Author's Note: So, here we go again. :} By popular demand, I'm expanding to a longer work with Abby. I'm sorry if these initial chapters are confusing--they're based on the events of Metal Gear Parallax: Antipodes, which, while I have it planned it almost in its entirety in my head, has yet to be written. Oopsies. I'll either get cracking writing that, or...just explain it as we go along. :} Perhaps in more author's notes, if people start yellin'.
Yes, this is the second time I've changed the title. I'm fussy; bear with me.
Disclaimer of Great Justice: I don't own the Metal Gear series. I don't own Manhattan, either, though if I get enough beads, I bet I'd be able to buy it...*ahem* In fact, about all I own in here is the idea of Abernathy, since the English language definitely belongs to someone else. Even his NAME belongs to other people...*gripe*
Metal Gear Parallax: Perihelion

parallax (n): an apparent change in the position of an object when the person looking at the object changes position.
perihelion (n): the point in the orbit of a planet or other astronomical body at which it comes closest to the Sun.

Chapter 1: Rainy Days and Thursdays
Thursday afternoon was the sweetest deception of the entire week. Many a Thursday has in the past proven to be calm and lazy, the perfect invitation to a restful weekend, only to have a hectic Friday slap you in the face. This particular Thursday was more perfect than most, warm and sweetly breezy, begging all comers to call in sick and spend the rest of the day in blissful contemplation of spring.
Alas, such a gleeful dereliction of duty was beyond contemplation for the majority of Manhattan's wage earners. Most were driven by that indefatigable American sense of duty through peer pressure; the rest that hadn't yet skived off were the lucky stiffs with jobs that let them enjoy the pleasures of the afternoon without losing a day's pay. Distinctly not among that select latter group was a young fellow who went by the name of Jack, even now making his way slowly home among the Manhattan rush-hour traffic.
Not, mind, that Jack begrudged even the slight respite his evening hours off gave him; oh, no, not him. There was simple pleasure in being a normal person for once, sliding comfortably into the routine of a civilian citizen of the island and shucking off all the pain and distress his former life had enjoyed heaping on him. The wounds from the latest debacle were even healing neatly; 'his' doctor was even of a disposition sunny enough to forecast he wouldn't have any trouble with his hands in the future. The supposed 'work-related' breaks had knit cleanly, with no one the wiser that his shattered fingers were the work of a sadistic, hell-bent torturer and not, say, a runaway equipment cart. The track marks left by the Skull Suit's cannulae, on the other hand, had nearly gotten him committed to drug rehab. But for the grace of God and Rosemary, he'd likely still be there.
Yes, life was definitely looking up, Jack reflected as he paused at a corner for traffic. As the honking press of cars wound on before him--promising a minute's wait before enough of a gap to dash through presented itself--he stretched languidly, rising up on his toes with his fingers splayed above his head. It had been a long day, even if his current job with a subway maintenance crew was a regular nine-to-five.
At least this one, of all the various odd roles he'd filled in the pursuit of money, promised to be somewhat stable. In the backsliding economy, he--like many others--had been forced to scrounge up what he could in an employer's market, taking whatever came for as long as it stuck around. Trimming trees, bagging groceries, patrolling a library on the graveyard shift, even a stint as a male model for a company too cheap to hire union; at least none of them, even the guard work, resembled soldiering enough to make him uneasy.
The light changed, breaking in on Jack's reflections. He eased out of his stretch, tossing his head and shaking his shoulders before joining up with the lockstep of a hundred pedestrians streaming out across the street. For once, he was just another one of them, and it felt good. He achieved the curb milliseconds before the light changed again, a ubiquitous yellow taxi nearly mowing him down as he did. The exchange of invective and the one-fingered salute with the cabby was almost friendly in its familiarity, another little part of the civilian routine that Jack enjoyed to the hilt.
Turning back from the street, he tilted his head back, gazing up at the row of brownstones that spread out before him. Almost home; it was less than half a block walking to the dingy apartment that he and Rosemary--and sometimes Abernathy, when his clone-brother could be induced to come home before dawn--shared. One of Jack's hands flitted to the pocket of his windbreaker, checking for his keys; it really wouldn't do to be locked out--again--and have to endure the landlady's too-familiar staring as she let him in. Thankfully, the keys were there.
He reached 'home' a few minutes before five-thirty--the shortest 'commute' he'd had yet--and mounted up the steps two at a time. He found--quite to his surprise--that he was whistling. Whistling! And not some kind of funerary march or dirge-like militant song, but some airheaded pop music that was being overplayed on the top ten lists of FM stations around the country. If he remembered rightly, Rose was rather fond of the song, which was typical of her. He was starting to surprise himself with how easily he was getting into the rhythm of being normal; and a pleasant surprise it was.
They lived three stories up; another short walk, when one took the steps two and three at a time. Maybe, Jack reflected, Rosemary would be feeling well enough that he could lure her out to a movie. Heck, they could even drag Abernathy along, if the twitchy little albino wasn't off somewhere, or unconscious on the couch. That new movie with the submarine looked interesting--what was its name? K...K-something-or-other. On second thought, though, it might be better if they just went to some chick flick Abby and Rose could both get mushy over; he'd be bored stiff, but submarines and the Cold War meant military, and even if he still sort of enjoyed war movies, nobody else needed to be reminded about it...
There was the door. 312A. Jack scrounged in his pocket for the keys, came up with the right one and unlocked the door. Slipping inside, he shut it behind him, tossed the keys on the hall table and began pulling off his windbreaker. "Anyone home?" he called with uncommon cheer as he hung the jacket up. No answer came; but then, that was hardly a surprise, given Rose's habits toward napping the afternoons away. Losing the kid must've hit her hard, Jack reflected, brows furrowing slightly. Himself, he'd been upset in an atavistic way about the loss of their unborn child, but also--guiltily--relieved. The thought of being a father had, frankly, scared the piss out of him.
As Jack started down the hall, something about the quality of the silence began to tickle the old combat senses at the back of his mind. He paused on the throw rug, listening a moment longer. Nothing...but a bad nothing, in a tiny apartment that should have had at least one live person in it. No sound of breathing from the bedroom to the right; none of Abby's irritating little snores emanating from the living room and the couch, either. A spot between Jack's shoulder blades began to prickle with the cold feel of that sixth sense most soldiers had, the one for self-preservation.
He continued down the hall, but this time much more cautiously, his tread no longer that self-confident swagger of his civilian persona but the light-footed sneaking step he adopted during combat missions. Step lightly, toes first, ease down onto the flat of the foot once you were sure the floor wasn't going to give or make noise, keep your knees bent so you were ready to spring in any direction...he shivered as he peeked into the kitchen, looking for any signs of a scuffle. Nothing. It was times like this that he heartily wished he had the nerve to get a gun permit so he could carry at least a pistol with him at all times.
There was nothing to it, though. Jack had vowed, so long as he was sticking around in Manhattan, that he wouldn't call any more attention to his continued presence here. Look at what had happened when he tried to register for a new driver's license, for crying out loud; the memory of Revolver Ocelot's midnight raid on the other apartment still chilled him to the bone. He eased away from the wall, chewing on the inside of his lower lip as he did so.
Maybe I'm wrong to be this paranoid, he thought as he continued his slow sneak toward the end of the hall and the living room. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe Rose managed to pry Abernathy off the couch and they both went shopping for nail polish or something. Maybe. And maybe there were pigs with wings vying with the pigeons for living space on the ledge outside his bedroom window.
The bedroom, as Jack had suspected, yielded no clues at all--the bed was in the disheveled state he had left it in that morning, there were still socks on the floor, and somehow his bottle of calcium tablets had tried to commit suicide by leaping off the nightstand. In other words, it looked like it had been ransacked, but in no way other than the normal one. He pulled back from the doorway, leaning up against the wall and raising his eyes to the ceiling. He so wanted this to be just some paranoid delusion, just the ugly remnants of the Big Shell incident and last month's debacle, but...but...but the icy little demon-feet running up and down his spine wouldn't let him think that. His senses might be wrong, he might be hallucinating the hollow silence of the apartment, but the sixth sense hadn't ever been wrong, in or out of combat.
As he dropped his gaze from the featureless ceiling, breathing out a prayer to silent heaven, something on the floor in the living room caught his eye. In the afternoon light from the glass patio doors, he admitted, the hand-shaped shadow could be cast by anything. Except every moment he stared at it made it look less and less like a shadow and more and more like a real hand, outflung as if in desperation across the floor of the living room. He peeled himself off the wall, the chill feeling at the base of his spine creeping around to nestle in the pit of his stomach.
The hand resolved into a wrist as Jack inched down the last few feet of the hall, then an arm--a thin, feminine arm, he noted nervously--was visible as his angle with the doorway changed. Then a shoulder, and then the brilliant crimson stain of a widening puddle of blood on the off-white carpet--
Jack snapped out of his tense posture, instantly upright, jerking his head away from the ugly vision as if to deny that it was happening. His teeth clenched reflectively, the pain of his bitten lip reminding him volubly that this was not another nightmare but the real thing. And, as it was the real thing, it was not very likely that just by pretending he had not just seen what he thought he saw there on the floor would make it go away. He glanced back again, the chill unfolding itself now into full, yammering fear at the back of his mind. Hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, bloodstain...oh hell. Oh hell, oh please, not this, not now, it's not real...
Throwing caution to the winds, he darted the last few feet to the room, impelled by shrieking fear and nervous energy. There, in the warm and golden light of late afternoon, was exactly what he had not wanted to see: Rosemary, sprawled facedown with limbs askew in a puddle of blood. She was also, the controlling, analytical part of Jack's mind noted, very, very still. Humans did not normally lay that still, in fact. Even when tranquilized, most still trembled slightly with inspiration and exhalation as they lay on the floor like that...
"Rose--!" The outcry startled Jack; it was his own voice that spoke, but her name had forced itself from his lips almost of its own accord. "Rose! Rose, answer me! Are you all right? Rose! ROSE!" He dropped to a crouch beside her, still nattering on even as the analytical part of him directed him to take her by the shoulders and roll her over. "Rose, answer me. This isn't funny. Are you hurt? What's wrong? Talk to me!"
The scene only became worse as he got her on her back; even the fearful voice that somehow managed to speak from his traitor mouth had to shut up as it noted the nasty mess the right side of her neck had become. Someone with a butcher knife, came the analytical thought. Or a hollow-point round, that clipped her aorta and lodged itself somewhere else. She must have bled to death. Which explained the spatters of blood on the furniture and elsewhere; arterial blood pressure, continued the analysis, was strong enough to spurt several yards if an artery were suddenly cut.
The blood and body were still warm, too, and the streamers of blood elsewhere had yet to congeal. Obviously, the killing had taken place perhaps minutes ago, maybe even when he was so cheerily climbing the stairs; the shooter had a silenced pistol, though he didn't yet know what type it might have been. A revolver, an ugly little voice spoke from the back of his mind. Colt. Single-Action Army. But he didn't know if such a gun could take a suppressor, though the hollow-point rounds were a distinct possibility. Perhaps a SOCOM, or an unmodified M9--
Your girlfriend has just been murdered, and you're worrying about the damn pistol that shot her? What the hell are you, some kind of monster?! Why aren't you screaming and sobbing right about now?! At least show a little feeling, you heartless bastard! A part of his combat mindset reached out and squelched the softer, emotional bits of him. Sure, she was dead, and that would hurt a hell of a lot later, but right now, one of his team was down and the enemy was--he glanced up briefly, toward the patio; the doors weren't shattered by gunshot--inside his territory. Grief was for after Jack found the rat-bastard and killed him before he could kill Jack.
He reached out, closing Rose's horrified eyes and rising slowly from his crouch. Sweeping the floor with his gaze, he noted the presence of a gun--his SOCOM--several feet from her outstretched right hand. The clip was missing; it was useless to him, as it probably had been to her. At least he could hope she'd had the presence of mind to try and shoot her attacker; the clip may have been removed later, and a crippled adversary with a gun was more promising than a healthy one.
And--there, beyond the fallen SOCOM, his first clue to the person he faced. Footprints dented the carpet, each heel-print bright red from Rose's blood. Whoever it was probably wasn't used to killing, hadn't realized the kind of mess it left. A newcomer to the arts of war, Jack noted disparagingly. And hopefully--such a grievous mistake neatly ruled out a number of his enemies, unless one of them had decided to toy with him; but that didn't seem to be a part of their style. Now, as to where the parti-colored footprints led...
Jack followed the line with his eyes; they did not, as he initially suspected, lead to the patio and freedom, but to...his...chair? It was high-backed and currently faced the patio; if someone was still sitting in it, it was impossible to tell. Whoever it was, if he was still there, had been silent witness to Jack's initial outburst. That was enough to warrant he do a little torturing of his own before putting this bastard down.
It was three strides from Rosemary's broken-doll body to the end table, and another two to the chair. Along the way, Jack grabbed the nearest weapon to hand--an empty vase of leaded crystal, with wicked facets--and held it before him, confident he could break his adversary's arm before any weapon was raised against him. He stepped around the chair, adrenaline neatly obliterating any need to steel himself, and spoke.
"All right, you motherloving son-of-a-bitch, you got her but you sure as hell--Abernathy?!"


Creative contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.