Author's Note: Thanks to Major Mike Powell III for the big ups.

The mottled gunmetal sky clung malignantly over London for the next week. On Sunday, Lara's only day to herself, it cleared for an afternoon's worth, where she lounged in the gardens of her estate and reread Nastasha's book. She was out of view of the country road, hedges too high for any oversight, so she lazed about sifting from page to page, stretched out like a lizard on the verandah that sat on the lip of the topiary maze's guest house. When the rain began to threaten, she moved inside the small cottage, drifting from room to room, following the best light source before dusk.

The challenge, as she ingested it less as a narrative and more as a factual series of allegations (in the strictly legal sense), would be finding how to get it published, who she knew who'd take a look at it, who might be interested stateside, but her connections only stretched so far. Academic publishing was a far cry from what was being required, and that was even before the libel angle could be argued. She also had the performance of her own papers to attend to, which had been trashed in a review out of Surrey that had some weight to it, and might affect the reach of her influence. Even still, for Nastasha and Hal, there was little corroboration to be made, and the implications it threw around were damaging to a number of parties she was edging into. She pondered briefly giving Nastasha a ring in hopes of possibly discussing amending some of the claims hoisted, but knew it would do no good. Nastasha would inevitably refuse to change them, with good reason considering their aim, and even if names and events were altered, the nonfiction quality it represented would come to nothing and its publication would be only an effort in vanity. She began to feel the weight of what they were asking, but rather than feel its frustration, she felt mildly exhilarated by the challenge.

Around the evening hours, she decided to give it a rest, and retire the topic from her thoughts. She went back to the main house, showered, changed into evening wear, and returned to her bedroom with a decanter of ice water and her computer. The rest of the night was a small effort to try and validate, or even invalidate, any of the accusations they would be making in the coming months. Unsurprisingly, there was little to be gleaned from traditional methods, even still using net backchannels she had made from nebulous antique and artifact thieves over the past few years. There was only a brief story stateside about an Alaskan base being overrun by right-wing extremists who demanded penetentiary release of criminals before being captured again by a special forces unit, with not a lick of intrigue to it. She found conspiracies, of course, events that had nothing to do with a nuclear tank, or cloning, or ethically unsound. Oddball commentary and speculation involving aliens, a hollow earth theory, even supposed sightings of ghosts, but nothing resembling actual events.

Otacon she found easily enough, however. No picture, but a name, on the alumnus page of MIT for the early aughts. Double major. She was impressed. Likewise, Ms. Romanenko had a record on file as being part of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team.

Of Snake, there was nothing. Not a rumour, or a hint, or even theories.

She wondered, idly, if they had been this easy to verify, if not their participation then their existence, just how easy it would have been to investigate her. She thought quietly about the stupidity of letting the celebrity of her life and the public face her family had always vaguely cultivated.

The last service bell chimed from one corner of her room, signaling Winston would be turning in. She hardly noticed. Midnight snuck up in between keystrokes, and when she nodded off in front of the laptop, she was thinking of Hal, and of REX, and of publishers, and of Snake.

Curiously, of Snake.

"And I'd been reading about the Masai, at the time, about their ritualism and the odd periods of growth and reclusiveness they exhibited, like a surging entity. They were almost cellular, in their military precision, and even the tools they used were precise beyond that of competing tribes in the area, honed to such a point they resembled artistry of a very stoic kinda way. But you know, I'm sure you've read all that before. "

"Hal, I just wanted to know if you'd ever been to Africa."

Lara had picked up Otacon in a taxi from the city. She had called in advance, and Otacon had advised her to come incognito, odd a request as it was, if it was possible. She'd gotten a long-brim sonoma hat and sunglasses, dressed otherwise in active summerwear in hopes of appearing as an impromptu vacationer. They'd taxi'd out to the terminal and been idly chatting since.

There was a man approaching, broad shouldered, in the distance. He was cutting a swath through the crowded airport, suited, with a small electronic tchotke on one lapel. It was clear he was moving for the both of them.

"I think this gentleman means to interrupt you. Thank God." Lara stood. There was only the sound of babbling group conversation, of tellers at desks, of overhead intercoms buzzing names and chattering times, countries, gates and doors. There were lines of men and women shuffling through metal detectors and darting into corridors. They had been waiting two hours for Snake to show up, and although his plane had landed, he hadn't disembarked in any way they could find. Nor had they heard from him.

"I'm actually rather pleased that we should be meeting him now. I was thinking I might come back to the states with the both of you. It's been a long time since I've been to New York, and I rather liked it the last time." Lara stood when the man was within arm's length, and she extended her hand.

The man promptly ignored her, reached into his pocket, and handed Otacon a small phone with a touchscreen.

"'Scuse me. He's rather rude a lot, then?"

"This isn't Snake."

Otacon looked at it, at the man, at Lara, then back to the phone. He pushed his glasses up his nose. The man turned from Lara, and walked away, and in the process Lara saw the namebadge clipped onto his lapel. He was a concierge.

In a moment, the phone rung.

Otacon looked at Lara again, who shrugged, then handed it to her.

"Why me?"

He shrugged.

Lara scrunched up her nose, clicked it on. "Hullo?"

The other end of the phone was raspy, sounding hushed and hurried at once. And maybe slightly concerned. "Where's Otacon?"

"Are you..." She looked at Hal. "He? They? Him?"

"The both of you have to get out of here. They know we're here."

"What?"

"When we were landing, I heard one of the attendants. They know we're in the airport. Get out now. I'll meet up with you both soon." And the line went dead.

Lara handed the phone back, and Otacon held it up to his ear. "Hal, he's not there. I think there's some trouble. He said they know you both are at the airport."

"Oh, no." Otacon stood. "We've got to go."

"Go? What?" Lara chased after him as he moved towards an exit, slipping her sunglasses back on.

"Why is this a problem?"

"You read the whole thing we gave you, right? You know REX's dummy data, the disk with all of its launch information?" Otacon rolled his sleeve up, producing a small wrist-mounted keyboard made of rubber and plastic. It ran from his wrist to his elbow, and he began tapping away at it.

"Yeah."

"It went missing, and they think Snake has it," Otacon said. In the distance, Lara spotted men in uniforms approaching the both of them.

"That's bad, yes, I could see why that would be bad. Those men don't look very welcoming." Lara checked herself instinctually. No weapons. "Hal, I don't mean to alarm you, but could you give me a worse case scenario?"

"For me? Maybe jail until the end of time."

"And for Snake?"

"A firing squad."

Lara scanned over them as quickly as she could. They'd be within arm's distance in just a few seconds.

Two men, a handgun on each, but not quite terribly fit. They were airport security, and used more to escorting hooligans than the odd terrorist and suspected agent for England (or America's) downfall.

She steeled herself before realising Otacon had placed his hand on her lightly.

"Don't. We have to get out of here safely. Just... not here. Not yet." He answered a question she hadn't asked. "They're just police. If we make a fuss, game's over and we lose Snake. I've got a backup plan."

Lara kept walking. Just a moment now. "Hal, please."

"Wait." They got within grabbing distance. He tapped a single key on his wearable, and the lights above them hissed, whined, exploded in a sudden blasting sound of thousands of fluorescents supercharging and their tension filaments snapping. "Now, go!"

Lara felt no need, at least in the dark, to play nice. She grabbed the wrist of one officer and flipped him into the other by spinning his arm and following the rest of his body weight with it. Otacon was already ahead of her, burrowing himself deeper into the crowd. "Come on," he was shouting ahead of her.

Lara kicked off her heels and took off after him, each leg exploding out in front of the other like bow strings recoiling, muscles latching as filaments filled by synapse. She was next to Otacon in a heartbeat, then pulling him his arm with her, moving as fast as she could. He might have had a losing chance of keeping up, but he was still typing on his left arm, looking half in trance and half in desperation. Alarms had failed to seize, but where their absence was felt there was only the succumbing hysteria of thousands of terroised would-be passengers on what was otherwise a normal day. They began their inevitable shuffle and sprint to the nearest method of panic, some grabbing bags, others yelling incoherant babblings. There was, of course, the authoritative shouts of men in uniforms and men in suits who began doing their best to rally. By the time both of them had crossed the expansive room to a service corridor's emergency doors, flashlights were already springing on, and there was little in the way of hope they would be far behind.

Lara plunged into the door, swinging its metal bulk before clasping it closed once Otacon was inside, and using a nearby fire extinguisher to brutishly club off the locking mechanism. She broke off the handle in the interrim, and that would do: from the other side, the push-handle would depress but not open the winglock. "Hal, that was bloody fantastic, but tell me you have another trick."

"I don't, but we're off the cameras. Before I left this morning, I dug up access to the airport's power grid. I can't do that again without going up an access level in its power grid, and then I could potentially blow out the control tower." Otacon peered down the hall, bathed in the crimson emergency lights. "We've got two problems."

"Only two?" Lara reached again for guns that weren't there. Damn.

"The first is getting out of here with Snake and the second is keeping you off any recording device." When Lara looked at him with mild annoyance: "If anybody finds out you're involved, anything you could have done to help us would be finished. Lara, if you want to walk away now, you still can, and-"

"Oh, now you tell me." She turned. There was pounding on the door, and shouting. A smattering of radio chatter was gurgling outside. "Hal, we've got to go, but look, if I want to walk away, I will. Trust me."

They began to move down the hall quickly, trying to hurry but not run. Otacon was tapping at his wearable, and Lara peering back over their shoulder. Periodically, Otacon would remark a direction, and they would follow suit, left, right, straight, so on. The concrete hall held mustard highlights leading them from corner to corner, passing sparse metal doors every tenth foot or so. The red lights were the only dim apparatus allowing their passage through what was otherwise dim to the eye and cool to the skin.

Lara could feel the heart beneath her rib pounding at its cage, adrenaline flooding her veins like an addiction. Otacon in front of her, she felt like they were racing to something bigger than the things around them, that they were at the start of some great unknown with their trespass only a fee over the Sanzu River. This sensation of anticipatory anxiety was elating in its vague terror.

Snake would have understood.

Otacon stopped once they had covered enough ground finding them in the maze of service hallways would be too time-consuming for easy deduction, and Lara was thoroughly disoriented. "Hold on a sec, I have to look at something." He produced a small touch-screen pad with his keyboard-equipped arm, then tapped at the keys with his free hand. "Alright, I think I know where we're going. This could get bad. If I can get to a primary terminal, I can-"

The lights flickered once, twice, then stayed steady.

"Shit," Lara said.

"Aw, that wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I really thought we had at least three or four more minutes. They must have a pretty competent technical staff. Gimme a sec." Otacon went back to his wearable, and was still immersed in it a moment later when one of the doors leading to another corridor snapped open, two plainclothesmen entering.

"Stop! Don't move!" Both officers produced handguns, and trained them on both Lara and Otacon.

"Oh, bugger. I'm really sorry about this."

Lara swung one bare foot over the arm of the closest officer, a brunette, and arced it down. The man doubled forward, losing his pistol in the process, and couldn't recover fast enough to avoid the blow to his teeth, then his nose. Just as the second officer turned his attention from Otacon to her, she hooked her arm around his right, forcing his hands apart and away from the pistol when she collided his head into the side wall. She followed through, her weight baring down on him, knee in the small of his back. It was the only chance she had to keep her face hidden.

"Listen closely, because we don't really have time for a discussion. We need a bit of a favour, and we need you to call it in. We're not here to hurt you, or anybody else, but frankly, this has all been blown out of proportion." Lara glanced over at Otacon, who had taken the liberty of handcuffing the second officer writhing with blood pouring from his nose. His hands had been stained by it, and he did not look pleased by development.

The officer writhed, trying to get enough momentum to get onto his knees and, hence, her off his back.

No luck. He swore under his breath, and Lara let out a sigh.

"You're really not helping much," she said. Otacon handed her his radio, tentative in his approach.

"Thank you, you're very kind. Now." She held the radio to the man's ear. She had torn his suit jacket in the shoulder, and holding the mouthpiece to his lips, she saw the cornflower-blue shirt underneath sticking out. "I'm going to depress the button, and I'd very much appreciate you say...uhm-"

"'Officers Plisken and Danziger to gate seven?'" Otacon offered. "Seven's just a few halls down."

"My, you are clever. Well, you heard the man, call it in." Lara smiled at Otacon reassuringly. He had looked collected earlier, but once the violence had erupted, his skin had gone sepia. She didn't care for his pallor, but there was nothing to be done but get it over with.

The man beneath Lara grunted, and she pushed the button in. The blonde spoke in a soupy Welsh accent. "Code 2, Officers Plisken and Danziger gate Seven. Danziger and Plisken, gate seven."

Lara let the button go. "That's a boy. Now, my mate and I are going to handcuff-ah, thank you for these-and then we're going to leave, and nobody's going to get hurt, yes? Yes, I thought you might agree." Otacon had handed her the handcuffs, which she'd swiftly applied so force to his spine was no long necessary. She then untied the windsor around his collar, and applied the cravat like a gag around his mouth before finally pocketing his radio. "No screaming for you, now. I don't think your passed out friend very vocal, but I imagine you're a bit more feisty. Cheers."

When they ducked back out of the maintenance hall, they came out into the fresh air of the airport's outer perimeter. The door shut and locked behind them. "Well handled in there, Hal, that was marvelous."

The young man's colour was returning, but he still looked lightly shaken. "T-Thank you. Let's just find Snake. This could still get worse, you know."

"My, you're always terribly cheery, aren't you? Right. Well, let's get going."

The trek around the corner wasn't much, but in a moment they realised the shortsightedness of their radioed plan.

"So, any idea on how we're getting out of here, Hal?"

The gates, number five through fifteen, were jammed by traffic. Not a car could move to or away from the curb, where luggage and discard goods lay like corpses. And many had already mounted the curb in the hysteria that had spiraled outwards after the lights had died and order collapsed. People were still in their vehicles, trying to manage an exodus made impossible by their careless haste.

"I don't have the slightest idea."

Officers inside were stopping people from entering or leaving the building, with many people pounding to get in and out. Most looked like a fusion of anger and fear and exhaustion, and Lara felt some degree of sympathy until realising there were people on the ground who'd been injured in the commotion and subsequently being aided by other travelers, undoubtedly due to the pandemonium that had ensued. Lara had spent much time finding western civilisation to be greatly overrated, its populace especially. For all they knew, some lightbulbs just blew out.

They moved a few vehicle's distance down then crossed the lanes of stoic traffic, hurriedly ducking between the stationary MGs and Fiats to reach gate seven. On their approach, Lara adjust the sunglasses on her face and tilted her hat's brim down a bit.

Once there, Otacon plopped down on one leg and returned his face to the touchpad and his armband keyboard.

"Writing your memoirs, I take it," she said, not unkindly.

"I'm gonna get us a way out of here, if I can. Try and spot him, could you? He should be a little taller than you, clean shaven, brown hair."

"Well, thank you, that's not half the blokes in the country at all." She murmured under her breath. She began peering around, before it dawned on her. "Wait, H-"

"Hey, no names." Otacon pointed briefly to a camera mounted by the sliding glass doors now guarded by security. Now that he had pointed them out, Lara spotted the others posted at twenty foot invervals.

"Right, apologies. But how is he going to get out of there if the airport's on lockdown?"

Otacon looked up from his screen, at her, and his shoulders slumped.

"...Right, okay, well, no worries. Let's just find a way to fix that, eh? Wait right here, would you?" Lara left Otacon to his device and walked a short jaunt away, looking for some sort of opening. She pondered briefly, scanning the surrounding area for some sort of clue. Luggage, upturned trash bins, broken glass.

Mm, there was a thought.

Lara moved over to a bit of rubbish someone had left behind, a broken suitcase with its contents splayed open like entrails of cloth and bauble scattered about. She crouched down and rummaged around its carcass for the right heft and weight, then came across an iron scuplture. Six, maybe seven kilograms, with an inscription on its underside. She didn't have the heart to read it, considering its purpose. It was perfect.

Lara stood, tossed the paperweight gently in her hand, and picked a spot that might have the most strategic value.

Then, pivoting her torso and rocketing her arm out, she pitched the object through one of the glass panes, and waited.

Inside, the police turned, almost lethargic, and Lara watched as they were too overwhelmed by the hurry of people to leave through the new aperture in their fragile perimeter. Down the walkway, she heard Otacon call out.

"Hey! Uh, Elle! I got it!"

She ran back over, ignoring the sudden exit of impatient travelers a few gates down. "'Elle', mm? What've you got?"

"A cruiser. I managed to forge us an access card to one of the ignition fobs, and my ID's a liquid number instead of a static assignment."

"Come again?"

"I can start one of their vehicles and my license'll say it's assigned to me." Otacon was practically beaming, but their elation was cut painfully short.

In the distance, as the view of the airport lobby's interior cleared, Lara turned to hear a scream that the glass wall had probably sealed off.

It also explained the panic inside.

Lara heard the man before she saw him. Before Lara could process what she was seeing, she heard his scream, drawn out into desperation.

"OTACOOOOOOOOOON!"

"Find that car, we're going to be leaving in a hurry!" Lara began to run inside, not awaiting a response.

As she neared, having to push past other travelers and with security not in the least interested in keeping someone from getting in rather than out, Lara stood just outside their perimeter of action, thinking perhaps there was something she could do. There was little point.

He was in a long tan trenchcoat and an olive suit, what might have been a military dress uniform sans medals or rank, and surrounded by a rotating group of as many as seven other men, all officers of various severity. Three lay on the ground already, and their firearms lay limp next to them. He was unarmed, hands balled into loose fists and with a stance like a man waiting for the next blow to come. The men around him approached carefully, although their prey had already been mildly tenderised. He moved from one officer to the next, flowing like water poured from glass to glass. They were systematically disarmed, thrown to the floor, tossed into one another, arms and legs and bodies smashed or grabbed or battered into sweeping collapse, and all in just a few seconds. The only interruptions came when he was hit, taking a baton to the head twice and another to the ribcage. They were pauses in what was otherwise a series of unprotected attacks against opponents who he greatly outmatched. When there wasn't any other man standing, he stood faced away from her. She could see a stab wound in the back of one thigh, blood seeping through the tan trousers, and when he turned, his face looked reddened from blows. His left eye had started to swell.

"Mister, ah, Danziger is waiting for us. Do you need any..." And she trailed off. He looked at her silently, looking tired, scary, handsome. There was an assymetry to his face she thought was interesting. His neck was cut, and the top collar button had popped off at some point.

"Is he okay?" His voice was like a whetstone's grinding.

"Yes, he's alright. We ran into a spot of trouble." She glanced at the men on the ground. "Bit different from yours, I'd say."

They broke into a jog outside, and started peering around for Otacon. A cruiser pulled up on the sidewalk, Otacon at the wheel, the police jeep crushing suitcase and handbags underneath. Lara got in front, he got in back.

They drove in quiet, with their exit mercifully covered by the chaos of earlier and by the sheer grace of their vehicle passing all electronic checkpoints without incident. Often they had to drive on the shoulder in exiting the massive series of onramps and gate systems leading from parking garages. Traffic made labyrinthine.

When they were sufficiently away from the airport, maybe five minutes out, Otacon let go of a sigh neither of them realised he was holding.

"Okay, I think we're clear. I'll get us to somewhere we can stop, get out of this and take a taxi back to a hotel or somewhere. Thanks for your help in there. Are you guys alright?"

They both voiced in the affirmative.

"Good," Otacon said. "Lara, I'd like you to meet Solid Snake."

END OF PROLOGUE