After a short, meaningful pause....


He faced a giant concrete wall.

Snake remembered, some several years back in 2003, hearing about a heat wave in Europe that killed fifteen thousand French people. At the time, from where he was housed in Alaska, it had seemed a feat too distant to realize. Now he was here, in the heart of the French climate, he could see why.

A burst of Mediterranean weather had hit a little too far north, which he learned from the newspaper he bought on the Corail Téoz, after a brief twenty minutes in the capital to wash up after hitchhiking from Calais. It had caused the unmistakable tropical style storm on the sea, and the blistering hot weather he experienced on his journey south. Inside the cabin of the train, in which he spent an agonizing five hours, it was humid, and oases of sweat seemed to pool on his palms and the back of his neck.

However, the thoughts that plagued him the most were not those of his hygiene; Snake felt a great discomfort at being disconnected from his team. It would be them who found out the answers. Would they have time to get them to him?

Probably not.

Toulouse had turned out to be an ornate city. He stepped upon the cobbles as though he walked through and antique model town. The architecture enthralled him, and yet, the audacious modernity that lined the walls in the form of ambitious graffiti complimented the older style buildings in a way he had not seen before, or at least not in a very long time.

New York was a rat's nest. Alaska was a desert.

If he had more time, he would've enjoyed it more, but he knew upon arriving that the place he was looking for would not be in the midst of the city. He also knew that no one around him would know where to find a cryogenics facility. Instead, he decided to ask people about roads out of town, and scenic, natural areas.

After a few hours, he had wrested enough information from the conservative denizens of Toulouse to set upon his endeavour out of the city.

His search was productive.

And so, he was faced with a concrete wall.

In his perfected cricket pitch, he bowled his bag over arm, which was now plus his clothes and absent his weapons. As the sun went down behind him, Snake was grateful for the lack of light, as he would not want to be seen by a civilian clad in his sneaking gear and fully armed. Then again, he couldn't imagine there being any out here in this desert. They'd have to be lost.

And yet, when he vaulted the concrete wall with his trademark dexterity, he saw, in the last of the light, what looked like a small house, complete with lights on and smoking chimney.

Charming.

"But it's not right..."

He crawled, stealthy, low through the shrubs on the hillside. Somewhere, down in the darkening black into the valley, there were more lights, shimmering eerily and appearing further into the distance than they probably were. That would be where his brother was. Somewhere down there.

The darkness descended upon the valley with a great speed, sweeping hastily as though someone drew a thick black sheet across the heavens. Snake tried to make as little sound as possible, the scuffing of his shoes against the shrubs the only noise he made.

After a moment of scrambling across the undergrowth, Snake found himself stood a short distance from the ominous house. Tying his bag firmly to the branch of a tree, he made the final dash towards the building, and stood with his back to the wall by the front door.

Wide Open?

In the silence of the evening, he listened for a sound from within the house. Nothing.

Whose place was it anyways? It seemed a little too big to be a cosy guardhouse.

He inhaled, and turned. His arms rose up automatically to bring his gun in front of his face, pointing it blindly into the darkness.

He could see nothing.

But he knew the smell all too well.

Swiftly, he grabbed a small flashlight from within the folds of his suit and held it above his gun. Shining the light across the room, he saw bottles of liquor scattered, books open on the floor with pages flapping in the draft, and the contents of a desk spilled out in all directions. The place had been ransacked.

A document fluttered down nearly inches from his feet. Shining his torch above it, he saw that its contents were obscured by a dark mark. A red mark.

The piece of paper left a trail behind it. A dark shadow. Lying across the rug.

He ran to the windows, closing the blinds so as to let as little light through, and felt for a switch. The room was dimly illuminated.

Standing over the body, he saw the man had suffered several shots to the body, and one to the head. Unnecessary brutality.

This man's life seemed to be worth very little to whoever had felt the pleasure of taking it. The guy didn't look like a military man. He didn't look like an intellectual either. Snake thought he looked like the kind of guy you'd see sat a desk in one of those humdrum insurance companies that never really took off. Small town guy. Occasional smoker. Regular drinker. They usually had names like Larry, Simon, Bill and Bob.

All in all, he seemed, very ordinary. Almost too ordinary. Snake was amused at the idea. Too ordinary to be murdered? Was there such a thing?

He had nothing in his pockets, no labels on his clothes. The man himself was unremarkable looking. A blue bottle lay just without of his hand's grasp.

Scanning the room, Snake spotted a coat and a bag on a peg by the door. The coat was the same as the clothes; empty pockets, labels cut off. Throwing it aside he tore the bag off the peg and felt from its weight there was something inside.

He turned it upside down and watched the contents spill out onto the carpet, before crouching to inspect them.

A half drunk bottle of water.

An empty sandwich packet.

A newspaper.

"The Guardian."

What?

"Britons Face Killer Heatwave"

And in the sub-article.

"Marine Tanker Sinks on the Hudson"

A British newspaper.

He'd seen it on the stands when he arrived at Waterloo. He recognised the picture.

"What...the...?"

He felt the breeze tickle his shaven head, and remembered he had left the door ajar. Turning around, he noticed something else hanging from the peg.

A security pass.

"Greg Kuross..."

Snake looked over to the corpse. Middle-aged. Slightly overweight. Greying hair. Unremarkable.

Completely unremarkable.

And yet a complete mystery.

Some horrible instinctive sense was making him very aware that this man was a civilian.

He could just tell.

Hardened men didn't die looking so pathetic. Greg looked like a seal's corpse washed up on the shore. A round decaying mass that people stood downwind of. Snake imagined that this man was much the same in life as in death.

But it was never good to imagine about dead people. Snake didn't know him, so there was no point trying to pretend that he did. Could be a complete bastard for all he knew.

Can't feel sorry for him. Civilian or no civilian.

However, one thing seemed certain. Someone who'd been here had been to London yesterday.

Or maybe this was all part of the 'plan'. Maybe this was the la-li-lu-le-lo, his unknown adversaries, trying to play with his mind.

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. That was their key strength; anonymity. They were everywhere and nowhere. Roy had called this whole scenario "bigger than he might think". Bigger than Ocelot. Bigger than the huge pile of political shit that was Metal Gear. That whole intangible web of lies...

Switching the lights off again, he returned the items to Greg's bag so as to leave the scene looking a little less disturbed, and made to leave. As he placed one large gloved hand on the back of the door, he heard something click. A short, sharp sound. Faint. But so familiar.

A shutter.

Slowly he turned around, looking up into the corners of the room and brandishing his flashlight.

"A surveillance camera?"

There was no sign of one.

Not in the corners, not on the sidelights, not on the shelves.

And then he saw it, in a vague blur whilst turning his head. Spotted in a panoramic swirl so that he couldn't tell where it was. That faint iridescent green glow that reflects off an anti-glare lens. So small it was, that Snake wasn't quite sure he'd seen it, but it was there.

He didn't have time to find it.

He didn't have time to shoot it.

He ran blindly out of the house.