Metal Gear Solid 6: The Infernal Conflict

by DJJD2184

Solid Snake- now called "Cyber Snake" due to his new cyborg body- has been called out of retirement in the middle of a bleak post-MGS4 cyberpunk future to stop a catastrophic global threat- a Metal Gear capable of wiping out all life on Earth. But worse than that, he has no choice but to fight against the iconic characters of the series that he used to call friends.

7. The Wrathful Swamp Firefly

CHAPTER 7— "THE WRATHFUL SWAMP FIREFLY"

Snake scanned the treeline in front of him and the waves behind him. There were several boats and water drones on patrol inside the energy dome protecting the island, as well as helicopters and aerial drones he could hear patrolling the skies. As for the treelines, he could hear the humming of the engines of ground vehicles, hovercrafts, and other ground drones in the distance.

No snipers hiding near my location, Snake thought. I'd better go hide in the trees.

Snake made for the treeline, and immersed himself in the foliage by going prone.

Crawling through the foliage, he picked up the signal of some drones near his location using his extended reality vision and Soliton Radar.

They were coming closer to his location.

Snake stopped crawling as some hovercraft flew over him, and stopped above the lower canopy, eerily close to his position. Several hovering drones armed with automatic cannons neared him as well, their sensors darting around, scanning the treeline for intruders.

"Hold on, I'm getting a message on comms," said one of Firelake's private army's elite soldiers on one of the hovercraft above Snake.

Snake listened in on their comms with his enhanced hearing and extended reality augmentations.

"Hades?" said the elite soldier. "Why aren't you sharing your senses with us via the hivemind?"

"The local hivemind's been destroyed, Devil 7-328-Delta," said Dante on the other end of the line. "The JD conglomerate is attempting to hack into the island's central OS network. We're jamming their signals in the meantime, but for the sake of not compromising the start of the final phase of my plans to end the infernal conflict, I believe it's best we communicate via human methods for the time being… via encrypted BISECT channels rather than the hivemind."

"Copy that, Hades," said the soldier. "I'll inform the rest of my unit."

"Have you found Cyber Snake yet? Our mole claimed he was going to approach the island from the shore near your position."

That damned mole again, Snake thought. Whoever this mole is, they're either very close to me… or they have vast influence within the JD conglomerate.

"Negative, Hades," said the soldier. "Should we keep searching this sector?"

"Negative, Devil 7-328-Delta," said Dante. "The island's sea and aerial defenses would've been able to have picked him off from much further outward… I want your team to focus on taking out this bogey stealth bomber that took out the hivemind."

"Bogey stealth bomber, Hades?"

"It was stolen from the inner lair's hangar," said Dante. "I'm positive it's the mole. Because they know I'm about to launch Metal Gear DAEMON, they're getting desperate… desperate enough to risk blowing their cover like this."

"We'll take care of it, Hades," said the soldier. "We're heading back to the nearest air hangar. My unit will be skyborn imminently."

"Copy that," said Dante.

Suspecting Dante was about to make more calls, Snake used his extended reality vision to hack into Dante's network using the soldier's BISECT and C3 connection as a conduit before the soldier became out of reach for optimal hacking distance on his hoverbike as the hoverbikes and drones went in the direction they came from.

He managed to get access to the network before the soldier was out of reach.

Jayden listened in on Dante's communications.

"Lust Beta, your timeout was over a while ago. My men should've freed you by now."

"They did, Hades," said Mikki.

"Where are you?"

"Looking for Snake, Hades," said Mikki.

I guess that's not exactly a lie, Snake mused.

"Good girl," said Dante. "Whereas I thought you were just avoiding me."

Mikki said nothing in response.

"Still, I want more people looking for him than just you. Gluttony Beta, where are you?"

"I'm looking for the mole and the stealth bomber they stole," said Fat Snake.

"All right then," said Dante. "Pride Omega, Envy Delta 1, 2, and 3, Unforgivable Delta, Heresy Delta, Sloth Delta, Wrath Delta, do you copy?"

"Wrath Delta copies, Hades," said Mei Ling.

"Sloth Delta copies, Hades," said Raiden.

"Heresy Delta copies, Hades," said Naomi.

"Unforgivable Delta copies, Hades," said Rosemary.

"Envy Delta 3 copies, Hades," said Jonathan.

"Envy Delta 2 copies, Hades," said Ed.

"Envy Delta 1 copies, Hades," said Johnny.

A fart was heard over comms.

"Pride Omega copies, Hades," said Meryl.

"Pride, Envy 1, 2, and 3, and Unforgivable, you three search the north side of the island for Snake, while Lust, Wrath, Sloth, and Heresy search the south side of the island for him. Both teams have access to Firelake's elite squadrons' communication protocols on the island. He has to be here somewhere… Find him, and kill him."

"With all due respect, is he seriously a bigger threat than the bogey, Hades?" said Meryl.

"He is after Rome. My technicians did some investigation… Somehow, he managed to hack into my local central OSs back in Rome, likely this one too. That was part of how he managed to disguise himself as Solidus and kill my Apostles and dozens of my elite posthuman mercenaries in one fell swoop… along with our precious Greed Delta."

Meryl said nothing in response to this.

Greed must've been Colonel Campbell, Snake thought to himself.

"Now that my Apostles are dead, I'm having more trouble influencing the media to silence Hannah Brady's hypocritical propaganda condemning my version of the Infernal Conflict's Evolution by leaking the DICE files. That cost my operation a lot of additional time and money. He put us at a dangerous disadvantage, albeit a temporary one."

"With all due respect, Hades, that can't be Snake," said Meryl. "He may be good at sneaking, but when it comes to combat he's not that good. Do you think Hannah Brady turned him posthuman somehow?"

"I haven't ruled out the possibility…" said Dante. "Nevertheless, none of you are to underestimate him, Pride Delta. Your orders still stand. I want him dead."

Raiden said, "We'll split up and cover more ground. Wrath, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I am, Sloth," said Mei Ling. "I'll act as a spotter for you and Heresy, Sloth. Once I find Snake with my nanite swarms, we converge on his location."

Shit, thought Snake, I need to come up with a plan to evade the three of them on my way to the inner lair and fast… Mei Ling managed to cause an avalanche back in Russia with her nanites… It'd be easy for her to spot me with them if she's using them as scouts, given their size and numbers.

Think, Snake…

Snake did this while he moved through the treeline now that the drones and guards on hovercraft were gone, carefully crawling around the smart mines he spotted with his sonar vision planted in the dirt and grass underneath the foliage.

There was a maze of electrified fences surrounding a small outpost with a few sniper towers and a central building for which he was having trouble locating its power source after scanning the outpost with his augmented vision.

Snake had no choice but to find a way through. He used his adhesive grips to climb up a high tree and get a better vantage point; fortunately the moss on the tree helped his adhesive grips stick to the tree's bark better.

He then aimed his M14 EBR sniper rifle at the guards after studying their movement patterns and marking them with his extended reality vision, and fired on them one by one with some precision shots to the head before they could react, starting with the snipers in the tower and on the building roof. He quickly shot the last guard through the window of the building in the middle of the outpost.

Once the posthuman guards were taken care of, Snake then jumped down from the tree, landing on the other side of the fence. He followed his way through the maze until he reached the central building in the outpost.

Hearing aerial drones nearing his position overhead, Snake quickly hacked the lock to the building's door and hid inside the building.

Snake waited for the drones to pass, avoiding the windows.

He then heard gunfire coming from the same direction as the sound of the drones' engines.

Shit, thought Snake, they must know I'm here!

Then Snake heard several explosions happen in mid-air.

He crept toward the window where the corpse of the guard he shot through said window lie, and peeked out of it.

The aerial drones were falling out of the sky, one of which landed eerily close to the outpost, and started a forest fire.

Snake managed to detect the stealth bomber with his extended reality vision, but not his sonar vision.

Shit… that's one impressively stealthy military plane... Snake thought. Not only does it have optical camouflage, but it's able to throw off my sonar vision somehow… My best guess is it's using some sort of jamming technology… Who's piloting that thing?

Snake then thought, it doesn't matter. I need to keep moving… they're bound to come investigate the crashed drones, and they'll end up finding me too if I stay here.

Snake noticed the central outpost building contained a computer hub with security camera feeds monitoring the other buildings in the outpost… Hacking into the computer's feed archives, he realized that they contained footage of some cells where the people Dante had trafficked here, either willingly as allies or unwillingly as hostages, had been kept at…

But the cells were empty now.

They're likely aboard Metal Gear DAEMON now, getting turned into posthumans, Snake thought before he left the outpost.

Snake estimated while using his BISECT's GPS map and Soliton Radar that the safest route to take to the inner lair of the island was through a valley full of rivers running through various rock formations; there was also a cenote somewhere in the middle of the valley that led to another underwater cave.

He made his way through the jungle, either avoiding or killing patrolling guards in his way with his M4 Custom and M14 EBR, until he reached the valley.

He then started to scale the side of a large rock wall covered in moss, using his grappling line to climb over surfaces his adhesive grips wouldn't work on, and pressing himself against the moss and using his OctoCamo to hide himself whenever he saw any incoming drones. By now, though, the stealth bomber had taken out a considerable amount of the island's defenses out here.

It's pretty incredible that one stealth bomber is managing to rival an entire posthuman army, Snake thought.

Snake then used his grappling line to swing across the gaps between rock formations, and used his adhesive grips to stick to vertical surfaces instead of crashing into them and falling down to his death in the gushing rapids beneath him.

He finally managed to climb onto a large rock formation overlooking the cenote.

Here goes nothing, thought Snake as he performed a dive, using the jets in his wings to slow his descent.

When he hit the water, he looked around him underwater as some fish in the water passed by him.

He swam up to the surface, and peeked his head out of the clear waters.

Snake swam underwater through the caves, using his sonar vision to see underwater until he reached an open area in the dark cave where there were fireflies glowing above the water, making it easier to see.

As he hit the surface, he looked at the fireflies curiously.

Suddenly he realized that it was getting harder to see due to the light of the fireflies, and it was getting… hot?

Wait a minute… thought Snake. Oh shit! Those aren't natural fireflies!

Snake dove back underwater as he felt a shotgun blast graze him and could see Mei Ling's nanites swarming above him.

He used his jets to propel himself faster through the water and then help him transition into a boosted jump onto a rock formation in the large cave, across from the rock formation where Mei Ling was standing.

Turning around towards Snake, Mei Ling said into her comms, "Sloth, Heresy, everyone. I've found Snake."

Snake said, "Mei Ling, it's me… you know me!"

"Who's Mei Ling? I don't see a Mei Ling. All I see is a confused little snake… staring into the eyes of wrath."

"I don't want to kill you, Mei Ling, but I will if I have to!"

"You don't have what it takes," said Mei Ling as she used her fireflies as a weaponized utility fog to hold Snake up and throw him into a set of conical rocks, breaking the rocks, damaging his flesh and denting his endoskeleton underneath as he fell back into the water.

Snake tried to swim back up, only for Mei Ling's nanites to swarm around him and pull him further underwater and start to crush his endoskeleton.

Snake broke free for a second by using his Mk. VI stun gun to electrify the water, and came up to the surface again.

"Damn it, Mei Ling, we used to be friends!" said Jayden, whose skin and clothing were now burnt to a crisp.

Mei Ling said, "So many of my men aboard the USS Missouri died because of you, Snake… During the SOP incident… Do you know how that felt, losing so many friends? Now it's time you felt what I did after, and I sought my revenge."

"That wasn't my fault, Mei Ling, it was Liquid Ocelot's!"

"You snakes are all the same to me," said Mei Ling with a frown. "Now return to the dirt!"

"Mei Ling, I know what it's like to lose friends… You're my friend. Please don't do this!"

"You ever wonder if that JD conglomerate you're so loyal to altered part of who you are, Snake? Made you unable to kill your friends when you've done so countless times before? What was it that Liquid said on Shadow Moses? You enjoy all the killing."

"Bullshit!" yelled Snake as he started to grow angry. "I'm different now of my own choices… I've killed enough of my friends… and family… I'm not losing any more!"

"Isn't that your mission though, Snake? To kill us if we get in your way?" said Mei Ling. "Not to mention that we're already gone. We're posthuman."

Snake grimaced. "Shut up, Mei Ling!"

"Struck a nerve, did I?" laughed Mei Ling. "I think I know why you can't kill us, why JD re-designed your mind to feel that way… Because you needed a reason to continue the mission. Your futile attempts to 'save' us are the only reason you haven't fried your BISECT yet."

Snake looked at Mei Ling furiously.

"You didn't want to kill yourself back when you were infected with FOXDIE… I wonder why you want to kill yourself now?"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" shouted Snake as he lifted one of his arms out of the water, and fired several blast rounds from his SOCOM at Mei Ling.

However, Mei Ling's nanites swarmed in front of the shot, shielding her from it.

Mei Ling then shot Snake with another shotgun blast, blowing a chunk of his skin off, and denting his endoskeleton even further.

She then used her nanites as utility fog again to hold Snake up in the air, and burn him simultaneously.

Snake screamed, and started to dissociate when he heard a familiar voice.

"You're not dying on me yet, Snake."

Snake looked through the fire and smoke produced by the nanites.

"Campbell?" Snake said. "I don't understand… I killed you!"

"And yet you're seeing me here now," said the Colonel as he floated next to Snake above the water. "I figured I'd offer some advice to you that might get you out of the situation you're in… so you can keep the promise you made to me."

Snake said, "What do I do? Mei Ling's got me!"

"Perhaps…" said the Colonel. "I've got an idea… but it's going to require you poke at Mei Ling's ego a little bit."

"That won't work… she's posthuman!" said Snake. "Not to mention I suck at manipulating people!"

"So what if you do?" said the Colonel. "You've got me to help you out. That and your extended reality abilities I've heard about…"

"What?" said Snake. "How'd you hear about my extended reality vision and hacking augmentations?"

"If you can bring Mei Ling's consciousness to the surface by trying to hack into her mind from here, maybe you can get under her skin a bit, and get the upper hand."

Snake said, "But I don't know how to do something like that... it would require Ultra Mouse's solution to undoing the effects of Dante's brainwashing!"

"You did something similar with me," said the Colonel. "You just had to do it physically instead of remotely."

"Wait… I did?"

"Yup," said Colonel Campbell.

Snake said, "This is going to be tough—"

Then Snake screamed as Mei Ling started to shoot him again with shells from her SPAS-12 shotgun while his flesh had already been eaten away by the burning effect of the nanite fireflies. Snake's endoskeleton was starting to take some damage.

"All right!" grunted Snake. "I'll give it a shot!"

Snake looked at Mei Ling, and raised his arm to try and hack into her mind remotely.

Mei Ling said, "What the hell—"

And suddenly she started to grab her head and scream, and her nanites dropped him into the water.

Snake said, shit, I can't access her mind completely from here yet… but I can shoot her now.

Snake rose above the water, and used his M4 Custom to fire assault rifle rounds and underbarrel shotgun rounds through Mei Ling's nanites she was using as a shield. The blast knocked Snake off of the rock formation he was standing on. He fell into the water too.

Once she recovered, Mei Ling managed to use her nanites to lift herself back up onto another rock formation.

Snake's blast rounds burned holes in Mei Ling's skin and Firelake uniform along her torso.

She tried to fire her shotgun at Snake, but he used his jets to dodge the shot.

"Mei Ling, did you really hate me all this time?" said Snake. "Or was it Liquid that you hated?"

Mei Ling screamed, and tried to burn Snake with her nanites again.

Snake dove underwater so the nanites couldn't.

Snake managed to hack into her mind enough so that she was having trouble finding him with the help of her nanites, and then came up and shot a round from his Mk. VI stun gun at Mei Ling's head, which caused her sight to malfunction.

"Damn it!" screamed Mei Ling.

Snake climbed up onto another rock formation, and shot at Mei Ling with several rapid-fire barrages of gunfire from his M4 Custom along with more underbarrel shotgun shells, knocking her off of the rock formation she was on.

"You were friends with me, Mei Ling!" said Snake. "I used to love listening to your Chinese proverbs!"

"You may be able to fuck with my mind… partially at least…" said Mei Ling after she rose out of the water, "…but if you can't fuck with my mind fully, Snake, then let's see you try to fuck with the minds of the others at the same time!"

Mei Ling grabbed and cocked her shotgun, and fired at the ceiling, bringing some rocks down that nearly buried Snake.

Once Snake sliced his way through them with his sword drills and pushed them off of him with his strength, and clawed his way out, he saw that Mei Ling was escaping through another cenote.

"MEI LING!" shouted Snake as he skidded across the cenote with his jets after Mei Ling.

Snake was losing distance between him and Mei Ling as her nanites were carrying her through the cenote faster.

Snake quickly marked Mei Ling with his extended reality vision in order to track her, and used his jets to accelerate across the water.

Outside the cenote was a set of rivers running through more rock formations, along with some guards that drove to pick up Mei Ling in a set of two small armored boats. Snake fired M4 rounds at the driver and gunner in one of the boats and managed to kill them, but he only managed to kill the gunner of the boat Mei Ling was in as the driver carried her onboard.

Snake got onboard the other boat and pushed the corpses of its prior driver and gunner out.

He hacked into the boat's controls, and drove the boat after Mei Ling down the river.

Snake used one hand to steer and one to shoot EMP rounds from his SOCOM at Mei Ling's boat, but it was too far away.

They drove underneath a bridge with guards firing machine guns at Snake's boat. Snake ducked underneath the boat's hull for a second, then brought the bridge down with blast rounds to its support beams, nearly crushing both his and Mei Ling's boats. He steered around the debris from the destroyed bridge and kept driving after Mei Ling once he was in the clear.

Several aerial, ground, and river drones were firing at Snake's boat now.

Shit… I'm attracting too much attention, Snake thought. Is killing Mei Ling worth it?

Snake shot down some of the drones in the air with precision blast rounds from his SOCOM while continuing to drive and dodge gunfire as best as he could.

He was nearing a set of rapids in the jungle river, as they were high up now… Mei Ling's boat had taken a thrashing by the rapids, but she had managed to survive despite that the driver didn't. She took control of the other boat and continued to drive it through the rapids.

Snake went after her, and held onto the hull of the boat with his adhesive grips so he wouldn't fall off as the rapids slammed into the boat.

There were some low hanging branches that Snake had to duck underneath as they exited the rapids. Mei Ling's boat was nearly too damaged to control after that; meanwhile, as Snake checked the condition of his boat, he saw some holes in the hull.

As Mei Ling boarded a helicopter hovering above the river, Snake continued to drive his boat around some conical rocks in the river so the boat wouldn't be torn apart. He managed to come into a set of tunnels just before the helicopter could fire upon him. Snake steered around the smart mines in the tunnels with his boat, and entered another set of rapids outside the tunnels.

Snake quickly tried to hit the brakes as he approached the edge of a massive gushing waterfall with a deep drop at the end of the river. The mist from the waterfall was hard to see through.

But through the mist, Snake could see Mei Ling's marker, and hear the buzzing of the helicopter as it was about to fire upon him.

Snake's boat was a lost cause, but if he survived the waterfall without taking out the helicopter Mei Ling was on now, he'd be gunned down.

Snake stood up, and tried to balance himself as he fired a concentrated armor piercing round from his SOCOM at the pilot.

The round pierced the windshield and killed the pilot.

As the helicopter fell out of the sky, Snake lost his balance as the boat started to fall off the edge of the waterfall.

Just in time, Snake regained his footing, and dove off of the waterfall.

Snake ended up at the bottom of the waterfall's pool, his leg trapped beneath some debris from the boat.

For some reason, he dissociated again.

He was back at the Boss's grave, after the SOP incident was over. He put a gun in his mouth, and started to tremble as his finger curled around the trigger.

A bullet went off.

"NO!" Snake yelled, as he got on his hands and knees; he had taken the gun out of his mouth.

He shot his way free of the debris, and sliced through it with his drill swords.

The boat exploded, and the explosion blinded him for a moment, and he floated downriver.

When Snake came to again, he swam up from the water, and pulled himself out of the river to find himself in a swampy area with a canopy that was lit ablaze by the crashed helicopter.

Snake followed Mei Ling's entrails of artificial flesh and bloodstains from the wreckage to where her endoskeleton was perched against a tree, with a shard of debris from the helicopter sticking out of her torso.

"Snake…" said Mei Ling with gritted teeth and blood dripping from her mouth.

"I need to know, Mei Ling," said Snake. "Was what you said true? Am I not truly myself anymore? Has JD altered the state of my consciousness somehow?"

"I'd tell you…" said Mei Ling, as she spat out blood, and made a pained gasping noise for a moment, "…but I'm afraid you won't live along enough to find out."

Mei Ling pulled out her shotgun with one hand and aimed it at Jayden, only for Jayden to dodge the shot, and slice her arm off with a powerful strike from his sword drill, and then he fired his SOCOM at her torso and neck.

"TELL ME!" Snake screamed furiously as he approached Mei Ling, who tried to push him away with her other hand, only for Snake to shove her hand away, and press his glowing fingers against the side of Mei Ling's skull and interface with her BISECT.

… … … … …

In the VR room inside Mei Ling's mind, Snake tied Mei Ling to a chair, and started beating her with his fists.

As Snake stopped for a moment, he said, "Do you know half the things you did to me? To my mind? You're posthuman, and you're exploiting my grief!"

Mei Ling screamed, and looked around, eyes wide in terror. "What's happening to me?"

Snake smacked her hard across the face, so hard her chair wobbled.

Mei Ling spit out blood and teeth.

"You've been tormenting me constantly!"

"Snake, please stop! I don't understand what's going on… Am I in hell?"

Snake screamed, and kicked Mei Ling's chair over.

Mei Ling looked up at Snake as he began to press as steel bar against her throat.

"Snake, wait—" Mei Ling croaked, "—please, this is nothing like you at all! What happened to you?"

"Answer my question!" screamed Snake.

"What question?"

"Was my mind manipulated somehow to grieve for you! Even though you're already dead!"

"Maybe… You're… not… yourself…" said Mei Ling as her face was growing red and then blue from her neck being crushed.

Snake breathed heavily, and looked at Mei Ling wide-eyed as if he'd just recognized her. He took the bar away from Mei Ling's neck, and bent it in half furiously.

"My god..." said Mei Ling, looking at Snake. "Snake, what happened to you?"

"You're right…" said Snake. "This isn't like me. My grief shouldn't matter this much… Why is it coming up like this, why is it making me so angry?"

"Talk me through what happened," said Mei Ling.

Snake sighed, and their memories started to play on the VR simulation's walls.

Mei Ling looked at the memories.

"So, I was turned posthuman by Dante…" said Mei Ling. "And you just killed me."

Snake nodded with watery eyes.

Mei Ling looked at Snake in disbelief. "It must not have been easy."

"I cared about you, Mei Ling…. I always did."

"You're not the only one who let your grief get to you," said Mei Ling. "I really was grieving for the men I lost back during the SOP incident… I felt guilty for their deaths… and when Dante started to brainwash me, I slowly turned into my worst enemy… I killed off the survivors. I was also angry at you because… for some reason… You seemed like my worst enemy… But my worst enemy was Liquid. He was the one whose ship, Outer Haven, killed my men."

"Your transhuman augmentations also remind me of one of the Boss's allies that Big Boss killed back during the original Operation Snake Eater in the '60s… The Pain," said Snake.

"I do feel a lot of pain," said Mei Ling as she tried to get back on her feet, only to fall over on her hands and knees.

"Snake…" said Mei Ling as she looked at her memories, and his. "It's up to you to stop Dante, and kill the others."

"I don't want to have to kill them," said Snake.

"They're already dead Snake," said Mei Ling. "Just like me."

Snake looked at Mei Ling as she said, "Grief never goes away completely, and it's awful at first… You just have to look it in the eye and come to terms with it. I never really forgave myself for the death of my men… but I managed to live with it. I realized over time, though, that it was because I cared about them. Grief and love are the same emotions, Snake… they just happen at different points in time."

"Is that another Chinese proverb?" said Snake.

"No," said Mei Ling with a smile, "it's mine."

Snake smiled briefly.

"Just be careful," said Mei Ling. "Grief can do weird things to one's mind. They've done plenty of weird things to mine… If anything, I think that was how Dante got to me."

Snake looked back at Mei Ling and tried to smile again as he wiped a tear from his eye.

"Promise me, Snake," said Mei Ling as she slowly sunk to the floor, and rolled over onto her back to look up at him.

"Promise you what?" said Snake.

"Don't just survive this mission, do more than that."

"What?" said Snake. "Do more?"

"Learn to thrive," said Mei Ling. "Stay true to who you really are."

Snake said, "I shouldn't. I'm just an old killer."

"No! Don't talk to yourself like that, Snake!" said Mei Ling, as she grabbed Snake's leg. "You may see it that way, but you're a hero. That's how I see you. That's how the others saw you. You don't just deserve to live… you deserve to be happy."

"I've—" Snake sniffled. "I haven't been happy since my mortal body expired."

"I haven't either," said Mei Ling. "Find out what it's like… If you won't find out for yourself, do it for me. For all of us."

As Mei Ling was lying on the floor, bleeding out next to the chair Snake kicked over, he looked at Mei Ling and said to her, "Mei Ling! Do you know where Metal Gear DAEMON is on the island?"

"Island? What island?" said Mei Ling as she coughed up more blood. "I've been in here… this whole… time…" Then she looked up. "Oh my god… what is that light… it's unlike anything I've ever seen…"

"Light? What light? Mei Ling? Mei Ling!" yelled Snake as the VR room began to dissolve.

… … … … …

"MEI LING!" Snake cried.

Back in the burning swamp, Snake closed the nonexistent eyes of the lifeless endoskeleton that had belonged to Mei Ling.

Still crying, Snake thought, Mei Ling's right… my grief… it's turning me into a monster, but I can't seem to overcome it!

Snake screamed, and punched the ground, creating a shock wave in the shallow water. He got up as his body was starting to heal from his wounds in the fight with Mei Ling, only to get hit in the shoulder by a blade thrown at him that was laced with something.

Snake screamed, and fell over, tugging at the blade lodged in his shoulder.

It feels like… poison… Snake thought, …but my augmentations should make me immune to that!

Snake couldn't tug the crossbow bolt out; his mind was too cloudy.

Through the static-filled blur of his vision, Raiden and Naomi walked up above where he was lying.

"You got him, Sloth," said Naomi.

"Not quite," said Raiden as he hissed and showed his fangs. "Keep an eye out while I drink his blood."

Naomi did so, while Raiden held one of his swords toward Snake's neck.

"Wait!" said Naomi. "Don't kill him yet… I'm getting new orders from Hades…"

Naomi said to Raiden, "Pick him up. Hades's orders."

"Hades's current orders contrast his prior orders. Which of them am I supposed to prioritize?"

"Your blade was laced with hacking nanites, but the signal's too weak… Something's inside his mind that's fighting against our hivemind… Hades wants to know what it is."

Their conversation was interrupted as Raiden was hit and knocked unconscious by an electric shock round of some kind.

Naomi was unable to pick Snake up as she limped to cover after her leg was hit by another electric shock round.

"Hades, we're taking fire from another intruder, identity unknown… Could it be the mole?"

As Snake started to pass out, he saw Meryl move toward where he was lying in the mud, smiling down at him through the static of his vision.

"Meryl…" Snake slurred, "…is that you?"

"Jayden, I'm sorry for everything," said Meryl as she looked down at him, and knelt beside him in the mud.

"Meryl…" Snake muttered, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too, Snake," said Meryl, and as she stood up, she said while crying a little, "Forgive me… What I'm about to do is the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

Then Meryl shot Snake in the head with a single round from one of her Patriot machine guns, and everything went dark.

… … … … …

Mikki looked around, then said, "I think they're gone. Oh no… SNAKE!"

Mikki ran toward Snake, and pulled the blade out of his shoulder.

"This is laced with nanites…" she said as she looked at the blade. "Dante's trying to hack into your BISECT… he must want you alive long enough to figure out my identity."

"Meryl…"

"No, Snake, it's me, Ultra Mouse!" said Mikki. "Listen, you have to stay alive!"

"…is that you, Meryl?"

"Meryl?" said Mikki.

"He's hallucinating…" she said to herself. "Fuck… He doesn't have long."

"Meryl…" Snake muttered.

"Snake, it's—" Mikki whimpered for a minute, then said, "Yes, it's me, Meryl."

"I'm sorry… I wish I could've been with you. You were the first woman I loved."

Crying, Mikki said while hovering over Snake's dying body, "It's okay, Snake…" Standing up, she paced around and thought for a moment, before facing him again, and saying while sniffling, "I know you won't forgive me for the things I've done to you… I'm pathetic… and what I'm about to do next… It's going to hurt."

Mikki then pressed her hand against Snake's skull, and her hands began to glow bright blue.

"I'm restarting your BISECT… installing software that'll insulate it from Dante's hivemind and JD's Reality of Things… make it so they can't access it… That way, maybe you can fight off the posthuman malware."

Mikki then picked up Snake's fleshless endoskeleton and hoisted it onto her shoulders, then carried it back to her hoverbike, and found a safe place for them to rest.

… … … … …

Snake woke up hearing the rushing of a nearby stream of water.

His mind was still in a lot of pain; it was a struggle not to dissociate again.

He was in a cave underneath a waterfall somewhere.

He could hear a familiar female voice humming a song somewhere, but the sound was faint.

Meryl? Thought Snake.

Then, as the ringing in his ears cleared, and the static in his vision cleared, he recognized the voice.

Mikki was over, sitting cross-legged on a rock in a tiny black two-piece swimsuit with a laptop on her lap that she was looking at and holding her hand over. Snake could see her veins and eyes glowing bright blue.

"Mikki?" said Snake, only to realize his voice was robotic. Looking down, he realized his human appearance was gone, and his endoskeleton wasn't moving.

"Snake?" said Mikki. "Is that you?"

"I… think so," said Snake. "What happened?"

"You nearly died," said Mikki. "You were stabbed with one of Raiden's blades, laced with nanites that were eating away at your endoskeleton until they reached your BISECT. After that, they'd start to hack into your mind, turn you posthuman. I risked my cover, scared off your friends by shooting at them from a distance to stop that from happening."

"Am I going to be all right?" said Snake.

"All right? That's… subjective," said Mikki. "I had to locally force-restart your mind at risk of killing you, or worse, erasing your consciousness in the process."

"But I'm still here…" said Snake, "so does that mean it worked?"

"I suppose," said Mikki, "I'm just worried your consciousness has suffered from irreparable damage at this point… Like computer code, I'm worried parts of it have been corrupted or turned off… So, I'm checking to make sure if that did happen to any parts of your mind, and to isolate said parts. If any critical parts of your mind necessary for important thought processes is damaged, then…"

"Okay," said Snake, "I get it."

"So far I don't see any though," said Mikki, "I'm still checking."

"You're inside my mind?" said Snake.

"Yes," said Mikki, "I have been for some time now, monitoring your BISECT to make sure nothing bad's happening that could compromise the mission."

"Did you see the part where I thought I saw Meryl?" said Snake.

"Yes," said Mikki. "You don't need to be embarrassed about it… I'm not judging you based on who you love… but I get how invasive this can feel."

Snake looked at Mikki. "I was just hallucinating… That was you, wasn't it?"

Mikki looked at Snake, went wide-eyed and blushed. Looking away, she chewed one of her nails and said, "Y- yes… that was me."

Looking away, Snake said, "Sorry."

Mikki looked back at Snake. "Sorry for what?"

"I don't know if anything I said or did while I was hallucinating creeped you out—"

"No, you did nothing wrong!" said Mikki, trying to hold back a smile as she looked at Snake.

But Snake was still looking away. "Meryl's gone. They're all gone. I may not have come to terms with that completely, but I'm past stage two."

"I can tell," said Mikki. "What Mei Ling said to you in her dying dream, when you linked minds with her, it helped you break out of the control Hannah was trying to force on you."

"What control?" said Snake.

"It looks like she was trying to weaponize your grief… make you angry and violent, enough so that you'd perform better."

Snake sighed, and put his head down. "Of course this is Hannah's doing… Back in Rome, something similar happened when Liquid turned me into Solidus… While he was possessing my body, I thought I was in a VR training simulation where I had to kill my friends in it. Liquid said it was a test to keep her from turning me posthuman for the sake of completing the mission."

"She distorted my perception, made me violent and angry from my grief! But seeing the real Mei Ling's thoughts… that made things change… Wait… Was that the real Mei Ling I interacted with?"

"Yes… it was," said Mikki. "Right before she died, you managed to temporarily free her human consciousness from her posthuman one… using the software solution I'm developing to bring down Dante's hivemind… but…"

Mikki sighed. "It's not entirely there yet. She's gone now."

"You did the best you could do," said Snake. "At the end of their dreams, both Colonel Campbell and Mei Ling said they saw a white light, but I couldn't see it."

"A… white light?" said Mikki.

"Do you think… do you think they're alive now? In some sort of afterlife? Can transhumans go to heaven?"

"I… I never really believed in that sort of thing…" said Mikki, looking away.

"Me neither, but now I'm not so sure," said Snake.

"The biological brain starts to release a potent hallucinogen known as DMT when the body is near death to help it cope with the pain," said Mikki.

"While the newer full-body augmentation models like mine that are capable of feeling physical sensations like pleasure and pain does have a similar effect that can be added to them… your full-body augmentation is the soldier model, so it doesn't," Mikki explained. "You don't feel physical pain… but you still feel mental pain."

"I know," said Snake. "I'm in a lot of pain right now."

"I can tell," said Mikki. "Your mind is struggling to process it… Someone who hadn't already been exposed to as much trauma, combat, and grief as you have would have lost their minds by now. Try not to lose consciousness."

"I'm trying," said Snake. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Yes?"

"Talk to me. To keep my mind off the pain."

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Something you like to talk about. Anything."

"I, um…" Mikki looked away, and scratched her head. "I don't know if you'd enjoy listening to me talk about supercomputer code, or transhuman medical science… Other than that, my only hobbies are sex, alcohol, and cheese."

"Maybe talk about how you got so good at your profession," said Snake.

"You mean sex?"

"No. I mean the supercomputer programming and transhuman science."

"Oh. All right," Mikki sighed, shut her eyes for a moment, and breathed out. "All right. Where to begin… From a very young age, I was always interested in science and technology, and all the amazing things it had built all around us. Whether this was the result of me being kidnapped by the Patriots is… debatable."

"While other girls my age were dressing up as their favorite Disney princesses, or playing with dolls and toys… I wanted to know how the toys worked, so I'd take them apart and put them back together. The other children thought I was weird because of that."

"Did they bully you?"

"They mostly just avoided me… and over time, I accepted their avoidance," said Mikki.

Snake said nothing.

"Eventually I was recognized as a child prodigy…" said Mikki. "I managed to land several jobs in advanced fields… Supercomputer programming… Rocket engineering… Transhuman medical science… I was only a teenager when I started working as an intern for JD, and eventually Firelake. I'd go on to be a huge influence in the industry, spearheading the current generation of transhumanist technology."

"You sound a lot like Sunny," said Snake. "You're a genius."

Some of Snake's flesh started to grow back onto his endoskeleton, and his voice slowly started to sound human again as his larynx started to heal.

"I got lucky," said Mikki. "I had a gift, an intellect few others possessed… a human one. I didn't want my gift to go to waste. I promised myself I'd use it to make the world a better place… I wanted others to be able to see the world like I did, to see what it could become."

Mikki put a hand to her head. "But I got carried away. I flew too close to the sun, and I got burned. Came crashing down into the bitter reality most people are living."

"I realize now that my life's work has been so time-consuming that I haven't been able to live my life the way I want to. Actually, I think it may be even worse than that…"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm no longer sure how I want to live my life, or if I want to. And now it's too late to do so anyway. The mistakes I've made, the monsters I've created have put a price on my head."

"It's not too late," said Snake.

"It is," she said.

"Well, even if that ends up being true… if, say, somehow we manage to make it off of this island alive, save the world, shutdown DICE, Firelake, and JD… What would you want to do the most?"

"Taking down the JD megacorporation seems like it would take a lifetime of work in itself…" said Mikki. "…but if somehow I managed to survive all of that, walk away, and start my life over again… I wouldn't want to do it by myself. I'd want to make friends again. I never realized how lonely I was until you showed me."

Snake's skin had almost completely grown back now.

"Thank god…" Mikki said, looking at her laptop. "It looks like I managed to fix your BISECT. I don't see any corruptions."

"That's good," said Snake, "because we've got a job to do. And after that… will you help me try to take down JD?"

"It would make the world better off if we somehow pulled it off, wouldn't it?" said Mikki. "All right. I'll help… but just by saying so, I've already made myself an enemy of JD."

"I know," said Snake with a frown. "Our BISECTs are being monitored by Hannah."

Mikki said to Snake, "Regardless, we need to focus on the lesser evil—Dante and Firelake—for now."

Snake said, "Right. Can you give me access back to my motor functions?"

Hovering her hands over some of her laptop's keys, Mikki said, "I just restarted your endoskeletal control terminals in your BISECT. You should feel your abilities to move and use your other augmentations come back soon enough."

Snake said, "Good. And Mikki?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"For what?" Mikki looked up while continuing to type.

"For telling me a little about you."

Mikki paused typing.

"I feel like I know you better now. It wasn't easy when I asked some of my now-dead friends about themselves. I was never great at talking to people… but that was around the time I started becoming friends with everyone I'm fighting now."

"You'd… consider being friends with me?" said Mikki.

"I would," said Snake.

Mikki got up from where she was sitting, and walked toward Snake.

"What are you—"

Snake was unable to stop Mikki from hugging him.

"Thank you," said Mikki. "You're helping me get back a part of my old self too. A part I thought I had lost... one that saw the good in others."

"You're welcome," said Snake nervously as Mikki hugged him. "Um… are my clothes going to print themselves back on soon?"

"What?" Mikki said, then looked down at Snake and let go of him, blushing.

"Sorry… I forgot you're in love with Meryl—I mean, that you didn't have any clothes on!"

"That's right…" said Snake, scratching his head.

"Isn't Meryl dead though, Snake?" said a voice from somewhere behind Snake.

Snake looked behind him.

"I'm back again," said Mei Ling, "along with the Colonel… He's still loitering around somewhere in your head. I may pop in every now and then to provide some 'tactical advisory' of sorts… along with some Chinese proverbs. If you don't mind me doing so."

Snake looked at Mei Ling in confusion as she continued, "I know you're a bit embarrassed because of your lack of clothes at the moment, so I'll be brief. I may be grieving too, but I have heard of a quick way to get over the death of someone you love."

"I promise I'll keep my hands to myself," said Mikki. "We're still friends, right, Snake?"

"Uh-huh?" said Snake, unaware of Mikki as he continued to look at Mei Ling.

"Find someone else to love that's still alive," said Mei Ling as he gestured his head toward Mikki.

Jayden looked back at Mikki.

"Thank goodness…" said Mikki as she looked away, and typed into her laptop. "I'm restoring your jungle camo uniform now."

"It's up to you ultimately," said Mei Ling to Snake as his camo uniform printed back onto his body. "It's true she's done some weird things to your mind… but from what I can tell the situation she's trapped in isn't that great either. You may not love her, but maybe you can help her find a way to love again without lust."

Snake looked over at Mikki. She was looking at her laptop.

"I'm detecting another partial consciousness that's sharing a body with you Snake, it's… Mei Ling's?" Mikki said as she looked up at Snake. "What is she telling you?"

Snake looked over at Mei Ling, who just grinned. "You used to hit on me all the time, Snake… What's holding you back with her?"

Looking back at Mikki again, Snake walked over to where she was sitting.

"I, uh… you're a bit young for me…" said Snake.

Looking at Snake, Mikki said while blinking, "What?"

"I'm grieving, you're grieving. We're all grieving," said Snake. "Would wrapping my arms around you help you feel better? For now, at least?"

Mikki grinned. "Yes," she said.

Snake held Mikki in his arms.

"I thought you said you loved Meryl," she said.

"Meryl's dead," said Snake. "She and I were never in a relationship together anyway. Even if both of us wanted to be… That and she's not really a hug person."

Mikki giggled, but then her thoughts drifted.

"I don't want you to kill Raiden," said Mikki. "He saved Sunny and me from the Patriots. I care about him a lot."

"I may not have a choice," said Snake.

"I know," said Mikki, looking down.

Snake kissed Mikki on the cheek.

Mikki smiled, and she kissed Snake on the lips.

In between kisses, Snake said, "I don't care if you're a slut anymore… You're a good person."

Mikki laughed.

They were making out when Snake saw Mikki receive a call on her BISECT via his extended reality vision.

"Shit, it's Dante," said Mikki as she noticed the message. Turning away from Snake, she said, "Sorry, Snake, I have to take this," she said, smiling excitedly to herself, then collecting herself and suppressing her emotions as she activated her comms channel with Dante. "What is it, Hades? No, I haven't seen him while I was on my bike… Yes, I was on my way to his last known position. I'm not sure how he managed to get away either. You're saying you want him brought to you alive now? All right, I'll regroup with the others. Yes, Hades. Over and out."

Mikki said as she put on her catsuit and zipped it up over the bikini she was wearing, "Despite that I want to spend more time with you now, I can't be away from Dante and the others any longer. I don't want to endanger the mission."

"Right, got it," said Snake.

"We have to do this again," said Mikki. "So do me a favor and don't die!"

"No promises," Snake said, "but I'll try not to."

"I'm serious, Snake! They're going to come at you all at once!" said Mikki as she walked out from underneath the waterfall to where her hoverbike was parked next to the river. "Do everything you can to stay undetected until you get to the inner lair!"

As Mikki got back on her hoverbike, and sped off into the distance, Snake waved goodbye, and smiled.

I may not be able to feel physical pleasure anymore, but I admit I'm wondering what sex with her is like, he thought to himself.