The approach to the 'Devil's House', as the site was called, was straightforward enough.
There was a lot of sneaking involved, but that was hardly out the normal for any mission that required a Snake.
He slipped past the patrols with the assistance of Quiet, marking soldiers before he could see them, and arrived at the industrial zone tunnel, one final enemy tent before the site.
And Venom entered alone.
At first the place could have been mistaken for some kind of hospital, or the victims within as having died of the sickness spreading across Mother Base, but a closer look would show that to be false.
No medical treatment involved placing a speaker within someones throat.
He contacted Mother Base.
"It's full of test subjects," he reported. "Speakers in their throats. Is there any connection between the infected, a shared language?"
"Checking. If there is?"
"Then everyone on Mother Base who speaks that language goes into quarantine. Keep everyone who hasn't shown symptoms separate from everyone else."
"Understood."
Venom proceeded further in, looking for any evidence of what exactly this infection was or whether there was a cure.
The closest he came to anything like that was a name.
Code Talker.
And then he found him.
From the translators, he'd heard that there was another of the child soldiers, who'd been taken captive with them, and then been dragged away.
Shabani.
And the boy was in front of him, exposed to the same sickness and procedure as everyone else in the building.
Venom did what he could, placing a hand on Shabani to cast Everheal, and detaching the equipment from him, abandoning his search for a rescue mission.
And that was where the Man On Fire appeared.
From deeper within the facility he emerged, the structure catching alight from his presence, forcing Venom to flee.
There was nothing he could do for the others trapped inside, or even try to heal the damage caused to Shabani by removing the devices from his body, not with the Man On Fire, a figure he could now recognise as once being Colonel Volgin, pursuing him so closely.
With the fire spreading ahead of him, collapsing the structure, even rescuing Shabani felt like it could be too much.
He was forced to invoke Freelancer to clear the wreckage before him, total collapse falling right behind only to be burned away by Volgin.
Smoke filled Venoms lungs as he fled, and he dreaded to think what it was doing to the boy, his body already damaged by whatever it was the XOF were testing or growing here.
He escaped the place moments before it collapsed, an impromptu burial for its victims, carrying Shabani as far away as he dared before Volgin could break free.
He took a moment to cast another Everheal on Shabani, and an Everfight on himself, the power unable to restore the boy even to the degree he could stand once more.
And then Volgin burst free.
Freelancer charged him, giving Venom time to try and ready a weapon, only to find them missing.
With no other choice, if he wanted to survive, he cast the hammerspace power, grabbing the first gun he could find as Volgins fire overwhelmed Freelancer and sent the Titan back to his amulet.
And as Volgin approached, Venom aimed his gun and fired, only seeing the water pistol he had picked up at some point after he was committed.
And Volgin flinched back as the water struck, the natural weakness of his fire overwhelming him.
Venom kept firing until Volgin collapsed, his fires burning out.
Venom fell back, relief washing over him at the end of the fight.
He opened his radio.
"Pequod, three for pickup."
]
On Venoms first return to Mother Base since the outbreak started, Pequod landed on the medical platform, Shabani needing urgent treatment if he was to survive long enough to be placed in quarantine.
Ocelot was waiting as he left the room the boy was placed into for surgery.
"It seems this weapon is spread to those who speak Kikongo, even just a few words from a native speaker," he stated. "Do you have anything? Any leads?"
"A name. Have you heard of Code Talker?"
"Yes, he was the one who conducted an autopsy on the remains of the End. I believe he was recruited into Cipher."
"His name was on documents in the Devil's House. He was involved somehow."
"It's more than we had before. Get back on Pequod, I'll track down Code Talker."
"After I shower. The smoke would give me away."
]
It wasn't long before Ocelot passed on the current location of Code Talker.
He was kept in a mansion, guards keeping him secure, but it seemed Skullface had decided he had outlived his usefulness.
His Skull unit was heading to the mansion to eliminate Code Talker, a second time limit for Venoms mission.
It wasn't clear why Skullface didn't send the orders to Code Talkers guards, but Venom was grateful for the chance it gave them, to hopefully find a cure.
Quiet hadn't left Pequod when they landed, and was likely the best companion for this mission either way, the only one of his buddies with lethal weapons, the only sort to work on the Skull unit.
And so it was Venom and Quiet who were left to journey through the forest, filled with the fog of the Skulls, to reach Code Talker in his mansion.
Venom was ready, so far as he could be, for the appearance of the familiarly zombie like Skulls, but that wasn't what they faced.
This was a unit of snipers.
From the brief look he managed of them, before they vanished to a better vantage point, the four of them looked zombified versions of Quiet, bald and corpselike snipers who seemed to possess the same abilities as her.
While Quiet was armed for the confrontation, Venom had replaced his tranquiliser rifle in preparation for the guards at the mansion, and so had only his Drybite power to use against them.
And he wasn't confident about aiming the power at the distance they engaged from.
Venom was left to proceed through the forest while avoiding being targeted by the snipers and Quiet eliminated them, a four on one sniper battle.
Venom would never know how many of the snipers were killed, how many survived Quiet, by the time he reached the mansion, but the fog was still present.
And within, the shapes of the guards.
Something didn't look right about them, as though their muscles weren't able to work properly, and Venom couldn't help but feel a shiver run down his spine.
He approached carefully, avoiding their lime of sight.
Up close, they looked even more wrong, as though the Skulls had a sickness and the guards had the same infection.
He stepped forward, trying to choke the guard out, but the guard kept struggling even after his air should have been cut off, acting similarly to the Skulls.
The dot of a laser sight appeared on the guards head, and Venom shoved him away to make distance, moments before a bullet passed through the guards head.
Venom backed away, doing his best to hide in the fog.
A fog that apparently turned soldiers into… zombies, or something of that ilk.
"Everfight," he muttered, to try and stave off the Skulls infection as long as possible, before turning his attention towards the guards lumbering about the mansion.
If they possessed even a fraction of the abilities of the Skulls, his weapons would be all but useless…
]
Given the apparent lack of communication between the guards and Skullface, Venom had decided to risk using his Titans, invoking Freelancer and Mara.
With the fog Mara was able to use their illusions to turn all but invisible, hunting the things the guards had been turned into and seeking out Code Talker.
Freelancer, on the other hand, drew hostile attention immediately.
At the sight of the armoured Titan the guards lost all semblance of sense, charging Freelancer in an apparent attempt to tear him to pieces.
Not that they could get past his lance.
And while Quiet and the Titans whittled away at the guards, Venom was about to find his way to where Code Talker was being held all but unopposed.
Code Talker wasn't what Venom had expected.
He looked to be even older than the End was when Snake fought him, about two decades ago, but frailer than the sniper, to the degree that Venom was forced to carry him out rather than guide him to an extraction point.
And with his age, there was no possibility that he could be extracted by fulton, requiring him to be taken to Pequod.
They talked as they went, Code Talker explaining the origins of the parasites, which had led to the development of language, turned to a weapon against languages by Skullface, while Venom told him off the outbreak on Mother Base.
With help from Code Talker, it was easy to put together what had happened.
Skullface had deliberately infected the child soldiers, whose vocal cords hadn't fully developed yet, to use them as carriers.
While the children wouldn't be affected, adults speaking the language their parasites targeted would be infected.
Venom helped Code Talker onto Pequod, setting course for Mother Base.
It felt as though the outbreak might as well be over already.
AN: All 50000 words for NaNoWriMo down, but a few more chapters remain. they may not be as fast in coming as the others though.