by Project Itoh
Naomi noticed it too and managed to whisper, “You …” but had no words to follow. What could she say?
“Whoa!” was all Drebin had to say, his grin nearly as wide as his face.
Drebin guided the APC around a corner in a sideways drift to see a flatbed truck blocking the street. He flicked the wheel, and the Stryker rolled on its side and bounced into an acrobatic flip over the flatbed.
I expect most everybody goes their whole life without seeing a giant hunk of steel the size of the Stryker roll through the air looking like a whale swimming in an aquarium. For all the trouble we caused the fair citizens of that city, at least we gave them a sight to remember.
Of course, we couldn’t expect the tires to just land back on the ground, and they didn’t. The Stryker landed on its side and slid down the stone pavement with a shower of sparks. Eventually, the friction of metal on stone slowed the vehicle to a stop.
Snake had reacted quickly and leapt from the roof of the APC before it left the ground. His knees and hips protested angrily, but that was better than being thrown from the Stryker. Soon after the vehicle came to a rest on its side, Drebin, Naomi, and Little Gray crawled out.
Naomi limped over to Snake. The cries of the Gekko—like those of pigs, or maybe crazed cows—rang through the skies. Then, moments later, a group of them appeared at the corner Drebin had turned in from. There, inside the city, it was easier to estimate their massive size—just compare one to a building. Three, maybe four stories. Just barely within the range a person could comprehend—probably a calculated decision to increase their effectiveness.
Drebin saw them. “Ah, shit.”
The Gekko came at them. One giant step. Another.
Then they noticed a man standing in front of them.
Some bystander who took too long to run?
No, that wouldn’t explain how still he was, or the complete lack of fear toward the creatures before him. He was so small in comparison to the giants that Snake’s group hadn’t realized he was there until now.
He wore a black trench coat, and a visor covered his face. But what got Snake’s attention was the glowing blade he held in his right hand. Just like Frank’s sword.
The visor slid up, and steam sprayed out the sides of his mask.
I’d seen those eyes before.
The man who killed Solidus.
“Raiden …” said Snake.
Raiden pointed his sword down the road as if to say, Run!
For a moment, Snake forgot to breathe.
I didn’t know what had happened to Jack. Only that something happened. Something, some terrible thing had mercilessly torn at his youthful body. In a word, ruin. A dreadful air of desolation radiated from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
I didn’t know if Jack—or Raiden, as he had become—had moved beyond whatever events had changed him or if he was still in the middle of them.
Drebin’s delighted cry, “He made it!” cut through the tension.
Snake looked at Naomi and asked, “Can you move?”
She took off her heels and said, “Yes. Let’s go.”
Snake and Naomi left the crash site, but Drebin and Little Gray climbed back into his toppled car. He threw his handkerchief in the air as if part of a magic trick, and the OctoCamo activated, the Stryker now a part of the road.
The arms dealer and the gibbon were safe inside, where the Gekko could no longer see them.
“Snake,” I said, “I’m setting the chopper down at the market square. Hurry!”
Snake and Naomi burst into the market and its panicking crowds. I landed the helicopter in an open square in front of a church and kept the rotors turning.
Soon I sighted them amid the chaos. I waved them over. Knowing that the pack of Gekko would not have the courtesy to wait, I ran through the pre-takeoff procedures.
Naomi cut across the grass yard and made it to the helicopter. With her twisted ankle, she was having trouble climbing the waist-high step into the chopper. Snake was behind her, providing cover, and I couldn’t leave my place at the controls.
“Sorry,” I said, “I’m a little busy right now.”
I disabled the Mk. II’s stealth camouflage. Naomi noticed the little robot and used it as a stepping stool to successfully make it inside.
Snake scooped up the Mk. II and got in, and I lifted off. Naomi let off a pinched shriek at the sudden downforce.
I turned to make sure they were both all right. Snake was battling some severe fatigue, but otherwise he seemed mostly fine. Naomi had twisted her ankle when the Stryker rolled over, and I looked at it with concern.
That was when I noticed she had been staring at me.
Her gaze shot right through me, and I reflexively drew back. But she wasn’t staring at me, not exactly. She was staring into my eyes.
I didn’t have time to process it. I had to focus my attention on the instrument panel and what was outside the cockpit.
I still had a comrade to pick up.
“Where’s Raiden?” I asked Snake.
He pointed at a street corner.
“Hang on to something!” I pulled the control stick and put the helicopter into a sharp turn. We could get to the point Snake indicated in mere moments. The problem was the pack of Gekko that surrounded Raiden. Thankfully, I didn’t see any IRVING armed with anti-air guns, but attempting to pick Raiden up would bring the helicopter within range of the weapons they did have.
Even though the helicopter was built for combat, it wouldn’t stand up to a barrage of Gekko fire without consequence.
All at once, four Gekko shot out probe arms and grappled Raiden’s limbs. He looked like a medieval prisoner about to be quartered. But he held steadfast against their probes with an inhuman strength. Jack didn’t look human.
So that was what was underneath his coat.
Ruin.
Now I apprehended the reason—or one of the reasons—that word had popped into my head when Snake and Raiden were reunited. He looked like Frank Jaeger. There were little differences in the details, sure, but I had no doubt: Raiden’s body had been augmented by a high-tech exoskeleton.
I wonder what Naomi thought as she watched him fight.
Was she thinking about how this young man was burdened by the same fate that took her own brother away? Did she still think about it each day?
Naomi pointed at the pack of Gekko. “It’s Vamp!”
A tall figure in a black coat slinked through the group of machines. He weaved around the Gekko and their extended probes with the grace of a ballet dancer.
Raiden stood with arms stretched straight out as if inviting crucifixion.
With a fierce stare, the nosferatu said, “Yet again, our paths cross.”
Raiden clicked his tongue. I too owed Vamp my revenge, but the bloodsucker had made Raiden live with the guilt of failing to protect his charge. Raiden had been escorting my sister Emma to the computer room at the Big Shell when Vamp ambushed them. Raiden wasn’t able to stop him from sticking a knife through her stomach.
Vamp threw off his coat. He was bare-chested, his very skin the embodiment of a soul born from a boundless cascade of evil begetting evil. A dead man. But my eyes could see that the man was very much alive, not sleeping under the dirt.
Powered armor—developed by the army—covered his legs. Vamp pulled a combat knife from its sheath at his crotch and thrust it into Raiden’s chest.
“Raiden!” Snake shouted.
I brought the helicopter within sniping range—which, given the harsh vibrations inside the vehicle, had to be quite close. I knew it would risk taking gunfire from the Gekko, but I didn’t see any other option.
Vamp made a show of pushing in the knife all the way to the handle.
Then he noticed the white blood seeping from the wound. He looked up and saw Raiden’s twisted smile.
“You too,” said the nosferatu. “Immortal?”
Vamp put his nose up to Raiden’s face and took in his scent—or rather,
noted its relative absence. Vamp seemed to be thinking, This man is like me.
“No,” said Raiden. “I just don’t fear death.”
Vamp snorted. He yanked his knife out of Raiden’s chest, then thrust it into the restrained man’s stomach. As Raiden coughed up more white blood, Vamp retrieved his knife, turned to face Snake in the helicopter, and drew his tongue across the blade with a slow, sensual lick.
Snake leveled his DSR1 and fired at the probe arms holding Raiden down. At our distance, the probe arms seemed as thin as strings, but Snake—aged eyes or not—snapped them one by one.
With the last probe severed, Raiden drew his sword and kicked into the air. His blade flashed toward Vamp’s face, but the immortal was inhumanly fast and blocked the strike with his knife.
But Raiden was already making his next move, kicking at Vamp’s feet to trip the bloodsucker. Vamp dodged the attack with a graceful backflip, casting out a barrage of throwing knives to cover his retreat.
Raiden’s sword danced in an attempt to deflect the knives, but several struck his shoulders and sides. Undeterred, he closed in on the backpedaling nosferatu. But Vamp suddenly moved forward, the maneuver so sudden it seemed to break the laws of physics. In an instant, he was right at Raiden’s face.
Suddenly, Raiden found his foot pinned to the street. A knife penetrated through the top of his foot and into the ground. Vamp jumped over Raiden’s head, flipped in the air, and landed behind him. The nosferatu wrapped one arm around Raiden’s throat and thrust his knife into Raiden’s back.
He pushed the blade deeper and breathed into Raiden’s ear, his breath heavy with pleasure.
Raiden’s eyes opened wide.
Then he took hold of his sword with both hands, gripped it tight, and shoved it through his own stomach.
It’s a shish kebab, I thought. Naomi drew her hand to her mouth. A sensible reaction to the nonsensical sight before us. This wasn’t a battle, not anymore. If I had to call it something, make it mutual destruction—the mutual destruction of two people no longer human but something beyond.
I don’t think there are many who could face such a sight. Snake hadn’t the option—the surrounding swarm of Gekko required his full attention as he attempted to hold them back with sniper fire.
Vamp released a long sigh that hung in the air. He was in ecstasy.
“Yes … could you be the one to finally kill me?”
Raiden pulled his sword free and jumped onto Vamp’s back. In a feat impossible for anyone lacking a powered exoskeleton, he sprung in two quick leaps from the ground to the top of a Gekko and from the Gekko to our helicopter.
Snake reached out the open cabin door and caught Raiden’s arm. Artificial blood poured out of the man’s wounds and rained white upon the South American city. Snake heaved him up and inside.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” Raiden said, but his wounds were clearly severe.
“Hang in there!” said Naomi.
Raiden began to cough blood. Even though his blood was artificial, his pale face lost even more color and turned as white as fine china. He wasn’t the same kind of immortal as Vamp.
Why wouldn’t Vamp die? His body hadn’t been replaced with synthetics as with Frank or Jack—Vamp’s flesh remained that of a man. Tears welled up in my eyes as I faced the disappointment of being once again unable to avenge Emma.
“Vamp,” I said. “He’s got to be immortal.”
Then Naomi, tending to Raiden’s wounds, said softly, “No … he’s not immortal at all. I’m the one who made his body that way.”
“Huh?” I said.
She looked into Raiden’s face. Maybe she was trying to see her brother in there somewhere.
“I’m responsible for Vamp,” she said. “He’s one of my sins.”
I thought back to her syringe in the Middle East. Before she left it with Snake, she had injected herself with it.
Snake asked, “Does your body have the same nanomachines?”
She didn’t answer except to say, “I brought a monster into this world … and myself too.”
Raiden began to cough blood again. The spray of liquid, white as pure milk, splashed against the ceiling. The deck was a sea of it. This blood was white, and made of plastics, but to his organs, it was the same as the blood in my veins, or yours.
And if he lost too much, he would die.
Although artificial blood taxed the human heart tremendously compared to the natural kind, the amount of oxygen it carried was greater by magnitudes. Even after losing as much as he had, Raiden was probably still all right. But if we couldn’t stop the flow, he would soon cross a line from which he would not return.
“Hold him down!” Naomi yelled.
I put the helicopter on autopilot and pressed my hands over his wounds. Immediately, the slippery white liquid engulfed my hands. This was Raiden’s life. Life, created by man, different from the red blood inside us.
But looking at Snake and Raiden, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate the achievement. The only difference between the curses those two men bore was that Raiden was born normal. Snake came into the world a clone of Big Boss, already bound to the fate in his genes.
“He’s losing too much blood,” Naomi said. Her hands pressed against the white tide. Beads of nervous sweat formed on her forehead.
“Can you save him?” Snake asked.
“I don’t know. He needs a blood transfusion. No—an infusion of artificial blood.”
Raiden’s coughing fit continued, and the blood kept on pooling under him. If he had still been a normal human, he’d have been dead by now.
Then Raiden squeezed the words out from his throat, “Snake … Europe.”
His chin hadn’t moved, and it took a moment for us to realize he had spoken. His mouth overflowed with his own blood, and the white liquid bubbled with each breath. I couldn’t believe he had been able to speak at all.
“Go meet … Big Mama.”
With that, Raiden slipped into unconsciousness.
All we could do in the helicopter was press against his wounds.
As we gritted against the realization of our helplessness, I sent the helicopter to El Dorado at full speed.
ACT 3: THIRD SUN
LET ME TELL you a story about a flower.
The most beloved flower in America.
No one knows her real name. “The Boss” might be her most famous.
Back when the world was in flames, when Adolf Hitler led the Nazis against Britain and France as Japan bombed Hawaii half a world away, her talents blossomed.
Those who knew her well, and those who lavished her with honors, often gave her stars-of-Bethlehem as a token of their admiration. Flowers with pure white petals. Flowers with a meaning—virtuous.
Her talent was her ability to fight on someone else’s behalf.
I don’t know when people first started to call her The Boss. But from what I’ve gathered, in World War II, she created a new class of fighting unit—the special forces unit. Before The Boss, armies had long performed operations far behind the battlefront into enemy lines—cutting off supply routes, destroying weapon stockpiles, inciting resistance movements in enemy-held territories—but those kinds of covert actions hadn’t been conceptualized as an organized function of the military.
That was The Boss’s modest revolution in the history of war.
She was involved in the founding of many special forces units across the globe, from the British SAS—considered by some to be the world’s best—to America’s renowned Green Berets. The last would go beyond the scope of special forces as they had been known. She took a group of operators—nothing more than dogs of war—trained them in the art of espionage, and created a new class of agent.
Alongside Major Zero of the SAS, who sought the ideal next generation army, she put all of herself into the foundation of that unit—Force Operation X. Later, the unit became known as FOX, and its existence was revealed to US government leaders along with
its new focus: to cultivate the world’s number one agent—to create a young soldier inheriting the traits of the “Mother of the Special Forces.”
The man chosen for this task was named Jack.
Whether that was his real name I can’t say for sure, but The Boss and Major Zero called him Jack.
For more than a decade, The Boss and Jack had shared fates. They fought in many dangerous missions and witnessed many wrongs. Their experiences had undoubtedly shaken their faith in God and humanity more than once. Jack had already lost the ability to father a child. Before he met The Boss, back in the days when we were still ignorant of the effects of radiation, he was involved in America’s hydrogen bomb tests. The cursed ash blanketed his body and denied him the chance to create a life for the next generation. Then, in the world’s battlefields and in hells unknown to the public, he learned the fragility of the human conscience. He saw how war could twist a man.
But Jack never wavered. He absorbed all of The Boss’s teachings and all of her knowledge. Maybe she had seen the latent ability within him. But he only survived that cruel training with his soul intact (I call it training, but most of it was on real battlefields in real wars) because of the example The Boss set for him—purity, righteousness, and a nobility that could stare into the abyss and feel no fear.
Her code name in battle: The Joy.
She gave herself to fight for others, to protect others. And in it she found her joy. Her soul stood pure white among the pools of blood, but in the end, she was buried among the graves of the nameless.
And Jack, her cherished apprentice, was the one who stole her life.
Upon Major Zero’s orders, he undertook an official FOX operation called Virtuous Mission. Its goal was the rescue of a defecting Soviet scientist. But Jack failed after the sudden betrayal of one of the FOX specialists—The Boss herself. She revealed to Jack her defection to the Soviets and escaped with the researcher and a Soviet colonel.
Events turned even worse when a Davy Crockett nuke destroyed a research facility near the operation, and US-Soviet relations, already jeopardized by the Cuban Missile Crisis, were only moments away from disaster. Unless America could prove it wasn’t behind the explosion, the two superpowers would soon enter a war capable of global destruction.
