Chapter TWENTY-FOUR: Not a Soul Was Settled

"What had happened up to that point was all preliminary, really. The background was set, the sides had been taken. Of course, there was much more to it, but at that point things seemed to be making sense. Finally, they could say that, though things weren't really going for them, it was starting to clear up. Unfortunately, though, that was all about to change. And soon."

~*~

"Seat belt," Fox said calmly, buckling himself in and swerving out of the way of a passerby. Screams and hollers followed them along the street, but were swiftly silenced as the Suburban came rolling through. Brant looked at Fox worriedly, almost as if he no longer saw Fox sitting there at all, but someone else – someone crazy. Fox turned, faced him, and grinned. Brant clicked on his seat belt and Fox looked back out the dashboard. "Isn't this fun?" he said, almost laughing, and jerked hard on the steering wheel, pressing firmly down on the brakes as he did so. The truck squealed out, and he maneuvered it skillfully into a wide alley opening on the right.

Brant held the sides of his seat tight and peaked out of the window to see the Suburban screech to a near-stopping point before turning sharply into the alley. Fox looked down at the radio and adjusted it until he found a good station and until the volume was loud enough to blow his ear drums. "Gotta have music!" he cried wildly as he attempted to keep left of a tall rusting dumpster. Then, at the end of the alley, he turned left onto another main road. Oncoming traffic went past as a long blur. Fox never once checked the rear-view mirror, but Brant kept a heavy eye on it, making sure the Suburban didn't come too close.

"So! Where are we heading?!" Brant yelled over the music. Fox kept nodding his head to the beat – some techno song that was lighting up the streets with sound – but stopped rather abruptly and turned down the volume on the radio. Then, he pointed to Brant's jacket pocket. Brant waited and listened until he heard the humming of his cell phone.

Plucking it out of his pocket, he tossed it to Fox whose hand was open and waiting. Clicking it on, he lifted it to his ear. Before he could speak he was bombarded with yells.

"Stay away from Beck! He's in to have you killed!" It was Desperado. From the sounds of things, he was driving also. "Where are you now?" His voice was frantic, out of breath.

"Just eluding some of our friends from the NSA," he said with a strange smile, just as a loud crack shattered the window in the back of the truck and went on to do the same to the front. Brant ducked instinctively and Fox turned his head slowly to check the damage. He could see a man hanging out the window of the Suburban, gun in hand. "What's happening there?" he went on to ask Desperado as another shot rang out, hitting the side of the truck but not doing a great deal of damage.

"Nothing but trouble," he said fast. "Listen, you need to get in the dark. As long as you're running around you're at risk. The whole government is at odds with us today."

"Strange," Fox said, almost as if he was thinking deeply about the situation, "that doesn't come as a surprise to me." He was smiling again.

"I have to go, Fox," Desperado returned, another voice sounding on his end. It seemed to Fox like someone was yelling directions. "Remember, get in the dark!" Fox nodded to himself and said swiftly: "Have a good one."

He pressed off the phone and handed it to Brant, pulling out of the way of some oncoming traffic and turning onto a side road. Brant slid violently to the right, banging against the window and dropping the phone at his feet. Gun shots were still flaring behind them, but the Suburban was no nearer now than it had been when they'd started out of the parking lot.

Fox noted something odd about the next intersection. Just past it, the street they were on turned into a one way road – going opposite the way they were going. Checking the traffic for a moment as Brant sifted around the floor of the car in search of the cell phone, it didn't seem as if the one way road was too busy. At least, not for him.

"Hold on," he muttered, twisting the volume back up on the radio and pressing harder on the gas in hopes of making the green light. He needed all the help he could get at this point.

Brant grabbed hold of his phone and sat up, one hand over his ear to shield the music, and looked over the dashboard. The obvious reaction would be to yell or start thrashing about in your seat, but Brant was tired of it all. Who the hell cared if they died now? Either way, they were being hunted by the United States government. What chance did they have, even if they did survive the chase? So, rolling his eyes and exhaling fully, he looked sideways at Fox and opened the glove compartment, pulling forth a shiny six-shooter.

Fox eyed him with sudden admiration and smiled. "Rock and roll," he said softly, and Brant laughed. "What the hell am I doing here!"

They ran through the green light just as it turned yellow, and there before them was an angry swarm of colors – red, black, maroon, green, yellow, brighter yellow, a deep blue – all racing furiously in their direction. Fox wasn't nodding to the music anymore. He was watching the road intently, eyes unwavering, hands gripping the steering wheel tight. And Brant wasn't just sitting there any longer. He was hanging out the window, taking aim at the Suburban that had just started up the slowly-slanting hill behind them.

He had fired just twice when he caught the windshield with a bullet. It cracked and went white, but it didn't shatter. The only real reaction he got was a hail of automatic gunfire, at which point he rolled back inside the car and held his head low. Fox had moved forward in his seat, eyes going straight over the top of the dashboard. He was pulling the steering wheel left and right, accelerating and decelerating so quickly Brant was made easily carsick.

"Where to?!" Brant yelled. Fox didn't answer, just kept driving, but after a while Brant came to recognize the route. They'd come this way after leaving Norman Keys' apartment. And so, after the automatic fire had ceased, the glass in the windows completely missing and the bed of the truck spotted like Swiss, Brant nodded to himself and bolted back out the window, twisting wildly to his left and firing three more shots – only one hitting anything. But, when he heard the bust of air and the squeal of wheels spinning on pavement, he knew he'd hit the mark.

One tire was torn, the gash quickly tearing down its side. And in seconds, the Suburban lost control and darted into the side of a little florist shop off the road. Smoke trailed up its hood, the shop window in disarray, and Brant saw Lexus jump out of the front seat, a telephone to his ear. Brant couldn't quite tell what happened next, but as Fox pulled off the one way street to the right, he saw Lexus look up to the sky, grinning. Then, he saw that more than four cars had been overturned and sideswiped in their passing.

Brant looked to Fox, but he couldn't dare criticize his driving skills now. Fox was smiling again, and even if he might have injured a few people back there, he'd gotten them out safe and sound. Swallowing hard, he looked back over the road, the apartment building in which Norman Keys lived, no more than five intersections ahead, and whistled like one would to a fine lady passing them on the street.

"Wow," he said, and peering sideways at Fox: "We should do that more often."

~*~

A cold feeling stretched over his entire body – like ice. It covered him completely, pricked at his skin, almost burned like chilled skin under warm water. His eyes stung, his muscles felt torn, his heart ached. And his forehead pounded with pain unlike any he'd ever felt. There was a feeling that something was missing, his face felt smashed, nose felt crooked, every piece of hair on his head felt like a needle pressed into his flesh. There was a sense that along every inch of his body, an open wound burned anew, felt to have been cut into him just that moment. Everything came alive with pain and with soreness.

And then, he felt a trembling in the depths of his chest, something trying to break free throughout him. He felt that it was warm. It tickled his insides, his brain even thinking to twinge, and he yearned for it, though he didn't know what it was. His body wanted to mold around it, live off its heat, and in just the next moment he trembled and tensed – every muscle tightening and springing wildly to life. The thing in his chest seemed to explode through him, seemed to burn in every depth of his being. The blood began to course through him, the icy flesh turned warm and smooth, his nose straightened. His fingers filled with warmth, his toes filled with warmth. Every part of him was suddenly as it had been more than an hour before – but better than it had been, then.

The heat worked its way up and up, through and through, until – in a single instant – he felt his eyes burst open, his mind break free, his heart pump regularly in his chest. And when that happened, he knew who he was and where he was.

Solid Snake, sitting up on a hard bed and surrounded by so many faces – all somewhat blurry, but still acknowledgeable. There was KING, his face twisted into a bright smile. There was Sears, his fingers moving along the bristly hairs on his chin. There was Tintern, eyes shut, face lacking all emotion. There was Raiden, a look of guilt burning in his eyes. And Daves, a man he'd only seen once, and in the presence of Sears. And there stood Dr. Kelmar, face warm and kind, but hands looking wretched and twisted, white gloves pulled over them to conceal the sickening veins that pulsed along his knuckles. And in his hands rested the Perfect Cell, trapped again within the wire-cage he'd seen it years before. How long ago all of that seemed now…

It was only then that he realized he'd been dead, only then that he realized the Perfect Cell had been swimming in his own body – only then that he began to wonder who was beneath that white sheet on the bed beside him and why, when he looked at May who stood in a corner, seemingly meditating, some sort of recollection sparked to mind, some sort of knowing. All of that he wondered, but he would know only one thing in the next moment – just one. He would know – remember – how to be afraid.

Dr. Kelmar looked to KING who nodded and stepped out of the corner, smiling at Snake as if he saw him as a son, as someone worth loving, worth protecting. KING walked slowly toward him and stopped at the foot of his bed.

"Son," he began (something in Snake cringing as the word was spoken), "I feel it is only right for you to be alive, to be present for this." Present for what? Snake thought. "Finally, it has become possible." KING began to pace around the room, eyes no longer on Snake.

"I have waited years for this day. Through the sacrifices of many soldiers, all of which believed entirely in my philosophy – that the soldier belongs to a race solely its own, that the soldier should forever reign, forever be worshipped and idolized – this day has been made possible. This day has been made a reality – no longer the fantasy I harbored since the beginning of all this." Snake couldn't tell what he meant. The beginning of all what? There'd been so many beginnings. "At last, the puzzle may be made complete."

KING nodded again to Dr. Kelmar, but Snake found this odd. Kelmar had not reacted to the nod. He had turned back to his instruments, those lying out on the tables before him, but he had not smiled or saluted or done anything in return. After KING waited, his hopes suddenly fleeting, there was a sharp movement from the direction Snake had seen Tintern standing. And at that same moment, Crais and Turkish, followed by Red – not May, Snake noticed – brandished their guns, Kelmar retreating behind them, fearful of being within arm's distance of KING at such a time.

"No," KING muttered, Sears running forward to block their aim. KING pushed Sears aside and looked crestfallen to Tintern, head shaking in disbelief. He couldn't say anything more, but when Sears grabbed for his gun Tintern shot just shy of his left ear.

"Neither of you move," Tintern said. Snake looked to Daves and Raiden and saw that both of them were in awe. Daves seemed more subtle, though. "Lock the doors," she proceeded to command and Red went to each of the doors, locking them all. As she locked them in, a small phone attached to Tintern's hip started ringing. She took it from her hip, eyeing Snake out of the corner of her eye, and lifted it to her ear. Speaking into it, she said: "Yes?"

The voice on the other end was loud enough for the entire room to hear. "We're nearing Trinket now! Visibility is low – give us some light on the roof!" Tintern nodded and clicked on her radio. "I need a unit to activate the roof lights," she said swiftly and hooked it back onto her waist, talking again into the small phone. "We're on it. Is there anything else?" There was a short pause, then: "Make sure we don't have much to deal with when we arrive! We need this to be quick." "Roger that. Safe landing." And Tintern ended the call.

Turning on the radio once again, she said into it: "All teams give their locations." She waited for a moment, but no one answered. Just then, there came a heavy slam at the door. There was screaming, loud yells, and gunfire. Snake couldn't help think of Fox. KING's voice sounded quickly, "You damn fools. There were reports of an intruder in this wing. Those are my men out there! Let them in before they're slaughtered!"

Tintern looked nervously to May who, eyes shut, said aloud: "It is the one. His 'other' is with us here." Tintern went to the door and thought on opening the door, the screams escalating.

"Where the hell is it?!" one man hollered. "Where – ugh…aghhh!" Tintern backed away as more gunfire was let loose, more pounding on the door, more men pleading that the doors be opened. And then another door began to shake, and another, until all four of the doors around the room were rattling wildly, ferociously. The soldiers outside knew that the rest of them were waiting inside. They were going crazy with fear. They never thought to abandon the wing, but they knew that they would eventually be tracked – and killed.

It was terrible. None of those within the room could understand what seemed to be massacring the soldiers outside. Their estranged cries continued to ring, though, the pounding still shaking the room, until slowly it all stopped. The gunfire disappeared, the doors became still, and the voices were lost. They all waited in silence for a long minute before Tintern's phone rang again. She answered it.

"Yes?"

"Where are those lights! We need the lights!" The voice was ecstatic. Tintern sighed.

"You can get on without the lights," she said with a sharpness in her voice. Everyone was dead – there was no way those lights were going on. Then, her voice calm and cool again. "You're Spetsnaz. You can handle anything." There was a short pause as everyone in the room registered this fact – Spetsnaz was coming? Why Spetsnaz? "Besides," she went on, "I don't think there will be much trouble getting past the soldiers. It seems they are all ready dead."

Silence. Then: "Roger that."

"But, watch your back. Be keen to sound. It seems we have an 'invisible intruder'. Someone whose been killing off our men." There was an uneasy silence that followed, and then:

"We'll watch out for that. But, don't you worry – we'll be sure to get your guy there." Tintern smiled wide, for the first time seeming truly happy, and without saying anything more, she ended the call and put the phone back along her beltline. Just then, May's voice broke the silence – confused, almost worried, and yet slightly foreboding.

"I cannot follow it…the man…or the creature, whatever it is. It is there one moment…and yet, not the next." Everyone seemed to be listening to him. And Snake, who was still wondering why he seemed to feel some sort of recollection of the man, was listening closer than any of them. "He is a beast…an animal. I am not sure where he has gone to now, but he is not far from here. He is still watching…plotting – waiting for us to falter, waiting for his chance to kill." And then, after another long silence, he said, voice curdling Snake's blood, "He has left only us."

And it was true. They were the last ones alive, and they'd be the last ones to die – to be slaughtered, picked off one by one or eliminated altogether. But however it was to happen, it didn't matter. The creature's mere presence was as lethal as its tactics. And that made only one thing certain – not a soul in that room was settled.

They were all afraid now.