Paradigm Shift, a Metal Gear Solid fanfic
by *blinkblink*
It was a clumsy set up, the
clumsiest he had encountered in years. Even Philanthropy’s first missions had
been better orchestrated, if less well armed. But time constraints had made it
impossible to provide the usual communications and soliton radar. They had been
unable to obtain and program nanomachines in such a short time, and Raiden,
while well stocked up on weapons, relied entirely on these new marvels of
communication and as such had not had any good old-fashioned mic and earpiece
set ups readily available. Which meant they had no way to contact each other,
should they become separated, and their only contact with the outside was
through Raiden’s cell phone, having just had its memory wiped. Their only support
was Mei Ling, monitoring local activity on whatever satellites she could
high-jack for her purposes. They were, for almost all intents and purposes, on
their own. Not only did they have to get Hal the hell out of there, they had
somehow to secure an exit from
His mind was already shifting
up to process thoughts as quickly as possible, senses spread to their limits about
him, a spider-web of piano wires, as he stepped out of the car two blocks over
from the warehouse. He felt alive, in a way he hadn’t for months, since his
last close call on a mission. No matter how his life changed, there would
always be that part of him that was only truly alive on the battlefield. Before,
he had been restless without a job to do, a task to set his mind to, and had
been unable to keep his emotions out of place. Now, though, he was in his
element, and the control which had eluded him was as natural to him as
breathing. Already, adrenaline was beginning to slip into his veins and as he
fell into the role of a soldier he was unconsciously reducing Hal to nothing
more than a goal, an objective, as he had been unable to do before. The world
was becoming cold and clear, precise lines and curves and paths of movement and
Snake, sharp eyes narrowed, slipped out into it without a ripple.
With Raiden scouting ahead
and doubling back to report on possible guard squads, they made it to the
warehouse in under ten minutes, cutting silently through the dark streets and
alleys, pausing only once to wait for a three-man squad to turn the corner
around the long side of the warehouse and disappear.
In person, it wasn’t much
different from the photos. Made of solid concrete, it loomed darkly over the
street, large windows set into the shorter side gaping like ghoulish faces in
the shadows. There was no light on this side of the factory, which was as they
had planned, Mei Ling reporting lights in the offices on the other side, and an
increased number of guards there to accompany them.
The windows along the first
story were all easily large enough to admit Snake, the bottoms level with his
chest, reaching up to a height of a metre and equally wide with double panes of
glass on sliding tracks. However, they all still had their glass, thick
reinforced safety glass, which would be difficult to break at all and
impossible to do silently. Glancing inside, keen eyes picked out steel locks
set against the runners inside the frames. He looked up, noticing Raiden
mirroring his move to his right. The upper windows were the same size, but
without any sill or perching point, the only aid to climbing being a rusty
metal pipe. They too were still filled with glass. Unless they were sure one of
the windows was open up there, his climbing the pipe would damage more than it
would help. His ribs were up to that kind of aerobatics, but he didn’t want to
push it this early on the mission.
He caught Raiden’s eye and
glanced around the back of the building, suggesting an examination of that
side. Raiden shook his head slightly, fair hair moving about in the light wind
and catching the dim light- Snake winced internally at the impracticality- and
looked up at the windows again. After a second of thought, he motioned at Snake
to stay where he was, poorly concealed behind a pair of empty metal drums, and
took a few considering steps backwards. Snake, understanding that he meant to
try the windows, looked around. He could hear a patrol around the other side of
the building, probably at least forty yards away, although it was difficult to
estimate accurately around the corner. He knelt down behind the barrels and
rested a hand lightly on the stealth camo as Raiden leapt forward and sprang,
graceful as a cat, and caught the pipe a good three metres up the wall. He
quickly began to scamper up it, pipe groaning and whining under his grip.
Snake watched the kid’s
ascent with a critical eye, and was impressed. He abandoned the pipe as soon as
he reached the proper height and moved across the wall like a lizard, finding
grips in what seemed to be solid concrete, limbs held mostly straight for
greater support with just a hint of give for flexibility. He reached the window
on the right side of the pipe in less than ten seconds of his leap, pressing
his gloved hand flat against the pane and pushing sideways. It didn’t give.
Snake detected a slight tensing in his back that might have been irritation,
and then he was moving over the window to the other side, trying that one too.
In the distance, Snake could hear a patrol slowly working its way towards this
end of the building, three pairs of boots echoing on concrete. On the upper
level, Raiden tried the second side of the window, and found it locked as well.
He began to slide along to the next set, two metres over. The boots clattered
closer. Raiden reached the first pane and tried it. Locked.
Snake pulled out his SOCOM
and screwed on the silencer, inspecting the chamber and the clip one more time,
then glancing up at the kid. He looked over his shoulder, not at Snake but at
the corner of the building, which the guards would be rounding in about ten
seconds, Snake judged. He made to catch the Raiden’s eye, but the younger man
had already turned back, swinging himself over to the other side of the window.
A gust of wind blew Snake’s way from the corner, and he could smell cigarettes.
Any second now. He raised his gun. Up ahead, something clattered quietly. He
glanced up, heart rate climbing, vision sharpening even further, picking out
individual bricks on the building opposite them even in the dark, the rust
stains on a group of barrels further down the alley. This was not a good time
for a split in concentration. He turned in time to see Raiden push the window
open and swing himself inside, vanishing instantly into the darkness there.
Turning back, Snake dropped to his knees in the same instant that the patrol
came around the corner, and switched on the stealth camo. It came on
immediately, the light prickling sensation of electricity running over his skin
telling him it was working. He slipped further into the lee of the drums he was
crouched behind, and took slow, silent breaths.
The patrol took its time to
pass by. The three men, each holding a FA-MAS, ambled by slowly. They were
dressed in no particular uniform, two wearing leather coats, the third a dark
corduroy one. Snake could tell at a glance that the one in the corduroy had
military training where the other two didn’t, that the taller of the
leather-wearers was both the heaviest of the group and the most belligerent but
wasn’t used to his weapon, that the other was more familiar with smaller arms
but was dangerous even without them. A regular collection of hired heavies. Or,
equally possible, borrowed help from whoever in the area was backing Stein.
He stayed silent and
motionless until they disappeared around the other corner of the building, and
didn’t move even then. He could hear another group coming down an alleyway
ahead of him to his left. Behind him, someone knocked quietly on the glass.
Snake stood, SOCOM ready, against the concrete strip of the building running
between windows, and glanced in. In the darkness there he could just barely see
the pale glow of white hair. He glanced over his shoulder, and then flicked the
stealth camo off, appearing with startling suddenness. He didn’t detect any
movement from Raiden, though, who had already unlocked the window and was
sliding it quietly back on its runners. Snake boosted himself up on the window
sill, resisting the instinct to simply flip himself in knowing the ensuing roll
would do his wounds no good. His booted feet found purchase easily on the rough
concrete, and he scrambled up to perch for an instant on the sill before
dropping into the dark room. Raiden slipped the window closed behind him,
flicking the lock shut as well.
Snake was already moving away
from the window into the dark room. Faint light was streaming in through the
window and the open doorway, providing only just illumination enough for Snake’s
keen eyes to get a good sense of the room he stood in. It was a good size, 15
metres wide by 20 deep, the door placed in the middle of the far wall just as
the two windows behind him were centred in that wall. Just like the exterior,
the room was made of concrete, smooth and grey and stained. It was completely
empty, except for a couple of old disintegrating boxes. Over the vague scent of
spirits, Snake could smell dust and mould, and was sure from the slightly
slippery smoothness of the floor under his feet that they were leaving tracks
in the dust. He could hear several groups of people moving in the large room
next to this one, judging its size by the echoes he figured it to be perhaps
sixty metres long, and take up the full two storeys of the warehouse’s height.
He strode silently over to
the doorway and paused there, back against the wall, head turned to the side to
catch sight of the room from the corner of his eye. He half saw and half sensed
Raiden moving to the other side of the door to do the same, his motion shifting
the stale air in the room.
Their small room, presumably
once an office or storage area, looked out onto the main floor of the
warehouse. Two storeys tall, it was a huge open space with concrete floors and
tall walls whose bland concrete was interrupted only along the upper storey
with a few lines of wide, short windows long ago stained dark by the stream and
fumes of the distillery. Directly across the room from him were three dark doors
set into the wall there, the middle standing in the shadow of a rickety metal
staircase running along the wall which led up to a sole doorway through which
streamed a pale light. Two large windows, only slightly lit, looked out over
the floor from the second story of the far wall, and were equally burnished.
Glancing up, Snake found the staircase’s mate above his own door, and a door to
his right and left. He was standing in the mirror of the doorway across the
building from him.
It was apparent that some of
the machinery from the factory had been taken away when it had gone out of
business, but plenty of it had been left behind as well. Here and there grimy
conveyer belts led to an empty drop, while in other places huge metal vats sat
completely isolated, some partially dismantled. It was as though whoever had
taken the equipment apart had begun and then abandoned the venture halfway
through, leaving half the mechanisms and containers alone without their
essential parts.
And through all this
patrolled groups of armed men, wandering slowly, sometimes meeting others and
splitting apart, sometimes pausing to light a cigarette in the lee of an
ancient metal vat or to glance up at the opposite staircase. At the platform at
the top stood a sole guard, holding a FA-MAS in his arms with a light ease that
told Snake he knew exactly how to use it. As the soldier watched, analyzing,
the man walked slowly from one end of the short platform to the other, then
turned and began walking into the dark hallway beyond. Raiden jerked his head,
catching Snake’s attention, and made to leave the doorway. Snake, startled by
his abruptness, was unable to stop him, and instead switched on the stealth
camo to follow him.
Raiden slipped lightly up the
stairway above them, feet making only the lightest clickings on the metal
steps, watching the open floor of the warehouse with sharp eyes and keeping
against the wall. At the top he slid around the corner and disappeared into the
darkness there, one shadow among many. Snake followed more slowly, keeping to
the wall himself, staring out across the floor. He counted five groups of
roving guards, and there were possibly more in the rooms which mirrored the one
he had been in a minute ago, or lurking behind the crap scattered around the
floor, or waiting to come in from outside. Not good.
He followed Raiden into the
room beyond, and found that it was a copy of the one downstairs, except with a
door in each wall as well, leading presumably to a further set of rooms. Raiden
was standing in the back, just far enough away from the windows to not be seen
from the outside.
“What the hell are we doing
up here? We’ll never get down that staircase again without someone seeing us,”
hissed Snake, clicking the stealth camo off and shivering imperceptibly in the
sudden absence of current on his skin.
“I’ve gotten up twice without
them noticing me. But anyway, we’d never make it across the floor without
taking half of them out, and the other half would notice that. Besides, the one
at the top of the staircase has never been gone for long. He’d spot us, even if
the others didn’t.”
Snake felt himself beginning
to bristle. He had been trained not to bring emotion onto the battlefield, but
he had always been a little weaker when it came to closing out anger than the
others. “What, you want to turn around and go home?” The hell was the kid
thinking? Even if they had little chance of making it across the floor, there
was no chance of getting anywhere
from up here, and now they’d have to get back down again.
“No,” said Raiden, giving him
an appraising and, Snake felt, slightly rebuking look.
“Well?” asked Snake, forcing
an even tone.
“This way,” said Raiden,
walking quietly around Snake and away from the window to the door on his right.
It lead to another room, exactly the same as the first, although this contained
some rotting wooden shelves and rusted metal poles. Raiden ignored them and
walked over to the wall the room shared with the distillery floor. In it was
set a large window, just like those Snake had seen on the wall across the way.
It too was darkened, but Snake could see it was on runners; it opened. Probably
so that whoever had worked in these rooms could lean out and yell at the grunts.
Raiden crept around to the far side of the window and motioned for Snake to
look out of it. He turned on the camo and walked up to the window, looking down
at the floor below. The view was little different than it had been from the
stairs, only darker and blurrier.
“What?” he said, and saw even
as he asked. Along the wall at floor level to the second story ran a thick
concrete ledge, just under a foot wide. It ran straight from the wall closest
to him to the far wall, overlooked by the opposite window, almost as dark as
his own. Each window was less than a metre from the ledge, which was in
relative darkness, the dim lights illuminating the factory floor hanging in the
middle of the roof rather than the sides. And, Snake noticed, none of the
guards were looking up as the milled around the floor. “The ledge,” he said,
and Raiden nodded.
“We can get all the way
across with it.”
“What if the other window’s
locked?” Snake looked across at the window, and then down at his.
Experimentally, he pressed his hands against the glass and pushed lightly. The
glass under his palms resisted but shuddered slightly. He put more pressure on
it, and it jerked open all of the sudden, so quickly he had to grab it to stop
it slamming into the frame at the other end. He looked at Raiden, and raised an
eyebrow, then remembered the camo and, stepping out of view of the window, switched
it off. The white-haired man shrugged.
“We’ll find out when we get
there,” he whispered. Snake grinned grimly. That was always how it was. It had
become his philosophy on life. Hell, on death too. He’d find out when he got
there. As he watched, the man on the stairway turned and began to walk into the
dark room beyond. Switching the camo on again, he made to climb out the window,
and was stopped by Raiden’s hand on his arm, although it hit his shoulder
first.
“Wait,” he hissed. “I’ll go
first. You’re not 100%. And if the guy on the staircase spots me, you can shoot
him from behind me, rather than him shooting you going for me.”
They were valid points, and
Snake recognized that. “Fine,” he whispered, wary of continually turning the
camo on and off, and moved out of the way. Raiden reached out slowly and put
his left arm on the window frame, more to make sure that Snake was out of the
way than for support, and hopped lightly up to perch on it. That was only for
an instant, though, because he was immediately shifting to the cement ledge
with a graceful smoothness reminiscent of running water. Wherever the kid had
learned it, he had style.
Snake waited until he was a
good metre along on the ledge to pull himself out of the window, aware that his
own move to the ledge was considerably rougher. His leg was beginning to give
him some trouble, but not enough to do anything about, and even if he had
wanted to do something, he hadn’t brought any painkillers, aware that they
never did anything but cause fuck-ups, and they hadn’t had any to bring anyway.
Raiden was making his way
along slowly, sliding along half bent-over to keep his balance, high-stepping
slightly to avoid shuffling noises, back pressed firmly against the wall. Snake
did the same, gun in hand, ready to pick off anyone who noticed the
white-haired soldier. But Raiden made no noise, and moved slowly enough not to
catch the eyes of the men who weren’t looking up in the first place. Twice they
both thought they had been spotted and froze, Raiden squatting slightly to make
himself smaller, Snake bringing his silenced M9 to bear. But the inquiring
glance passed on without noticing, and after a few seconds to make sure, Raiden
stood again and continued on, never showing any emotion other than slight anxiousness.
Snake, for his part, knew his face betrayed no emotion because he felt none.
He was at his best here, a
fish in water, a hawk soaring the high skies. This was what he knew, what he
had been bred to do, what he lived to
do. The surge of adrenaline sharpening his senses like a whet-stone; the
absolute knowledge of every move about him, every aspect of his surroundings; a
perfect awareness of what had to be done when, exactly how to move and what his
options were and which to choose- this was his world when he was truly alive,
filled with bright colours even in the darkness, and sharp scents even in the
must, and the tiniest of sounds even in the silence. When he was in this state,
the rest of his life seemed like a pale dream, quiet and tasteless in
comparison to this incredibly vivid world. Afterwards, it was hard to remember
just how vivid it was. But now, he revelled in it, drank it in thirstily. It
was better than alcohol, better than nicotine, better than sex. It was the air
he breathed.
Raiden had made it almost to
the end of the ledge when Snake heard a quiet clicking which told him the stair
guard was returning before the man came into his field of vision. He reached
out to warn Raiden, who of course did not see it, but a second later stopped
himself, glancing at the doorway. The younger soldier continued his glance
quickly across the floor, and then in a quick leap covered the ground to the
window so that he was crouched in the dark corner, bright eyes watching the
stairway with an eagle’s sharp sight. Snake continued until he was standing
next to the other soldier, M9 in hand. If he shot the guard now, he wouldn’t
trouble them later, as he almost certainly would if Snake took no action. But
at the same time, there was the chance that he would make a noise to attract
the men below, or that he had a schedule to report in by and would be missed.
Snake weighed these options
against each other, finger tightening on the trigger as the guard turned to
face them, but he was staring at the wall above their heads with slightly
unfocused eyes, scanning the dark windows there with the eyes of one who didn’t
really expect to be attacked but was at least making an effort at his duty.
Snake eased his finger off the trigger, although he kept his pistol aimed at
the guard, and rested his free hand against the wall for purchase. Raiden’s
face showed nothing but firm concentration, although Snake knew from experience
crouching against the wall had to be uncomfortable and straining. The guard
continued to pace slowly across the top of the stairway, pausing every now and
then to look out over the floor below him. Raiden’s legs began to shake
slightly, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.
Below came the sudden clang
of metal striking metal, and Raiden flinched slightly, eyes darting to the
source of the sound and then back to the man on the staircase. He was looking
down at the floor, where there was a slight commotion. One of the men had
struck the butt of his gun against a metal vat and was being snapped at by a
group mate, leading to his snapping back. The man on the staircase shouted
something, and was ignored. Snarling, he took off down the stairs and began
pushing through the guards, who were converging on the escalating quarrel.
Raiden took this opportunity and stood quickly, turning to reach out and press
his hands flat against the window, strain against it.
Snake watched the soldier
with one eye and the floor with the other, beginning to consider how best to
break the glass, if possible. Below the argument was being broken up, and men
sent back to their routes. Raiden gave the window a last shove, and nearly fell
off the ledge when it gave, was saved only by Snake reaching out and grabbing
him, throwing him bodily into the wall. He regained his footing immediately,
and Snake even with his keen eyes wasn’t sure he had seen even a split second
of horror in his eyes. Of course, he hadn’t truly begun to fall. The next
instant Raiden had swung himself over to the window and inside. The moment had
already passed, and they were already moving on. Without a backwards glance
Snake reached out and grabbed the frame and hauled himself in through the
window as well.
He watched the guard walking
back up the stairs as Raiden slipped deeper into the room behind him, watching
to see if he noticed the window. He regained the top of the stairs and took his
position there, looking all over the floor and watching to see that the guards
took up their beats again. And again he began to turn to the left and right,
scanning the high windows for any hint of activity. He didn’t look at the
window at all.
Snake turned into the room,
eyes automatically tracking to the only source of movement: Raiden, prowling
quietly by the closed door in the wall to his left. This room, he quickly
realised, was not the twin of the one across the building. It was both
shallower and broader, almost half again as wide as the room they had exited to
get here. It was filled with boxes, some slumping empty and rotted, some filled
with dusty equipment, bottles and scraps of metal. Light was filtering in from
the other side of the door which didn’t fit well in its frame, leaving a large
gap at the bottom and side for light to seep in through. Raiden had pressed his
ear against it, hand resting lightly on the doorknob. Snake pricked up his ears
and drifted over to stand next to him, pressing his own ear against the door as
Raiden moved to try to see through the gap between door and frame.
They would have to take the
guard out; the chances of them managing to sneak through the room behind his
back were slim, and the benefits didn’t outweigh the risks, this time. Snake
tensed as he heard the quiet click of the man’s shoes approaching. Raiden drew
back from the door, pulling his own M9, and waited for him to pass the door. A
shadow fell across the band of light between door and frame, and then the shoes
clicked on down the hall. Raiden pulled the door open, and three things
happened at once. The door shuddered and creaked, hinges no better than the
framing. The guard turned, pulling his FA-MAS to bear on Raiden and opening his
mouth to shout. And, even before he pulled the trigger, Raiden had already
pulled his, and a tranq dart hit the guard in the heart.
Raiden stepped quickly out
into the corridor to cover the stairway as Snake slipped through behind him and
hurried forward to catch the guard before he hit the ground, glancing at the
stairs himself. No one was coming; all was quiet down below. Raiden turned and
grabbed the guard’s feet, leading the way back into the room they had come
from. They dropped the guard in a corner behind a pair of boxes filled with
broken glass.
The door led out, as Snake
had found, not into a room, but into a short hallway, the staircase at one end
and a cement wall at the other. Across from the door to the room they were
leaving was a second one with no light inside. At the end of the corridor by
the wall was a further pair of doors, one on each side. These each had a small
glass window set in a foot above the doorknob. The rooms these windows looked
into were lit, yellow light flooding out into the dark musty corridor in
visible beams. From what Snake could see, they were almost certainly a pair of
symmetrical deep, narrow rooms. The two soldiers slipped silently down the hall
and paused at the end by the second set of doors.
Snake waited for Raiden to
pick a side of the hallway; he chose the right. Snake sidled up to the left
hand door, back pressed against the wall, and looked in. The room extended
deeper than his angle would allow him to see to his right, but there was a wall
almost immediately on his left. This room clearly took up the back end of this
side of the warehouse, its windows being those which Mei Ling had originally seen
light from. What he could see of the room was empty, but most of it was not
visible to him. He looked at Raiden, whose eyes were flitting carefully over
the room before him.
“Nothing,” hissed Snake
quietly. Raiden nodded, looked over to him. Snake flicked off the camo. They
were getting to their goal. Friendly fire was becoming a distinct possibility.
“Time?”
Raiden glanced at his wrist.
“9:42,” he said quietly. Snake nodded. Odds were Stein was already waiting for
him at the park, with an army of goons. And in eighteen minutes, he would
figure out Snake wasn’t going to show, if he hadn’t already. They were cutting
it close.
From inside, he could hear
the low murmur of men’s voices. They would be getting a phone call soon,
telling them to cut their losses. Snake looked at Raiden, who was watching him
with intent eyes. Snake couldn’t tell which room the voices were coming from.
50/50 chance. He nodded towards his door. Raiden did the same for his own,
placing his off hand on the doorknob, silenced SOCOM in his right. Snake drew
his own gun, hand steady and calm as he gripped the doorknob. He had been in
this situation a hundred times. Take out the hostiles, protect the target. His
heart rate had picked up, providing his muscles with extra oxygen, eyes
dilating, scent… his eyes narrowed. He caught the faint metallic tinge of blood
in the air. That meant hurry. He nodded to Raiden, and then tensed
simultaneously, each watching the other from the corner of his eye.
Snake acted first by a split
second, throwing open his door. Even as he did so he heard Raiden charging
through its mate. They both flew through into the rooms beyond. Or rather,
room.
As Snake turned to his right
to face the depths of the room he had not been able to see from the window, he
was already reconfiguring his mental map. Rather than a pair of rooms, there
was only one large one, shaped like an upside down U around the end of the corridor.
He took this in without actually focusing on it, just as he noticed Raiden come
around from his door without paying him any actual attention. His attention was
taken with shooting down the guard already aiming a beretta at him, saw Raiden
take out his partner out of the corner of his eye. Which brought the occupants
of the room down to five. Himself and Raiden, standing towards the factory end
of the room, a man in a dress suit before Raiden, and one in jeans and a black
t-shirt before him. And between them, the blindfolded man hanging by his wrists
from the ceiling, bare feet lying limp against the ground.
Instantly, like a magician
pulling the cover from a birdcage to reveal the doves inside, Snake’s faceless,
empty goal became Hal. The shock was more intense than falling through ice into
frigid water, so intense that he felt literally frozen, conflict he had never
expected coming from nowhere to run him down and crush him under its heavy
wheels. It was because of this that he watched without moving as the man in
jeans whipped his own sidearm around to point directly at Hal’s head, the
engineer hanging between him and Raiden.
Snake’s finger jerked, but he
didn’t take the shot. He knew he could have made it, and even as he knew that,
he knew it was too late to take it. He had, for the first time in his life,
hesitated on the battlefield, and that meant someone was going to die. It was
an unwritten certainty.
Snake stood, SOCOM pointed
straight at the punk’s head, and knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger. It was as
though someone had slit his wrists, and his detached involvement, all the
thrill of the mission, the battlefield, had bled away out of him. Even the hot fury
from before that was gone. Hal had taken it from him, and left only an
unfamiliar twisting fear and a vague chill, a premonition of the ice to come
when his luck ran out. His timing had finally failed him. There was no worse
time he could have chosen to find clues to this key.
“Nobody moves,” said the man
in jeans, almost certainly Leo, stepping over and shaking the engineer for
emphasis. Hal made a quiet whistling noise as he jerked, the only sound a
throat rent raw from screaming could make. His dark clothes were stained even
darker with blood, dripping down in a puddle beneath him, probably the only
cleaning the floor had seen in decades. His chin rested on his chest,
unnaturally blond hair falling to hide his face, a white cloth tied over his
eyes. He was drawing in quick breaths in shallow gasps, holding the air as long
as he could before facing the agony of taking another breath, shoulders jerking
slightly with each one. His wrists had been tied with old rope, hung on a hook
screwed into the ceiling to keep him upright, wrists slick with the same blood
that had run down his torn sleeves, shirt, pants, and came out in narrow rivers
on his pale feet.
Stein, who Snake recognized
from his brief sight of the man a week ago on the other side of a street, was
shocked, although he was doing a decent job of covering it up. Snake was very
used to shocked people, although around him they didn’t stay shocked for long. That
Stein was here was unexpected, but he didn’t spare it any further thought.
“You two, put down your
guns,” said Stein, and he snapped it fast enough that he was able to keep his
voice from wavering.
Hal tried to say something,
entire body twisting, which came out as a gasping soundless moan, and partially
raised his head to look towards Snake. Leo drove his elbow into the engineer’s
side, sending him into a near-silent choking fit.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
The punk was dead, no matter what happened. He had decided that hours ago, snap ringing in his ears. He was wearing
a toe-tag right the hell now. What did it matter what he did to provoke them? The
death warrant was signed in blood across Snake’s eyes. It was a certainty. The
cheap taunts shouldn’t have mattered. But it was all he could do to hold his
reins, biting his tongue until it bled coppery blood down his throat. In a
clean movement he raised the SOCOM’s barrel to the roof, clicked the safety on,
and then lowered it in an arc to waist-level before dropping it. Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw Raiden do the same.
“What now?” he growled, and
noticed the way Hal twitched slightly at the sound of his voice.
Stein smiled slightly,
reassured by the apparent absence of weapons. “Oddly enough, your partner asked
me the same thing yesterday. You can see where it got him.”
“Yes, I can.” His snarl
clearly encompassed the entire situation, the bloody ropes, the broken chair in
the corner, the lengths of pipe. A kind of cold fury was filling him, one which
he was unfamiliar with. He was used to rage, so hot it burned, driving him on like
a furnace, heat waves blinding his more subtle perceptions. But now ice was
pouring into his veins, world around him becoming clear as a sunny winter’s day
in
“My requests are the same as
they were before, although I will now take the liberty of including your
friend, since you were kind enough to bring him along. I’m sure you saw it
coming, Jack. That’s what I liked about you. You were noble, even if you were
dumb as a brick.” He smiled at Raiden, the smile of a grandfather to a
waywardly child. Raiden twisted his lips in disgust. Stein shrugged, smile
widening slightly. “You let Leo take care of you, and I’ll keep my word,
despite your breaking yours. The engineer lives. You won’t get a better deal.”
“Fine,” said Snake
immediately, ice thickening a little at Hal’s squirm. He smiled slightly,
mirthlessly. This was what soldiers were for. To protect civilians. This was
what he was for. To protect Hal. He
would never be any better than that. He would always be a soldier. But at least
it would be good for something. The ice coating his insides felt like an
exoskeleton, encircling him, protecting him, strengthening him. Even if the
thrill was gone, his strength had returned, granted to him by Hal, or out of
love for him.
He raised his hands slightly,
so that they were level with his chest, and gave no hint of noticing Raiden
shifting slightly.
“I am impressed,” said Stein, raising his eyebrows slightly. He
glanced at his pet torturer. “Well, then, Leo, if you would.”
Three things happened in the
time it took a second hand to tick. Leo swung his gun away from the engineer’s
head towards Snake. Hal threw himself sideways, catching Leo’s shoulder and
swivelling him slightly. And Snake and Raiden moved in tandem, two arms
describing wide arcs.
A single shot rang out. Leo
fell to the ground, Snake’s shoulder-knife in his heart, Raiden’s sword in his
throat. Stein screamed and twisted, his lackey’s bullet in his shoulder.
Snake, with the cool
unstoppable strength of an avalanche, strode forwards with sharp snaps of his
limbs, pulling his boot knife out as he went, and slit the rope tying Hal to
the ceiling with one smooth motion, catching the engineer gently about the
waist and lowering him to a sitting position. He was careful to face him away
from the dead torturer. Raiden had already drawn his M9 and advanced on Stein, scything
his feet out from under him and then striking him once in the temple to cut off
his screams. Snake, trusting the kid to do his job, knelt down, reached out and
pulled the blindfold off his partner.
Hal blinked up at him, bright
eyes dimmed with pain and exhaustion. He said nothing, but watched as Snake
reached out and carefully sliced away the ropes from about his wrists,
revealing bloody sores and bruises. Most apparent task taken care of, Snake
paused. There was no universal reaction common to this situation, and he wasn’t
sure what Hal needed, or even more importantly, needed to not happen. Hal’s
mouth opened and shut, slightly, in what might have been a murmur if he had had
a voice, but now was nothing than a slight sigh.
“Otacon, I can’t-”
Hal, with a shaking hand,
reached out and traced a weak squiggle in the air, ending in a trembling fist. Dave.
“Yeah,” said Snake quietly,
as the engineer folded against him, face pressed into his shoulder, a shaking
hand resting weakly against his chest, “I’m here.” He wrapped his arms around
the engineer’s thin frame, just tightly enough so that Hal could feel them, feel
his presence, his protection, careful not to rest any real weight on his
battered body.
He glanced over his shoulder
at Raiden, who was deftly tying Stein up with a length of the same rope which
had been used to bind his partner. The irony was too obvious even to mention.
Stein was twitching slightly, black suit fabric turned slick and shiny about
his shoulder, moaning as Raiden jerked the rope tighter. He tore off the man’s
own tie and stuck it in his mouth, only then moving back across the room to
reclaim his sword, flicking it harshly to shake off the blood before returning
it to its sheath. Best weapon in hand again, he returned to Snake. He glanced
down at the engineer for a second, sharp eyes analysing, before looking away.
“What now?” he asked in an
undertone. It was a popular question. What indeed.
“Kill him, take our chances
with the Mob. Don’t kill him, take our chances with the Mob. Might as well be
damned for doing something.” Snake glanced over to where he knew his SOCOM must
be, and there it was. He couldn’t pick it up while holding Hal, though, not
without moving. And although time was tight, he wasn’t damn well moving until
Hal chose to let go of him.
“It’s your choice,” said
Raiden in an almost toneless voice. It had just enough of an edge to it that
Snake could deduce the anger underneath. He had seen it in those sharp eyes as
well. The kid liked Hal. Hell, everyone liked Hal. Except these bastards, and
he was taking care of that right now.
Except that he wasn’t,
because Hal was knocking against his chest with his knuckles, as if he were a
door, trying to attract his attention. He looked down to find the engineer had
slipped around to sit at an angle to Snake rather than directly facing him, so
that he could tilt his head up from his lower position and make eye contact
without Snake’s chin in the way. He said something that resembled wind blowing
through pines, and closed his mouth with a pained wince, taking a few shallow
gasps. Snake refrained from telling him not to talk, although the next time the
idiot tried it, he’d damn well clamp his mouth shut.
Instead, he began to sign
with his left hand, clumsy and shaking, the right cradled in his lap. A glance
at it told Snake several of the fingers were broken, and that someone had quite
probably stepped on his wrist and hand. The way he didn’t move his left arm
from the elbow up told Snake something was wrong with his shoulder and upper
arm, but there would be time for that in a minute.
No kill,
managed Hal after several starts, and then, don’t
need to.
“Yes, we damn well do,” said
Snake in a harsh voice, and regretted snapping immediately when Hal flinched
slightly.
“I caught some of that, but,
what?” asked Raiden, staring at the engineer curiously. Their signals had, of
course, been based off of Fox Hound’s old ones, modified by Snake. It was
likely that Raiden had been trained with those original signs. After all, he
had been trained to be a new Snake. He flashed them for the kid, the originals
sharper and with less subtlety of motion, designed for quick passes of
information, not conversations like Hal always wanted to have, like his long
fingers and delicate hands were so aptly designed for- had been so aptly designed for. Snake gritted his teeth and was careful
to keep his motions curt and text book, and Raiden nodded.
His eyes were on Hal, though,
who had begun to struggle through a new sentence, sweat beading on his forehead
under that mop of hideous dyed hair. Heard
S talking. With M-O-B.
Snake was translating for
Raiden as he went, steady hand pausing to wait for Hal’s trembling one.
Not impressed. Not want involvement. Want money. S
fails, no money, M-O-B angry. They take care of him. No problem.
Hal shuddered to a stop,
panting with a harsh rasp that suggested he would be keening if he had the
voice for it. He dropped his head to rest against Snake’s collarbone, face gray
and haggard under the artificial brightness of his hair.
“You don’t know that for
sure. We might as well do it ourselves.” He was still a soldier. Whatever else
he might feel, killing would never hold any compunctions for him. He hadn’t
forgotten that, but he had put it aside, for a while. It had been a long time
since he last really thought about himself. Possibly as long ago as Shadow
Moses. Well, he hadn’t changed much since then, whatever moral justification he
might find for his missions, however many tranq darts he fired in place of
bullets. Maybe Hal thought he had. Maybe he had forgotten what he had known the
soldier to be then. Snake smiled grimly at the bloody corpse lying less than
two feet behind them. He doubted he would forget now. Not ever.
Hal stiffened against him,
right hand knocking inadvertently against Snake’s stomach. He gasped and began
to curl in on himself instinctively, stopping when that brought only more pain,
and pressed his forehead more tightly against Snake’s chest, panting as if he
had just finished a marathon, hair dampening with sweat. They needed to finish
this and get the hell out of here. He needed to check Hal for serious injuries.
The bastard wasn’t worth this much consideration. He wasn’t worth any.
But, even shuddering with
pain and exhaustion, so hurt that trying to escape it only caused worse, Hal
had stretched out his better hand, knocking accidentally against Snake’s knee,
and managed one swift sweep. Please.
It was at this point that
Snake realised that while he could care for the engineer, maybe even love him,
he would never understand him. And he would never want to be him. Otacon had
pitied him, at least at first, the cold soldier so accustomed to death that he wouldn’t
flinch even when sprayed with the blood and gore of a man cut down beside him
on the battlefield. But Snake could not imagine, or desire to be, someone who
could hate killing so much as to beg for their enemy’s- their torturer’s
master’s- life. Maybe his way was cruel. But to him it seemed damn less
painful.
“Otacon,” he said quietly,
aware that Raiden was watching in incomprehension. Fox Hound signals had had no
use for the word “please.” That had been an invention entirely of Hal’s. He
didn’t know what he would have said next, so it was just as well that Stein’s
phone rang when it did, because it probably would have been something stupid.
Raiden was already moving
across the room as the first chirp of Stein’s ring tone died away, and had
pulled the small black cell out of his pocket by the third ring. He flipped it
open without a thought and answered it. “Hello? Yes,” he shifted his voice into
a deeper, quieter one. “No. I see.” He kicked Stein in the stomach as the man
began to jibber through his tie; he shut up. “Call it off, then… If he’s not
there now, he’s not showing. He must have skipped town without his partner.
Call the watch off. We can try to lure him out again later… No, go home… Yes.
Fine.” He clicked the phone shut and put it on the floor, then kicked it. It
skittered away across the floor quietly, coming to rest against the far wall.
Stein watched its departure in dismay. Raiden glared at him, then returned to
stand at Snake’s side.
“We need to get going,” he
said.
Snake nodded. A patrol might
come by any time looking for the vanished overseer, or some squads might be
expected to check in with Stein or he with them, or someone might just turn up.
They needed to get out. Lingering was never a good idea. He glanced down at
Hal, whose breathing had calmed during the phone conversation. Snake suspected
from his breathing pattern he was drifting away from consciousness. The
question still remained of what to do with Stein. He knew he was justified in
whatever decision he chose to make. He had final say on missions, always. In
addition, Hal was in no state to be making any. When they got out of this, he
could make those arguments, and Hal would accept them. Hal wouldn’t blame
Snake, not much. But, knowing the engineer, he might blame himself, and when he
got started down that tunnel it was almost impossible to dig him out of his
ideas. Snake couldn’t turn back the clock, couldn’t stop what had happened,
couldn’t protect Hal from it. But he could protect him from himself. He sighed
slightly and turned to Raiden. “Knock him out,” he said, motioning to Stein.
Raiden met his eyes with a clearly questioning expression. Snake nodded curtly
and the younger soldier replied with the same.
Stein mumbled something as
Raiden approached, but the kid didn’t pause to listen, pulled his gun out and,
grabbing it by the barrel, pistol-whipped the bastard in the temple. Stein
collapsed onto his side limply. Raiden considered him for a minute, then snarled
and turned away. “I’ll check the exits,” he said simply, meeting Snake’s eyes
to give the older soldier a chance to call him off, and when he didn’t drifted
silently out of the room.
Which, effectively, left him
alone with Hal. He looked down at the engineer, then gently placed his hands on
his shoulders, pulling him away slightly. Hal swayed in his grip and looked up,
blinking heavily. Definitely on his way to passing out.
“Otacon, I need to know if
you have any serious injuries.” As though being beaten to within an inch of his
life didn’t count. But Hal shrugged slightly, just a tiny hitch in his
shoulders, and shook his head. “I’ll give you a quick check, then, and we’ll
get out of here.” Field checks, at least, they were used to. They had
practiced, back when he had been training Hal up to come with him on missions
if necessary.
He slipped his hands under
Hal’s chin and tilted his face up to look Snake in the eye. A few bruises on
his face, but not many. A split lip, a cut over his right eye, a long dark welt
along the right side of his jaw. His eyes were more unfocused than Snake would
have liked, but not dangerously so. Could have been due to pain, or exhaustion,
or a concussion. Hal followed his finger when he passed it across his frame of
vision, although there was a lag there. He ran his hands around under Hal’s jaw
and around the back of his skull, searched quickly and competently for a
concussion, found a raised area two inches back and a little above his right
ear, nothing else. Slightly relieved, he ran his hands down the first several
vertebrae of the engineer’s spine, searching for injuries there, and found none
with considerably more relief.
Hal watched him, face
contracted in pain, as he made the rest of his exam. All in all… it could have
been worse. Much worse. They had been beating him with their fists, with rope,
with those damn pipes. Snake looked carefully for internal bleeding, probing
with careful fingers and found some suggestive bruises and slightly hardening
sections, but not an overly worrying degree or amount. The blood came mostly
from long cuts on Hal’s torso, deep enough to bleed seriously for a while but
not to continue to do so, and a couple of relatively minor puncture wounds,
Snake suspected from a pen, in the engineer’s left shoulder and upper arm.
Wounds made more for fright value than actual pain, barring the punctures. The
broken bones had been done for pain, three fingers and his lower right arm had
been cleanly and deliberately broken. The hand was also a mess of bruises and
bleeding, having been kicked hard while it was resting against an unyielding
surface, possibly the chair, or the floor.
His left collar-bone showed
some of the same, a long thin bruise overlaying the break in the bone there,
almost certainly from one of the pipes. In addition, several ribs were cracked
and he knew at least two were broken, and had his eye on three others. His
legs, at least, had been left alone. Snake had worried for his kneecaps
originally, but as soon as he had cut him down it had been apparent that his
legs weren’t broken. There were some nasty bruises, a few from the pipe,
several from whipping with the rope, but nothing that wouldn’t heal in a few
days. He took note of the damages mechanically, as if he were a prospective
buyer inspecting a car, or a home. Painful, yes, worrying, yes, life
threatening, no.
He bandaged the worst of the cuts,
pressing the white patches against the pale skin between Hal’s shoulder blades,
under the right side of his ribcage, his lower left arm. He wanted to tape
Hal’s ribs, but with no tape they would only be able to wrap them, and either
way it would almost certainly lead to Hal’s passing out, which, depending on
how they had to get out of this goddamn warehouse, might not be helpful.
Raiden came back as he was
considering this, and from the attempted stony look Snake could tell it wasn’t
going to be good news.
It wasn’t. Raiden walked over
to stand in front of them, glancing down at Hal. The engineer was sitting
leaning with his back resting on Snake’s chest, head on his shoulder, eyes
closed, chest raising and falling in quick succession under the torn, stained
shirt Raiden had bought for them. “The alleyway behind this room,” he looked
over Snake’s shoulder out the windows behind them, “is full of guards. We’ll
have to go back the way we came. Which isn’t much better. I gave the stair
guard another tranq.”
“We can’t carry him across
the ledge,” said Snake. Even if they somehow managed to solve the almost
insurmountable balance problem, the only way Snake could think of that would
possibly work would be to carry him between them. Barring the fact that even
then balancing would be near impossible, such a carry-on would be sure to be
spotted.
“No,” agreed Raiden. “Can he
walk?”
It was a moot point; he would
have to. Snake shook his own shoulder slightly, and Hal blinked awake. “Otacon.
Can you walk?”
The engineer paused for a
moment, and Snake began to worry he was on the verge of passing out, when he
straightened, more rocking himself into an upright position than anything else.
Snake and Raiden both reached out instinctively, Raiden backing off slightly
but moving to stand with an arm out ready to give him a hand up. Snake shifted
to a crouching position, and a flash of pain passed through his thigh. It
wasn’t strong enough to cause him to falter, but his eyes narrowed and he took
a deep breath, found his side was beginning to ache as well. He put it aside for
the moment, and concentrated on helping Hal to stand, which was done mostly by
carefully wrapping an arm around the engineer’s waist and under his right
shoulder, the only uninjured parts of his torso, and pulling him up like a
puppeteer lifting his puppet.
Once on his feet Hal stood
hunched over like an old man, taking quick shallow breaths, face wan, leaning
against Snake for support. His legs could hold him up, but his balance would be
even worse than usual and that was already damn bad. Having him walk across the
ledge like this…
“You’re sure we can’t make it
across the floor?” He looked at Raiden, who was watching Hal with a concerned
expression
“There’s still at least five
patrols, and another came in a few minutes ago; I’m not sure if they’re staying
or not.” At his best, it would have been nearly impossible for Snake without
stealth camo. It was definitely impossible for the three of them.
“Fine.” There was no other
choice. It was that simple. Hal looked up at him, shaking with each breath.
Go? He
signed.
“Yeah. I’m going to carry you
for a while, then you’ll have to walk. After that… we’ll see when we get
there.” He didn’t feel entirely confident in his leg, and that was worrying. He
knew it would support him, but he doubted it was up to carrying almost double
his weight, at least for long. But Raiden was too small to carry Hal easily in
his arms, and with his ribs getting on and off someone’s back repeatedly was a
dangerous plan. Well, there would be time to worry about it if they managed to
cross the ledge. They’d find out when they got there.
He caught Raiden’s eye and
drew the kid’s attention to his SOCOM, lying on the floor. Raiden grabbed it
for him and returned it, Snake holstering it deftly. He then turned slightly,
Hal stumbling as his anchor shifted, and bent slightly to wrap his arms under
the engineer’s shoulders and knees, and pick him up as slowly as he was able to
in order to keep from jolting him. Hal’s breath hissed out harshly between his
teeth, eyes closed, dark lashes unusually pronounced against his pale skin,
eyebrows deeply narrowed. Snake didn’t make a practice of carrying his partner
around, but he had done so before, once to get the engineer over a wall when
under time constraints, a couple of times when he had actually passed out on
the way to his room from overwork. He was just as light now, probably even
lighter after a week of worry and poor meals, although with Snake’s side aching
and his leg throbbing it was difficult to judge.
Raiden slipped on ahead
silently, opening the door for Snake, and guided them to the room they had
entered from. Snake slowed his pace drastically in the hall, eyes not yet
adjusted to the dark, and rounded the dimly lit doorway into the box-filled
room with extreme caution. Hal lay in his arms, stiff, but otherwise more like
an unconscious weight than a conscious person, making no effort to hold onto
Snake or raise his head into a more comfortable position, in the certain
knowledge that to do so would only bring about more discomfort.
Snake made his way eventually
to the window and rested against the wall next to it. “I’m putting you down,”
he hissed, and slowly released Hal’s legs, pulled his back up until he was
standing resting against Snake again, Snake’s arm wrapped around his left side.
He had the feeling that his arm was most, if not the entirety, of what was
keeping the engineer standing. Not good. He glanced out the window, and
frowned.
While he hadn’t technically
forgotten, he hadn’t taken into account the distance from the window to the
ledge. It was at least a metre, to land on a space less than a foot deep. Hal
wouldn’t make that jump five out of ten tries normally. He looked down instead at the floor. And all the guards swarming
around it like busy ants. Any minute now one of them might wonder why he hadn’t
heard from the queen and come looking. He let out a harsh sigh and turned to
Raiden.
“We’ll have to try,” he said.
Raiden had been looking at Hal, and when he met Snake’s eyes the older soldier
saw the same conclusions there. But there was no other choice.
“You go first,” said Snake,
already organizing the logistics in neat sections in his mind. “He goes second,
wearing the stealth camo. I go last. He’s got some puncture wounds in his left
shoulder, but other than that both his upper arms are sound; we can hold him
against the wall.”
“What if he falls, though?
Maybe one of us should keep the camo in case we have to go after him.”
“If he falls, we’re fucked
anyway. He’s most likely to attract attention; he wears the camo.”
Raiden considered, and then
nodded. Snake unhooked the metallic box from his suit and carefully clicked it
onto Hal’s pants’ waistline, making sure it was secure with a good tug. “You go
first,” he said to Raiden, who nodded and began watching the guards below for a
window.
“Hal, listen to me. We’re
going to cross a ledge, and you’re going to have to walk. It’s narrow, less
than a foot. So we’re going to walk on either side of you, and hold you against
the wall. Just keep shuffling along the wall, and don’t make any noise. You’ve
got the stealth camo, so no one will see you, but you have to be as quiet as
you can. Understand?” He spoke as if to a child, with no idea of how much of his consciousness Hal was holding
on to.
At least enough to be afraid,
was the answer. Snake saw fear in his eyes when the engineer looked up at the
soldier. To his right, Raiden suddenly leapt up onto the window sill and in a
flash out towards the ledge, disappearing behind the wall. Snake leaned over
and glanced out, saw Raiden watching him from his place crouched in the shadows,
perched like a jaguar in a tree, bright eyes shining.
“It’ll be all right. Just
keep your back against the wall, and take shallow breaths.”
The engineer tried to whisper
in his ear, dry, harsh breaths. “I can’t understand you,” hissed Snake quietly,
glancing at the window and then back again. In the dim light, he could see
hardly any of the fine details which were required to read the signs, but he
caught the two repeated ones. E.E.
“That is not going to happen,” snarled Snake. “I’ll be damned if I’ll have
another of your deaths on my conscience.” As if he had one. But… “I’ll be
damned if I’ll have your death on my
conscience.” Conscience or not,
something in him had latched on to the engineer, and it wasn’t going to let go.
He knew he didn’t want to find out what would happen if it was forced to.
“Come on,” he said quietly,
and pulled Hal to the window. Reaching around his waist, he switched on the
stealth camo, watched the man his arms told him was right in front of him
disappear. He looked out the window, through
Hal, and saw Raiden standing a few feet out from the corner, reaching out with
one hand, other braced against the wall.
Snake helped Hal up onto the
window ledge carefully, bending his good leg against the wall under the window
and letting the engineer climb slowly onto it, and from there to the ledge,
holding his left arm and right side the whole time, hands tight against him.
Hal balanced unsteadily on the window ledge and shuffled to the edge, reaching
out with his left hand towards Raiden. Snake let go of that arm as it passed
out of his reach, rested a hand on his left calf instead. It would be a poor
catch if he fell, but it would be better than nothing. Hal was wavering, moved
so that his left foot was off the sill,
leaning towards the ledge. Then, all of a sudden, he was moving, and hissing,
and Snake had no idea what he was saying, was he shouting for help, or telling
him to let go, and oh god-
“Let go,” hissed Raiden, and
moved as a man taking a dancing partner, swinging Hal onto the ledge next to
him, arm holding an invisible shoulder against the wall. Snake watched, heart
hammering against his chest, then blinked, relaxed. They needed to finish this
damn mission, before it killed all of them.
Raiden was shuffling Hal
along, making room for him, and he glanced out at the warehouse floor. The
guards continued to mill around, paying no attention to the ledge in the corner
above their heads. He pulled himself up onto the window sill, wincing as a
flare of pain shot through his leg, waited for Raiden to pull Hal to a safe
distance, and then sprang.
He landed more clumsily than
the first time, coming up hard right against the wall, actually ramming his
chest into it, and having to throw his arms up to tip the balance and keep him
from rebounding and falling. He turned, slowly, and reached out to his left for
Hal. The engineer was there; he found his shoulder easily, heaving with quick
shallow gasps.
Raiden glanced at him through
Hal, and began moving, still conscientiously high-stepping. Snake did the same,
and slowly, agonizingly slowly, they began the long walk across the building,
each holding part of Hal’s weight against the wall.
Snake was watching a guard
below, who looked like he might be thinking about glancing up at the wall, when
Hal began to tip, balance suddenly deserting him all together as he began to
tilt head-first towards the floor, arms flailing instinctively, hindering Snake
and Raiden’s efforts to push him back. Snake reached over with his right arm
and grabbed Hal’s, forcing it down sharply, and at the same time anchored his
left hand against the engineer’s shoulder and pushed back hard. He saw Raiden echoing
his movements on the other side. They slammed Hal back into the wall, Snake
wincing, and held him there listening to his quiet gasping, each releasing his
arms to rest a hand on his M9, eyes on the floor.
It seemed like an age before
Raiden looked over at him and tilted his head to suggest movement. Snake
glanced down at the space occupied by Otacon, silently asking whether he had
approval, and Raiden nodded. They began again.
The engineer almost fell
twice more, the second time so quickly that Snake was forced to swivel around
completely for better balance to pull him back against the wall, every instinct
he possessed screaming at him not to turn his back on the enemy, shoulders
hunching, hairs raising. Hal took longer to recover every time, the three of
them waiting more than a minute the last time, Snake afraid to turn again and
draw attention and so remaining with his back to the floor.
It was quite probably the
longest walk of his life. Every noise, every voice from the floor had him
tensing, and this was exactly why you didn’t allow emotions on the battlefield,
but with Hal right there, suffering, a step away from a painful death, he
couldn’t find his usual displacement. Oh, he could hide his emotions, and he
doubted even Hal would have seen the fear in his eyes, not for himself but for
his partner, but it was there where it shouldn’t have been, where always before
there would have only been emptiness tinged slightly with excitement.
He felt as though dawn must
have been breaking when they reached the other side, although his sense of time
told him only half an hour had passed since they left Stein in the main room.
Raiden waited for him to secure his hold on his partner, and then leapt easily
to the window, disappearing inside only to reappear a second later, watching
the floor before reaching out an arm.
Again, Snake supported Hal as
he reached out, shaking, held his own foot out in mid air for the engineer to
stand on, leaning his weight back against the wall. This way, going up rather
than down, was harder, and Raiden had barely grasped Hal’s fingertips, judging
from his own pale hand, before the engineer was scrambling across the space
awkwardly. Snake watched with sharp eyes as Raiden caught Hal around the waist
and pulled him in, could from where he was standing hear the engineer’s sobbing
gasps as he fell in through the window.
Snake leapt and was standing
in the window frame in the next instant, waiting for Raiden to turn off the
camo or clear him. The younger soldier chose the former, reaching across an
apparently empty space of floor over which resolved out of nowhere the figure
of the engineer. Snake dropped in to his side, heart pounding, more than a
little shocked they had made it. His relief vanished as he watched Hal, lying
on his right side on the floor. Raiden, bending over his head, looked up at him
with worry in his eyes, and he stepped over Hal’s prone form to crouch by his
chest, facing him.
The engineer was lying in a
vaguely foetal position, knees twitched slightly towards his chest, back
curved, head resting on the floor. His eyes were tightly closed, but he was
gasping hard, entire body shaking with the force of his breaths, hair slicked
against his skull with sweat. Not only his face, but his entire bearing, tense
form, clawed hands, rounded shoulders, spoke of intense pain.
There was nothing Snake could
do. They didn’t have the medical equipment to deal with his injuries here. They
didn’t even have any pain medication. The only thing he could do was wish he
had killed that fucking son of a bitch, and that wasn’t goddamn helpful.
“Check the fucking alley,”
snarled Snake at Raiden, who was watching the engineer, the same as himself.
Raiden started, and stood immediately to do so, vanishing from Snake’s line of
sight in a second.
Leaving him alone with Hal
again, with nothing to do, nothing to say. “Just hold on, Otacon.” He managed,
delving for optimism and finding none, forcing himself to create it instead, a
gold-miner painting rocks yellow. “We’re almost there. It’ll be okay.” He
rested a hand on Hal’s shoulder, torn between comforting him and making contact
at a time when the engineer might have no idea who was talking to him. At
Snake’s touch he let out a long soundless sob, which ended in a series of
wrenching gasps, forcing him to turn onto his back. His hair fell away from his
face, revealing his expression more clearly. Snake recognized it easily,
although it wasn’t one he had worn often. No soldier is unfamiliar with
excruciating pain, though, and Snake had certainly caused enough of it to know
it intimately. He had never cared much before. Now, he would have slammed his
own hand in a drawer, would have shot himself in the foot rather than see it on
the engineer’s face. And they still had to get out of the building and walk
several blocks before they would be anything resembling safe.
“Otacon?” he said. Hal
twitched at his name, but didn’t open his eyes, the entirety of his being focused
on bearing the pain. “Sorry,” said Snake quietly, voice grim. He reached out
with steady hands and, grasping Otacon’s broken fingers in a tight fist, gave
them all a firm wrench.
The engineer screamed
wordlessly, soundlessly, back arching, head thrown back, before dropping limply
into unconsciousness, just as Raiden came back around the corner. “Holy shit,”
he whispered, running over, crouching down to take a pulse. Snake was doing the
same at Hal’s left wrist, found it quick and thready, but at least even.
“You’ll have to carry him; my
leg’s acting up,” said Snake tonelessly, pulling the engineer carefully into a
sitting position from which he could be hoisted onto Raiden’s back.
“Is he-”
“He just passed out. Better
this way. Now come on.” He didn’t feel any guilt. He had never had any trouble
doing the dirty work. But it hurt all the same. It hurt like hell. He knew he
would see it in his nightmares, Hal screaming and twisting in agony under his
hands. He would deal with it when it came.
Snake stood and helped the
younger soldier pull his partner onto his back. He then guided them to the
window and looked out, keen eyes watching for movement, for any hint of a squad
coming around either corner. As soon as he was sure there was no movement, he
clicked the lock open and pulled the glass pane to the side, opening the window.
Although the warehouse was not heated, the outside air was still cool on his
face and hands, smelled of cold, of fall.
Snake pulled himself up onto
the ledge, glancing about once more, and then turned and, grabbing hold of the
sill with both hands, dropped for an instant to hang from it before letting go,
falling and rolling with only a slight exhalation as he hit the ground. He was
immediately up and looking around, SOCOM in hand. He could hear footsteps
around the side of the building, judged slightly less than a minute before they
came around the corner. He looked up at Raiden, standing awkwardly in the
window, Hal’s arms hanging limply over his shoulders, ankles knocking against
the soldier’s knees, and nodded.
Raiden turned and, as Snake
watched with worry, drew his sword and a second later stepped backwards off the
edge, other arm wrapped firmly around Otacon’s back. An instant later he
stabbed the sword directly into the concrete of the building, arresting their
fall only a metre down. With a twisting wrench he pulled the sword free from
the wall and dropped down onto the thin sill of the window below, and from
there sprang back and landed on silent feet on the ground bent to keep the
engineer in his precarious grip. The entire drop took only slightly more than a
second. He turned and sheathed his sword in a clean movement. Snake raised an
eyebrow in approval.
Around the corner, the squad
was approaching. Across the alley from them was another one leading off into
darkness between two narrower buildings. Snake glanced at Raiden, who nodded. Silently
the three crossed the uneven concrete, and disappeared into the shadows.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
They returned in the end to
Raiden’s bolt hole, having no idea how much attention Hal had drawn to the one
the Philanthropists had shared. Judging Hal to be in need of medical attention
but not serious medical care, Raiden had gone through his most trusted contacts
and dug up medical supplies and a doctor to make a house call, the more
recognisable Dave staying in the bathroom for the duration of his visit. Hal’s
cuts were stitched, bones set, chest wrapped, and he was left with a regiment
of pain killers and antibiotics and bandages to be changed, with orders to be
moved as little as possible for a week, and then to be taken to a doctor to
have his stitches checked.
Raiden had stayed until
morning, and then left wearing an unfortunate green tweed fedora and white
wind-breaker, to find out what the hell was going on. Dave stayed in the
apartment, and spent the time not involved in eating, sleeping, pissing or
giving Hal injections in his mission-lull trance. It helped a little at least
with his nicotine cravings, and he realised with something like surprise that
it had been more than two weeks since he had last had a cigarette. Hal was
getting to him, even while unconscious. By the end of the day, he had a
definite sense of how Hal must have felt in the hospital.
The engineer, apart from the
occasional quiet sigh, lay still, and it was only through Dave shifting him to
prevent blood clots that he saw any movement at all. He remained unconscious for
the entirety of the first day, a pale figure in a bed of browns and purples.
By the morning of the second,
when the chances of his waking were rising exponentially, Dave began to
consider what he was more anxious about: that Hal wouldn’t wake up, or that he
would. He wanted, needed, to know the engineer was all right. And that took
priority, he supposed. But, at the same time… things had changed, and he wasn’t
sure how, and when Hal woke up they were going to have to confront that. Oh,
not their relationship. He could tell himself it was more convenient, to sleep
with your roommate than go out trolling through cheap bars for a quick fuck. It
was. But he knew himself well enough not to be able to fool himself with such
simplicities, nor did he care to try. In all their years of living together he
had never even considered such an arrangement, mostly out of deference to the
engineer’s feelings, but partially due to his own. From early on, Hal had been
more than a roommate, had come to hold an importance for Dave beyond that of
his job. And now, he was more than a friend. Dave could accept that as easily
as the fact that it was sunny today. He had worried, initially, that Hal would
find the barrier in Dave’s affection an insurmountable issue, but Dave was
pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
In short, Dave had no problem
with being Hal’s lover. He didn’t even have a problem with being in love with
Hal, or wouldn’t when he knew he was. He doubted, in fact, that anything he
could have done, anything that could have happened, would have made him
happier, and more fearful at the same time. But he could deal with that. He had
long ago accepted that you could look at emotions along scientific lines,
analyze them, measure them, predict them, and you’d get along fine, and then
one day they would blew up in your face and you would never even quite know
why.
What was troubling was this
sudden dichotomy in his life. Before, there had been the soldier, and that had
always taken precedence over everything. In any situation, at any time, he
could drop himself into that cold, precise world and lock everything out. And
then two nights ago for the first time, something else had superseded that, and
he hadn’t been able to get it back. He could still fight, still think as a
soldier. Those were things which no longer even required thought, were basic
instinct. They were not a part of him, they were
him. He had thought the same to be true of his mission state. And now, he
wasn’t sure. Something had broken through that shell, and that thing was Hal.
Without it, he could still be a soldier. But he wouldn’t be Snake. And if he
wasn’t Snake, he couldn’t continue with his work. He would be shot on the first
mission. He would have been dead now, if rescuing Hal had been a real mission
and not a run through a gauntlet of petty crooks; he had made so many mistakes
he winced to think of them, more than he had made since his years in basic.
He had heard, in sappy movies
that used ketchup for blood and never killed off the protagonist, that having
someone to fight for didn’t make you weak, but strong. This was, as far as he
could tell, complete propagandist bullshit. Oh, maybe it would make you strong,
in a happy warm-feeling-in-your-chest-ready-to-take-on-the-world way, but it
also immediately afterwards made you dead. Emotions were a distraction, always.
It was possible, hell, it was
likely, that he would learn to lock them away as he had always done before as
long as he didn’t take Hal with him on any missions for a while. But, what if
he didn’t? He would have to choose, between Dave and Snake, and while he didn’t
know which he would choose now, he knew with perfect clarity which he had
always chosen in the past.
Maybe his problem would be
solved for him. Maybe Hal would be traumatized enough, hurt enough, to make the
choice for him. Maybe he would remember the soldier’s complete lack of
compunction about killing, and be unwilling to have those bloody hands on him. He
was almost certain he wasn’t actually
hoping for this to be true.
Dave glanced down at the
engineer. Still sleeping, lying carefully covered by a set of Raiden’s hideous
blankets. He stood with a quiet sigh and wandered out into the kitchen,
considered a beer and poured himself a glass of orange juice instead, grimacing
when he noticed the excessive amount of pulp floating in it. Goddamn kid. He
took a sip in tired resignation, and when he encountered no reason to have to
spit it out, returned slowly to the single bedroom. To be met by a pair of gray
eyes shining with fear.
Dave paused abruptly in the
doorway, a wave of orange juice sloshing against the side of the glass. At the
sight of him the fear in Hal’s eyes dimmed, and he untensed slightly. Taking
this for permission to enter, the soldier slipped quietly into the room and
around to Hal’s side of the bed. The engineer dropped his head back onto the
pillow, turning to follow him with his eyes.
There were no chairs in the
small bedroom, nor really the room for any. Dave sat on the floor instead, back
against the wall, so as not to be towering above his partner, and set his glass
down next to his leg. “The doctor said your throat won’t be up to much for
another day or two, so don’t bother trying to talk.” That was overly abrupt,
and he saw it in a slight darkening of Hal’s eyes. “How are you feeling?” he
tried, and reached out to pull the cover away from Hal’s left arm. The engineer
made no move to lift it, though.
“Confused,” he said quietly,
so softly Dave had to strain to make a word out of the hiss of air.
“That’ll be the meds. It’ll
only be for another couple of days.” They would begin dialling down the
morphine tomorrow, and wean him off of it onto something weaker and less
addictive over the few days afterwards.
“Raiden?”
“He’s trying to get a lead on
the situation. He should be back in a day or two.” Dave paused, glanced at
Hal’s left hand, long thin fingers lying stilly on the blanket. “You shouldn’t
keep talking; your throat’s had enough already.”
“I remember,” mumbled Hal,
eyes wandering to the window, and even though Dave doubted he knew what he was
saying, it still hurt. “Jus’… wanted to talk to you.” He drew his gaze back to
the soldier, lids falling already.
“Well, I’ll be here when you
wake up,” said Dave, even as the engineer lapsed again into drugged sleep.
Leaving Dave with no idea where he stood.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Hal woke for several brief
periods over the next two days, sometimes not speaking at all, sometimes
mumbling a few questions or remarks of varying degrees of sensibility and
relevance before dropping off again.
Raiden returned late in the
evening of their third day in his apartment, smiling grimly when Dave opened
the door for him.
“How’s Hal?” he asked
immediately.
“Fine,” said Dave, leaving
him free to get to his news, which he did.
“He was right. They did take
care of it themselves. Turns out, his contacts in the underworld were already
getting uppity when he botched the attack on you. Then the two of you slipped
out of the hospital. I think he almost lost them right there. They weren’t
happy about pouring out their resources to scour the city for you. Word on the
street is his Mob contacts here in
Which meant they were free.
Free to get out of this hellhole. Free to do what they wanted Free to figure
out whatever needed figuring out. Just… free.
“I can get you a ride out of
here, whenever you want. In an hour, if you need.”
Snake glanced at the bedroom,
considered Hal’s condition. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll drive.” He doubted Raiden
would be naive enough to try to saddle him with a driver, but there was no
sense in assuming needlessly.
“Right. Car’ll be behind the
building at 9:30. Do you need anything else?”
“I think we can manage. What
about you?”
“I’ve got some work to do.
Finish what I started. Find out who put me on to Stein, and take care of that.”
His eyes shone dangerously. Dave nodded, held out his hand. Raiden, glancing at
it in surprise, took it with his own after a second of hesitation. Dave wasn’t
surprised to find the kid’s shake firm, confident.
“I’m grateful, kid.”
Raiden’s surprise grew, eyes
flashing. “It was my fault in the beginning.”
“Maybe. But you took care of
it. I won’t forget. You’ve become a damn good soldier.”
Raiden grinned slightly.
“Thanks,” he said. Dave nodded, once, and watched him go, following to lock the
door behind him.
When he had finished cleaning
up what needed to be cleaned, and in the bathroom, he turned out the light in
the main room and slipped into the bedroom, turned out the light there as well.
He shucked off his shirt and pants and lay down well on his side of the bed,
knowing perfectly well that he slept without moving and yet still concerned for
his partner. “Hal?” he said quietly, after a minute. Hal hummed vaguely in
response.
“We’re going home tomorrow.”
“Okay,” mumbled Hal, with
clear incomprehension.
Dave felt like a weight had
been lifted from him, one whose presence he hadn’t noticed. They were free.