The combat high hadn't even left Snake's system by the time they were promoting him. He was in the chopper, dressed in a filthy uniform, laced all over with nicks and dark stains forming a camo pattern of their own, hair so unkempt there was no point even having his bandanna on his head any more; and suddenly a bunch of indistinguishable officers he'd never seen in his life were falling over themselves to shake his hand and pin gleaming medals to his chest. He'd gritted his teeth and smiled and posed and shook and vomited out of the chopper's side as soon as the purple stains from the flashbulbs had finished dancing in his eyes, the husk of Outer Heaven burning like a ransacked cathedral in the dark.

Lieutenant, they called him. Lieutenant Solid Snake. FOX-HOUND hadn't had a proper lieutenant for years; the FOX code system had enough to identify someone who should be listened to. Some of those paranoid nights he wondered if it had been the biggest and most elaborate field exercise he could possibly imagine; a training session to prepare him for the big leagues. All the same faces had been there; Fox had been there, and in enough live simulations he'd reached the heart of some empty building to find Big Boss standing there with a smile on his face and a gun in his hand – but in all those simulations, Big Boss had won. He wondered, every now and again, if he should quit the unit and try for something else, but he knew that without Big Boss FOX-HOUND was a shambles and needed all the help he could give to get it back on its feet. He was loyal to his unit; loyal to his men. He wasn't selfish enough to leave them all in the dust over a little paranoia that he was feeling just because he'd done his job too well.

And so Outer Heaven came, and went, and Snake dodged going to Big Boss's funeral out of fear for what he would do to the grave – he knew he'd cover it with either spit or flowers and he had no intention to find out which – and kept professionalism when confronted with the rows of salutes the new recruits gave him whenever he entered a room.

"Lieutenant," said John, voice crackling over the radio earpiece, "are you okay?"

Snake glanced up at John. He was a good ten years older than him, his nose crooked with breaks and his half-smile crooked with experience. He wore his hair long. That meant he was either a moron or good enough not to need to take his job seriously.

"I'm fine," he replied.

"Alright, sir."

"Don't call me that."

John's black eyes focused hard on Snake's chest for a few seconds longer than Snake liked until the chopper suddenly pitched, forcing John to shift to keep balanced.

"Remember, sir," he said, in a careful, neutral voice, "you're in command."

John, Snake thought, had been working as an infiltrator for six years, and had led his men through impossible odds, and yet the man in charge was the soldier who'd climbed into the back of the wrong truck, time and time again, just because he'd heard the instruction spoken in his master's voice. The situation called for a leader and they'd instated nothing more than a loyal dog who'd been trained too well.

Snake stared at Nick in the back, finishing wiring up some packets of plastic explosive with the nimble ease of someone who had years of experience under his belt. He found himself wishing fervently that he hadn't quit smoking, so he could do something with his hands half as easily.

"John," he started, "you know this line of work better than I do."

In the background, Nick's construction made a faint beep.

John shrugged.

"It doesn't matter how many years you've been in the business," he told Snake, sternly. "There's more than just learned skills. From what they told me, you've got the knack."

Nick looked over his shoulder at the two, and gave Snake a wide, admiring grin.

"You pulled a great job in Outer Heaven," he said. "I don't think anyone saw it coming."

Snake said, "I certainly hadn't."

A bright red light glowed from Nick's bomb for a second, lighting up the cockpit clear enough that Snake could make out the lines around John's deep-set eyes.

"This looks bigger than Outer Heaven," John said, raking a hand through the dark curls of his hair. "Look at us. Navy, Army, Marines and a CIA sleeper working together. That'd only happen at the end of the world."

Snake gave a nod. "Hard to worry about feuds when you're trying to buy your family space in the concrete bunkers."

John folded his arms, and looked up, gravely. The chopper lurched into a pre-landing hang.

"You know why they put you in charge of this operation?" he asked, and Snake nodded.

"Of course. Fortress Fanatic has a... a Heavy Walker... " he growled out the hateful words as if they were a curse - "and, in Outer Heaven, I was the one who - "

John shook his head. "No. That's not why."

"Then - "

"Alright! Time to start the rope descent. I'll supply air support."

The pilot whirled around in his cockpit, his unlit cigar hanging out of his mouth recklessly, face sullen, and Snake chased all thoughts about what John had told him from his mind as he rose to his feet.

Nick passed Snake the explosive, which he took. He'd sealed the vapour wrapping with a thumbprint. SWALK.

The next thing Snake knew, his head was full of the smell and crawl and darkness of the Ishkabibil jungle, and the bright lights of the gyrocopters were shining through the canopy of leaves like nighttime suns.

There was a large ant, about an inch long, clinging to the same tree trunk that Snake was pressed against. For a long time, he stared at it, since there was nothing else that he could see. Each little hair along its pointed body glowed white in the light of the lamps of the base entrance, and it remained completely immobile. With grisly reverie, he realised that its mandibles were buried deep in the wood, and that there was a long, white, slender mushroom extending from its head, the parasite that killed the thing.

Then he felt something move and he spun round and his handgun was out of his holster and buried in thick black curls before he worked out what that meant.

John gave him a cold look, his mouth pursed, his body not even tense, as Snake lingeringly lowered the gun.

"John," he mouthed.

John raised his hands in a flurry of sharp military hand signals. Lieutenant. No - sound. Danger! Sentries. Five – approximately. More (could come)? Distraction. Mission objective. Remain standing. Sir.

Negative, Snake signed back. Danger! Sentries. Death by gunfire. Necessary - stealth.

The language had been stripped down as far as it would go.

John frowned at him. He raised his hands.

Negative. High-ranking officer. Interrogation.

For a moment, John stared at him. Snake thought John must have known how the slowly maddening ant must have felt, climbing up the trunk under the influence of the spores in its head.

Snake signed, Pain. Interrogation.

In the base of his stomach, a thought rose, angrily – this is my man, and he trusted his life to me, and they order him to -

John nodded. Lieutenant. Mission objective. Locate - high-ranking officer – hostage.

Affirmative. Necessary.

John nodded at him, and patted him on the shoulder. Jaw held tight, he worked his way between the trees, Snake in tow, until they reached the edge of the clearing, where the sentries standing by the fortress's gaping mouth were visible.

They seemed rather at ease; they were chatting amongst themselves, and a couple of them were sharing a ragged cigarette. Snake, catching the scent, recalled the way the taste had filled his lungs back in Outer Heaven when his noble, evil Boss was lying dead and the siren of the fortress was screaming – he'd been so damn sure that cigarette would be his last that even after he'd returned to base with the new badge hanging lopsidedly off his torn uniform, he hadn't been able to pick up another.

John stared across at Snake for long enough for him to consider that there was no hand gesture for 'good luck', the winged emblem on his FOX-HOUND beret winking brightly in the flickering light. Then he turned and ran.

There was a brief chatter of gunfire, and John calling, "please, don't shoot, I'll tell you everything" in a dead voice - and when Snake found a vantage point where he could get a clearer view, John's empty hands were raised high in the air and six gun barrels were pointed at his head. Even there, he looked in control.

With five of the men escorting their prisoner, the lone sentry was easily dispatched with a single well-aimed shot from cover, and Snake slunk in the door after stubbing out the smouldering remains of the cigarette the dead man had dropped.

The officer's pupils were wide holes, and his chin was shiny with saliva.

"Hey," Snake said, softly, "talk. Tell me again what you told me the first time."

The officer pushed himself up a little, until he was sitting. He took a long time to arrange his legs. He looked up at Snake in glee.

"About the prisoner?"

"Yeah," Snake nodded.

"He's – haha, he's in the cell, the locked cell, by the shipyard, up north. The man with the dark hair." The officer gave a lazy snort through his nostrils, eyes unfocused. "I think you gassed me too much."

"Sorry, I didn't know how much to use," said Snake. Instantly a part of his mind begged him not to say anything like that again.

The officer gave a sleepy laugh. "You bastard."

"Yeah, that's right."

"Little grunt," the officer continued. "You've got an officer's badge, but you don't have any of the ideals that our leader has..." He swallowed. "You know. I pity you. And the West. And the East. And the leaders. Because they can't ever be as great as him."

Snake bowed his head. "He's a madman."

"Do you know who he is?" the officer asked, almost conversationally.

"No," Snake answered. "Tell me. Who's the leader?"

The officer's eyes grew even more hazy.

"He's a war machine. The war machine. He's mighty. But there's just one thing you've got wrong." He laughed, chin sticky with dribble. "He's got a Heavy Walker, but he's not going to nuke anyone with it."

"Nuke?! There's definitely nukes involved?"

Why would he need a Heavy Walker to –

The officer cut him off with a groan. "Use – use your imagination. Nukes aren't weapons for firing at people. They're for waving at people. M – Mexican standoffs. That's what you have nukes for. He's got them. And he's got a Heavy Walker. And not just any Heavy Walker – not just the cheap type you see on the battlefield every day, falling over on tight turns, yeah? A ship, he's got a ship, full of the best. And down the deck you see their faces, frowning at you."

"'The best'," Snake repeated. "You mean - "

You can only mean -

"Yes," the officer confirmed.

Snake pounded a fist into the floor.

"How?"

"There's always plans."

"Did Pettrovich sell out?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. I think some member of Outer Heaven took copies." The officer's eyes were beginning to gleam. The drugs were starting to wear off. "And so we – we built copies. Long and hard, our men worked, and now we have twenty-five copies of - "

" - Metal Gear!"

The word growled out of Snake's throat like an old curse.

"Don't get so excited," the officer said. "I just told you. Our leader's too smart to launch a nuke like that. The mass produced TX-55-IIs are for export. Start a few global wars. Even though that's not what he's out for."

"Who is he?! What is he after!?"

The officer looked up at him flatly.

"Revenge," he said, his eyes clear, smiling, his mouth not laughing. His hand moved drunkenly towards his assault rifle.

With brutal suddenness, Snake shot him.

He paused for a moment, watching the last twitch of motion flicker through the dead man's dead muscles as if in slow motion. The smell of blood began to crawl into Snake's head, and he felt his chest begin to heave – not now, no – and he reholstered his gun and tried not to think of Metal Gear –

Metal Gear. In the briefing, he'd been told the objective – a CIA spy codenamed Jennifer needed to be picked up; the suggestions she'd made about nukes in seventy-two hours needed to be looked into. He'd thought, staring at the bright projected slides, that it made no sense to send in three men when they could send in troops – and FOX-HOUND hardly ever cooperated with even the rest of the Army or the CIA, let alone the Marines or the Navy. There was no sensible reason, he had thought, that they would send in a unit made of a mix of various forces and head it with a FOX-HOUNDer.

No obvious reason.

What were they expecting to happen ? –

The old paranoia filled his insides, and he stared at the radio in his hand –

Solid Snake? This is Big Boss. You're in, right? I'll recap the objectives. Your mission is to penetrate the enemy fortress, named Outer Heaven. I know it's highly unconventional for you to work like this, but there's a few good reasons. Everyone in the building is a mercenary among the best, good enough even to capture Gray Fox, and they're carrying what we think might be a revolutionary new weapon politically sensitive enough to –

– you're nervous? Good, it'll help you stay alive. – What? No, it's not that difficult, if you break it down. I'll give it to you in words a child could understand.

Penetrate… enemy fortress… Outer Heaven. Contact… missing… Gray Fox. Destoroy… the final weapon… Metal Gear. That's all you need to concern yourself with.

– What the hell? 'Destoroy' is a perfectly valid word – okay, it isn't, I'm kind of tired, it slipped out – never mind. Never – Snake. I'm sure you can handle this. As a man, not as a commander, I know you're able. Be smart enough to pull out if it gets too tough, and watch yourself. And I'm sure you'll succeed. Never give up in any cornered situation, imagine success. Snake. Sn –

"Nick, what's your status?" he found himself snarling into it when the images faded enough that he could see what he was doing, and even as they went he could still feel his heart rattling against his ribs.

"Lieutenant," came the response, crackling. "I got in. No problems. Blew up a couple of trucks as a diversion. I'd avoid the outskirts of the fortress for a while, if I were you. The place is swarming."

"Well done," Snake said, trying to sound encouraging. It certainly wasn't anything that came naturally to him. "Have you made contact with Jennifer?"

"A little. Only patchy communication. The signal's too bad – it's the jungle, after all. We can probably start receiving again when we get to the radio tower."

Snake rose from his crouch and moved over, angrily, to the wall.

"How're you getting on?" Nick asked.

"I've got an officer here," Snake responded. "Not a native Ishkan – I'd guess American from the accent."

"He was talking to you? How'd you drug him?"

Kid caught on fast, Snake thought.

"I found an armoury a few corridors back. No ammunition in any of the weapons and none of them looked very well-made, but I found some small canisters of something labelled Truth Gas." He smirked. "No idea what the hell's in the stuff but it seemed to work like a charm."

"So you interrogated the officer. Good thinking, Lieutenant." Nick paused. "How is he now?"

"He started to come down, posed a threat. I shot him. He talked enough."

"What did he know?"

Snake paused, and spoke with engineered neutrality.

"Do you know who's in control of this operation?"

There was a faint crackle of static. "What?"

"I'm asking you. Who's in control?"

"L – Lieutenant!" Nick said, voice fearful. "I'm not questioning your authority, Lieutenant!"

Snake snarled. "That's not what I meant. Who's in operational control? Who designed this mission?"

"Why the hell would I know if you didn't?" Nick responded, hostility flaring up again. "You're in command and you mean to say you don't know who wrote the mission plan?"

"That's the thing," said Snake, dropping his voice. "I don't know. John seemed to know something. He didn't tell me. He tried, but he never got the chance."

"Why not?"

"Because," Snake explained, coolly, "I always focus on the mission. When I'm on a mission I can't think about anything else. It's the only way I can survive."

There was only breathing on Nick's end for a moment.

"So you're saying that unless you find out we'll fail the mission?"

Something flared up in Snake's throat. "Did you know, Nick, that John's been captured as a decoy so I could get in the building?"

Nick stopped. "That wasn't in the mission plan."

"Yeah, but he acted like it was his duty," Snake snapped, banging his fist against the wall in fury. "He took one look at me and marched off to the slaughter like a good little soldier. And right now, they're torturing him, and they've got all the time in the world to do it, which will be seventy-two hours if we don't get a hold of him soon."

"Lieutenant - "

"They're playing with him," Snake snarled. "I want you to think of him, lying, beaten so hard he can't even stand, because of a plan written by someone none of us have ever met. Someone made the decision that his life is less important than mine."

"That job you pulled on Outer Heaven must mean they're putting a lot of faith in you," Nick said, and his voice was quavering with just a little awe that made Snake's stomach clench.

"John brought down the terrorists in Eldera. He brought down the Tormenta Stronghold in the Serena Republic. He was a genius, and right in his prime. I've done nothing that he never did."

Except –

– that one eye, that eye, staring back as bright as the sky only he's a hundred floors underground -

"Exactly," Nick said, and Snake realised he was here. "They needed someone tougher even than you to endure the torture and not let out a word. You know – John works in the info centre. They treat their men to be resistant to damn near every truth drug ever made, and train them to resist temptation, torture – even telepathy. They're hard nuts to crack."

"That doesn't mean - "

"You'd better go save him, then," Nick told him, coldly. "They told me you were a professional, and you're getting wound up over a man you've known for hardly five minutes. What's wrong with you?"

Snake's hand balled into a fist. "You've got it all wrong. I don't give a damn about him as a person. After this mission it wouldn't bother me if I never saw him again – in some ways, seeing as he's a Navy man, that'd be a relief – and I don't feel like taking you home either, Marine. But when they assigned him to me – whoever the hell they are – that meant I had to take care of him. He was loyal to me. He's mine. So," his voice went calm, "there's nothing else to think about until I get him back."

Nick said, "I can see why they made you an officer. They say Big Boss used to say the same thing."

Snake sighed. "Alright, Nick. That's enough. No more… compliments. Just focus on finding out a way to get rid of the base." He grimaced. "Unless you have some secret mission plan, too. And try to get in touch with Jennifer."

"Lieutenant."

He clicked the radio off.

He'd done in the officer. He'd done that a lot. Man after man. That's what he found it was like when he was inches from death. He didn't – couldn't - think about any of - that. He was like that a lot in Outer Heaven, when it was easier, or quicker, or simpler, to silently put a bullet into some marching sentry than to hide and wait for them to pass. He'd killed men just for being in the way.

And that had been fine. It was the battlefield, and every man on the battlefield knew what risk they were taking. So the troopers, and the attack teams, and the prison wardens, and the soldiers at mess, and the soldiers at posts, and the soldiers asleep, and the soldiers attentive, were all fair game.

Shoot Gunner had known what he was in for when they assigned him to the prisons completely alone. So had Machinegun Kid and his dead-man laugh as his gun clicked hungrily for ammo he didn't have; so was the pilot of that Hind, staring in horror at the grenade rattling on her control panel from through the smashed hole in the window. Maybe that hostage hadn't agreed to what would happen, Coward Duck's long, slender fingers stroking tenderly across his jaw the second before their heads both exploded into pulpy red, but he'd certainly been expecting it. As Fire Trooper lay there bleeding and twitching out the last few seconds of his life, he had asked Snake for a last cigarette, and lit it on his flamethrower pilot light, and blew out his last breath mingled with the smoke he'd been so obsessed with. Snake had put a bullet in Trooper's head to ensure that he was dead, plucked the red-stained cigarette from what was left of his lips, and finished it off as he moved on. He didn't like to waste cigarettes.

It was the game. The gamble. Everyone paid their stake and everyone lost and Snake counted his stacks of badges and titles with a winning-streak prayer, but that was how he knew battle worked. And it was fair. Only a sore loser didn't clap for their opponent's victory. That was what he had been taught.

But it didn't work that way.

As a Lieutenant, leading the recruits with their awkward ears sticking from their identically shaven haircuts, barking at them for getting seen in their simulations, it occurred to him that people would never, ever know what they were in for. Something like that didn't even fit in the human mind. Half the children believed they were invincible and the other half didn't understand what death was.

It's not right to take bets made by a man who doesn't know what money is.

But his first jolt had been back when he was a rookie, when Big Boss in the basement had given him a broad dealer-smile, showed him that the pack was cut so that the winners were decided before the game started. These men hadn't known what they were going to draw, so they assumed that no-one did.

If a sane man was in a game and thought it was a fix, he'd throw down his hand and leave the table. Snake knew that in some other world where he was smarter, he'd done that.

But, instead, Snake had carried on playing using the same dirty tricks he'd hated when other people pulled them, and the only way he could get through it was by not thinking about it. Nights he woke up tangled in sweat-drenched sheets, gasping for breath, and water, and company; days he spent killing people he was aimed at with the efficiency of the handgun he carried. But it didn't bother him.

Each morning he shaved his face smooth with his razor, and shaved his head into the bristling, short military cut with his clippers. And each day he taught his men a little more about how to kill people. And each evening he woke himself up when the nightmares got too unbearable and read a page from whatever book he had beside him.

He'd see photos of himself around before Outer Heaven, a new member of FOX-HOUND, with his hair impractically long and his face rakishly stubbled, usually pulling some awkward expression that he remembered thinking made him look sexy, and he'd cringe inwardly about how used to be such an idiot.