Otacon sat back in the command chair, and noticed a fleck of blood on the control monitor. He reached out to wipe it off, and it smudged. Next to him, Mei Ling silently monitored the perimeter. The soldiers had broken inside and were fighting to subdue the prisoners, but the fight was messy.

She watched the fatalities mount, watched the soldiers open fire on the prisoners. Some had nonlethal weaponry for prison break situations, but many still had the Type 56s.

"They… they won't hold for long, the prisoners I mean. Most of them are either dead or subdued," Mei Ling said.

"I know. Activate the teargas on the first floor when they get too far. That'll get rid of the first wave of them for at least a little while," Otacon said. "After that they'll probably start using special tactical troops against us."

She shook her head, and looked away from the monitors. Her own was also speckled with blood, but she couldn't bring herself to wipe it off.

"Hal… how do you handle this? All the killing? I know this was a facility for violent criminals, but how are we justified in this?" she asked, close to tears.

Otacon closed his eyes and leaned back, and she saw for the first time that the stress bled off of him in waves. He was not as young he used to be, either, and she saw that the violence had also taken its toll on him.

"Sometimes I think we're no worse than those we're fighting against," Otacon said. "Like now. But I also remember the pictures of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Tselinoyarsk… and I know that if we can prevent that from happening again, we can justify it, even when we must do this."

"So many people will be dead when this is done…" Mei Ling said.

"I know… but the alternative is another world power with a Metal Gear program," Otacon said. "I created this monster… now I need to destroy it."

The computer blatted angrily – the soldiers were trying to breach the stairwell and get to the second floor. Mei Ling reached for the button that released the teargas, but couldn't.

Humorlessly, deadly, Otacon pressed it himself, and they both watched as the soldiers fell to the ground, choking as the gas overtook them.

---

The rooms lead to bundles of conduits and pipes that neither of them knew what to do with. Sabotage at this stage would only highlight their exact whereabouts, something which they did not need to add to their laundry list of worries. Each hallway lead to a ladder which lead farther downward. There were elevators that were designed for two or three people at time, but as Snake wisely said and as Raiden agreed, they'd had bad luck with elevators and would likely do better avoiding them for a while.

"Hang on, this one looks different," Raiden said as he looked down the next ladder. "I think the hallway below is widening out – could be an area where personnel regularly pass by."

Snake nodded.

"All right, be careful."

Raiden slid down the ladder and landed lightly on the ground, whirling around in time to see a bevy of twin-turret automated machineguns mounted on the ceiling as they snapped around to aim at him.

"Uh… Snake?"

They all went off at once as Raiden back-flipped into the corner, his sword clearing its sheath and deflecting the slugs as they flew toward him. The walls and floor around him became pitted with bullet holes. They clanged off his blade as it drew waving arcs in the air before him.

Snake slid down the ladder with the Type 56 ready. He turned and fired a steady stream, holding the rifle sideways and allowing the recoil to create a horizontal sweep. He took out half a dozen of the turrets in a single spray of automatic fire, and the remainder of them tried to divide their targets between the two adversaries.

This gave Raiden the time he needed to get into the blind spot of several of them, jumping up and slicing off one at the stem. Snake's rifle clicked empty and he let go of it, pulling the 92 pistol and shooting out the sensor on a gun just as it tried to come to bear on Raiden, who had already chopped off another at the source.

Four gunshots and a couple of sword-swipes later, the automated defenses lay in ruins on the ground, sparks and smoke drifting up from them. They stood in a wide corridor with a number of open doors on either side. The hallway ended at the ladder they'd climbed down from, that end of the hallway now shot to bits. Portions of the heavy concrete fell to the floor, breaking on impact.

"Well, if they didn't know we were here before…" Snake said.

Raiden peeked into one of the rooms.

"Oxygen masks, IR goggles, and hand-held oxyacetylene torches," Raiden reported. "Some other raw materials for construction and it looks like parts for basic repairs."

"Masks in case of oxygen blackouts, goggles for working in dark places," Snake said. "Grab those, and a couple of those torches, too."

They loaded up and found the other rooms to contain larger industrial tools that they couldn't use. Snake frowned at the pistol he had.

"Remind me to bring a sword along next time we raid a place that has no weaponry," Snake said.

---

The walls were made entirely of colorless, undecorated concrete. They gathered from what little Chinese they could read that this was Maintenance Corridor 5A West, and their map seemed to indicate that there was a cable-car of some kind a floor below them that would take them to the reactor area, near where the science staff resided.

"There'll likely be an even bigger security front coming up," Snake said.

"Sounds like fun," Raiden said. They'd arrived at a wide staircase that lead downward, about as wide as one that might lead down into a subway station. Raiden took the left side and Snake the right, their weapons before them, both ready at the twitch of a muscle to defend themselves.

They might have gotten to the bottom, but a mechanical skittering noise drifted up to them and they paused.

"I don't like the sound of that at all," Snake said.

A metal creature with a perfectly spherical body surrounded by eight sharp legs about as thick around as a thumb ticked across the roof of the stairwell. The eye in the center of the legs was about as large around as a basketball, and a compartment opened up on the top of the ball (which was actually facing the floor) that had a small camera on it.

"Oh, come on!" Raiden laughed.

Suddenly a machinegun telescope out next to the camera and opened fire, laying down a scathing arc of tracer rounds aimed at Raiden, who yelped as he deflected them with his HF blade. Snake gave the creature a double-tap to the body, but found the basketball center of the spider-bot to be superbly armored.

He adjusted his aim and shot it in the camera-eye. The creature twitched, losing its grip on the ceiling and crashing to the floor. It stumbled about, firing in the last place Snake had been standing.

"I can't damage it with this lame gun!" Snake shouted.

Raiden strode up to it and stabbed straight through the body. It jerked, sizzled, and then stopped moving. Raiden kicked it off the end of his blade.

"They're going to need to do better than this," Raiden said.

The walls and ceiling and floor of the passage were swarmed from around the corners with the spider-bots in the next three seconds, and Snake sighed.

"You were saying?"

---

The teargas on the first floor deterred the soldiers for a little while, as Otacon hoped it might, but the gas reserves on that floor had run out, and the broken windows didn't help to keep the gas intense enough to truly stop the advance of the troops.

Flinching with the bad feeling it gave him, Otacon activated the automated defenses. Machineguns popped down from the ceilings and started popping tranquilizer rounds into the crowd of soldiers as they shouted orders to one another, trying valiantly to charge the gun emplacements.

"Snake and Raiden are reaching the end of the upper-level maintenance area," Mei Ling said, keeping her attention firmly on the Codec monitor. "There are some automated defenses that are slowing them up… automatons."

She gasped as she was able to get the full count of them.

"Hal! There's no way they can fight that many! There must be nearly a hundred of them, and more on the way!"

"Hmm… hold on, I think we might be able to access some of those systems from here…" Otacon said, his fingers flying over the keys. "Remember that theoretical virus you and I were talking about, the one we could redirect through a nanomachine IFF broadcast?"

"Yeah, funny idea, huh?"

"Make it happen."

---

Snake's pistol clicked empty on the last magazine as he shot another spider-bot in the camera and ducked underneath the hail of gunfire that targeted where he'd been standing. Throwing away the pistol in rage, he pulled his combat knife, shoving it deep into the camera of the next drone that came his way. Behind him, he heard Raiden leaping around, bisecting the drones on the left and on the right, deflecting bullets in every direction madly.

He's going to knock one my way and that'll be it, Snake thought grimly as he grabbed a blinded spider-bot and pointed its rattling machinegun into the midst of a crowd of others, shredding them into scrap.

When the gun clicked empty on the creature, Snake plunged the knife deep into the neck-hole and tore out a few of its servos, then drop-kicked the defeated thing down the stairs. The shell crashed at the bottom, the legs twitching the same way an earwig's does when you crush it. Snake and Raiden stood amid a sea of their opponents' metallic corpses.

"Easy!" Raiden said, and then sat down on the stairs, breathing quickly and deeply, chuckling with his success. He was about to sheathe the HF blade, when another great sound of metal skittering on concrete reached them, and another squad of spider-bots littered the walls and ceiling and floor. Both heroes sighed, sure they'd met their end, when the machineguns came out, the robots all faced one another, and blew each other to shreds.

Smoke and sparks and small explosions drifted up the stairs, choking the two men for a moment, and they answered the call on the Codec.

Thought you'd appreciate the virus Mei Ling cooked up just now, Otacon said.

What? That was you guys? Raiden asked.

All Mei Ling, Otacon said. She used your nanos to infect the automated defense system. It won't work again, though… so from here on out you guys need to handle it on your own. Somebody must've figured out our hoax. Now nothing will read anything that comes from your nanos. You'll need to improvise the doors… those torches you found might work, or if you can find keycards like normal people. Just be careful.

They descended the stairs, walking over the destroyed automatons, to find themselves on one end of an enormous hexagonal tube that lead downward before sloping back to head in the direction behind them. A large cable car stood open, with some kind of security booth right next to it. Inside, Snake and Raiden found the controls for the cable car.

"We can't hit the switch here and be on it at the same time," Snake said.

I've got it covered, Snake, Mei Ling rang them.

Raiden had already gotten into the cable car, when Snake froze.

Hold on… something…

The cable car doors slammed shut and locked, and Raiden whirled around as a cyborg ninja materialized right outside them. Snake pulled his combat knife, falling into a stance.

"Snake!" Raiden called, but the cable car was already moving. The last thing Raiden saw before he dipped below the floor was the ninja gesturing toward the security booth with one hand, a torrent of lightning destroying it.

The cyborg ninja was not the same design as Gray Fox's suit. It was completely black with a red Chinese symbol painted across its face and various other things printed across it in red all along the body, all in kanji. Snake and his enemy circled slowly. The ninja did not seem to be interested in talking, but attacked almost immediately, a katana appearing out of nowhere and taking a full swing at Snake's neck.

Snake ducked beneath the swipe and made a cut of his own at the midsection of his enemy, but the knife skipped off.

Guess it's back to basics… Snake thought, hanging up the knife and jumping over a cut directed to take him apart at the waist. He kicked the ninja in the face and was satisfied to see it back up and falter, then discouraged to find that it didn't pause or shake its head to clear it as even Gray Fox had done, but instead leaped back into combat, forsaking its sword for hand-to-hand.

Snake blocked several strikes and dug his elbow into his enemy's gut, then head-butted it and delivered a knife-hand chop to its neck. Again it only fell back as much as the strikes could push it and then wasted no time in returning. Snake took a strike to the face and went down, but twisted his legs and swept out those of his enemy, then kicked it in the side as hard as he could on the pressure point right under the arm.

The hit might have at least momentarily pained any human opponent, but the ninja would not be deterred. Snake rolled away and got to his feet in just enough time to block a ruthless roundhouse to the face. Snake punched the thing in the crotch, braced its leg, and bodily hurled the thing into the concrete wall with such force that it left a crack.

The ninja flopped to the ground and looked ready to rise, but Snake didn't give it the chance. He dropped his heel in an axe kick to the back that slammed it face-first into the ground and then took it by the head and started beating its face repeatedly into the ground. It tried to shake him off, but Snake broke its neck.

The thing twitched and tried to flail at Snake, who continued slamming its head into the ground harder and harder until the fiberglass plating around the face had cracked. It finally managed to gain leverage and kicked him aside.

"What the fuck!" Snake snarled, genuinely pissed off now as the thing rose, its head hanging at an impossible angle as it strode toward him.

It leveled a kick at Snake's chest that bowled him over and then leaped above him, aiming to come down on him with both its knees to shatter his sternum and crotch. Snake rolled away and swiped out with the knife, severing whatever passed for its Achilles tendon. That same weird machine-blood that the RAYs had and that never really made any sense or got explained sprayed out and the machine fell to its opposite knee as it tried to turn to face him.

Snake plunged the knife in between the thing's ceramic plating right where its heart ought to have been, then kicked the knife in deeper, the machine-blood spraying all over him. Snake began booting it where it would've had genitalia, had it been a human being.

"Made…" kick "…in…" kick "…China!" kick Snake taunted.

The robotic ninja surged to its feet and grabbed at Snake's throat, but Snake wrapped his arms around its left arm in a strange configuration and pivoted on his waist, and the ninja's left elbow cracked like a breadstick. He then held the thing's wrist, twisted it, locked his ankle behind its sliced ankle, and threw his body into his opponent's at the same time he pulled forcefully on the wrist.

The arm dislocated at the shoulder, and Snake punched the robot in the stomach, roaring as he did so. The ninja flopped to the ground and scrambled to rise again, not losing a second recovering. It turned and grabbed Snake by the throat, lifting him off the ground. The ninja was beginning to make a high screeching noise from somewhere, as if some part of it was raging at how much it had been harmed.

Snake pulled the oxyacetylene torch, closed his eyes to keep from damaging them, and opened up the flame on the thing's remaining functional elbow. He felt its grip tighten, felt his eyes want to bug out of his head, felt his feet dangle above the ground, kicking…

This is humiliating…

… and then the grip relaxed as he destroyed its musculature with the torch. The arm came off at the elbow and Snake grabbed it, stumbling back and dropping his torch. The ninja leaped at Snake in a flying kick, but Snake had enough oxygen left in his head to think to duck.

The ninja's kick crashed it thigh-deep into the wall and left it unable to free itself due to a lack of arms. Snake took the severed cybernetic limb in his hand and started beating the ninja with its own arm. When the metal bones inside the arm broke, Snake discarded it, cracked his knuckles and neck to loosen himself up a bit, and then broke the thing's leg that was still embedded in the wall. He then proceeded to break its back, several of its ribs, and both its scapula before sitting down on the ground to take a breather and light up a cigarette.

He'd gotten about halfway through it when the ninja shook itself free and hopped toward him with its one good leg, the only few bones in its body not broken.

"What're you gonna do, bleed on me?" Snake asked, stooping down to pick up the HF katana it had dropped and cleaving the robot in half at the waist in one fluid strike. Snake was covered in the explosive machine-blood geyser that resulted, but it did not stop him from dismembering the ninja with its own weapon, limb by limb.

Snake pulled his Beretta and pistol-whipped each individual piece until they stopped moving and the high-pitched screeching subsided.

Snake sat down nearby, watching the individual parts in case they started trying to put one another together again as he lit another cigarette and tried to raise Raiden. He found that he couldn't reach him. He worriedly sighed and raised Otacon instead.

Otacon, have you gotten in touch with Raiden?

No, but his nanos report he's still alive… Snake, what just happened?

If you get in touch with him before I do, tell him to watch out for any cybernetic ninjas. They take a long time to kill.