Disclaimer: I don't own Metal Gear Solid (or anything Metal Gear for that matter,) and I don't own Max Steel. My profit from this is an exact figure of zero dollars.

Metal Gears, Nanoprobes, and a Word from our Sponsor

Chapter VII

by Alhazred

madarab20@hotmail.com

http://www.rockettownonline.com/~alhazred

We're all born with an expiration date; nothing lasts forever. -Solidus Snake

"Remind me to thank Dad for this."

"And every other toy he gives us," Kat took the keycard he offered. A small "5" was inscribed on the clear plastic.

"Wish I had level five when I first went into the real thing," Snake took another. Josh kept the last for himself. "Would've made it easier. So neither of you have actually been through this thing, eh?"

"Sadly, no," Kat sighed. Clearly, she would've loved to experience the challenge of a run-through of Shadow Moses. "But even if we had, there's no guarantee these jokers haven't changed anything around anyway."

"Right," Josh added. "But we've got nothing better to go on, so we might as well start looking around like they haven't."

Snake thought on it. "One of us should check the Metal Gear hanger."

"I'll handle it," Max nodded. "I can go down the communications tower and right through the blast furnace. Kat?"

"I'll go in on the tower too," he answered. "Check out the storage building while you go the other way."

Max handed out headsets; with Berto and Otacon out of the loop, bothering with the more direct methods of communication would've just been a hindrance. Snake, however, had taken more then one different set of goggles.

---

Otacon had taken to obsessively cleaning his glasses as he sat in the corner to fight back the madness of boredom. Ocelot was either busier then he had planned on being, or he was being very passive in his techniques, letting them sweat it out for awhile...

Every now and then, Berto would shiver a little under the bedcovers, maybe pull Otacon's coat tighter. Otacon, for his part, didn't know if he was asleep or not. But if he was, he probably wasn't having the best nap of his life.

Trying the Codec again, Otacon let out a scoff. There was no escaping the conclusion that the walls had been reinforced with radio shielding, but he didn't have anything better to do then try.

"No luck on comms?"

His head snapping up, Otacon met Berto's gaze. His eyes were barely open, but open nonetheless. He wasn't shivering as much anymore, but his voice was still barely over a whisper.

"Not a bit. Did you sleep?"

"No," Shaking his head as if he didn't care to think about it, Berto sat up. "How long..."

"Been a half-hour, no Ocelot." Starting to wipe his glasses off again, Otacon stood up. "No way outta here either..."

"Is this blood?"

Blink. Blink again. Otacon looked at his lab coat on Berto's shoulders; the latter was staring at a spot on the side, a faint strain so light he hadn't noticed before.

Otacon's face fell. "Yeah..."

"Sorry," Berto added, realizing he'd gone off on quite the tangent as well as hitting it on the mark.

"Oh, it's... not mine," Otacon said, putting his glasses back on. "Vamp stabbed... someone. Died in my arms. Kinda turned into a reminder after that, you know? It... reminds me of her."

Berto wished he hadn't asked. "Oh... sorry..."

"Eh, stop apologizing." His eyes traveling to the floor, Otacon went on. "It's a good reminder... Snake always says you have to find something to believe in before you can pass anything on to the world. I... believe in helping people who aren't at the right place and time to help themselves. Though right now we're the ones in the wrong place, remind me to ask Snake to teach me some of his tricks. You hungry?"

"Three eggs over easy, please," Berto tried to smile. His eyes hung at half-mast; he just didn't have the strength to do much of anything.

"Well," Otacon dug into his pants pockets, coming out with a pair of dull silver wrappers with exceedingly simple labels. "Today's specials are 'Bland,' and the French variant, 'Le Bland.'"

Otacon was nice enough to walk over and hand him one, doubting Berto would care for a game of catch at the moment. Grateful for that, Berto looked at the little wrapping; on the bottom was a box of nutrition facts, and on the top it simply read, "C-Ration."

"Snake got me on these damn things," Otacon pulled his open, looking at the little nutrient food like it was a three-year old cookie. Of course, the normal, fresh state of existence for a C-Ration was like a three-year old cookie. "If there's any taste... hey maybe you should take small- never mind."

Berto had already bitten off half in one bite.

As if to taunt them, the guard started having his usual stomach troubles, leaving them once more with no supervision, but no way out.

"That guy really gets around," Otacon said to himself. "There must be a way out of here..."

"Is he gone?" Slowly, Berto forced himself to his feet, swallowing the last of his ration. He was wobbly, but he could stand on his own now. "Completely?"

"Yep," Otacon watched the guard make a mad dash through Ocelot's torture room until he was out of sight.

Without hesitation, Berto dug into his back pocket.

Otacon blinked. "Where'd you get that?"

"Vamp took it from me. I palmed it from the table when Ocelot let me flop," Berto grinned, pressing the button on the nanosword. His face turned to relief when the blade coalesced and showed no signs of being tampered with.

He'd planned on testing the blade's theoretical capability to slice metal on the door, but before he could do so, the door tore off its hinges seemingly of it's own volition.

And Vamp walked around the doorframe as if he'd been in the hall, but nothing had been behind the windows. His eyes met Berto's as he turned. "I hear a bird calling my name..."

"You..." Otacon started, his voice seething with rage to the point where witty remarks weren't entirely forthcoming. As far as he was concerned, Vamp was responsible for their entire situation, let alone what he'd done in the past. "YOU!"

Before Berto knew it, Otacon had snatched the nanosword from his hand and dived at Vamp with it pointed at his heart.

Vamp caught him by the wrist and lifted him off his feet long before he was even close. The blade wavering harmlessly away from either of them, Vamp yanked his arm further up, his face stopping just short of Otacon's neck. "Fortunately for you, the intelligent don't have much of a taste. Funny, isn't it? I feel you should know, the equipment in your falsetto lab is entirely functional."

He tossed Otacon away; Otacon, in turn, bumped into Berto, and Berto almost fell over trying to shove Otacon back from falling on top of him. No sooner had this finished then a rectangular black object plastered with stickers of bikini-clad anime women flew through the air and promptly hit Otacon in the face before he caught it.

It took the both of them a few seconds to realize it was Otacon's laptop.

And Vamp was gone.

"I am now, officially, confused."

"Me too," Otacon added, opening his laptop as if looking at the keyboard would teleport them back to the D.O.X. "Falsetto lab... what?"

Light dawned in Berto's eyes, and they opened wider in revelation then they had been in mere consciousness since Ocelot had let him down. "This isn't Shadow Moses, this is the training course N-Tek built."

"And if the equipment works," Otacon snapped his fingers, "we can send out a big fat distress call. Oh... ahem, here..."

With that, Otacon handed the nanosword back. Weapons never sat well in his hands, really, but even a prestigious otaku such as him could only take so much from the blood-sucking bastard that had put a knife through his sister.

Berto didn't ask. He was out the door and into Ocelot's domain first, wasting no time in collecting his other items and peeling off Otacon's coat in favor of his sweater. The fuzzy cotton stung more against the dampness of his serious burns, but he didn't care, the less people could see... the less his friends could see, the better.

For Otacon's part, he didn't much mind the prospect of putting his coat through the washer again. If he could be a psychiatrist's nightmare and draw strength from a stain of his sister's blood, why not add a fellow scientist's pain?

He did, however, make a mental note to ask Berto why he could suddenly walk on his ankle.

---

Ocelot's arm was twitching.

Psycho had to admit that he liked Ocelot's style. The guy was a sufficient sociopath to demand nothing less.

But Psycho didn't care for Liquid Snake. Liquid was such a poser, as far as he was concerned, blabbering on about his drama and genes and whatnot. It didn't help that Ocelot either never thought to or never wanted to remove his EM shielding when he felt Liquid taking over.

But for the moment, that wasn't a problem. "What's the plan, Boss?"

Making one final adjustment to the army-brown combat gear that wrapped around his lower legs, King stood up. "The three of you merely have to make sure Ocelot's 'prisoners' play their roll. I shall handle the wayward Mr. Steel."

Slightly agitated, Psycho growled. He wanted to pound Max's face in himself, but he would settle for Solid Snake if he bothered coming to this building. He watched King open a drawer in the desk and retrieve a gun belt. It held two almost identical weapons, one black and inscribed with "Ombra" on the barrel, the other gray and reading "Luce."

"I still say you're insane for taking seven-round Desert Eagles into a fight," Ocelot chuckled.

"You're one to talk. Besides," King smiled, tapping his sunglasses with the front sight of one of his guns. "Infinite ammo."

Roaring with laughter, Ocelot followed the others out of the room.

King walked to his desk. One of his hands played across a panel of controls on one side, each entry made with confidence and certainty. A few seconds after he received the status report he so desired, the wall's monitor came to life with the S3 AI once more.

"You have made a mistake," the Colonel said.

He switched off with 'Rosemary.' "You've let us see, you've let us hear, and you have let us destroy you."

"We shall see," King raised a bottle of water in toast to them, and then he sat in his chair as if nothing was wrong while a thirty-minute countdown began to tick its way down to zero on the monitors.

---

"Kat, what's up on your end?" Max whispered into his headset.

"Not a damn thing," her voice came back. "This part of the base is almost deserted."

Snake chuckled. "I'll buy that, there's only two of these goons over here... looks like they're shorthanded."

With that, he deftly avoided the obligatory security camera and dashed down the stairs. Taking a second to look at the guards before hiding behind said staircase, he decided N-Tek definitely had too much money when it was being thrown around the espionage gig, the reproduction was so precise it was scary. The only fault was a blatant overuse of the N-Tek logo on walls, doors and other things, though he choose to think it was due to the designer being smart and wanting to make sure agents drew a big black line between reality and fantasy.

Raiden seriously needed this for therapy.

With that happy thought, Snake took an opening and made it to the elevator, reaching the next floor without a hitch. Unfortunately, the door to Revolver Ocelot's sanctum didn't slide open when he approached it, card in hand, and it didn't take him long to notice it had been replaced with a normal, albeit large door that had a normal lock.

So he continued down the hall and into the cellblock; whatever guard on duty must've been able to get in, unless Ocelot kept the only key. The realism took another climb, the place was as gritty and poorly cleaned as he remembered, that was for certain.

The moans of agony coming from the bathroom caught his attention immediately. When that particular door opened and a soldier stepped out, Snake wasted no time in popping him with a tranquilizer in the neck. "I should let that guy get a hit in sometime."

One of the cells was open, but the other was closed and probably locked. Maybe Ocelot had someone in the other room right now. That thought in mind, Snake plucked the key ring off the guard's belt. It was simple enough, there were only three keys, one for each cell and one for the door in the hall.

This scene was familiar. Except the last time it had played out, the very guard Snake had just knocked out cold had been smashed over the head and promptly had his clothes stolen by Meryl.

So he dropped to the ground and crawled to the wall, passing underneath the range of sight provided by the slit in the door. With that done, he hugged the wall and stepped toward the door, reaching an arm out with key in hand.

The first key he chose went in and turned with a rattle that, under any other circumstances, would be unnoticeable. Stealth missions tended to make pin drops completely unacceptable.

The cell's occupant, apparently female, let out a startled gasp and Snake could hear sudden, quick footsteps. Whoever it was tried to quietly step to the door, hoping to hear or see better.

Holstering the M9 and pulling his SOCOM, Snake flung the door open, reached inside, grabbed a handful of clothes, and pulled the woman out against one mother of a shriek, gun aimed at her head instantly, just in case.

He was glad for the last part when he looked her over: cheesy Otacon-like labcoat, long hair, part Asian, eyes squeezed shut and hands instinctively raised... it didn't take him long to realize whom he'd just freed. "Naomi."

---

"Um, Snake..."

No answer. Unanswered radio calls were getting to be a major annoyance lately, Max decided. Snake couldn't have picked a better time to go radio-silence. Max had made ti to the maintenance bay. There was certainly enough room for Metal Gear RAY, especially considering the thing was slightly smaller then the REX model.

But the bay was totally empty as far as giant walking battle tanks went, so Max turned and doubled back. "Well, this was worth the effort."

He almost ran right into a pair of guards that seemed to be waiting for him around a corner. One pointed an AK-74u at his chest, the other had a plasma rifle. Taking a step back, Max looked over his shoulder only to see another pair of guards cut him off, these armed with shock sticks. "Um... hi."

---

He couldn't bring himself to be surprised at anything this woman did anymore.

Her expression softening, she cracked open her eyes. "Snake?"

"Not the tooth fairy," he answered, pistol almost touching her forehead.

"You know you can put the gun... down... eh heh..."

For what it was worth, she looked genuinely terrified.

It wasn't worth much. "Dream on. I thought someone broke you out of prison."

"Didn't you?" she wailed. "I went to sleep in one and woke up in here!"

"Nastasha seems to think so," Snake shook his head. "Wasn't me. Now, you have five seconds to explain what you're doing here and another two to come up with a good reason why I shouldn't make the contents of your head decorate that wall, considering what's swimming in my blood."

"Um, because..." she stammered, blinking down the barrel of the gun's suppressor. She shut her eyes again, flinched, and spat out, "because I gave the ninja all the information you need for a cure!"

"You know the ninja," Snake said; it wasn't a question, he wanted to know whether she liked it or not. Why she would be that eager to help him didn't seem like priority information at the moment.

"Well no not really just... he appeared a few days ago knocked out the guard and asked me what he could give you so you'd trust him and I told him where the data was," she continued babbling, clearly not used to having a gun touching her head. But then, seeing the battlefield as a child could have that effect on people.

Snake pulled the trigger. Click.

She jumped and then froze, eyes crossed and glued to the weapon.

"Damn lucky I kept the safety on," he growled. "Get the hell outta here."

She was happy to oblige. Snake leaned against the wall and sighed once she was out the door, a cigarette soon in his mouth. Living on borrowed time could be stressful. "Billions of women in the world and the only ones I meet are the ones that try to kill me..."

Naomi, on the other hand, checked back to see if Snake had followed her into the hallway and, noticing the lock on Ocelot's door had been sliced through, was quick to hop onto the elevator. Her face twisted in exasperation, she muttered, "I hate that defenseless chick act..."

But Snake was fairly annoyed that the other door had been totally busted when he went out with his newfound keys in hand. He was even more annoyed when a quick search turned up nothing. If Berto and Otacon had been in there, he'd missed them by five seconds.

---

The trek across buildings had been short and reasonably hazard free. Berto had insisted on stopping at the armory for a pair of thermal goggles first, remembering the minefield in Nastasha's book, but there weren't any Claymores in sight.

Otacon was just happy that the climate wasn't mimicking Alaska at the moment. The doorway into the storage area from the tank station was only raised a foot-and-a-half, however. He remembered having to go through that once on Shadow Moses.

So they crawled under and stood up on the other side, first thought in both their minds being to hide from the few guards patrolling.

And suddenly, the ninja uncloaked not five feet in front of them and drew his sword. His metal voiced rasped with a newfound malice. "Gentleman, I'm afraid I must now blatantly demonstrate that I've been playing you for complete idiots."

"Figures," Otacon shrugged, going for sarcasm to stay calm as a pair of armed guards ducked out from behind the piles of what were, hopefully, fake nuclear warheads. "Who trusts a ninja, anyway?"

On a hunch, Berto put the thermal goggles on for a second, chuckled, and tossed them away. To thermal vision, the ninja had no right arm. "And I trust you even less. Smiley."

"So you finally figured it out. Well good," the ninja sheathed his sword, prompting the soldiers to step closer and level their guns. He touched a switch on the underside of his left forearm and the exoskeleton faded away under a glow of purplish energy like some warped-reality version of Josh's Transphasics. It left only the sword on Psycho's back and the brace with the switch. It wasn't entirely unlike Max's Biolink. Even the metal tinge in his voice vanished.

But his arm was still most certainly metal, a fact demonstrated by his claw folding down. "Because quite frankly, I am damn sick and tired of this sneaking-around shit!"

The snickt of a blade being pulled caught their ears. "Can I have this please, thank you!"

Psycho spun on his heels just in time for Kat to smash him in the head with the butt of his own sword. She hit flesh just behind his jaw, and Psycho tumbled away. Not to be deterred, Kat followed through and sliced the sword down, cutting one of the soldiers' guns in half before kicking him into the other.

"Kat?" Berto blinked.

"Don't just stand there," she eyed the farther guards approaching, "Move!"

"Good idea!" Otacon pulled him by the arm toward the stairs at the left of the room, there were no guards on the upper walkway that led to the elevator.

Watching the guards, Kat flipped the sword around in her hand and hurled it like a javelin. It went clean through the heart of one of the soldiers, impaling him to the hilt before he even hit the ground.

To her side, Psycho hopped to his feet and went for her neck with his claw. But Kat was far quicker then the cyborg and crouched down under it as the metal clanged shut. A kick up to his chest knocked Psycho back a few feet, and she promptly took the opening to jump and kick him in the face.

On the other side of the room, Berto and Otacon made it to the elevator, something that didn't escape Psycho's notice. He watched the doors close, turned back to Kat, raised his arm... and touched the panel on his gauntlet. His optic camo came on, and Psycho, cackling the entire time, vanished into the room.

---

The elevator made a light 'bing' noise when it came to a stop on the second basement floor. Otacon and Berto ran a few steps out before realizing how ridiculous they were being.

"Wait, Kat's here," Berto frowned, pulling his glasses off to wipe the sweat from his face.

"Which means Snake is here and Max is here, we don't need to call for help," Otacon faceflopped.

Try as he might, Berto couldn't make it add up and he was having trouble thinking straight to begin with. "Ocelot... Psycho told Ocelot 'they're here.' He knew they were here, so what did he bait us down here for?"

"Information?" Otacon thought aloud. "Hell... we won't know until we look... if this is just a training facility there shouldn't be any poison gas in that corridor."

"There shouldn't have been a working torture chamber either..."

Fortunately, Otacon had been right and they had a clear run to the lab. He hesitated on the thought that it was his lab, it really wasn't, but still, there were memories... he'd first met Sniper Wolf being shoved into his lab, after all.

Berto's face lit up for the first time since he awoke on Ocelot's floor when he caught site of the electronics in the room. It was the best-equipped lab he'd seen since the Feds had torn apart his Ops room at N-Tek.

"Total systems access," Otacon raised a finger and looked around, the memory a little fuzzy. He pointed to one of the terminals near the far wall. "That one."

Berto was quick to sit down, the system was already active and going through an easily shut-down diagnostic. He started looking around while Otacon booted up his laptop on the theory he'd need it for something.

"Get out! You can't be in here!"

"That's interesting," Berto blinked. The voice was distinctly electronic and from the soundboard in the systems, but he hadn't seen anything like that coming.

"That sounds familiar," Otacon's brow furrowed. He couldn't quite place the voice, maybe someone he'd only met in passing...

"This is more interesting," Berto's eyes darted across the information scrolling across the monitors. "Someone's hacked into the systems through a security hole..."

Squinting at a string of data, Otacon pointed a finger to the middle of the screen. "Look at that, that's no security hole, someone left an opening."

"A small one, just enough so it doesn't look intentional from outside." Berto thought on that for a second. "I know Psycho doesn't have the brains to do that..."

Otacon confirmed his suspicion. "Neither does Ocelot, and Vamp, Vamp's had his brains blown out a few times, but I doubt he does either. What's that?"

Bringing up the data, Berto made a face. He hated timers, especially when they were counting down. "That can't be a good thing."

"You are correct," that same voice said again. This time, it was followed by an image on screen; a pair of boxes drew themselves on either side, underneath the dwindling timer, and a face appeared in each. One was a middle-aged man wearing a colonel's uniform, the other a brown-haired young woman.

"Whoa!" Otacon yelled, jumping back from the surprise, eyes wide with curiosity. "Not possible."

"Quite, quite possible," Colonel told them.

"Who are you?" Berto said, thinking it quite obvious there was a microphone somewhere, maybe a hidden camera.

Colonel turned into a x-ray image for a moment. "We are everywhere."

"We are nowhere," Rose added. "We are everything this nation is, and everything it will be."

"And you should not be here," Colonel was adamant, his head turning as of to look at the countdown ticking away on the screen. It was down to five minutes. "You will die, and you would have been a good puppet."

"You would have been easy to manipulate. And you," Otacon froze; something about the way 'Rose' turned her 'head,' the program's emulation of movements like looking right at him gave him the creeps. "You are easy to manipulate, but now you will die."

"This coming from a stupid AI progr- die? Wait, what IS that?"

"I know what it is," Berto drawled. Already, he was madly trying commands and on-the-fly coding to bypass the lockouts and get the timer. "There's a real nuclear warhead here, isn't there?"

"Yes," both of the AI's personalities answered.

"A mistake by the he which orchestrated," Rose told them.

"He believed he could orchestrate our demise," Colonel said. "Imagine! Influence us? We are the Patriots."

"What?" Otacon said, more then a little confused at the nonsensically of it all. "But you're just a program! A program that should be gone, I might add..."

Rose gave the answer. "Only GW is gone; a minor setback. We are still here, and we still control. We are the reason for your lives, your jobs, your livelihoods, you all exist because of us, and we ensure it goes on, no matter what you think."

"Like hell," Otacon pushed his glasses up.

"Oh, they may be right," Berto slammed a fist down, bringing it up and biting down on his knuckles to focus on something while he thought. "I can't turn the thing off, they're locking me out wherever I go..."

The timer was down to three minutes.

"Please," Colonel raised an eyebrow, as if he were no more then fascinated. "Try to survive. The behavior of humans trying to scamper away from death is..."

Rose's eyes rolled back. "Intriguing."

"Screw you," Otacon closed his eyes, trying to think. "Wait.... I got it!"

Berto picked up on the same idea, and they both exclaimed, "Hack the AI!"

Except Berto wasn't entirely sure even that would work. "Wait, I can't do that in... two and a half minutes, something this advanced?"

"Neither can I," Otacon dashed over to a familiar looking locker and flung it open, tossing equipment out of it like a Loony Toon. "Just get access!"

Not having any better idea, Berto worked on that. The AI was easy enough to trace; it only had one way to connect to the system here and only one way back. Its actual security was massive, but not the best he'd seen at all.

At the very back of the locker was the item Otacon sought for. Networking cable in hand, he ran back to the computers, dropped to the floor in a slide, knocked an access panel off and shoved one end into an interface port, plugging the other into his laptop as soon as he was on his feet.

"What are you doing?" Rose demanded.

"You can't reach us," Colonel said. "You sister helped make us what we are, and she was far superior to you!"

"Shut up," Otacon roared, calling up another file his sister had built. He didn't mind the comparison, in fact, he'd rather Emma be remembered like that: strong, good at what she did, brilliant... but he found it more then a little repulsive that this thing dared even mention her.

Rose cocked her head. "And you won't destroy us. You can't destroy us. We shape the human race, we know what is best for you because none of you do yourselves. Without us, you have no guidance, nothing to look up to. Ocelot may have betrayed us, but omnipresence gives us infinite options, infinite choices."

"That's God you're talking about," Berto deadpanned, putting more effort into his hacking then his feelings on the matter.

For once, the AI almost seemed at a loss for words. "No... we are..."

"Loud and obnoxious," Otacon cut Rose off. "Are you getting this file?"

"Just did," Berto said. A sense of accomplishment on his face, he clapped his hands together once and gave a thumbs-up. "And I got through."

"Plant the file right in their system, execute it and cross your fingers."

"You must not," Colonel wasn't pleading, not in the strictest sense, but it was obvious that he was scared; if he could experience 'fear' in the human sense, that is. "If you kill us, all will be lost."

Rose jumped in. "If you take us offline, you will turn our position into a vacuum. You will have no guidance, only the overload of information that grows and power-mad, flawed people baying for authority. Consider your actions carefully."

"You wanna know what I consider? I consider what Nietzsche said," Berto pressed 'enter.' "'God is dead!'"

The AI was instantly hit when the upload competed. The images flickered and their speech became garbled and laced with gibberish. Berto flipped the monitor off.

Meanwhile, it was Otacon's turn to nearly type faster then his keyboard could handle. But he had plenty of experience in things involving the word 'nuclear,' and with the AI rapidly breaking down and unable to keep him out, it wasn't long before he made one last keystroke, fell backwards into a chair, and let out a triumphant "woo!"

He'd disarmed the weapon; the timer froze at forty-three seconds.

This amused Berto. "I'm officially impressed. Stopping it long before one second? That's skill."

"Feel free to bow down and lick my boots," Otacon smiled, his eyes counting the tiles on the ceiling. Snake be damned; the rush produced by pulling off an impossible h4x0r had to be better then snapping someone's neck, if only by a little.

"What was that program?" Berto asked.

"My sister made it," Otacon said. "It's a long story, but, see, there was this AI called 'GW' and we used that virus to kill it. It had those same personifications, and they were specially made to fool one person, so I figured one of these AI's must be based on the other..."

"Well hell," Berto gestured to the screens, "that thing definitely worked."

"Damn right, that's... my sister... smart girl. Good thing too, I couldn't take that Patriot... babbling... crap... Oh my God, of course," Otacon fell back into the chair, his head swimming. "That thing is... was... and that blood sucking bastard led us right here to do his own dirty work for him... Ocelot is a high-ranking Patriot, the AI said 'Ocelot betrayed us.' Betrayed us. 'We are the Patriots…'"

"You're saying... what, that thing is how they run the country," Berto looked at him, awaiting the pieces of information he wasn't privy too.

Otacon laughed at the absurdity of his revelations, feeling every bit like a mad scientist as he spun slowly in his chair. "Part of that virus is made to erase information about the Patriots, right? So I went over the program, I mean, if it's supposed to eliminate the information about the Wisemen's Committee, those are the highest Patriots, anyway, if it's supposed to eliminate the information then it has to know what to eliminate, right?"

"So you found their names on the virus itself," Berto answered. It was what he'd have done; a smart little trick every good hacker resorted to when the owners of information didn't know just how many places their data was stored.

"Yeah, but they've been dead for a hundred years, give or take a few" Otacon's hands went to the back of his head and he tried pulling hair right out of his scalp, but it didn't actually work. "There were even other people on the list. Most of the actual founders were the original Sons of Liberty. Sam Adams, John Hancock... I thought it was just BS, some stupid hoax, but it's not. The Patriots censor everything, including technology. The general public is so far behind in certain things, the mapping of the human genome, and probably computers..."

Berto caught on to what Otacon was getting at, but he couldn't accept it. He couldn't believe it. "Are you saying what I think you are? That's... I don't have a word for that."

"Neither do I," Otacon muttered. "And Vamp wanted us to get in and kill it... and the damn thing even warned us about it. That's why lower ranking Patriots get their orders through middlemen, no one could handle knowing what it all comes from."

"And since no one knows," Berto finished, horrified at what they'd done, "anyone can fill the hole; we just handed the United States to Psycho and his buddies."

"Christ, we should've let it kill us. Let's get outta here."

Berto couldn't have put it better himself. Closing his laptop and stuffing it under his arm, Otacon was quick to follow him to the door.

Except someone had decided to stand quietly on the other side, clearly waiting for them. Otacon let out a squeak as Ocelot snickered and pulled a gun; Berto, on the other hand, lost it... for just a second. In that second, he threw a punch square in Shalashaska's face and broke his nose before the marksman could even take aim.

Ocelot stumbled back, grabbing at his shattered nose in a vain attempt to stop the onslaught of blood. Berto didn't even feel the splat of red on his knuckles. "Revenge of the nerds, Cabron," he growled, breaking into a run with down the hall with Otacon.

But he'd really only succeeded in making Ocelot angry, and Ocelot lunged for them and swung his arm down, the butt of his colt hitting Berto square on the head an instant before he would've been too far away. Otacon skidded to a stop and looked back. Berto went down like a demolished building, but Ocelot suffered the same fate from following through too much with his swing.

Before Otacon could help Berto up, he suddenly found some sort of force wrapping around his waist.

Psycho dropped his stealth when he yanked Otacon off of his feet, claw fit snugly around the scientist. "Ya shouldn't piss off the Eggheads," Psycho rolled his eyes, chuckling at the blood running down Ocelot's chin. "They hit harder then your good ol' days."

---

"Wow, didn't save any for me, eh?"

"Huh?" Kat blinked, giving one last right hook to the soldier she was holding to his feet. "Took ya long enough, Steel."

Looking around at the six prone guards, Max raised an eyebrow. "Hey, I had nine chasing me through the service tunnel!"

He pointed a thumb to his back; Kat looked past him at an open doorway built into the wall, leading down into a simple corridor illuminated by hanging light bulbs.

"Well, that's the fun part about simulations," she smiled, grabbing a MAC-10 from one of the downed guards, "they always have shortcuts built in."

He shot her a look in response to the lack of sympathy, but it was in good fun. "Any luck?"

"Actually, yes," she remembered, turning and dashing for the stairs. Max wasn't far behind. "I sent our geniuses down the elevator. I can't raise Snake, though, comms won't work."

"Same here," Max plucked the headset from his ear, looking at it for a second before shoving it in a pocket. "My guess is they've got radio jammed."

---

Somehow, Otacon had managed to keep clutching his laptop after Psycho had grabbed him, carried him to the commander's office, and tossed him at one of the chairs placed against the left wall. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to stop the chair from shattering under the impact and dumping him to the floor, and he wasn't able to stop his head from off the edge of the next chair and almost giving him a concussion.

Berto was just as bad off. Ocelot had kicked his knee from behind, and now that he was halfway to the ground, the marksman shoved a boot into his back and pushed him the rest of the way.

On the right side of the room, not far from the back door, Vamp stood on the wall, one foot on the other knee and arms outstretched in a perfect balance. "Some of your guests have arrived, King."

Ordinarily, Otacon would've been fascinated by Vamp's latest method of violating the laws of physics, but he found his attention wandering to the chair enclosed in the u-shaped desk at the end of the office.

Vamp had said 'King.' From what Otacon could barely see at his angle, the man most certainly had an eye patch underneath a pair of sunglasses, and his face almost looked like... "Solidus?"

"An educated guess, Dr. Emmerich," King watched the babbling, deteriorating AI for a few more seconds, then he turned off the monitors. "And not entirely off, but alas, no, my brother is quite dead."

Ocelot's arm twitched. Underneath him, Berto tried pushing himself up and was summarily rewarded with Ocelot's spur grinding into his burns, but he didn't feel it. He didn't feel anything except complete shock. He knew that voice. His own mouth whimpered, "can't be... you're gone..."

"I see you remember me, Dr. Martinez," John Dread turned in his chair, his eyes, ever hidden behind his thin shades, meeting with Berto's. His hands were gloved in finger-less leather, such a stark contrast to the sophistication his wardrobe always showed that Berto wondered if he was going through a midlife crisis. "Come now, Psycho's been presumed dead, what, six times?"

"Seven, Boss," Psycho scratched his head. "I think."

"Yes," Dread smiled, pulling an optical disc from his computers. "The point being, of course, is that death is a... minor setback."

"Too bad you don't know firsthand," Berto spat. What interested him above all else was Dread's face; the scarring across his flesh was almost completely gone, only a few dark lines remained from his brush with the reaper. A new, fresh scar came down from his forehead and cleanly bisected his right eye under the patch, curving elegantly toward the edge of his lips at the bottom.

"I do," Vamp rolled a knife around his fingers, his feet stepping off the wall and to the floor so slow it seemed as though he were in water. "Not much of a difference between the other side and this one, really."

With a soft chuckle, Dread pulled the shades from his face and tore the eye-patch away, discarding it to the floor before taking a gulp of water from a bottle on the table. His left eye glinted a soft brown, but his right eye was tinted a light, glossy magenta where it should've been white, like the suspension fluid he had used for his own nanotechnology research, or whatever bastardized copy of Transphasics that Psycho's armor used.

Berto didn't want to acknowledge the theories about what was going on that his brain started cooking up. He didn't like where this was going at all.

To the side, Otacon pulled himself up on a chair. "What did you mean... 'my brother is dead?'"

"Oh isn't it obvious?" Dread raised an eyebrow. He put the bottle of water down, flipping the cap like a coin once and tossing it away. "I'm a survivor of the 'Les Enfants Terribles' project too. The ultimate controlled experiment. Not that much came of it. As you can see, my outing to N-Tek was more disfiguring then dirt in the test tube."

Unflinching, Otacon pushed his glasses back up his nose. "So I guess even the Patriots' genetics were pretty crude back then."

"Brown wouldn't be my natural hair color otherwise," Dread chuckled. He put his shades back on. "Does Solid still dye his? I must confess I wouldn't want to remind myself of Liquid either... in any case, Ocelot, if you'd be so kind as to remove your heel from the good doctor's back and prepare our ride?"

Growling through his broken nose, Ocelot mashed Berto into the marble floor one last time for good measure and strode off through the backdoor. Determined to find an opening that would let him get the nanosword to Dread's neck, Berto dragged himself to his feet.

But he hadn't noticed that Vamp had moved behind him with his customary speed and stealth, abruptly feeling a cold hand grab his hair and yank his head to the side, an equally icy breath passing over is neck.

Still, Berto refused to give up. His hand moved farther down; if worse came to worse, he could always try shooting the Infinity Ice right into his veins. And it took him a few seconds to realize the rough surface scraping at his neck was Vamp's tongue and not sandpaper. Keeping his eyes locked on Dread and giving his all to pretend Vamp wasn't there, he kept the conversation going. "So what are you supposed to be, then? 'Colloid Snake?'"

"No, my brothers were given the good aliases," Dread replaced his sunglasses. "I renounced the name, as well as the heritage."

"Any objections, King?" Vamp asked, his other hand clamping down on Berto's wrist just before he could reach under his sweater for the injection gun.

"Not a one, we don't need them anymore. Do forgive me, Dr. Martinez," Dread sounded sincerely apologetic... for what it was worth. "But I find those that work for me are inspired to loyalty if they get what they want."

"Got that right, Boss," Psycho looked at Otacon, a deranged gleam in his red eyes. Otacon took a step back when Psycho's claw unfolded, but he had about as many places to go as Berto did.

Still behind his desk, Dread pulled Luce from his belt and cocked the slide. "I consider it unfinished business."

The office's front door slid open, and Kat's voice promptly filled the room. "Dodge this!"

Half-surprised and half-intrigued, Vamp tried to turn around, but Kat pulled the trigger on her lifted Ingram long before he could draw a knife.

Before the shot even sounded, Dread stepped to his right and swept his arm to the side.

The bullet rang out and sprayed dark blood from the front of Vamp's head, a red mist that settled and stained the pristine marble. His grip on Berto softened and released, and the man fell to the floor, eyes wide in death.

Behind the back door, something metal clanged against metal. Once, twice, bouncing and banging. Dread's hand swiped over a particular spot on his desk, a motion sensor that lit up for just a second as the door exploded inward, slamming into Psycho and knocking him to the floor.

Snake leapt from the smoke with M4 pointed at Dread's head, quite ready to fire. Filing away her shock at seeing Dread alive for later, Kat pointed her own gun at his chest and squeezed the trigger.

And the light fixture above his head swung down, dumping the contents of the secret compartment it hid. Dread caught the elegant broadsword perfectly by the handle in his free hand as it fell. The massive blade was no Japanese katana or wakizashi, more like something a knight in medieval times would use, but nevertheless, he swung around and deflected the few remaining rounds from Kat's Ingram and promptly turned to shield himself from Snake's barrage.

Turning the sword with an air of elegance, Dread deflected every bullet in the M4's magazine; Snake went for a reload, and Dread took the opportunity to raise the heavy sword above his head. Particles of air around it shined blue and drew towards the high-frequency blade.

Snake cocked his gun as Dread brought his weapon down in a clumsy swing, unable to keep it steady with his other hand still holding Luce. The sword half-sliced and half-smashed his desk clear in half, and the bullets had no sooner left Snake's M4 then Dread was speeding through the shattered wood and across the room on the same leg gear that Solidus had had on his combat suit.

Kat was caught completely off guard. Had they been playing Hockey, Dread would've been penalized instantly for checking her so hard that she was knocked out the door. When it slid closed, Dread swung his sword once more, the very end slicing the card sensor on the doorframe, effectively locking Kat out.

Snake stepped along the edges of the flames Dread's gear made, watching them die down until he had a clear shot. But Dread simply dashed over to the side and threw Berto back to the floor, finally aiming Luce... but not at Snake, not at Berto, not even at Otacon, at the empty air past the dying fires, towards the offices' back-left corner.

He pulled the trigger: once, twice, three times, adjusting his aim for each shot. On the third one, Berto made out a feint distortion moving through the air. The bullet grazed it and, Max, his stealth compromised, turned visable as he dived out of the way.

"Long time no see, Mr. Steel." Holstering Luce, Dread raked the tip of his sword across the floor and wrapped both hands tight around the handle, the leather of his gloves crunching against it. "A word of advice; don't snort in contempt of your enemies while sneaking up on them."

Bringing the sword up, Dread pulled back. Berto looked from Max to Dread and back again.

"Max!" He didn't need to think; the nanosword was in his hand and turned on in an instant, and tumbling through the air as the blade formed a second later.

Dread blazed his trail across the room once more, his sword already in motion as he skidded toward Max. But Max, in turn, had gone into turbo mode at the same time. Just before Dread's HF blade struck, he caught the nanosword and swung.

The two swords met in the middle of their blows, one crackling with light blues in protest at its inertia being fought against and the other blazing green through the air, reliant on the suitably enhanced strength of its wielder to fight the massive weight forced down on it.

"Can't you die right?" Max growled, shoving the broadsword back to Dread's face. Dread staggered and used the motion to spin around, the swords meeting with an almost unnaturally high pitched clang over and over.

"Now you're just stealing lines," Dread skidded backward a few feet. He cocked his head towards Snake, noticing, among other things, that he had just shoved a grenade into his M4. "Enjoying your status as a role model, Solid?"

Max took the opening and kicked Dread clear into the corner before dropping out of turbo mode. His HF blade tumbled out of his hands, but it went with him and he picked it right back up. "Getting old, Dread? I guess the attention span's the first thing to go."

"Hardly."

"Kid, get outta the way!" Snake called. It wasn't a request; Max jumped to the side, clear of Snake's grenade only by a second when it shot from his rifle.

And Dread, a smile on his face, tossed his heavy blade ahead of himself, ran up the wall and around the corner before rocketing off, far clear of the ensuing explosion and catching his sword in midair to boot. He skidded to a stop at the other end of the room, blocked for the moment by the flames trailing him.

Snake pushed another grenade into the M4, fully intent on trying for a second shot. Before he could take aim, however, he found his arms bound by something large, tight and metal that promptly lifted him from the ground.

"It is four-thirty in the morning," Psycho voiced, disturbingly calm despite the mass of black-and-blue marks covering his normal arm and head from the impact of the door. "I have not slept since the fertilizer insanity yesterday, and I am so. Not. In the mood. For bullshit."

With Dread currently out-of-bounds, Max decided to focus all of his attention on Psycho for the moment. But he didn't get the chance. Something distinctly plastic dropped to the floor behind him; the water bottle Dread had tossed away, the one nobody had noticed splash down on Vamp's chest.

The one no one noticed fall from Vamp as he stood, his face and hair soaked in watered-down blood. He grabbed Max before he could even turn, one hand keeping his arm and the nanosword away and the other pulling his head to the side.

Eyes wide, Max yelped when he felt Vamp's fangs sink into his neck. It didn't hurt, really, but he could feel it, and he could feel Vamp sucking like his veins were a drinking fountain. He tried to get away or force him back, but the bloodsucker held fast.

"And now who gets caught with his proverbial pants down," Dread commented, the inferno next to him giving out.

But he hadn't been referring to Max. Intoxicated by the taste of Max's enhanced blood, Vamp let his guard down for a brief moment, and in that moment, Berto and Otacon literally jumped into the fray and tackled him clear off of their compatriot.

Nearly falling on his face, Max caught himself from stumbling over and grabbed at his neck. Already, there were no signs of Vamp's snack left, the Max Probes having done their job, but he felt light-headed. It would be a minute before he felt the compensation for blood loss. All in all, he'd had worse... even if the experience itself was far down the 'worse' end.

Vamp was quick to toss the two scientists away, but he did nothing more save watch Snake struggle against Psycho's grip. Snake, on the other hand, had another idea; he could still reach his belt, and after twisting his arm in near unnatural ways, he managed to grab an honest-to-god stun gun he'd started to carry for this very occasion and jam it against Psycho's claw.

His sneaking suit didn't conduct electricity, but Psycho's arm sure did; the entire battery discharged into the metal and shocked the hell out of him, dropping Snake from his grip and dropping Psycho to the floor.

"And then there was one," Dread mused.

"Soon to be none," Snake drew his SOCOM, the M4 forgotten.

Dread held up the disc he'd taken for himself. "No matter, Solid. Since your friends were so kind as to utterly annihilate the Wisemen's Committee, lead me to the S3 data and Arsenal Gear, I'm quite finished. And, Brother... you'll never find the Gurlukovich child."

Snake didn't hear the second part. "Brother this!"

"I think not." Way ahead of Snake, Dread pressed his back to the wall underneath the monitors and flattened his hand to a single tile that stood out against the otherwise solid color.

"Stop him!" Max charged Dread, hearing the mechanism before anything could be seen, but he wasn't fast enough; the wall spun around like a classic secret door, taking Dread with it and sealing tight. There was no switch on this side.

From the floor, Psycho turned on his optic camouflage before he even stood back up, and he was gone out the back door. Vamp had vanished as well.

He would be too fast to catch if he used the exoskeleton, and he was smart enough to realize that, so Max turned and kicked the front door down; Kat was long gone, most likely getting the Helifoil. Unless some major changes had been made, Dread and his troupe wouldn't be able to get away without being seen from the air, and the three of them didn't need to talk it over to agree on it.

Both of them guessing they would have a helicopter, Snake and Max made a mad dash for the landing pad on the other side of the tank hanger.

And there they found Dread, standing alone on top of the large painted H, his back to them and one hand holding the other wrist behind his back as he looked out to the sea. His sword was stabbed into the ground at his right.

Snake walked around the cargo truck, flanking him as Max approached from behind, neither making an attempt to be silent.

"Your persistence is always impressive, Mr. Steel," Dread drew Luce and Ombra as he turned, one aimed at his genetic twin and one aimed at Max.

"You think you can hit me with that?"

"No," Dread answered. "It would be fun to try, but I simply don't have the time."

"You got that right," Max stepped toward him, almost daring him to take a shot.

But Dread simply holstered Ombra, his other weapon still aimed at Snake, a distinct laugh working its way up his throat. "The irony here is rich, Mr. Steel. It's disturbing how similar you are to your father, despite never knowing him."

Max knew, of course, that he meant Jim McGrath, and that made him even angrier. And then he wondered... "What do you know about my father?"

His eyebrows raised, Dread honestly felt surprised. Keeping one eye on Max and one on his brother, Dread reached into his back pocket and puled out an ordinary-looking wallet, possibly the one thing he had owned that didn't give him away as a crazed terrorist, Josh thought. "Jefferson never told you? I thought he would want to get it off his chest once he thought I was gone... or maybe he just wanted to bury it for good."

Flipping to a single, weathered photograph, he held it up the way policemen flashed their badge.

A little voice told Max he should ignore it, that it was just bad news, or fake bad news made to throw him off... but his curiosity got the best of him and he zoomed in to see it. The picture burned into his eyes, the implication almost too much for him to bear. "You're lying."

"Am I?" Dread smiled. "Your mother took the picture just after you were born, she said it was too good to forget... looking back, it was a nice moment. But it was a long time ago, back when I thought N-Tek had a chance of fighting them, when my name was still Marco Nathanson..."

Confused, Snake looked in the goggles that sent him Max's Biolink image. He blinked. "Ew... that's a scary thought."

A frown painted Dread's face. "You never tire of your rhetoric, do you, Solid?"

"When you're all dead, then I'll get tired," Snake quipped, studying the picture as Max continued to stare. It was most certainly a hospital, the room just had that look, and Snake could see the edge of the bed it was taken from. To the far left was a man he didn't recognize, sitting on a stool next to the bed and trying not to laugh. To the right was a decades-younger Jefferson Smith, and he was finding the scene funny.

Smack in the middle stood John Dread himself, two decades younger, the same brand of sunglasses he wore today being violently yanked off by the baby in his arms; the baby with a full head of blond hair.

Max wanted to throw up.

Putting the goggles away, Snake looked at his latest long-lost brother with nothing but scorn. "Nowhere to go, you... where are you on the gene pool, anyway? More disease-ridden combos then Liquid? Or did you get an extra set? Too many Xs, maybe?"

Dread's first reaction was a chuckle... and then a full on hysterical laugh as he holstered Luce, put his wallet away and took up his sword.

And then he simply became quiet for a split second, turning around and running towards the elevator that would lead down the caverns Snake had used to enter the real Shadow Moses.

Max gave chase, and Snake took a shot at him, but Dread simply leaned into his run and blazed away. Dashing along the edge of the flames, Max skidded to a stop when his target skidded past the elevator and leapt elegantly over the cliff. "Dread!"

Snake started to walk over... but he and Max wasted no time in backing off very quickly when Metal Gear RAY burst out of the water below, springing into the early morning air and landing perfectly on the cliff's edge.

Vamp stood still on one of Metal Gear's shoulders, not phased by the fact that it wasn't exactly meant as a walkway. Dread and Psycho stood on the other, leaving Ocelot for the cockpit.

"Deny it all you want, Brother," Dread called down, Metal Gear looking straight at them, "Big Boss is a part of us both, and it makes us more alike then brothers have a right to be! We were born to die and we die to live, Solid!"

"Oh shut up," Snake yelled back. A huge metal crate thudded to the ground next to him, but he didn't seem surprised; he just kicked the top open and hefted the Stinger launcher to his shoulder.

In the air, Kat turned the Helifoil around, deciding she wanted plenty of room to maneuver if RAY even looked in her direction.

And Snake took a shot. Metal Gear stumbled when the missile impacted its knee, the rust-colored goop oozing out over the hull breach almost instantly. Vamp caught Psycho from falling off the top, and Dread managed to keep his footing; but there was no sign of retaliation; Snake didn't think Ocelot had any way of rearming the thing after he and Liquid had totally wasted its payload.

This time, he painted Dread himself with the Stinger's laser guide and pulled the trigger.

Dread, for his part, didn't flinch when he saw the missile heading for him. Simply drawing his sword up, he waited patiently. It glowed brightly the instant before the missile reached him, and he swung.

It looked like he'd hit it, but Snake wasn't sure. For the briefest of moments, it looked like Dread had killed himself when his sword flashed a bright blue. But the Stinger missile curved around in midair, wobbling on its course a little before heading right back where it came.

Snake had seen a lot in his time, but this took the cake. "Can anyone remember when all you had to do was shoot the bad guy?"

He and Max ran away from each other, hearing the missile impact the ground they'd just been standing on.

Metal Gear plodded around, turning back to the cliff and gently hopping back into the sea.

---

Kat didn't give anyone else a chance to sit in the Behemoth's pilot seat as soon as everyone was back aboard. Josh was disturbed, Snake was strung out, Otacon was shaken, and Berto had shut himself in what used to be his mobile Ops room.

All in all, the atmosphere was so laden with stress that it could be cut with a knife, shot with the Stinger, and stomped on by RAY without being dented at all. And she'd thought just seeing Dread had been bad enough.

If there was any redeeming factor, it was that no one was taking out their various angers on others, something she was grateful for when Josh plopped into the co-pilot's seat. On the other hand, Kat tried never to keep her mouth shut. "What's buggin ya, McGrath? And I mean besides the obvious."

"I don't want to talk about it," he answered, looking out the side window. "Let's just say I need to ask Dad about something..."

Farther back in the plane, Snake held a door open, looking at Berto as he slept on the floor, curled up with his knees to his chest. But his face looked anything but relaxed, more like he was in pain. Snake had a pretty good idea why. "Ocelot got to'em?"

"Yep," Otacon confirmed, pulling his glasses off as he tried to process everything that had happened. "Let him rest, he deserves it."

"Hmm, no," Snake shook his head, some of his own buried memories digging up through the dirt. He watched Berto shiver out of fright from whatever Hell his dreams were putting him through for another moment, and closed the door. "He doesn't."

---

Thanks to Princess Artemis for dialog help, and Ellen Brand for letting me shamelessly rip off some of her Dread material. 8)

The ref list:

-Luce and Ombra are from Devil May Cry. No, the sword is not supposed to be Alastor.

-Kat's "dodge this" is from The Matrix, and if you need me to tell you that, boy do you watch the wrong movies.

-Dread's philosophizing to Snake contains a quote from Russell Nelson.