"Scar Tissue"
Otacon greeted me from behind a cup of coffee, an accessory I was used to seeing him with by now. I took a moment to notice the clock on one of the computers.
3:17AM.
He quickly caught my look of disgust.
"You know you wouldn't be here this early if it wasn't important."
"I know. So, what's up?"
"Ocelot's been lying pretty low for the past ten months ever since...well," He looked at me to let me finish the rest in my own head.
"Yeah."
"It seems he's getting tired of existing under the radar and is working on something big. I'm digging up all I can but I'm just hitting a lot of dead ends right now."
"Wasn't Mei Ling helping you?"
"She helps whenever she can but for the most part, she's busy with her own projects."
He took a stack of papers from the table and moved them to another near by surface for seemingly no apparent reason. I felt an uncomfortable subject coming. I knew the shifting around paper thing was the equivalent to Otacon twiddling his thumbs in nervous anticipation.
"Snake, as you know, your health is getting increasingly worse," he said confirming my observations and straightening up the second stack of papers he had just transferred, "It's getting too hard to continue to ignore, but it's too much for me to handle alone."
While I had come to accept the fate handed to me eight years ago at Shadow Moses by FoxDie, Otacon had not. I hadn't given up, I just couldn't waste whatever time I had left wondering if there was a way to fix it, "That's why I've been working with someone from the outside."
"Otacon, that's not like you."
"I know, but I've never been faced with anything quite like this either."
"Can they be trusted?"
"I'd like to think so."
"Ex-FOXHOUND?"
"Definitely not."
I knew that Otacon was going to continue to talk in circles for as long as I allowed him to.
"Spit it out. Who is this other person?"
"Snake, you have nothing to worry about. I've taken every precaution you can think of and this person checks out."
I nodded about as much as I was convinced.
"Do you ever think about Olivia even though you only met her once?"
It was the first time I had heard her name in months. Ten to be exact. And it reminded me of all the bad feelings that became attached to that name.
"Yes. I do, actually."
"I can tell. I can also tell that you still blame yourself for what happened to her."
I know I grunted at him that same grunt I did when I didn't want to talk about something. But, like usual, it did little else other than convince him that he should continue.
"Otacon--"
"Snake, all I'm saying is that it's completely okay to feel that way. Normal even and--"
"Otacon!" I repeated in a tone that still made Otacon jump slightly even after all these years, "A late night psychoanalysis isn't what you called me here for, is it?"
"No."
He held up a small vial with a clear liquid in and waited for me to ask about it before offering up any information.
"It's an inhibitor and it should regulate your body's aging. That's what we're hoping will happen anyway."
"I suppose you're going to inject me with that."
"Well, I'm not going to be the one injecting it. It has to go directly into your blood stream and I'm certainly not trained to give an injection like that."
I felt a presence enter the room from the doorway behind me. It was one of the most unsettling I had felt in a long time and nothing about it encouraged me to turn around to see what it was.
"Hi, Snake."
That voice.
I'd seen a lot of evils in my life and none of them gave me a chill like that voice did.
The figure in the doorway could have been a ghost and by rights, it should have been, "That's not exactly the welcome I was expecting," she joked.
I watched her come towards me, sporting a slight but permanent limp and a scar across her face that felt so familiar, it could have been my own.
This was no ghost. It was Olivia.
Olivia Steele wasn't the first person I had ever watched die, neither was she the only death I had ever been responsible for. She wasn't special to me nor did hers hold anymore value than any other civilian life. She was, however, the closest thing to a decent soul I had crossed in a long time and up until then, I thought she had died because of it. She hadn't thought about what kind of person I might have been outside of the few hours that circumstance had brought us together for. She acted on instinct and I had considered that a major personality flaw from the moment I had met her.
I could hear Otacon talking to me, but the sounds were barely forming in my head as words.
"Snake, do you remember when you told me that you had a bad feeling about Olivia's safety?"
"You told me I was being paranoid."
"Yes, I did," he admitted, "But after I thought about it, I decided it couldn't hurt to check on her. I hacked into her security camera's network but something didn't feel right. So, I asked Raiden to check in on her."
Olivia touched my arm before going past me to stand next to Otacon. I had half expected her hand to pass through me. She looked different and it had nothing to do with her hair being shorter or any other physical change that I noticed.
"His timing couldn't have been better. If Raiden wouldn't have shown up at the moment he did...well, I don't even want to think about where the next bullet out of Ocelot's gun would have ended up in me."
"Where have you been all these months?" I finally managed to choke out between the first drags of my cigarette. She shook her head and looked at me disapprovingly.
"Underground, with the help of Mei Ling. She even wired me with the same nanomachines that you and Hal use."
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner, Snake, but I had to make sure that Olivia was absolutely safe before I said anything," Otacon said.
"So, she's alive because of a well timed call...and luck."
"I'm alive because Hal followed up on a feeling that you had. Besides, you don't believe in luck," Olivia reminded me as if she could recall me ever saying that to her.
"I don't know what I believe anymore."
Olivia passed a subtle look and nod to Otacon that almost seemed rehearsed.
"I have some things to catch up on. I'll be back in a bit," he said, and handed the vial to Olivia.
She watched him leave the room before turning to me.
"Hal's a great guy. He wants to help you more than anything. You're still a hero to him, you know."
"I thought you were dead."
"Well, I'm not. This limp looks pretty sexy when I have high heels on, by the way," she joked when she noticed I had shifted my eyes to every object in the room before letting them rest on her, "I'm sorry about the early morning call but, I wanted to see you. Especially when Hal explained to me what was happening to you."
I could see the scar on her face up close now. It remained elegant to had been so savagely put there. She produced a capped syringe and began drawing liquid from the vial with it and nodded to my right arm.
"The sooner we start this, the sooner it can begin to work."
"You and Otacon created this together?"
"Not exactly. Hal had been working on it for a few months before. He had most of the information he needed, he just didn't know how to go about putting it all together. That's where I came in. Okay, Snake, this may hurt a bit."
The liquid from the syringe felt like sharp, hot pebbles traveling through my veins, "You're arm's going to be sore for a day or two. If it's sore any longer than that, let me know."
"What in the hell did you just give me?"
"I'm sorry. I know it's a bit uncomfortable. Next time, I'll try and make a formula that travels a bit smoother."
I pulled my shirt sleeve back over my arm and tried to ignore the burning sensation that existed under my skin where the needle had been.
"Aside from the soreness and the burning that's probably occurring right now, if you have any other side effects, I need you to let me know. It's very important that you do."
"You mean it gets worse than this?"
"Seriously, Snake, if you experience anything like dizziness, weakness or even a headache, report it back to me or Hal."
"Okay."
She looked at her watch and grabbed a clipboard from a near by table. She rechecked her watch before recording what I guessed was the time and then scribed notes for a few moments.
"Since Hal says that the most change seems to happen every three months, that's when we're going to do the injections," she said finishing the notes, and looked up at me with a smile.
"What?"
"It's just...really good to see you, that's all. I hated not being able to tell you that I was okay for so long."
"Why couldn't you?"
"Well, Hal thought it would be safer if he deleted public records and information about me first before telling anyone what had really happened."
"Deleted information?"
"Yeah. After we torched my house, instead of creating a death certificate, Hal deleted everything that said I ever existed in the first place. Birth certificate, Social security number, even my high school transcript...all in the trash bin on his computer now. Burning the house down was just a quick way to get rid of any personal information I had left in there."
"So you simply just disappeared?"
"Who's gonna notice? The people back in Virginia who I haven't spoken to in six years or my neighbors who lived 2 miles away that I never met? I didn't have any ties. That's what sadly made it so easy."
"What about having a normal life?"
She waved her hand as if the thought was too trivial for her to even consider and laughed, "It's overrated. Besides, my place is with you and Hal now."
"All of this shouldn't have happened to you. What Ocelot did--"
"Is in the past, Snake", she finished, "and it's something that we can't change."
A part of me needed her to be as angry at me about what had happened as I was, but she wasn't budging.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you, Olivia."
I didn't think about how those words would sound outside of my own mind but they pushed their way out into the space between us.
I didn't fight her when she reached up and aligned my eyes with hers or when her hand lingered on the side of my face.
"I never blamed you for what happened. Never," she emphasized it in her eyes as well, "The only thing I want to do is help you. Hal and I know we can't cure the effects of FoxDie right now, but if we can at least slow it down, it'll be a good start. Now, the burning. Is it gone?"
It took me a moment to realize she had switched the focus and then a moment more to realize that the burning had indeed subsided in my arm.
"Yeah, it has actually."
"Good," she jotted a line of text onto the clipboard, "I'll certainly take that as a good start. I need to go and finish up some things with Hal and then possibly try and get some sleep but remember, don't shrug off any abnormal feelings. Let me know immediately."
One more look passed between us before she disappeared around the same corner that Otacon had earlier. I listened to her and Otacon briefly exchange ideas and thoughts a few rooms away before they either stopped or I just tuned them out.
That night, I had a dream about the video. It wasn't the first time, but this time, I heard the gun go off at her head and saw her body fly back from the chair. Olivia laid on the ground but the absence of blood made her look as if she had simply fallen out of it. Her head slowly turned and she mouthed something to me that I couldn't make out.
I woke up with my heart beating at least twice as fast as it should. I spent a few seconds confirming my surroundings and bringing my breathing back to a normal rate.
"Is everything okay?"
When I looked up, I saw Olivia leaning in the doorframe with her arms crossed in front of her.
"I'm fine."
"I wasn't spying on you," she added immediately, something that hadn't had time to cross my mind until she said something, "I was passing by and heard some commotion."
"It was nothing."
"Troubled sleep patterns could be a side effect of the serum. Did you have a nightmare or something?"
"It had nothing to do with the serum."
"Snake, it's important that you tell me—"
"The damn serum had nothing to do with it, Olivia."
Her sharp, green eyes burning into me the way they did made me uncomfortable. They cared too much. She lingered in the doorway for a few moments and as if giving up, finally nodded.
"Okay, Snake," she said and I watched the door close behind her.
She looked like she was waiting for something to happen. Like a wall to come down allowing some sort of truth about myself to come spilling out. I knew that dream hadn't come from watching Olivia almost die, but from knowing that I would have to watch again and for real this time.
