt fingered hand swung to quirk two fingers at Snake. "You destroy what you have wrought."
Snake's face etched into lines of confusion, suspicion. "What the hell are you talking about."
The smile dropped from Liquid's face. "I said before you had left only the best of the best behind. You are the only predator who can eliminate them; you have to.. level the playing field, you might say." Again, the smile, only now it had a predatory edge to it. "Either you kill them, or they will kill you."
Snake's only response was to stare impassively at the bulky form of the other man, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Otacon. "You're wasting your time," finally came from Snake's mouth, in a hollow, flat sort of tone. His face was flat, and it seemed as though invisible wires manipulated his face to talk, for all the expression he had. "I'm retired. And even if I wanted to do this-- I doubt if I could."
The sharp smile on Liquid's face curdled. "I seem to have made an error in presenting this as voluntary. You will be going out there. If you don't, they will do more than just kill you. They will hunt down everyone who has ever aided you, befriended you, supported you. And when they are done with that, they will shoot you like a dog, and harvest your data."
A long silence fell between them.
Finally, in a deathly whisper, Snake echoed, "Everyone."
Liquid stood before him, less than an arm's length away, arms crossed, legs together, drawn up to his full height, his eyes throwing the meager light back in flickers as he searched Snake's face. Otacon had stilled, almost instinctively.
Finally, Snake's voice whipped out again, like a strike. "I guess I'm going in, then." He did not meet Liquid's eyes when he asked, "Who is it, exactly, that I'm working against."
Liquid's bravado was gone, replaced by a slow, stony drawl. "We'll send the information to you. And the equipment you will need. For now, you'll just need to prepare yourself." Liquid's lip curled. "Never thought we would be working together... eh, brother?"
burningvigor wrote:
The drop-off point was at the edge of a forest. From what Snake had been told, he'd have to hike in to the facility at its center, some sort of research institute. It all would have been run-of-the-mill if it wasn't for three things. First, of course, was the fact that Liquid was around and a part of this in any way, but in a way Snake had grown accustomed to his brother cropping up like a cold sore.
Second was the fact that the people behind this were apparently the leftover Genome soldiers from the Shadow Moses incident. Just thinking back to that time was enough to put a bad taste in his mouth, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. His arm was literally being twisted here.
Finally, there was intel that Raiden had been captured and was being held there. The kid wasn't even supposed to be a part of this mess, so Snake was going to have to get him out.
With an M9 in hand, he started hiking through the woods, though it wasn't long before a call came in over the Codec. He pressed up against a tree and answered it.
"All right, Snake," Liquid's voice came through. "Dr. Emmerich--"
Otacon's voice cut in. "You'll need to use codenames from now on."
"Of course, how could I have made such a careless mistake?" Snake got the feeling that it had been intentional, which just annoyed him further. "Otacon and I will be supporting you from here."
"You don't need to tell me," Snake grumbled as he started to stalk forward, eyes and ears open for any sign of guards patrolling the area. It would have been careless for them to not have placed sentries out here, even if it was the wilderness.
"Snake," Otacon's much more welcome voice continued, "let us know if you see anything that stands out. We aren't as well briefed about the facility as we should be, so you'll need to be ready for anything."
None of that was new to him, and while Snake felt his muscles ache under the strain as he scaled an incline, he seemed doomed to undertake these missions time after time, no matter what he did to try and get away from it. Maybe that was what happened when you got your hands so dirty.
There was too much about this that was familiar, and in the wrong way. He'd never trained much in the wilderness like this, but the man he'd been bred from had. Here was another Snake, slithering through the trees -- but he wouldn't be living off the animals here. Sometimes it felt like he (and Liquid, for that matter) couldn't ever escape their own genetics, but that wasn't going to stop Snake from trying.
"Let's say I get hold of the kid and we get out," he said, pausing for a moment near a fallen log, "what then?"
"We'll have the helicopter ready to retrieve you," Liquid's accented tone explained.
Snake didn't like that. He preferred to be more prepared, but this had all happened too fast. If the slightest thing went wrong, both he and Raiden might be paying for it.
Before he could respond, he heard the telltale sound of a cracking twig, and felt his back straighten automatically in response. He cut off the codec and tightened his grip on his tranquilizer gun, ready to do what he did best.
athena_crikey wrote:
Snake spun around fast, elbow against the tree bark to steady his aim. A doe stared back for a split-second, her wide brown eyes so near he could see himself reflected in them, and then she sprang away. She was gone in seconds, bounding over ferns and rotting stumps and flashing her white tail in alarm as she disappeared into the thick underbrush. In her wake the leaves swished quietly before falling still.
The forest around him showed no signs of human life. No wiring, no cameras, no trails. If the genome soldiers were patrolling it, they were covering their tracks with skill Snake hadn’t seen in Shadow Moses. Of course, after the screw up that had been, any decent commander would have knocked the survivors right back into basic. No good assuming their skills were as sloppy as they had been the first time around.
Although untouched by humans, the forest was alive with noise - branches rustling, birds calling, trees creaking. It made scoping out enemies with hearing almost impossible, and with the amount of cover available the chances of visual detection were pretty damn poor. Snake glided through the tall trees slowly, the constant awareness that a well-placed sniper could pick him off with no trouble making him grind his teeth until his jaws seemed to be fusing together. The chattering nanny had seemed like an annoyance at the time, but he’d have traded all his gear to have her soliton radar here. As it was, a tranq gun and some body armour was a poor defence against a well dug-in facility in the middle of the wilderness. But he’d survived worse odds.
Snake chose a deer trail to follow, just a barely noticeable path through the ferns with a few fresh hoof-prints picked in the damp earth, wet from recent rain. It was going in the right direction, and it avoided the steepest inclines. It was purely chance, but chance had saved his life before.
Following the trail, he noticed the hoof marks disappear where the beaten trail didn’t. And then, stopping, saw the spider-silk-thin wires crossing through the air. Near the ground, water was beading on them as it would a web. He tracked the wires back to the nearest trees, and after searching for a moment located the grenades hidden in against the bark. The wires weren’t a wall by any means - it would be easy enough to slip through them. But one trap hinted at more.
In his ear, the codec chirped. “Snake? Why have you stopped - is something wrong?” Otacon, sounding more cautious than worried.
“No - just some good old-fashioned trip wires.”
“Can you get by?”
“No problem. Just want to make sure I don’t step into something worse.” He paused, eyes sweeping the terrain for a moment. And then, jaw tight again, “Is everything okay there?”
“If you mean am I still present and accounted for, brother, the answer is yes.” Liquid sounded jovial as usual. And why not - he was getting what he wanted with the added bonus of watching Snake squirm. “Not to worry, Dr. - I mean, Otacon and I are getting on swimmingly.”
“Everything’s fine, Snake,” said Otacon, speaking through his teeth.
Snake squatted down into the ferns, the security of their cover allowing him to let some real emotion to seep through his cold vigilance. “It’d better damn well continue being fine, or I’ll walk right out of here.”
“And then they’ll torture all your secrets out of your golden-haired boy, and his as well. Or maybe just take him apart to see what makes him tick - he’s the next best thing after us or Big Boss,” replied Liquid, sharply. “Two can play at that game, Snake. And I have more leverage than you.” He didn’t have to say any more; he was sitting right next to it.
Snake took a deep breath, and Otacon broke in hastily, heading off the the outburst. “It’s alright, Snake. He’s right - you need to get Raiden out of there.”
“And fulfill our part of the agreement,” added Liquid, smug enough that Snake’s hand fisted of its own accord.
“I remember,” said Snake, tartly, and cut the feed before things went off the cliff that was looming. He closed his eyes and sighed, let the hot anger run out of him and waited until he could feel the soft brush of leaves against his legs and smell the pine in the air.
Coldly attentive again, he stood and stepped carefully over the nearer trip wire and then ducked under the next. More concerned now with avoiding potential traps than leaving a trail, he struck out walking across the thickest ferns and avoiding the hidden mud between them.
Up head, the forest was getting brighter, the trees and underbrush thinning out. Snake slowed his pace, and crept up to the edge of the trees. Squatting low against the trunk of a thick fir, he got his first look at the research institute in the dell beyond - a concrete bunker surrounded by a good dozen yards of grass on all sides. An asphalt square on the far side, barely visible around the corner of the facility, hinted at a helipad. With the helicopter as his only realistic extraction method, he would have to cross the complex to get out again. Nothing was ever easy.
Behind him, something crackled again. Flicking off the safety on the M9, he swivelled sharply. It wasn’t a deer this time. Snake’s finger closed on the trigger before the startled guard had his M4 aimed. He went down with a tranq. dart in his neck.
Snake stood, holstered his gun, and grabbed the guard by the arms. The ferns gave adequate cover for the body. He liberated a bowie knife, a bandage and a ration from the unconscious man, and then got to work stripping off the uniform. He wouldn’t, at least, have any trouble passing himself off as a genome soldier.
athenemiranda wrote:
Snake was developing the impression that the facility was intended to be as low-key as possible - the kind of place that only existed on a need-to-know basis. He found it guarded by many more traps than people, and his progress was meticulously slow. At least his stolen uniform was serving its purpose effectively; the scientists ignored him, and the few Genome Soldiers he encountered all took him for one of their own until it was too late.
He didn't call upon Otacon. The whole situation with Liquid was a dangerous distraction from what should have been the main purpose of his operation. They were dealing with the devil. Snake had made worse compromises in the past, but cooperating with Liquid was intrinsically painful. Even if they succeeded, he had no trust in Otacon's safety and that wasn't something he could waste time thinking about now.
Gradually, he explored the whole facility. He soon realised that it was both a research institute and also a secret prison, with all the horrors that implied; equipment for torture and sensory deprivation, a bunker area designed to contain psychics, cold storage vaults full of euphemistically labelled psychoactive drugs. There weren't many inmates, but he stole glances whenever he marched past one of their cells and determined that he recognised most of them; people who he and Otacon had found listed as 'disappeared'. This was the place people were taken when the Patriots didn't want them to exist any more, but might still occasionally wish to speak to them.
They didn't look to be in very good shape.
He checked through the extra-security wing and the places of torture; no Raiden. He wasn't sure whether to be frustrated or relieved. He gave the lead-lined bunker that held the psychic subjects only a cursory visit, and turned his attention to the medical research facilities, his stomach sinking.
Unlike the prison cells, each room was sealed rather than barred and he could only see into them through frosted plate-glass doors. Snake marched calmly past a soldier patrolling the area, mimicking his stance and the minuscule nod of his head, and then pivoted on one foot and shot him in the back of the neck. He caught the man as he fell forward, lowering him gently to the floor. Great, now he was alone he could get some of these doors open. His first objective would be to find a good place to leave this guy to nap. He stepped over the sleeping body, and opened the nearest door; it was empty, and seemed to be an operating room. He left the man in there and hurried on down the corridor.
He glanced into laborotaries and operating rooms that could easily have been covers for more torture. Each bed he saw was fitted with restraints. He wasn't sure how much time he had before the alarm was raised -
- There was movement beside him. A silhouette shifting in the glass.
He slid the door open with his gun raised, and she looked at him before he could pull the trigger. She was standing over a steel box, fingers resting on its surface.
"Naomi? What are you doing here?!"
She looked at him calmly. "Keeping him alive. I thought you'd come here," and her eyes closed briefly, overcome by a moment of wistful pain. She seemed unchanged from that night beneath the ocean before Shadow Moses, a young and brilliant face that hid a thousand secrets, most of them painful to her or to someone.
She stepped away from the box that had held her attention, and Snake walked up to it, his gun still trained between her eyes. "Who are you working for?"
"Does it matter?" she replied. "I have a lot of experience of keeping people alive when they shouldn't be. He needed me, Snake. Isn't that enough?"
He looked down at Raiden through the thick glass of the tank's roof, and tried to see how he'd been damaged and what Naomi had done to stitch him back together. "What happened to him?"
"I have only limited information -"
"Sounds familiar. Was it classified?"
Her eyes narrowed. "I don't know if anyone else survived the explosion that wrecked him. For all I know, there's nothing to classify."
"So someone wanted him alive?"
"I wanted him alive."
"Why?"
She curled her arms around herself and stared at him like he'd wounded her. "We're all the same, to them. Just beasts to be controlled. If I can free one person from the destiny that's been forced on them, then I will."
"This is freedom? A culture tank in a prison camp?"
"It's not yet death. Not like Frankie. There's hope of a new dawn for Raiden, beyond life as a ghost or a animal."
"So can he walk?"
She looked at a display on a wall-mounted monitor. "I think so. I've only tested his nervous clusters virtually but I think he's adjusted to his new central motor functions."
"New central motor functions?" She nodded, unassuming as ever about her work. "So is that what you're working on now?"
"As I said, I learned a lot about keeping people alive. I'll set him to wake up," she added, leaning over her desk and opening a black command line. "He's been asleep for quite some time now. He'll be glad to see you."
"I was expected?" She kept typing commands just as if he hadn't spoken. "Just tell me one thing. How did Liquid find out Raiden was here?"
The look on her face told him that he'd finally learned to ask the right questions. It was in his blood, maybe, the lingering virus of distrust for her, the knowledge that anyone would cut a deal with anyone if it would help them achieve their goal. He hated knowing that he was silently doing the same; she clearly knew this place, clearly knew what Liquid wanted, clearly knew the way out and that was a good enough trade for her life even if he could have killed her.
He could never have killed her, or even left her.
He activated his codec. "Otacon, I found Raiden."
"Excellent work, Snake," answered Liquid. Snake scowled. "I hope you appreciated my intel. Now, what about your side of the bargain?"
"What about my engineer?"
"I'm still fine." Otacon's voice shook and Snake tried not to think of everything that could possibly be wrong. "Just let us know when you need me to move in with the helicopter."
"You see, Snake? I am a man of my word. I hope that you prove to be the same." The disconnection sound in his ear was more jarring than usual, and Snake's reflexes seemed to recall every punch and bullet he'd put into Liquid, every blow he'd struck to no avail.
Naomi was bent over the culture tank, flicking switches rapidly. She stepped back, and the lid opened.
ljusastjarnan wrote:
Snake takes an instinctive step back, eyes fixated on the tank with a dread that transitions into morbid curiosity as the cryogenic liquid clears. The body that still retains a familiar face floats noncommittally, glassy eyes open but unseeing.
How much of this was patriots’ workmanship and how much Naomi’s?
He turns back to said doctor for explanations. From her lack of response, Snake figures he wasn’t going to receive any, and he doesn’t feel like egging anything out of her tonight. Instead, he takes a few cautious steps closer to the tank, trying to discern if the silver mounds of muscle made Raiden’s skin---
Only to be sent spiraling back into the wall, the landing impact against an industrial centrifuge almost breaking his shoulders. Scowling, he fumbles for his gun and sits up. “The hell-”
Red eyes stares back at him, flickering around before finally making contact with his own. Snake lowers his gun, and Raiden jumps back up in one swift movement. The kid had always been agile, but never this damned fast too.
“Made a few modifications to him, did you?” he rasps, hoisting himself up.
Naomi snorts, still hovering over the terminal. “I hope you haven’t taken to repeating the obvious again, Snake,” she replies curtly. Snake growls, but doesn’t grace her with an answer, and she turns to Raiden.
“How are you feeling?”
The humanoid in question still stands with an inscrutable expression. Raiden flexes his arms, and hums quietly, as though assessing it for himself. He turns his back on Snake, whose eyebrows furrow at the sight of spine that protruded from synthetic muscles.
“Fair enough.”
He spoke too soon. Doubling over in a fit of coughing, he grips the metal bars to regain his footing. Snake is startled to find white liquid oozing from his hands as he straightens back up.
Naomi draws a syringe from her kit, and jabs it into the small of his back in one swift movement. “Don’t be alarmed,” she says, “you’re immune system has not yet been fully configured to accept your blood. The process has been automated, so it shouldn’t pose any problems.”
The humanoid grunts, snapping his neck forwards. “Aren’t we going, yet?” he asks, the first address directed to Snake.
Snake just shrugs and turns to the doors; Raiden could walk, that was more than he had hoped for. He doesn’t ask his questions, not yet. His curiosity could wait until Otacon was secured from Liquid. Raiden follows close behind, steps not making a single sound against the floor, and Snake turns back every so often to check he was still following. It disquieted him, and putting aside even the entire restructuring of his body, there was something fundamentally changed about Raiden. The way he walked, the bitter edge that had somehow crept into his voice during his ordeal.
“Don’t think you won’t get caught, Snake,” Naomi calls from her station, but doesn’t make a move to stop either of them.
Snake doesn’t look back.
As far as he was concerned, he no longer had any business loitering around the facility when conversation could clearly be had without the unpleasant presence of Liquid.
He presses two fingers to his ear.
"Otacon, get ready to land. And don't--- don't try anything, Liquid. Or you'll never get it."
Here's where the story went!
fireholly wrote:
Snake felt the snap of the mechanism before the sudden jolt of animal terror made his eyes flash open. Instinctively, he grabbed at the autoinjector and pulled it from his neck, fumbling at it with shaking hands.
It wasn't nanomachines; just epinephrine. His heart was stuttering away in his chest like a distant machinegun, but it couldn't have felt further from a combat high otherwise - instead of the mixture of hysterical fear and total serenity, it was a purely physical response, purposeless and unfulfilling. He forced himself to regulate his breathing, and as the high wore off he noticed a dull throb on his hairline. So the blood everywhere was his, he realised, wiping it out of the indentation under his eyebrow with his thumb. Perfect.
"Otacon," he said. "Thanks."
Otacon, Snake noticed, had backed away from him after setting the injector to go off, a long-distance detonation of a bomb capable of killing in blind panic.
"Snake," he replied. "There's been a change of plans - wait, don't stand up yet - "
Snake was already straightening his knees. He staggered a little; the air around his head twinged, and a cold whistle started in his ears, but he made it onto his feet.
"Don't worry about me."
"I don't try to, geez. You're just always getting yourself into these situations."
Otacon gave a wan smile - it seemed genuine, but Snake could hear that his breathing was quick and irregular; see the puffs of cold air mushroom from his nose and mouth too fast.
"I noticed you weren't responding about fifteen minutes ago," he carried on, without waiting for Snake to ask. "I don't have bio-feedback records at the moment, so I can't check exactly how long you were out."
He approached Snake, his feet moving over the noisy corridor steel so slowly as to make hardly a sound. When they'd first started the organisation together after the full enormity of Otacon's mistake had hit them, it was something they'd done because it was the best way to carry out their personal duties, with no other reason; and they'd both been wary of each other, until time had gone on and they'd both realised they trusted each other too much for that. Seeing Otacon's reticence now made Snake very aware of what kind of a state he must have been in.
With a little amazement in his voice, he asked, "Who did this to you?"
"Don't remember."
"Oh."
"Think whoever it is must have got the jump on me."
"But how? You go into full guard mode if you hear so much as me getting up to go to the bathroom."
Otacon chuckled, a little too loudly, and then turned slightly away, hand to his eyes. He held like that for a second, and then turned back.
"Whatever happened," he said, in a slightly choked voice, "we've got to get out of here, as soon as possible."
"Why?"
"I just told you, weren't you listening? There's been a change of plan."
"Otacon - "
Otacon adjusted his glasses, and gave a sigh.
"I wasn't able to get any more information on the slush fund than we already had. The way it transfers money is absolute genius - it's all tied up in the stock market and sold off algorithmically in ways that appear random to anyone analysing the stocks themselves, but serve to keep all those billions under the control of - whoever's fund it is. Actually - there was one thing. I thought at first it was a botnet doing everything, but now I'm pretty certain that it's based on predicting financial trends."
"Predicting financial trends?"
"Yeah. The majority of stock trading takes place automatically, governed by AIs working faster than the human mind ever could. So to be able to manipulate money that exactly without being in control of every single machine, the owner of the slush fund needs to have information on the workings of every AI and know how to exploit them to get them to move money to exactly where the owner wants it."
"We already knew they were high up."
"Yeah, but not this high up. In fact, I don't even believe any one organisation could have enough information to build an AI like that. The owner of the fund is either a huge group of organisations all working in perfect lockstep, or - "
" - Or an AI itself," Snake finished. "But we knew that's what our 'generous friend' would be, anyway, once we found out how long he'd been dead."
"See what I mean? Useless. I was hoping to be able to find some evidence of what the trading algorithms were that were being used to keep the fund alive, but I didn't have any luck. It seems like all that information is being hosted somewhere away from the main bank - it's being sent these blind, encrypted instructions from some server that's completely impregnable, and trust me I don't say that lightly."
"So the fund was a dead end," Snake said. "What about Jack? What happened on his side?"
"That's the other thing. Jack disappeared just a little while before you did. He went off-radar, too. Didn't say anything to me about it. I've got no idea where he is."
"Why'd you come after me and not him?"
Otacon gave him an innocent look. "I thought he'd be with you."
Snake folded his arms.
"So we can't get any information on the AI that's feeding us funds, Jack's missing - "
"And there's someone here who was able to sneak up on you," Otacon carried on. "Even though the security in this place is mostly automatic - "
In the spaces between Otacon's words, Snake detected the tell-tale sound of a gun-camera motor at the end of the next corridor, and froze.
"How'd you get past all the sentries on your own?"
Otacon hesitated.
"Well," he said, "I - I had my ways. Okay?"
"You had to do something you're not proud of, huh? What is it that you can't trust me with it?"
"Don't worry. It's all taken care of now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's not supposed to mean anything!" Otacon said, in a slightly petulant voice that made Snake immediately know he was acting offended to prevent pressing. "I hacked into the security system, okay! None of the gun cameras can recognise us as targets. No more trouble for us."
"Thanks, Otacon," Snake said, trying to sound gentle - Otacon reeked of sweat and nervous energy, and now would be a bad time for him to crack. "But I wish you'd done that earlier. Getting past those things earlier wasn't the best experience I've ever had."
"You made it past, didn't you?" Otacon said, nudging his arm affectionately. "You don't really need my help."
"Don't be stupid," said Snake. "I need all the help you can offer. Especially right now. We've got to get hold of Jack somehow before we bail."
"Yeah."
"You put a passive transmitter in him, right? He should be on the Radar."
"Well," Otacon admitted, "I was going to. But he asked me not to."
"What?" Snake clenched his fists. "Why would he ask you to do that? Privacy concerns?"
"Uh. He didn't give me a straight answer. But you know what he's like." Otacon hesitated. "I didn't think it would be a big deal. I mean, he still had the active biofeedback transmitter running so I thought it would be fine. But either something's blocking his reception or he's switched it off."
"Why?"
"I don't know why."
"I don't want to speculate about this," Snake said. "But he could be planning something."
"That's what I was wondering," Otacon confirmed.
Snake looked at Otacon's face and the red rings around his eyes, thinking hard about what the hell Jack would want.
"Snake," Otacon started, "do you think Jack could… sneak up behind you?"
"No," Snake said. "He can't be the one who knocked me out. He's on our side, and we know it."
"I don't want to suspect him either. But he's got the skill - "
"He was probably concerned about someone else picking up the signal. Right now, let's worry about things in front of us." He took his hand off his hip. "Where was he when he disappeared? The East Wing?"
"Y - yeah. Like you, he was searching for - well, you know."
Snake paced down the hallway, deactivated gun cameras bowing their heads as they passed, like vassals. He strained his ears to hear enemy movement, but heard nothing, except for a subsonic throbbing he could feel in the sound traps on the soles of his silent-boots. Otacon carried on after him, each step hard and reluctant. Four years, and he still wasn't cut out for combat zones, Snake rationalised.
The card key door leading to the 5F Central Plaza was in front of him, white sprayed metal decorated with a yellow sign insisting those without proper clearance could not enter. Snake could make out the sound of the fountain, vomiting an endless stream of bubbly water into the plastic plants on the ground floor. When the civilians evacuated this place, they'd done it in a hurry enough not to care about turning it off and saving the power bill.
"Through here," Snake confirmed, waiting for Otacon to get over there with his hacked PAN card, weight on one foot.
"I - I don't want to go that way."
"It's the quickest route to the East Wing. Jack might need our help."
Otacon attempted to steady his breathing.
"Otacon! What's gotten into you? Hurry it up!"
"I'm sorry," he said, taking the transparent card into his hand and approaching the doors, which parted.
Snake noticed the smell of blood even before he realised the walkway was lined with the dead bodies of security personnel, slumped, some hanging over railings, others with hands bent backwards bleeding through the stamped holes in the metal floor. There were at least six on the walkway itself, and others, behind the glass walls of the offices, and lying in a constant stream of blood on the staircases like huge beads strung on a thin red string. Behind Snake, Otacon gave a strangled sob.
"Not cut with a sword," Snake said, which was the first thing he thought. The bullet holes were clear, punched obviously in the thick grey uniforms of the security staff. "A machine gun. Otacon, did Raiden do this?"
"Snake - I'm really sorry."
"What do you mean?" Snake snarled. At the same time, his eyes ran between each of the gun cameras studded on the pillars and the roof.
"I - it was the only way to get to you."
"The gun cameras!"
"Snake, I didn't do it like that, not really - "
"Otacon! What the hell did you do - "
And as Snake turned, the entire front wall of the building exploded.
Instincts in control, Snake grabbed onto Otacon's side and pushed him back towards the door as the heat blazed against his face. There was a yawn of surrendering metal. The walkway sagged, and as Snake pulled Otacon through the doorway, keeled, tearing itself free of the walls. Drywall melted inwards, cameras sucked into the long void of the hub, and both men dashed down the hallway as the outer wall, its black0ut-glass no longer supported, collapsed under its own weight in a shower of glass. They passed office cubicles and server rooms, the floor leaning outward further and further; Otacon, grabbing at Snake's arm, pulled him into a long room, going further back in the building. He dived for cover behind a desk - Snake pinned himself to the opposite wall, and watched until the collapse stablised.
The sky outside was orange, smeared with stripes of featureless yellow cloud, and against the sunset Snake could make out the hunched, black, froglike shape of the Hind. Snake's tinnitus finally melted into the clamour of the rotors, ringing from the walls underneath.
Otacon crawled out from under the desk, the wind drawing a glittering stream of dust from his hair.
"What's happening?" he shouted.
Not answering, Snake stood at the edge of the gaping wound in the building, twisted iron and crumbling plaster splayed around around his feet, bent like a frozen wave. White cement dust flowed over the edge, bright against the faint night-blue band at the edge of the sky, and all of a sudden Snake was thinking of snow, and a Hind piloted by someone else, someone who survived only by clinging to someone else's life.
"Who are you?" he roared at it, voice immediately absorbed by the pounding of the Hind.
The Hind hovered. Snake's Codec flickered into life.
"Snake, it's me," said the voice in his ear. "I know the circumstances between us, but I'm here to help the two of you. The situation is worse than you think."
adrikyn wrote:
Somehow, through coaxing and reassurance and no other way out, nowhere else to go, Snake and Otacon ended up on that Hind. "Liquid" wasn't piloting, which left him to pace around the midsection of the vehicle and gesture enthusiastically as he explained the situation.
"The culprit gathering funds from the stock trade--you were right, Brother. It's an AI," Liquid smirked, folding his hands behind his back as he came to a half in front of the two men. His eyes gleamed something dangerous.
"But I bet what you didn't know why you were getting a cut of that cash, or their goals," he chuckled, Snake grumbled, Otacon crossed his legs uncomfortably and adjusted his glasses. The Hind's propellers still blared and thrummed rhythmically outside.
"Go on," Snake knew his brother only wanted to goad him, make him beg for the information, but he wasn't going to. Liquid wouldn't have contacted him like this if he was only planning to withhold; this fund transfer obviously involved him too somehow.
"Another army, Brother! And you were doing all the work for them. Destroying Metal Gears only wiped out the competition, like a bacteria only getting stronger when you wipe out the weakest kin. You, Brother, cut them down to the strongest few and allowed those to breed and fester. You gave them the advantage to encroach in and dominate the market," Liquids arm were held out by now, a large, sweeping gesture. The man was begging the world to come weeping into his arms.
"Cut to the chase, Liquid," Snake's voice was a gruff bark. Knowing everything he'd done to help had only done the opposite--it wasn't pleasant, and unless Liquid was just here to rub it in his face, he expected a suggestion to a solution.
Liquid lowered his arms, clasping his hands once more behind his back, "They're not just after Metal Gears, and they weren't just funding your destructive natural selection. You were all guinea pigs, being trained and used to gather data--that friend of yours, the weird...feminine blonde one?"
Otacon and Snake both had their attention piqued (Snake in particular thought Liquid was one to talk about weird blondes). Otacon sat up slightly, nervous and adjusting his classes again, "You mean Jack?"
"Yeah, that one, they took him too."
*
The air was palpable, thick and ripe with sweat and blood. Something warm and wet stuck to his wrist and wreaked of a metallic odor, but not blood.
"Handcuffs...," and a moving truck, light stropping through the small spaces between the top of the car and the canvas serving as the roof. Last time he checked, he was inside the East Wing of the building he and Snake were infiltrating.
There was a sharp pain on the back of his head, so he reached back with both hands to give a feel. Dried blood, hair sticking to the wound. This wasn't good. From the looks of it, he hadn't been the only one captured either.
On either side of Jack were a few more men, some still passed out, others awake but clearly just as confused as he was. He was about ready to suggest they just jump out the back, it was only canvas after all, when he spotted the guards armed with AK-47s and some futuristic armor. There were so many grooves, joints, and sensors attached to them, joined seemingly to the skin--it looked almost like they weren't wearing armor at all.
"Cyborgs...," Jack found himself muttering under his breath.
*
"Do you know where he is?" Snake gruffly barked, rising to his feet and having had just about enough of Liquid.
"Now, now Brother," Liquid motioned for Snake to sit, a sneering smirk on his lips, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Isn't that how it works?"
khronos_keeper wrote:
"You'll get more than a scratch if you keep playing me like this." Snake's voice held tight anger, barely controlled aggression, couched below the rasp. "Where is he; who's got him."
Otacon's voice, never more than a decibel away from hesitance, interjected. "Snake..." Twin pairs of flat blue eyes slid to him, accompanied by silence. The scientist cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses. "Liquid has a point. Everything has it's price, right?"
A savage smile seared across Liquid's face, teeth glinting fragments of light. "How right you are, Dr. Emmerich. Everything has it's price." One broad, blunt fingered hand swung to quirk two fingers at Snake. "You destroy what you have wrought."
Snake's face etched into lines of confusion, suspicion. "What the hell are you talking about."
The smile dropped from Liquid's face. "I said before you had left only the best of the best behind. You are the only predator who can eliminate them; you have to.. level the playing field, you might say." Again, the smile, only now it had a predatory edge to it. "Either you kill them, or they will kill you."
Snake's only response was to stare impassively at the bulky form of the other man, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Otacon. "You're wasting your time," finally came from Snake's mouth, in a hollow, flat sort of tone. His face was flat, and it seemed as though invisible wires manipulated his face to talk, for all the expression he had. "I'm retired. And even if I wanted to do this-- I doubt if I could."
The sharp smile on Liquid's face curdled. "I seem to have made an error in presenting this as voluntary. You will be going out there. If you don't, they will do more than just kill you. They will hunt down everyone who has ever aided you, befriended you, supported you. And when they are done with that, they will shoot you like a dog, and harvest your data."
A long silence fell between them.
Finally, in a deathly whisper, Snake echoed, "Everyone."
Liquid stood before him, less than an arm's length away, arms crossed, legs together, drawn up to his full height, his eyes throwing the meager light back in flickers as he searched Snake's face. Otacon had stilled, almost instinctively.
Finally, Snake's voice whipped out again, like a strike. "I guess I'm going in, then." He did not meet Liquid's eyes when he asked, "Who is it, exactly, that I'm working against."
Liquid's bravado was gone, replaced by a slow, stony drawl. "We'll send the information to you. And the equipment you will need. For now, you'll just need to prepare yourself." Liquid's lip curled. "Never thought we would be working together... eh, brother?"
burningvigor wrote:
The drop-off point was at the edge of a forest. From what Snake had been told, he'd have to hike in to the facility at its center, some sort of research institute. It all would have been run-of-the-mill if it wasn't for three things. First, of course, was the fact that Liquid was around and a part of this in any way, but in a way Snake had grown accustomed to his brother cropping up like a cold sore.
Second was the fact that the people behind this were apparently the leftover Genome soldiers from the Shadow Moses incident. Just thinking back to that time was enough to put a bad taste in his mouth, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. His arm was literally being twisted here.
Finally, there was intel that Raiden had been captured and was being held there. The kid wasn't even supposed to be a part of this mess, so Snake was going to have to get him out.
With an M9 in hand, he started hiking through the woods, though it wasn't long before a call came in over the Codec. He pressed up against a tree and answered it.
"All right, Snake," Liquid's voice came through. "Dr. Emmerich--"
Otacon's voice cut in. "You'll need to use codenames from now on."
"Of course, how could I have made such a careless mistake?" Snake got the feeling that it had been intentional, which just annoyed him further. "Otacon and I will be supporting you from here."
"You don't need to tell me," Snake grumbled as he started to stalk forward, eyes and ears open for any sign of guards patrolling the area. It would have been careless for them to not have placed sentries out here, even if it was the wilderness.
"Snake," Otacon's much more welcome voice continued, "let us know if you see anything that stands out. We aren't as well briefed about the facility as we should be, so you'll need to be ready for anything."
None of that was new to him, and while Snake felt his muscles ache under the strain as he scaled an incline, he seemed doomed to undertake these missions time after time, no matter what he did to try and get away from it. Maybe that was what happened when you got your hands so dirty.
There was too much about this that was familiar, and in the wrong way. He'd never trained much in the wilderness like this, but the man he'd been bred from had. Here was another Snake, slithering through the trees -- but he wouldn't be living off the animals here. Sometimes it felt like he (and Liquid, for that matter) couldn't ever escape their own genetics, but that wasn't going to stop Snake from trying.
"Let's say I get hold of the kid and we get out," he said, pausing for a moment near a fallen log, "what then?"
"We'll have the helicopter ready to retrieve you," Liquid's accented tone explained.
Snake didn't like that. He preferred to be more prepared, but this had all happened too fast. If the slightest thing went wrong, both he and Raiden might be paying for it.
Before he could respond, he heard the telltale sound of a cracking twig, and felt his back straighten automatically in response. He cut off the codec and tightened his grip on his tranquilizer gun, ready to do what he did best.
athena_crikey wrote:
Snake spun around fast, elbow against the tree bark to steady his aim. A doe stared back for a split-second, her wide brown eyes so near he could see himself reflected in them, and then she sprang away. She was gone in seconds, bounding over ferns and rotting stumps and flashing her white tail in alarm as she disappeared into the thick underbrush. In her wake the leaves swished quietly before falling still.
The forest around him showed no signs of human life. No wiring, no cameras, no trails. If the genome soldiers were patrolling it, they were covering their tracks with skill Snake hadn’t seen in Shadow Moses. Of course, after the screw up that had been, any decent commander would have knocked the survivors right back into basic. No good assuming their skills were as sloppy as they had been the first time around.
Although untouched by humans, the forest was alive with noise - branches rustling, birds calling, trees creaking. It made scoping out enemies with hearing almost impossible, and with the amount of cover available the chances of visual detection were pretty damn poor. Snake glided through the tall trees slowly, the constant awareness that a well-placed sniper could pick him off with no trouble making him grind his teeth until his jaws seemed to be fusing together. The chattering nanny had seemed like an annoyance at the time, but he’d have traded all his gear to have her soliton radar here. As it was, a tranq gun and some body armour was a poor defence against a well dug-in facility in the middle of the wilderness. But he’d survived worse odds.
Snake chose a deer trail to follow, just a barely noticeable path through the ferns with a few fresh hoof-prints picked in the damp earth, wet from recent rain. It was going in the right direction, and it avoided the steepest inclines. It was purely chance, but chance had saved his life before.
Following the trail, he noticed the hoof marks disappear where the beaten trail didn’t. And then, stopping, saw the spider-silk-thin wires crossing through the air. Near the ground, water was beading on them as it would a web. He tracked the wires back to the nearest trees, and after searching for a moment located the grenades hidden in against the bark. The wires weren’t a wall by any means - it would be easy enough to slip through them. But one trap hinted at more.
In his ear, the codec chirped. “Snake? Why have you stopped - is something wrong?” Otacon, sounding more cautious than worried.
“No - just some good old-fashioned trip wires.”
“Can you get by?”
“No problem. Just want to make sure I don’t step into something worse.” He paused, eyes sweeping the terrain for a moment. And then, jaw tight again, “Is everything okay there?”
“If you mean am I still present and accounted for, brother, the answer is yes.” Liquid sounded jovial as usual. And why not - he was getting what he wanted with the added bonus of watching Snake squirm. “Not to worry, Dr. - I mean, Otacon and I are getting on swimmingly.”
“Everything’s fine, Snake,” said Otacon, speaking through his teeth.
Snake squatted down into the ferns, the security of their cover allowing him to let some real emotion to seep through his cold vigilance. “It’d better damn well continue being fine, or I’ll walk right out of here.”
“And then they’ll torture all your secrets out of your golden-haired boy, and his as well. Or maybe just take him apart to see what makes him tick - he’s the next best thing after us or Big Boss,” replied Liquid, sharply. “Two can play at that game, Snake. And I have more leverage than you.” He didn’t have to say any more; he was sitting right next to it.
Snake took a deep breath, and Otacon broke in hastily, heading off the the outburst. “It’s alright, Snake. He’s right - you need to get Raiden out of there.”
“And fulfill our part of the agreement,” added Liquid, smug enough that Snake’s hand fisted of its own accord.
“I remember,” said Snake, tartly, and cut the feed before things went off the cliff that was looming. He closed his eyes and sighed, let the hot anger run out of him and waited until he could feel the soft brush of leaves against his legs and smell the pine in the air.
Coldly attentive again, he stood and stepped carefully over the nearer trip wire and then ducked under the next. More concerned now with avoiding potential traps than leaving a trail, he struck out walking across the thickest ferns and avoiding the hidden mud between them.
Up head, the forest was getting brighter, the trees and underbrush thinning out. Snake slowed his pace, and crept up to the edge of the trees. Squatting low against the trunk of a thick fir, he got his first look at the research institute in the dell beyond - a concrete bunker surrounded by a good dozen yards of grass on all sides. An asphalt square on the far side, barely visible around the corner of the facility, hinted at a helipad. With the helicopter as his only realistic extraction method, he would have to cross the complex to get out again. Nothing was ever easy.
Behind him, something crackled again. Flicking off the safety on the M9, he swivelled sharply. It wasn’t a deer this time. Snake’s finger closed on the trigger before the startled guard had his M4 aimed. He went down with a tranq. dart in his neck.
Snake stood, holstered his gun, and grabbed the guard by the arms. The ferns gave adequate cover for the body. He liberated a bowie knife, a bandage and a ration from the unconscious man, and then got to work stripping off the uniform. He wouldn’t, at least, have any trouble passing himself off as a genome soldier.
athenemiranda wrote:
Snake was developing the impression that the facility was intended to be as low-key as possible - the kind of place that only existed on a need-to-know basis. He found it guarded by many more traps than people, and his progress was meticulously slow. At least his stolen uniform was serving its purpose effectively; the scientists ignored him, and the few Genome Soldiers he encountered all took him for one of their own until it was too late.
He didn't call upon Otacon. The whole situation with Liquid was a dangerous distraction from what should have been the main purpose of his operation. They were dealing with the devil. Snake had made worse compromises in the past, but cooperating with Liquid was intrinsically painful. Even if they succeeded, he had no trust in Otacon's safety and that wasn't something he could waste time thinking about now.
Gradually, he explored the whole facility. He soon realised that it was both a research institute and also a secret prison, with all the horrors that implied; equipment for torture and sensory deprivation, a bunker area designed to contain psychics, cold storage vaults full of euphemistically labelled psychoactive drugs. There weren't many inmates, but he stole glances whenever he marched past one of their cells and determined that he recognised most of them; people who he and Otacon had found listed as 'disappeared'. This was the place people were taken when the Patriots didn't want them to exist any more, but might still occasionally wish to speak to them.
They didn't look to be in very good shape.
He checked through the extra-security wing and the places of torture; no Raiden. He wasn't sure whether to be frustrated or relieved. He gave the lead-lined bunker that held the psychic subjects only a cursory visit, and turned his attention to the medical research facilities, his stomach sinking.
Unlike the prison cells, each room was sealed rather than barred and he could only see into them through frosted plate-glass doors. Snake marched calmly past a soldier patrolling the area, mimicking his stance and the minuscule nod of his head, and then pivoted on one foot and shot him in the back of the neck. He caught the man as he fell forward, lowering him gently to the floor. Great, now he was alone he could get some of these doors open. His first objective would be to find a good place to leave this guy to nap. He stepped over the sleeping body, and opened the nearest door; it was empty, and seemed to be an operating room. He left the man in there and hurried on down the corridor.
He glanced into laborotaries and operating rooms that could easily have been covers for more torture. Each bed he saw was fitted with restraints. He wasn't sure how much time he had before the alarm was raised -
- There was movement beside him. A silhouette shifting in the glass.
He slid the door open with his gun raised, and she looked at him before he could pull the trigger. She was standing over a steel box, fingers resting on its surface.
"Naomi? What are you doing here?!"
She looked at him calmly. "Keeping him alive. I thought you'd come here," and her eyes closed briefly, overcome by a moment of wistful pain. She seemed unchanged from that night beneath the ocean before Shadow Moses, a young and brilliant face that hid a thousand secrets, most of them painful to her or to someone.
She stepped away from the box that had held her attention, and Snake walked up to it, his gun still trained between her eyes. "Who are you working for?"
"Does it matter?" she replied. "I have a lot of experience of keeping people alive when they shouldn't be. He needed me, Snake. Isn't that enough?"
He looked down at Raiden through the thick glass of the tank's roof, and tried to see how he'd been damaged and what Naomi had done to stitch him back together. "What happened to him?"
"I have only limited information -"
"Sounds familiar. Was it classified?"
Her eyes narrowed. "I don't know if anyone else survived the explosion that wrecked him. For all I know, there's nothing to classify."
"So someone wanted him alive?"
"I wanted him alive."
"Why?"
She curled her arms around herself and stared at him like he'd wounded her. "We're all the same, to them. Just beasts to be controlled. If I can free one person from the destiny that's been forced on them, then I will."
"This is freedom? A culture tank in a prison camp?"
"It's not yet death. Not like Frankie. There's hope of a new dawn for Raiden, beyond life as a ghost or a animal."
"So can he walk?"
She looked at a display on a wall-mounted monitor. "I think so. I've only tested his nervous clusters virtually but I think he's adjusted to his new central motor functions."
"New central motor functions?" She nodded, unassuming as ever about her work. "So is that what you're working on now?"
"As I said, I learned a lot about keeping people alive. I'll set him to wake up," she added, leaning over her desk and opening a black command line. "He's been asleep for quite some time now. He'll be glad to see you."
"I was expected?" She kept typing commands just as if he hadn't spoken. "Just tell me one thing. How did Liquid find out Raiden was here?"
The look on her face told him that he'd finally learned to ask the right questions. It was in his blood, maybe, the lingering virus of distrust for her, the knowledge that anyone would cut a deal with anyone if it would help them achieve their goal. He hated knowing that he was silently doing the same; she clearly knew this place, clearly knew what Liquid wanted, clearly knew the way out and that was a good enough trade for her life even if he could have killed her.
He could never have killed her, or even left her.
He activated his codec. "Otacon, I found Raiden."
"Excellent work, Snake," answered Liquid. Snake scowled. "I hope you appreciated my intel. Now, what about your side of the bargain?"
"What about my engineer?"
"I'm still fine." Otacon's voice shook and Snake tried not to think of everything that could possibly be wrong. "Just let us know when you need me to move in with the helicopter."
"You see, Snake? I am a man of my word. I hope that you prove to be the same." The disconnection sound in his ear was more jarring than usual, and Snake's reflexes seemed to recall every punch and bullet he'd put into Liquid, every blow he'd struck to no avail.
Naomi was bent over the culture tank, flicking switches rapidly. She stepped back, and the lid opened.
ljusastjarnan wrote:
Snake takes an instinctive step back, eyes fixated on the tank with a dread that transitions into morbid curiosity as the cryogenic liquid clears. The body that still retains a familiar face floats noncommittally, glassy eyes open but unseeing.
How much of this was patriots’ workmanship and how much Naomi’s?
He turns back to said doctor for explanations. From her lack of response, Snake figures he wasn’t going to receive any, and he doesn’t feel like egging anything out of her tonight. Instead, he takes a few cautious steps closer to the tank, trying to discern if the silver mounds of muscle made Raiden’s skin---
Only to be sent spiraling back into the wall, the landing impact against an industrial centrifuge almost breaking his shoulders. Scowling, he fumbles for his gun and sits up. “The hell-”
Red eyes stares back at him, flickering around before finally making contact with his own. Snake lowers his gun, and Raiden jumps back up in one swift movement. The kid had always been agile, but never this damned fast too.
“Made a few modifications to him, did you?” he rasps, hoisting himself up.
Naomi snorts, still hovering over the terminal. “I hope you haven’t taken to repeating the obvious again, Snake,” she replies curtly. Snake growls, but doesn’t grace her with an answer, and she turns to Raiden.
“How are you feeling?”
The humanoid in question still stands with an inscrutable expression. Raiden flexes his arms, and hums quietly, as though assessing it for himself. He turns his back on Snake, whose eyebrows furrow at the sight of spine that protruded from synthetic muscles.
“Fair enough.”
He spoke too soon. Doubling over in a fit of coughing, he grips the metal bars to regain his footing. Snake is startled to find white liquid oozing from his hands as he straightens back up.
Naomi draws a syringe from her kit, and jabs it into the small of his back in one swift movement. “Don’t be alarmed,” she says, “you’re immune system has not yet been fully configured to accept your blood. The process has been automated, so it shouldn’t pose any problems.”
The humanoid grunts, snapping his neck forwards. “Aren’t we going, yet?” he asks, the first address directed to Snake.
Snake just shrugs and turns to the doors; Raiden could walk, that was more than he had hoped for. He doesn’t ask his questions, not yet. His curiosity could wait until Otacon was secured from Liquid. Raiden follows close behind, steps not making a single sound against the floor, and Snake turns back every so often to check he was still following. It disquieted him, and putting aside even the entire restructuring of his body, there was something fundamentally changed about Raiden. The way he walked, the bitter edge that had somehow crept into his voice during his ordeal.
“Don’t think you won’t get caught, Snake,” Naomi calls from her station, but doesn’t make a move to stop either of them.
Snake doesn’t look back.
As far as he was concerned, he no longer had any business loitering around the facility when conversation could clearly be had without the unpleasant presence of Liquid.
He presses two fingers to his ear.
"Otacon, get ready to land. And don't--- don't try anything, Liquid. Or you'll never get it."