CHAPTER 21 (DEBRIEFING)— "THE MOUSE SOUL EATER"
Mikki showed Snake the footage of the Limbo stronghold.
"It was when you encountered me for the first time at Dante's Limbo stronghold in Hong Kong that I activated Liquid's consciousness inside your BISECT."
"So… that was the reason he helped me break into Dante's vault, steal the DICE files…"
"It was also the reason Meryl and Dante were unable to wipe them from your BISECT by interfacing with you when you boarded their extraction plane…" said Mikki. "They tried to extract the files from your consciousness… not Liquid's."
"So… you originally disguised me as Fat Snake like you did with Daemonic Snake in Rome, and uploaded his consciousness to my BISECT… in order to keep the DICE files safe?"
"Along with your consciousness," she said. "There was a weakness in Cocytus that I managed to exploit… Dante's hivemind never figured out how to purge multiple consciousnesses from a transhuman body at once, let alone detect them."
"I think I understand now…" said Snake. "That's what Liquid was hinting at back in Hong Kong when he first showed up!"
"The others call me Fat Snake, brother. They bother me about my weight. And yet I've been fooling them all along. I've always wanted to be the man who stole my birthright. And now as it turns out, I finally am that man!"
Fat Snake laughed.
Snake said, "How are you still alive? I killed you? Or… FOXDIE did."
"Yes, on one hand, FOXDIE did in fact kill me. But I'm also here, before your very eyes. I wonder how that's possible?"
"He knew what was happening all along," said Mikki. "After Hong Kong, we had you get back to Geneva to have your body repaired… Then you showed up to Dante's philanthropy party in Bangkok as yourself."
"And then… when I met you and learned you were the mole inside Dante's ranks… when you repaired my endoskeleton after Meryl damaged it, when I was meeting up with Drebin… you turned me into Fat Snake again."
"Otacon must've tipped Meryl off about Drebin," said Mikki. "You never were eavesdropping on Dante's meeting with his Apostles in Bangkok… You were attending it, as Fat Snake."
"Do you know if he managed to store a copy of them somewhere? Meryl thought she had stolen and then redacted the files from Snake's BISECT when she interfaced with him while grabbing his arm on the plane ride out of Hong Kong, but my sources say NATO has more information than they should," said Dante.
"Unfortunately, based on my own sources, I suspect so as well," said Fat Snake.
"This was also believed to be true by our double agent within NATO, hence why I ordered the rest of the Apostles to avoid meeting in person at this party. This is going to set back our plans considerably. Speaking of which…"
Drakovich snapped his fingers. "Bang."
Holograms of 11 men and women in suits appeared at chairs in the round table with the globe hologram in the middle, along with 88 more in holograms on screens all around the panic room.
To Snake's shock, he found that he himself was a hologram, thinking he was hiding in the ceiling.
Snake said, "So that's why Liquid helped me break into the meeting!" Thinking further through it, he said, "Russia… The A-Nile-8 factory…"
"You arrived with me via plane as Liquid. He planted the explosives for the distraction that helped you escape ahead of time, and hacked into security and slaughtered Jeffrey Bozeman's security detail as well. Dante thought he was doing it to help him kill Bozeman…"
"…but he was helping me break in," said Snake.
Flipping through the various security camera and drone feeds viewing the airfield in the air control tower, Snake said, "It's Drakovich… he's meeting with Bozeman."
Snake said as he scanned the airfield, "And Meryl and the others… they're guarding him. I also see Ultra Mouse and Liquid getting off the plane together. That can't be good…"
Sunny said, "All right, Sn- snake. I think it's best we stop talking to each other and start eavesdropping on the meeting."
"All right," said Snake.
Snake said, "And that biometric scanner that I thought was filled with microwaves, the one that led into Jeffrey Bozeman's office…"
"You were hallucinating. That was when Solidus was first uploaded to your BISECT, with Sheila and Liquid's help."
Snake unrolled the e-sticky note from Liquid's soda can, and scanned it with his Solid Vision.
The note was a relatively short text file.
It read:
We have a common enemy, brother. I propose a temporary truce. Here's the password to open the lock. As for the proper voice, you'll have to find it within you. Speak it, brother, and then… doors will open.
"Who are the Rat Patrol 01?"
Extremely confused, Snake walked up to the door, and spoke the password.
"Who are the Rat Patrol 01?"
The lights on the lock turned from red to green, and the door's magnetic seal opened.
Snake walked in, and to his shock, he saw a field of microwave emitters ahead of him.
In order to get to Bozeman's office, he had no choice but to walk through them!
… … … … …
Snake quickly opened the door to the other side of the microwave-filled corridor, and shut it tight. He then fell over onto the floor and screamed demonically, with the peripheral nerve wires connected to his BISECT pulsing bright white and blue through his terrifying endoskeleton, now completely void of skin.
Somehow though, the endoskeleton was not even slightly damaged itself by the microwaves.
"Who's there?" said Jeffrey Bozeman.
"My friends… I don't want to lose my friends…" said Snake deliriously.
"Someone turned the microwaves guarding my office off, but I didn't recognize the voice," said Bozeman. "Who are you?"
Realizing someone was talking to him, Snake tried to snap out of his hallucinations, and fight through the pain. He got onto his feet again.
"Ah," said Jeffrey. "Ocelot said he'd sent someone to come get me out of here. You must be Solidus Snake."
"…Solidus?" said Snake.
Jeffrey frowned as he looked at Snake. "Who are the Apostles?"
Snake was so confused right now, he wasn't sure what to do.
"Who are the Apostles?"
Snake grabbed his head with his terrifying hand, and shook it.
"Don't make me tell Alisa to activate the nearby turrets and kill you—"
"Oh, for Christ's sake, 01310011161!" yelled Snake.
Jeffrey's frown disappeared. "That was the password. I guess you are Solidus. The third son produced from the Les Infants Terribles project, a clone of Big Boss himself…"
"Yes… I'm… wait…" said Snake as his artificial human flesh started to grow back over his endoskeleton again as the nanite healing agents kicked in.
"You're not Solidus?" said Bozeman.
"No, I'm not," said Snake now that his skin had fully grown back.
"My god…" said Snake. "'Who are the Apostles' was never a password to identify my contacts… it was a trigger phrase, meant to activate and deactivate Liquid's consciousness! And 'who are the Rat Patrol 01' was meant to activate Solidus's."
"That's right," said Mikki.
"As for when I met with Liquid in the mines…"
"You were never fighting with him… Just conversing with him inside your own head… That's why you couldn't penetrate his energy shields."
"Come out, come out, wherever you are! You can't stop me brother! After all, you are me, and I am you!" Fat Snake laughed as he juggled his revolvers in front of Snake.
"So much for that temporary truce!" Snake yelled, and fired his SOCOM at Fat Snake, only for the bullets to merely graze him due to his magnetic shield device that was strapped to his hip.
Snake threw a stick of dynamite at Fat Snake, only for it to sizzle out.
"A dud!"
Fat Snake then ran at Snake, and the magnetic shield shoved Snake into the tunnel wall behind him, nearly crushing him against it.
"Enough, brother!" said Fat Snake as Cyber Snake aimed his SOCOM pistol at Fat Snake, who aimed his two revolvers at him.
"Do you honestly think you'll win this way?" said Fat Snake. "I'm not here to fight you."
"Then why the hell did you knock me off of that cart!"
"Cart?" said Fat Snake. "I thought I was destroying Dante's means of producing more posthumans, just like you did by smashing a plane into that fulfillment center!"
Snake grunted.
"And he was trying to warn me about you," said Snake as he frowned at Mikki. "About how you were trying to turn me into Big Boss… A combination of me, Liquid, and Solidus… A three-headed demon."
"I'm here to warn you, brother… Make no mistake, I am a mole working for President Brady… but I'm not the mole… While I will by no means endanger the real mole so long as she is useful to the same operation I've been assigned to, I also know that she is the true threat. I'm talking about your mouse friend, Snake. She may be helping President Brady stop Dante, but she also is responsible for developing the tools Dante needed to create his horrible new future.
Don't be fooled by her looks and her flirting. She is merely cleaning up her mess… and when everything is clean again and back to normal… she's going to stab us both in the back with just one knife!"
"Who is she then?"
"How should I know? If anything, you should know her better than I do!" said Fat Snake. "Perhaps you need to give her a call and ask. You can do so on your way to extraction. Oh, and one more thing…"
"What?"
"Keep in mind, Snake, that Dante has moles of his own. I know he at least has one. I was attempting to draw one of them out, by sending you to Jeffrey's office in lieu of them. I also believe Ultra Mouse sent you to get the DICE files before they could steal them and give them to Dante, all without incriminating him as the one responsible for the attack on Hong Kong to the public for the time being. Long enough for Dante to execute his plan. I think I know who it is now."
"Who is it?"
"Didn't you hear Jeffrey say his name? I believe you said it too."
Snake went wide-eyed. "Solidus?"
"Yes…" Then Fat Snake's eyes went wide. "Strange… Wait a minute… No, no, it can't be!"
Fat Snake said, with his tone making it sound almost as if he was in disbelief of what he was saying rather than belief, "The real mole working for Dante… is our father."
"Big Boss?" shouted Snake. "He died in my arms… in that graveyard, during our last smoke together, right after he killed Zero. If it weren't for him, I may have pulled the trigger… How the hell is he alive?"
"It sounds like that bothers you…" said Fat Snake, rubbing his chin.
"Is he even alive?"
"I don't know."
"How are you alive? How the hell are you alive!"
"Snake!" yelled Fat Snake as he pushed Cyber Snake against the wall.
"Perhaps I've revealed too much…" Fat Snake said. "All I know is that you're assigned to the same operation I am as well, and I can't endanger your life or your sanity… although the more I realize it, the more they seem to be one and the same. I fear if I tell you the truth… it may destroy you, and unravel everything."
"You're not making any sense!" yelled Cyber Snake.
"Perhaps I'm not, but I will in time," said Fat Snake as he juggled then holstered his revolvers, and then took out and juggled two sodas instead before downing one of them.
Mikki said, "It started to become a little more obvious in Rome when we disguised you as Solidus to get past the biometric scanners in Firelake's main headquarters."
"I remember…" said Snake. "The VR simulation… After Liquid had me put on those sunglasses with the QR code, I was turned into Solidus."
"What the hell…" said Snake as he realized he was looking at himself from somewhere inside the elevator. "Mikki… I'm… having an out-of-body experience of some kind… I don't know what's happening to me… Did you and Liquid plan this?"
Mikki looked around the elevator, eventually looking at his perspective, where he could see that his skin was dissolving off of his endoskeleton. "No, I think Liquid did this on his own, under orders from Hannah Brady… They must've had access to recent intel that I didn't. But I think I know what's happening to you."
She grabbed his body he was looking at and stroked his endoskeleton with her hands while looking back at him as his consciousness slowly went out of the elevator doors into the parking lot with Fat Snake. "There's no time to explain. What's about to happen is going to feel very weird… Please, you have to be strong for me. You have to be strong!"
And as Snake's consciousness was separated from his body by the elevator doors as they began to close on him, he looked at his body one last time.
Oh my god… my body, it's… Mikki… my body's turning into- Mikki, is that… S…
… … … … …
"You lied to me," said Snake as he frowned at Mikki. "You did this ahead of time with Liquid's help… I was already turned into Solidus back in Russia."
"I know," said Mikki, "and I'm sorry."
Snake woke up to realize he was trapped under a red Porsche that had seemingly flipped over; he was also covered in his own artificial blood.
As the insides of the car caught on fire, Snake screamed as his skin burned off but his endoskeleton remained intact. He ripped off his seatbelt and crawled out of the car's wreckage and away from the red Porsche before it exploded.
Snake looked at his reflection on the pavement of the road outside Firelake Headquarters as it started to rain. Covered in blood, he looked like a demon.
"What do you think?" said Fat Snake as his reflection stood next to Cyber Snake's.
Snake turned to look at Fat Snake to his right; he was still wearing his matching Carnevale mask, and diamond-studded yellow-golden suit, only now he had a hat on as well.
"Like my hat trick, brother?" said Fat Snake. "If you look inside it, you'll find not one, two, but three snakes are there!"
"Three… snakes… ?" Looking behind him, Fat Snake must've crashed his yellow-golden-painted sports car into Cyber Snake's somewhere as he made a break for it out of the parking lot.
"Do you think we'll make a proper devil of him yet, brother?" said Liquid Snake.
"What?" said Solid Snake.
"No, he needs more time here," said Solidus Snake as his reflection stood next to Cyber Snake's and Fat Snake's.
Snake turned to look at Solidus to his left; he was wearing a black suit and tie, and an eyepatch over his right eye.
"Solidus!" said Snake.
"Glad you recognize me, brother," said Solidus as several tentacle-like arm augmentations ripped out of Solidus's back. "Do you know what's happening to you?"
"No," said Snake apprehensively as he tensed himself.
Fat Snake said, "I could feel something in him start to give, back in the elevator before the merge, Solidus… Perhaps he is ready to complete his mission of his own accord… We may not need to take over his body."
"You may have seen a change in him, Liquid, but I see more than you do right now. After all, my consciousness may be buried somewhere in his mind, but the reality of things is that I am the entity most capable of monitoring, processing, and interpreting human thought, and in its purest form."
"Right… so, what's your interpretation of him?" said Fat Snake.
"I think he's scared," said Solidus. "Scared at the thought of losing his friends. Someone like that isn't fit to kill them himself."
"Three snakes…" said Snake. "A red one, a yellow one, and a black one… The three heads of Satan. That acid trip of a simulation makes sense now. Given you did this with Sheila's help… You were working with Dante to try and turn me into what you thought was my worst enemy at the time… Big Boss!"
"I had no choice," said Mikki as she trembled in fear. "I had to preserve my cover."
"It makes sense why the operation was called 'Operation Snake Soul Eater," said Snake. "It was modeled after Big Boss's mission in the '60s! This whole damned mission was just an attempt to break my will the entire time!"
"That's correct, Snake," said Mikki as she began to cry.
"That explains why Liquid was talking to me in the sim," said Snake. "When we were walking alongside Solidus… We were all occupying the same body, not just me and Solidus. Liquid wouldn't have wanted to be seen near the fake Solidus to preserve his cover, but he didn't have to since he was in the same body as Solidus and me."
Snake said, "And then there was Dante's private island… and what I learned from Hannah Brady…"
Mikki said, "After Rome, I was starting to have second thoughts. The mission was evolving, as I now realized Big Boss wasn't your worst enemy. I wanted to show you the truth… hence why I used Solidus to restore some of the memories Hannah erased…"
"Despite that Solidus's consciousness was uploaded to your BISECT with Liquid's help during Russia… you actually did get surgery to look like Solidus back between the missions in Siberia and Rome, back in Geneva…"
Snake was in Geneva, being augmented again… but his consciousness had already been uploaded to his newer, inferior body.
This time he was being augmented with Solidus's tentacles.
At some point after his surgery was over, Snake headed to the top floor via the elevator.
President Hannah Brady was in her office of her John Doe megacorporation's cyber-care clinic subsidiary's main headquarters.
She was talking to a hologram of Mikki while sipping a drink.
Snake was walking into her office when he heard them talking.
Mikki told Hannah, "I'm in Rome, Hannah… I'm at one of John Doe's old subsidiaries' headquarters that Dante took over and repurposed to become Firelake's main headquarters instead."
"The AI monitoring your thoughts is telling me that you want to ask how long this schism has been going on between me and Dante."
"Tell me. I deserve that much," said Mikki.
"For longer than you can imagine," said Hannah.
"I had already known that the DICE project had been under development for much longer than the point I became a part of it…" said Mikki. "I was just the one who was able to help Dante finish it."
"Obviously," said Hannah. "Despite your genius-level intellect and impressive levels of achievement in your field… Entering multiple advanced scientific fields at a young age, all without a normal education… Spearheading the development of several of the latest full-body transhuman augmentation models… And taking part in the DICE project… You're only in your twenties, Mikki."
"But this… this damned project… and whatever caused Dante to betray you, it's not just a means to rid humanity of its collective consciousness… It's responsible for reviving the war economy to the extent that it's worse than that of when the Sons of the Patriots were in charge of it."
"In addition to that, Dante turned to the Russians and the Chinese for help, and caused society to regress to a second cold war… more like World War Three without nukes given the implementation of the war economy. The two sides of the war are using allied PMCs to brutally exploit each other's proxy nations for resources…" Mikki shouted angrily, "He's been plotting behind your back for over a decade after you cut him loose and you said nothing just because his plot is your plot, only worse!"
"That's correct," Hannah said, and sighed. "Your contributions to DICE merely helped Dante meet the deadline I wanted his subsidiary to meet all the way back in 2023 in order to help me ensure my re-election for a second term… That was eleven years ago. You would've been sixteen then. We had to undergo tremendous losses of profits due to the increasingly unhappy constituents of the world's governments we control since then."
"You pushed him into a corner," said Mikki, who was visibly trembling. "All the people that are about to die because of his experiments… The blood's not just on my hands, or Dante's… it's on yours."
… … … … …
"Back when I first relived this restored memory, I thought what I saw in it was the truth you wanted to tell me… But it wasn't about that, it was about the fact that you had been working with Sheila and Dante all along, that you triple-crossed both me and Hannah Brady!"
Mikki said, "Hannah only knew about Liquid… She didn't know about Solidus until Sheila proposed the plan to her for breaking into Firelake's headquarters in Rome."
"Why are you telling me this, Mikki?" said Hannah.
"I can't keep the truth from Snake… about what I had to do to him… forever, Hannah," said Mikki. "He deserves to know too."
"Are you considering telling him?" said Hannah.
"You already know the answer; you're monitoring my BISECT!" yelled Mikki.
"Not only would telling him the truth about what you did to him pose a massive threat to our operation," said Hannah, "but it would turn him against you as well."
"Snake's a hero," said Mikki, "and a good person. He used to be my friend, too. He'll understand what needs to be done—"
"Cyber Snake is a hollow shell of his former self," said Hannah. "He's changed now. You would know since you implemented the changes yourself, Mikki.
He may have been your friend in your past life, but in this one he already doesn't trust you very much. If you tell him the truth, he won't trust you at all, and never will. And if you somehow get him to trust you before you tell him the truth… You're seeing what's happening to his mind, knowing that his fellow agents, the only friends he's ever had, are gone. If you actually choose to seduce him for your own selfish reasons, you'll destroy him."
Mikki frowned at Hannah as she said to her, "You're not going to tell him. You're going to fall in love with him long enough to satisfy your lustful desires I designed you to have in this life… and then he's going to find out."
"We'll see about that," said Mikki.
… … … … …
"You remember?" said Hannah, looking at Snake as if she was intrigued rather than upset for a moment. "Mikki must be becoming rebellious again… She must've thought that she could use Daemonic Snake as a way to get past some of my control over your BISECT."
"You've been manipulating my consciousness…" said Snake. "You're a sick woman, Hannah…"
Snake's eyes then went wide. "Wait a second… Are you saying the copy Liquid made of Solidus's consciousness is still sharing my body with me?"
"Yes. He never left you," said Hannah. "Mikki's hiding something from me… No matter. She can't hide it for long. I'll take a look at her secrets via access to her BISECT myself."
"So… Mikki used Solidus as a conduit to help me get my memories back," said Snake. "At least some of them. She's not entirely responsible for manipulating my mind… but you are. I suggest you earn my trust back by filling in the rest of the gaps in my memory."
"Nice try, Snake," said Hannah. "You'll never trust me again… but at least for the time being, you might trust Mikki somewhat. Have her fill in the gaps for you."
"Fine," said Snake.
"But the memory was only partially restored," said Snake. "My entire meeting with Hannah never happened… It was one of Sheila's manipulations, to plant the idea of bringing down the JD conglomerate in my head."
"You did mention that to me later…" said Mikki.
"Was I even on that NATO carrier?" said Snake.
"You were," said Mikki. "We didn't want Dante's mole to be suspicious, even though at that point we didn't realize it was Otacon. He was likely planted within JD's ranks to give away your position, as well as attempt to expose whoever the mole was. Once Dante figured out it was me… He didn't have to pretend he was still transhuman anymore."
"You deployed via submarine that night, and then… throughout the mission on the private island… You switched places with Fat Snake at various airfields on the island, so you could grab the stealth bomber and destroy Dante's local OS and comms network."
"That explains that confusing point where I hallucinated and thought I was being shot by Naomi… and I suppose I was. She shot Liquid—AKA me—out of the sky."
"That's right," said Mikki.
Snake was moving along the rope bridge until he felt a massive pain in his chest.
Screaming, he stumbled and nearly fell off the bridge; a sniper blast round had penetrated his heart. Suddenly, he had a feverish vision of Liquid getting shot in the chest through the stealth bomber's cockpit windshields with a blast round.
"What the hell…" groaned Snake as he looked at the cave in front of him.
Shit… where'd she come from?
It was Naomi. Her sniper rifle was raised toward the sky.
"Hades, this is Heresy."
"Heresy, I told you to cease all communications—"
"I shot down the bogey."
To his shock, Snake looked up.
Liquid's stealth bomber was falling out of the sky, and crashed somewhere in the deeper jungle area that was eerily close to where the rope bridge was.
Snake could hear the plane's frame shred through the trees as it made an emergency landing.
"LIQUID!" yelled Snake.
As the plane came out of the jungle and smashed through the posts the rope bridge was tethered to, Snake screamed as the rope bridge collapsed.
Snake held on for dear life to the bridge as it slammed into the rock formations beneath the cave.
Snake grunted, his skin was bleeding all over and covered in bruises from the impact.
Above him, Naomi looked down at him with a bizarre expression.
"Someone there?" Naomi said. Looking at the wreckage of the plane as it was smashed to pieces by the conical rocks in the waterfall, she then looked down in Snake's direction.
"Do you see the mole down there?" said Meryl to Naomi as she appeared at the other end of the cave.
"Not yet," said Naomi, looking back up.
"If we don't have a body, then he's still out there," said Meryl, as she looked down. "What's this rope bridge doing here?"
"I don't know. Maybe the mole set it up as an exfiltration route from the lair? It's thick enough to hold a hoverbike… or was."
"Well if that's the case…" said Meryl, as she looked down at Snake and squinted.
"No!" yelled Snake as Meryl raised her hand toward him instinctively, then frowned and hesitated moments before she fired her Patriot machine guns at the posts connecting the rope bridge to the cave.
"NO!" Snake screamed as the rope snapped and he lost his grip.
"MERYL!" He screamed as he fell down into the rapids, and after he hit the water, he dislocated his right leg as he slammed it into a conical rock at an angle.
The plane wreckage was crashing through the rapids, the flames from its jet fuel turning to steam in the rapids as it tumbled down right behind him.
As he fell over another waterfall, he managed to deploy his wings and the jets in his legs, barely landing on his feet in the dirt before he lost control, further breaking his right leg and falling face first and skidding into the mud not far from the shallow bottom of the waterfall.
Before the stealth bomber's wreckage that didn't get shredded by the trees or conical rocks fell over the side of the waterfall, Snake saw an ejector seat launch sideways and land somewhere in the trees past him before the wreckage fell very close to Snake, crashing and reigniting the jet fuel.
Panting heavily and covered in blood, scratches, mud, and tears in his skin revealing his endoskeleton, Snake managed to propel himself back onto his feet using his jets and limped away from the burning wreckage before it exploded, sending him flying again and blacking out for a second as he hit the ground.
As he lifted his head out of the mud as it started to rain, Cyber Snake saw an equally heavily wounded Fat Snake whose ejector seat's parachute strings had gotten caught in the canopy in front of him. Fat Snake unbuckled his seatbelt and cut through the foliage with his own set of sword drills, falling to the ground next to Cyber Snake.
Snake said, "Liquid… get up… they'll find us here… we have to go…"
Liquid got up, and yelled, "NO!" He limped into the trees.
"Liquid, wait!" yelled Snake as he raised a hand. "What… about… me… ?"
"After you reached the airfield… the drones and soldiers you hacked into with your BISECT's extended reality toolset were done remotely from the air while you were piloting the stealth bomber as Liquid… You were never on that rope bridge, or the cave full of symbols about Dante's Inferno. You were just contemplating what the mission meant in your head. It was just part of a sim I put together based on shared expectations and experiences of the island."
"Right," said Snake. "That explains why Naomi and Meryl acted like they didn't see me… and it explains why I thought I was on the rope bridge. That's where you stashed your hoverbike. You built the sim off of your knowledge of the island to make it feel like I was actually there."
"When Naomi shot you out of the sky… that's when everything started to fall apart," said Mikki. "I had to put you back in your own body to preserve Liquid's cover… but it wouldn't be preserved for much longer once the others captured you after Raiden nearly bested you in combat."
"Right…" said Snake. "Dante figured out that you and Liquid were the moles… He must've realized that you were the mole because he recognized your handiwork upon realizing that Liquid and I shared a body... not after Naomi saw you help me escape."
Snake opened his eyes and screamed demonically as Dante pulled his hands away from his skull after interfacing with his BISECT.
Panting, Snake looked at his body; most of his flesh was gone. His endoskeleton was covered in blood.
"What's happening, Dante?" said Naomi. "I thought you wanted to turn Snake posthuman!"
Mikki looked at Snake with a horrified expression on her face. She had been crying. Naomi, Meryl, and the others all looked at Dante in confusion. But Dante looked at Snake with a furious look on his face that intimidated him a little.
"Fat Snake is the mole," said Dante, "but that only leaves me with more questions…"
"I thought you saw into Cyber Snake's thoughts, though," said Meryl.
"No," said Dante. "I saw some of Cyber Snake's thoughts… But before I could see all of them, instead I saw Fat Snake's."
"Fat Snake's thoughts?" said Rosemary.
"I've seen work like this before… That means…" Dante looked around furiously, breathing heavily before he screamed in a deafening, demonic howl.
"MIKKI!" shouted Dante.
All eyes were on Mikki now.
"Your work was used against us… How!"
"I don't know, Dante," cried Mikki, who was a shaking mess. "Hannah Brady, she must've found a way to—"
Dante then grinned.
"Right. I understand… my love," he said to her, and stroked her hair as she trembled.
"You've cooperated with us this long… You wouldn't have reason to betray us now."
He kissed her on the lips forcefully. She shut her eyes tight out of fear as he did this.
"Come to my chambers for another round with me," said Dante. "This round will hurt even more than the last."
"Yes- yes, Dante," Mikki sniffled.
… … … … …
"After that… things became less confusing, but much more terrifying," said Mikki. "Dante was able to hack into Fat Snake's consciousness as well as Solidus's, which is why his consciousness started to fade away when you were fighting Rosemary and Otacon."
"And it was back then that Dante hinted at his final plans… He was using Rosemary to distract me in Zanzibar Land, while simultaneously trying to figure out who my worst enemy was by putting me through a simulation of one of my older missions—the mission where I took down the real Big Boss—back when I was a heartless killer," said Snake.
"Then he used Otacon to hack into the Reality of Things central server while I was trying to chase after Rosemary and Metal Gear DAEMON."
"I wish I had acted on my instincts," said Mikki. "I suspected Otacon was the mole from the get-go… but then again, his true intention was to expose my identity as the mole. Getting him to hack into the Reality of Things' central server locally was just icing on the cake… but if Otacon didn't do it, then one of his other associates within Hannah's ranks likely could've. Firelake's posthuman conspiracy was vast, after all… and I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest if he was able to hack into it remotely if he failed to do so locally."
Dante shouted, "Naomi!"
"Yes, Dante?"
"You take Snake to his cell. Keep an eye on him," said Dante. "Rosemary, you're going to meet me in my office in a minute. And Jonathan, Ed, Akiba… and Meryl… Prepare for your journey to Metal Gear DAEMON for the final phase of the infernal conflict… I'll be with you shortly."
"What about Fat Snake, Dante?" said Rosemary. "Is he still on the island?"
"Yes," said Dante, "he is… but not in the way you'd think. He no longer matters."
"But… he's the mole!"
"And without his stealth bomber or his cover, he's got no way to stop our plans anymore."
"I don't understand…" said Rosemary.
"And you don't need to," said Dante. "I'm in charge of the hivemind's hierarchy, therefore you'll understand what I need you to. Rose, for the final phase of the plan, you and our own mole will be key players as well." Dante said as he walked out of the room. As Mikki and the others followed him, Mikki looked back at Snake briefly as Naomi released Snake from the chair.
As Meryl, Jonathan, and Ed helped Naomi restrain and tie Snake up, Dante walked toward Snake and grabbed him by the back of his skull again. "You won't be able to sneak past us any more, Snake. I've discovered Hannah's mole. All this time, he wasn't crawling around, or hiding in a cardboard box… Instead, he was hiding in plain sight…"
As Dante zapped Snake's endoskeleton with electricity again, he then shoved Snake face-first to the floor.
Snake screamed, only for Dante to stomp on his torso.
"You failed Hannah's mission for you, Snake… but my mission for you has only just begun…"
Snake looked at Liquid and Solidus in shock as they surrounded the same body they all occupied.
"My and Liquid's recessive and dominant genes in our consciousnesses would cancel each other out… all while Solidus's posthuman consciousness and appearance would make us into…"
"The three-headed beast… Big Boss," cried Mikki.
Liquid turned back to Mikki and said to Snake, "I told you that you couldn't trust this little mouse, brother…"
"Liquid was right," said Snake with a frown. "Hannah probably programmed him so he would warn me not trust you."
"That's right," said Mikki as she began to tremble again.
Mikki said to Snake, "I'm so sorry, Snake… but the conspiracy… it runs even deeper…"
"Dante said the same thing," said Snake with contempt in his voice as Liquid began to juggle his revolvers again and pull their triggers in Mikki's direction.
"No, Snake, please listen to me!" cried Mikki. "There's something else about all this that I need to tell you!"
Mikki flinched as Liquid kept pulling the trigger in Mikki's direction. With every click of their barrels, Mikki's flinching and cries became more and more intense.
"Please don't kill me, Snake!" sobbed Mikki. "I'm your friend too!"
"Friends don't lie to each other," said Snake. "Not like this."
Just as Liquid was about to shoot Mikki, he stopped as several transhumans came out to look at Mikki.
"I thought I recognized her…" said a transhuman man.
"What's going on?" said Snake, looking around.
"That's Mikki Moskova, the OnlyTraps model," said a transhuman man.
"No, that's Sunny Emmerich," said a transhuman woman. "I worked with her at Solis Space and Aeronautics!"
"What?" said Snake.
"No…" said Mikki as she trembled intensely, her voice hoarse from crying, "I'm not Mikki Moskova, and I'm not Sunny Emmerich… I'm both."
