"What did you say?"
"I said we've lost them," Mei Ling answered Otacon, turning from her computer's screen. "Raiden, VII… even Snake, all unconscious."
"Damn," Otacon replied, more anxious even than his voice revealed. "What the hell do we do now?"
"We've been here before," Mei theorised wearily. "Remember, in Shadow Moses?"
"Yeah, but Snake doesn't have me and a bottle of ketchup now…"
Something jumped in Otacon's stomach as he remembered how Snake had been tortured at the hands of Revolver Ocelot, how he must have been tortured in the past week. He had cracked once… how much had he told the Patriots about Philanthropy?
It didn't really matter, Otacon reminded himself. Philanthropy were no longer a secret NGO: The Patriots had long known of their existence and even played them like chess pieces. It had seemed for a time that Snake and Otacon were the only ones not under the Patriots' influence, a belief that was harshly shattered towards the conclusion of the Big Shell mission. It was amazing that Snake and himself were still alive… unless The Wiseman's Committee saw them as no threat at all.
But what about the sniper who had tried to kill him in his apartment?
If he was indeed working for the Patriots, why had he been sent to kill Otacon while Snake had been kept alive? And how did VII fit into all this?
It didn't add up. Otacon's first reaction was to contact Snake, but that was no longer an option. If Otacon's instincts were correct, Snake would be kept alive, so he would contact his friend as soon as he regained consciousness. Until then, he needed time to think.
"Sunrise," Rosemary spoke for the first time since finishing her Codec conversation with Jack. Otacon had thought her asleep.
Otacon swiftly realised she was correct: light was again visible outside. In one night, VII and Raiden had infiltrated Groom Lake under cover of darkness, only to get themselves captured. Joy awash with sorrow.
"I know about Jack and the others," Rose revealed. "But I'm not going to panic. We need to come up with a plan."
"I agree," Mei Ling replied. "But there's nothing we can do until they're awake. We're all the way out here. They're the ones on the battlefield."
"What about an escape plan?" Rose suggested. "We can't just drive up to Area 51 once they're finished destroying Metal Gear and pick them up. It'd be suicide."
"Commandeering a helicopter in the middle of the desert is next to impossible," Mei commented. "Anyone got any other ideas?"
There was a pause while all three considered their limited options.
"I have one," Rose said finally. "They can't get out on the ground and they can't fly out. But, a base that big in the middle of the desert must have a water pipeline."
"So they'd be escaping underground," Otacon realised Rose's scheme. "If we could find out where that is, we could drive to the end of the pipeline and meet them when they come out."
"Right," Mei Ling said. "We need to find out where the nearest water drill is. I'm guessing there'll be one nearby that feeds the base."
Otacon almost leaped into the now-vacant seat that stood in front of Mei Ling's computer. In an instant, he mentally prepared himself for hours of gruelling work and psychological torment, taking full advantage of the hope-filled moment that had been set before him by the teamwork of his comrades.
It was time to go to work.
The room in which Doctor Nicholas Ling now stood was a reminiscent of The Cell, the place where he had utilised techniques perfected by him long ago in the field of interrogation. In truth, he had never hoped to break Snake with electroshock torture as Shalashaska had in Shadow Moses: he knew the memory of failing a loved one was enough for Snake to resist anything anyone could throw at him nowadays. It had been more of an experiment: a test of Snake's worth, and a test of his own brainwashing abilities. After all, Doctor Ling could not rely merely on the psychic talents of The Janus Collective for this purpose: there would be too many in his army for them to handle alone.
The doors to the room began to open. Through one to his left, the barely visible figure of Miasma walked. Behind her, ensnared in an aerogel substance she had created, floated the knocked-out bodies of VII and Liquid. Two soldiers followed close behind, dragging the unconscious forms of Raiden and Vamp. In a door to Ling's right, the muscular physique of Shark appeared, carrying over his shoulder a bald man wearing the distinctive uniform of Solid Snake.
Anyone who knew Snake would've been hard pushed to recognise him with his hair short, but it was indeed him who Shark carried into the room.
All five unconscious men were dropped before Ling. He smiled a peculiar smile, and looked to the two soldiers. They stood quickly to attention, saluting him with the respect usually reserved for a colonel or a decorated war hero. He saluted them back. And then, like lighting, he pulled a revolver from his white coat and fired two shots, each one finding its mark in the head of its target. The two soldiers dropped dead.
"Secure the room, Charity," Ling said to half of the Janus Collective, who had remained unseen by everyone but him. With the speed of thought, Charity proofed the room of all electronic or psychic interference, allowing her master to speak freely.
"We stand on the cliff face of history, my friends," he began. "A couple more steps will take us to the edge, steps these five men will take for us…." Ling gestured to the unmoving figures of Liquid, VII, Vamp, Raiden and Snake.
"It is they who will fall, allowing us to rise, rise to the level of our masters," he continued. His voice reverberated around the room eerily, like a slow drumbeat on a foggy battlefield. "We will approach the Patriots with stealth, an offering to them heralding us. They will see this offering as a gift, while we will see it for what it truly is: a knife sharp enough to cut through their lies and purge this world of their influence.
"Solidus Snake and President Johnson thought Arsenal Gear a sharp enough blade. But the Patriots saw all, while the Presidents remained blind.
"We are not so blind. I have been trusted with many of the Patriots' secrets. I was alive to see The Philosophers come together and watched as they fell apart. I know of the sacrifices made by The Boss in the Cold War. I stood by The Twelve's side as they rigged election after election: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon… all puppets of unseen puppeteers.
"Solidus was justified in his goals, but flawed in his actions. You do not pit yourself against the might of the Patriots: you sneak up on them and smother them in their sleep. You cut their throats while you stand beside them. Stealth is the key. The Janus Collective has been our shield. And Metal Gear will be the knife."
The tall doctor stepped back from his four comrades, revealing that he'd been standing on a steel trapdoor. He leant down and pulled at the door, moving it gracefully open to reveal a long, cylindrical shaft that led beyond what the eye could make visible. Four more identical shafts opened to his right and left, making five in all. He nodded to Charity and Faith, who used their invisible power of telekinesis to lift the bodies of the fallen and hold them above the shaft, so that each had one to himself.
Doctor Ling raised his hand to The Collective to halt them, the expression of someone who has just remembered a chore he had meant to carry out prominent on his face. He reached into his white coat with his left hand, and within seconds produced a hypodermic syringe. Not an ideal tool, he thought to himself, but the best available to hand.
He walked towards Liquid Snake, who was suspended in mid air. He took hold of the right arm of the blonde-haired commander, but remembered something else and let it go in favour of Liquid's left. It took him less than a half-second to find the necessary artery in the underside of Liquid's elbow and, once he had, Ling plunged the syringe into it, slowly using it to withdraw crimson lifeblood.
"What're you doing?" Shark broke the silence to inquire. Ling wrinkled his nose at his henchman's impertinence, but kept on at his task of filling the syringe with Liquid's body fluid. Shark never did have a sense of occasion.
"Taking the remains of Big Boss' Legacy," Ling explained. "From the inheritor of the Legacy of Blood."
"Why?"
"If you must know, think of it as the result of a promise I made to an old friend," Ling said.
When the extraction was completed, Ling nodded again to Charity and Faith, speaking as he did so. The five men fell into their respective openings in the floor and out of sight.
"Let the best weapon win."
