Through
a Glass, Darkly, a Metal Gear Solid fanfic by *blinkblink*
He was sitting against the wall, eyes on the door, when Slatt returned. The doctor was high-stepping just slightly on the padded floor, smile plastered on his face as always, eyes shining behind his glasses. “How are you feeling?”
Snake smiled back, teeth glinting in the fluorescent light, mind cold and sharp. “I figured you’d be back soon. At first, I just assumed you were watching me.” He indicated the camera with a flicker of his eyes, Slatt following his glance. “But that’s not right, is it?” He watched Slatt, own face carefully schooled to reflect confidence, and danger. Slatt’s smile was fading slightly, confusion darkening his eyes. “Whenever I wake up, you arrive. Coincidence?”
“David-”
“I can’t believe I didn’t catch on earlier. It took a memory to make me realise what was missing. You told me my favourite food was curry. I remember eating, being fed. But I don’t remember any taste. I haven’t tasted or smelled anything since I got here.” His eyes narrowed slightly, dark and unreadable under the shadow cast by his thick bangs. “VR can create sights and sounds. With the right stimulus, it can even create feeling, although only strong, general sensations- hard and soft surfaces, for example,” he pushed his shoulder against the padded wall, “but not the delicate differentiations fingers are capable of.” He shook his hands in their sleeves. “It also can’t create scent or taste accurately, so most systems don’t bother, because no taste or smell is less startling than the wrong one.”
Without dropping Slatt’s gaze, he caught a sliver of cheek between his teeth and drove them together, tearing the flesh away from the wall of his mouth. “Which is why this,” he spat out a mouthful of bright blood, “has no taste.” He could feel the liquid – the blood – filling his mouth, hot and watery and slightly slicker than saliva, but it had no taste, no hint of copper or salt.
Snake pulled himself up against the wall, and looked up at the ceiling. “You can damn well let me out of here; your game won’t work anymore.” He stood, and waited. Slatt took a step forward, expression worried. And then, the world shifted, grayed out, and dissolved into static, like a television with the cable unplugged. Followed by darkness, thick and silent.
There was warmth, and the plastic smell of running computers. Relief rushed through him like the foam at the head of a wave of adrenaline. This was real.
After the first second of displacement, sensation moved forward from a tiny background prickle to an encompassing overall awareness. He was sitting in a chair, padded back tilted at a 100 degree angle to the seat, wrists and ankles secured to the chair with what felt like the same medical restraints which had been in use in the simulation. He set his teeth and tensed, ready to leap if he got the chance.
The VR helmet was removed, leaving his head cool in the absence of its cocoon of warmth, and he winced in the bright light shining down directly in his face, bright as the midday desert sun. To his left he heard a quiet clank as the helmet was put down on a non-metallic surface, most likely wood. A second later the light immediately above him was turned off, leaving a burning red spot on his retinas. On either side of the ceiling a row of fluorescents were giving off a pale bluish-white light, soft and cool after the scorching centre light. As his eyes adjusted he could make out the dark walls of a small room, colours brightening slowly. To his left on a folding wooden table sat the VR helmet, hooked up to a laptop, the quiet whirr of the fans the only noise his slightly dampened ears could pick up. Sitting in a wheeled desk chair next to the table was Slatt.
He was wearing the same clothing VR-Slatt had – suit, tie and lab coat – although this pocket was not filled with pens but more blatantly with syringes, and his glasses were gone. Apart from that, the only difference was in the man’s expression. The doctor in the simulation had worn a perpetual calm, optimistic smile. This one wore a smile as well, but it was a jackal’s grin, close, watchful and confident.
“How are you feeling, David?” he asked, with just a hint of mockery. Snake said nothing. “This is disappointing,” he added, tapping something on the laptop without looking.
“You don’t seem too disappointed,” said Snake dryly, tongue slightly clumsy and voice gruff from lack of use. He twisted in the chair slightly, found no give in the bindings. He recognized his jeans as the same pair he’d pulled on an indefinite number of days ago, shirt unfamiliar.
Slatt shrugged, and his smile brightened without becoming any more genuine, face shifting slightly like leaves in the wind. “This way, at least, I get the opportunity to meet you.”
“Going to introduce yourself, then?” Snake studied the man, as he had the representation of him, for weapons, and found no immediate sign of them. But his vision hadn’t brightened as much as it should have, he could detect no hum from the fluorescent lights or the computer fan, and if he moved too quickly the room spun slightly. The drugs, at least, had been real.
“My name isn’t Michael Slatt, I’m not a psychiatrist, and I’m not going to tell you who I’m working for.” Slatt sat still, hardly moving, eyes watchful but smooth. He made no movement that would give a hint of his strength, training or coordination, and that suggested danger.
“Glad we got that sorted out,” said Snake, slowly putting more and more pressure on the restraints around his wrists, pulling harder and harder until he was pulling with the equivalent of 150 pounds’ worth of lift. They didn’t give. He exhaled slightly as he relaxed, a tiny ripple of dizziness coming and going. “Are you going to tell me anything, then, or just shoot me? You know you can’t put me back in there.” He nodded at the helmet.
Slatt paused, looked up at the ceiling, considering. Without looking back at Snake, he began to speak slowly. “Michael Slatt already told you we’re not out to kill you.”
“Or screw with my head,” snarled Snake, tensing again.
Slatt’s smile widened slightly. “Well, that was a lie,” he said, as if offering a concession. “But there was never an intention to harm you- more than was necessary to ensure compliance. Your partner was wrong there. I’m sure you’re familiar with the S3 programme?”
Snake eyes, which had narrowed at the casual mention of Hal, narrowed further. “Yeah,” he spat. “An attempt to make a copy of me by forcing a soldier through a situation similar to Shadow Moses.”
“The Solid Snake Simulation,” said Slatt. “Exactly. It proved to be remarkably successful; although, some have argued, it required an indefensibly huge waste of funds for a relatively tiny result. Nevertheless, the S3 provided the world with a way to make nearly perfect soldiers.”
“And...?”
“And, having found a method to create them, it was suddenly realised that there was no method available for … uncreating them.”
“I can think of a few,” said Snake darkly.
“Well, yes, of course,” granted Slatt, hands flipping open for an instant in further concession. “But apart from a bullet to the head- which, I may add, is difficult when that would almost certainly require a soldier of equal calibre to the one targeted- there was no way to … deprogram these soldiers.”
“And there still isn’t.”
“No. But, had it succeeded, the S4- that is, Solid Snake Suppression Simulation- would have eventually made a regular citizen of you, a safe, productive-”
“-controllable-” cut in Snake. Slatt continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted.
“-regular member of society. You have been
the source of a huge amount of turmoil within- well, within those groups aware
of your creation and the goals which lay behind it. It is almost universally
agreed that authorising the Les Enfants Terribles Project was a mistake. After
the dedication of resources to the S3, resources which proved to be
unrecoverable, it was suggested that perhaps what
Snake snorted. “You mean they wanted to screw around with some guinea pigs.” He waited for a moment, but Slatt didn’t answer, returning instead to typing on his computer. His movements were quick and competent, although Snake’s sharp eyes measured the speed and pause between commands, analysed it against his partner’s and found it to be significantly reduced. The spark of pride burned painfully, and he turned his mind away from it. “You realise you’ve given away your employer.”
Slatt looked over at him, lips still twitched in a slight smile, light from the laptop’s screen a bright shining veil over eyes as he turned. “Have I?”
“The Patriots were behind the S3. They’re the only ones with the kind of knowledge and funding you’re talking about.”
Slatt’s smile gave away nothing. Snake met it with one of his own, eyes grim, teeth sharp.
“Fine. Where’s Hal, then? And what was all the not-existing crap about?” He was stalling for time, preventing the inevitable terminus they were rolling towards, unstoppable as an avalanche. It didn’t mean he couldn’t take the opportunity to ask what was really on his mind. He might not be getting many more chances.
Slatt rolled back slightly on his chair, rocking slightly when it hit the table behind him. He crossed his arms and looked up again, resting the back of his head on the top of his chair’s back. Clumsy movements, confident execution. An overconfident civilian, or…?
“Mr. Emmerich was an essential part of the S4, and also the most problematic. We needed a way to capture you without your knowledge, or you would have suspected VR from the beginning. In this sense, the S4 was nearly impossible without him. But, he was also its most serious weakness. In all your life, he is the one strong connection which you have maintained. If you were ever released, his existence would be what you looked for to verify your memories. Therefore, the most important goal of the S4 was to make you believe entirely that he did not exist, that he never had, to break the one unforgettable tie to your previous life. And it proved to be the tie we could not break.” Slatt straightened and turned to look Snake in the eye. “It’s ironic. If you had lived the way you were trained, and never attached yourself, as you should have done, we could have given you a new life. The one exception you made to your training is the reason you will remain a soldier. Hal Emmerich hasn’t saved you. He’s damned you.” The smile disappeared, for just an instant, and Snake saw in the man a flint-sharp flash of soldier. Things fell into place. He was a damn good actor. But then, he’d have to be.
“No one asked you,” he said flatly, eyes cold. Slatt shrugged easily, lips twitching upwards again, a clown’s mask.
“In any case, to answer your first question, he’s very close by. Next door, in fact. We were forced to bring him with us to stop him mounting a rescue attempt.”
Snake’s eyes lightened slightly, but his mind was turning rapidly, caught between fear and anger. “You obviously didn’t pay him very well.”
“We didn’t pay him at all. He didn’t comply with our note, and in fact acted completely opposite to instruction. He was told by email that he had been poisoned – an unnamed substance in the milk, which I understand only he drinks – and that you needed to be sent out by 7 the next morning to a point we specified, for the antidote. It wasn’t ideal; tranqing you in the street would still have left you with suspicions, but it was infinitely preferable to breaking into your apartment and taking you there. Instead, he drugged you and remained with you in the apartment, presumably either waiting for the poison to take hold, or for it to be proved a false threat. I suppose he did it to keep you from going for the antidote in the event he had been poisoned, but it turned out to be an unfortunate choice when an hour later ten men broke into the apartment while you were out cold. And it provided an unexpectedly clean transition for you, into the S4.” Slatt flipped his hands together to rest palm up, as if to give two choices.
Snake ignored the man’s theatrics and said nothing, mind replaying the events of that morning for the hundredth time. Hal, skittish and nervous. Hal, trying to act as though everything was normal. Hal, barely taking a sip of his coffee. Hal, wondering if every skip of his heart, every shaking of his hand, was the poison kicking in. Hal, waiting to see if he would die in an hour. There had been no betrayal. Only a poorly considered, selfish, foolish, stupid, idiotic decision. And the painful, bitter knowledge reinforced, that there were things Hal ranked above Snake’s life, but his own wasn’t one of them.
His reflections were cut off abruptly when Slatt stood, and pulled from behind the syringes in his pocket a thin metal rod with a plastic cap on one end. Slatt removed the cap, and the blade of the scalpel shone dully in the poor light. Snake stared at him with hard eyes. Slatt’s clown’s smile did not slip.
“I think that’s enough exposition. You’ve got the answers to your questions, so you have no reason to go digging for them. You have plenty of powerful enemies already, and the failure of this simulation won’t have changed that. Don’t go looking for more.”
“Trying to save face?”
“Your future actions won’t affect me at all. I have nothing to lose or gain through them. Just call this… some advice. From your doctor.” He bent down, slightly, eyes locked on Snake’s the whole time, and put the scalpel in the soldier’s hand.
“Right,” said Snake sceptically, fingers wrapped securely around the thin metal of the blade’s handle. Slatt turned to go, hand on the doorknob after only a step. “Slatt.”
The man turned slightly.
“The pictures- the drawings. Where did they come from?”
“You think with all the funding we have, we couldn’t dig up some starving idealist artist?”
Snake relaxed, slightly, a tight spring somewhere inside loosening slightly. Slatt paused, and turned around further. “It is interesting, though. Your reaction to some of the pictures was stronger than I would have expected. Made me take a second look.” He reached into his coat, and from a pocket pulled a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it, he stepped back into the room and held it up, sharp folds casting rectangular shadows on the page. It was the picture of Hal. But, at the same time, it wasn’t. The basic outline was there, strong lines of his cheekbones and jaw traced out accurately, dark hair in its usual fly-away style. But the expression on his face held no intensity, almost no emotion, as though it had been copied from a photo and the vivacity of life had not made the transition. There was no hint of a smile, no light in the lines of the eye. And, above all, there was no love behind the cold ink.
“Different than you remember?” Slatt’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe you saw what you wanted to, rather than what was there. I’d be careful of that.” He dropped the paper, white page floating to the ground with the grace of a snowflake, and was gone before it had landed on the floor. Snake snarled, and began to saw at the restraint with his scalpel.
It took him slightly more than a minute to slice through the thick leather, and after that another two to undo the other three restraints, the buckles being large and unwieldy, and the attempt not being aided by the clumsiness of his drugged fingers. As soon as the last restraint fell away from his ankle he was swinging himself out of the chair, overbalancing slightly before finding his centre, adjusting to the mixed interpretation of signals from his foggy brain.
Even as he caught his balance he was looking around, trying to draw information from the room. It had clearly been vacant for a considerable time before its current use, judging by the layers of dust on the floor, walls and ceiling, and the spindly cobwebs stretched across grimy corners. Equally, it had been ill cared for before that, edges of the linoleum floor chipping away, paint peeling away from the bottoms of the walls, the room overall dirty and stained by long years of use with little cleaning. And, for such an apparently ignored room, the door was exceedingly strong.
Snake turned to his left to examine the computer. The screen was displaying the desktop, cluttered with a range of icons far in excess of those Hal ever kept on any of his computers. A mouse had been plugged in to the side to augment the touchpad. He reached for it, fingers an inch away, when something in the back of the computer gave a soft popping noise, and a small cloud of black smoke rose up. There was a smell of acrid smoke and melting plastic. The computer screen went black immediately. Snake stared at the mouse for a second, and then grabbed the laptop, swivelled it around to stare at the back. Beside the many hook-ups for the VR helmet was a patch of burnt plastic, the black of the laptop’s casing an even darker shade, case melted into a pattern of waves and bubbles by a sudden burst of extreme heat. He tapped it gently with a finger, and pulled it away immediately when he felt the searing temperature still held by the plastic. Hal would not be impressed.
Hal.
Snake turned, scalpel held tightly in his right hand, and slipped over to the door. As expected, it was unlocked. He turned the knob, back pressed against the cold cement wall next to the door, and then pulled it open. The hall outside was long and silent, filled vaguely with the cool scent of musty concrete. Snake paused in the doorway, eyes narrowing as a sense of familiarity washed over him, the wave so strong he felt almost carried away.
The hallway was familiar, intensely familiar, without having any real memories attached to it. It did, though, have a set of false memories linked to it; those of the VR world. This hallway was the one his room had let out onto, the position of this empty room the same as the padded one in the fake world. His sense of familiarity ran deeper than that, though, without his knowing how. He knew each doorway, each chipped floor tile, each vent opening just as well as he knew the strength in his hand, the accuracy of his aim. Things he had known without thought, for as long as he could remember.
Hissing quietly, he closed his eyes and reached out with a hand, gripped the concrete frame of the door hard, cold seeping into his skin, surface of the wall uneven and gritty under his fingers. They were screwing with his head, his mind, somehow even now out of VR; something must have remained, subconscious, waiting to ambush him. Slatt’s quiet whispering came back to him, ideas and memories slithering in through his ear to wrap around his mind. Was such subconscious influencing possible, in either VR or the real world? Maybe with words and phrases, but images? He raised his left thumb to his mouth, tore a strip of skin from next to his nail and sucked at the reassuring salty blood which flowed for a minute. Whatever was happening, this was still real.
Opening his eyes again, face set to a stony blank, he drifted out into the silence of the hall, straining his ears, frowning slightly at the dim thrumming at the edges of his senses. Forcing himself to focus intensely on the situation, as he was now, he could recognise that the hallway was not exactly the same as the one in VR. The false one had shone quietly, cleaned daily so that the floor reflected the lights, and the white walls sparkled. The reality, though, was darker, again covered in layers of dust. It was stained with years of disuse followed by years of abandonment, the paint peeling; tiles chipped and cracking. There were trails in the dust, the comings and goings of Slatt and whoever else had been working with him, but no other sign of habitation. The building was, almost certainly, abandoned.
There was a door on either side of the one he had exited from, he knew before he looked. He had the impression that they were copies of the one he had just exited, but refused to trust that idea. However, he remembered, truly remembered, Slatt glancing to the right when mentioning Hal. It was as much a hint as anything. Assuming he was telling the truth. Assuming he wasn’t screwing with Snake further, a big assumption.
The doorknob was cold under his hand, metal slightly dented. Holding the scalpel at chest height, he threw the door open and lunged inside, senses stretched to their limits, eyes narrowed and focused as sharply as his drugged state allowed. And paused.
The set up of this room was exactly the same as the one he had been in. Two chairs, a table, a laptop, VR system set up and running, the same smell of dust. And, strapped into the chair, body limp and listless, Hal Emmerich.
Questions of reality and mental surety abruptly took a back seat as he stepped over quickly to the laptop, shutting the door quietly behind him after a quick turn of the knob made sure it was not locked.
The laptop screen displayed the three dimensional setting which Hal was currently experiencing, as well as providing a side bar detailing his physiological readings and rough reactions to the scenario. Snake checked these first as he lay his scalpel down on the table next to the computer, noted them to be lower than was the norm, but within acceptable limits. Most likely, his partner’s stats were suppressed by drugs, and prolonged exposure to the VR program without interruption. There was, at least, nothing disturbingly wrong with them, no sign of injury or maltreatment. All the same, as Snake watched the screen, he felt his heart twisting.
The scenario into which Hal had been dropped was, as far as he could tell, the same as his own. The engineer was in a padded room, and the third panel which indicated the equipment and items in direct contact with the subject, told that he had been restrained in a straight jacket. He was sitting against the back wall, only half awake, talking to VR-Slatt, who was clearly following the same program as Snake’s Slatt, trying to convince him that he was insane. However, unlike Snake, Hal knew for a fact that he was not insane, and in VR. He was answering Slatt’s probes with dull, exhausted words, appearing slowly and unevenly on the bottom portion of the screen dedicated to recording conversations.
Slatt: …discuss your past?
Emmerich: Screw off. Or tell me … where Snake is.
Slatt: I can’t do that.
Emmerich: [inarticulate vocalization.]
Slatt: Really, I think that talking-
Emmerich: For the hundredth time, you’re a goddamn VR simulation… This whole fucking place is a VR simulation… It was yesterday… and it’ll still be tomorrow.
Slatt: Well, if this is really what you want to talk about, why do you think so?
Emmerich: …
The stats indicated that Hal had lain down, and his vitals dropped slightly.
Slatt: Hal, we can’t get anywhere if we don’t communicate.
Emmerich: …
Slatt: Hal, I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.
Emmerich: …
Snake snarled. It was perfectly possible to keep a person in VR unwillingly, if the fail-safes and exit mechanisms programmed into almost all systems were overridden; to leave them to rot in an inescapable imaginary world, slowly going mad in the knowledge that they were trapped there, body dying by inches on the outside. Snake had never given the matter much thought before, never given VR much thought before. And he had never realised what a terrifying system VR could be, before. Now, he brought up the program cancellation protocols, used to monitoring the system while Hal trained, or “dived,” as the engineer liked to call it. He ordered the program to terminate and shut down, which would release the engineer less abruptly from the system than an unprepared exit.
He clicked the “ok” button with some force, mouse shifting slightly under his grip. The computer seemed to freeze for a moment, and then, with a quiet sizzling pop the screen went black as the back of the casing blew out. A cloud of black smoke rose in the air, lingering for several seconds before diffusing, accompanied by the familiar sharp melting smell. In the chair, Hal jerked suddenly, limbs shaking briefly with the limp heaviness Snake associated with electrocution. He was at his partner’s side in an instant, unhooking the straps of the VR helmet with quick fingers. He pulled the helmet off in one sharp movement, tossing it to the side where it landed on the table with a rattling thump. He paid it no further mind.
Hal’s face was pale and unshaven, dark stubble thickening but not yet close to a beard. His glasses were gone, incompatible with the helmet, his eyes pressed tightly closed in a wince. Snake knew from experience that being inside a VR simulation when the system shorted out wasn’t far from having a stun grenade explode at your feet, the sudden shock leaving ears ringing, eyes blinded and nerves stinging. Although he was taking relatively normal breaths, the thin t-shirt over Hal’s chest was quivering in time with his racing heat beat. The pulse at his throat, when Snake pressed his fingertips there, was quick and slightly thready.
“Hal,” said Snake quietly, knowing security was breached to high hell, and began pulling at the restraints, leather hard and unyielding beneath his fingers.
Hal shivered quietly and opened his eyes, winced immediately. Snake glanced up, remembered the light in his own room, and slipped over to the door, turning off the first light switch and finding it to be the right one. Hal stopped squinting, looked around with a masked face, although Snake could read the fear there clearly. Hal’s gray eyes stopped on his partner, and Snake slipped back across to him.
“Snake?” he asked quietly, eyebrows furrowing. They narrowed further a second later in suspicion, and he looked around again.
“It’s not VR,” said Snake, and undid the left restraint. “I pulled you out of the system. Besides, you should be able to smell and taste now.” He leaned over to undo the right, elbow brushing against Hal’s chest. Hal’s free hand shot out to rest on Snake’s arm, fingers tightening. Snake paused and Hal leaned forward, resting his forehead for on Snake’s shoulder. After a second, he heard the engineer sigh, softly.
“Smells like you, all right,” Hal raised his head. His face was tired, but he was grinning weakly.
“Ha ha,” growled Snake, but the tension in his chest faded. He freed Hal’s right arm, and the engineer sat up and bent to pull at the bindings on his right ankle, Snake unfastening the left. “You okay to move?” he asked, shoulder resting against Hal’s, conscious of a vague trembling there. He didn’t move away, conscious of both their awkwardness, the stinging need for reassurance and closeness offset by the careful coldness the situation required.
“Yeah,” answered Hal, voice not as strong as it was when he was healthy, but not so weak to be worrying either. “My head’s just kinda fuzzy. Guess the drugs were real.”
Snake, finished with the left strap, waited for Hal to get the other and then straightened and backed away. Hal looked around the room again as he stood, and immediately found the computer and drifted over to it, drawn inexorably as iron to a magnet. It only took a second of investigation for him to discover the burnt-out back, and he gave a quiet yelp of dismay. “What the hell did you do?” he asked, turning to Snake, eyes flashing, indignation strengthening him more than days of rest. Snake shrugged.
“It did it to itself, when I told it to pull you out of VR. The other one- the one in my room- blew up too. Can they be salvaged?”
Hal didn’t bother to take a second look, just shook his head. “No way. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing. They burnt out the hard drives, and the CPU. All the data’s lost.”
Snake nodded once, to show he’d heard. He wasn’t surprised. He picked up the scalpel from the desk and slipped over to the door again. There was nothing to be gained by lingering. Hal’s glasses were sitting on the table near the edge, and the engineer slipped them on. He seemed more distant with them on, as always.
“Where are we?” Hal moved to follow him, keeping slightly behind, arms wrapped tightly around his stomach. His eyes, Snake noted as he turned slightly, were over-dilated behind the clear lenses, dark pupils reflecting Snake’s face to him like a shadowed mirror.
“I don’t know.” Slatt, VR-Slatt, had said
somewhere in
Hal shook his head. “They got me with a tranq round almost as soon as they broke into the apartment.” He paused. “The whole thing was a fiasco,” he added in a quieter tone. He tilted his head slightly to face Snake, gray eyes full of regret. “I’m sorry,” he said simply.
Snake said nothing, but reached out with his left hand, right holding the scalpel, and grabbed the engineer’s shoulder, pulled him into a one-sided hug. Hal’s skin was warm under the thin t-shirt, hair smelling of oil and sweat and plastic, and below that Hal’s own faint, softer scent. “I missed you,” he whispered gruffly in his partner’s ear, felt the engineer stiffen against him, then relax. When he pulled away, Hal was smiling faintly, eyes bright as quick-silver. Snake nodded, once.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
--------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of the dusty corridor was a wide bay of windows, the stairwell tucked away in a nearby corner. The windows looked out onto a large empty park, tall maples with flame-red leaves, thinner birches and alders covered in bright gold, here and there a dark evergreen. The grass was thick and untidy, speckled with dead branches, fallen leaves and sprigs of pine. The unwelcome warmth of familiarity was washing over him again, skin tingling slightly, eyes narrowed as he leaned on the dusty windowsill staring out the dirty windows. Hal stood slightly behind him, quiet breathing loud in the silent hallway.
“What is it?” the engineer asked, after a minute, voice soft. He shuffled forward to stand beside the soldier, near enough that Snake could feel his warmth in the cool air. Hal took a closer look at the scene, and then turned to watch his partner.
Snake didn’t turn, watched the leaves blowing in the wind with a sense of deja-vu so strong it was almost suffocating, thoughts confused and blending together. And, overall, the fear of disconnection, of losing his sense of reality and, deep in his thoughts like a silver dollar at the bottom of a pond, of losing his mind. He knew this place, knew these trees, remembered staring out at them, knew what they looked like barren and covered in snow, and bare but slowly budding, and bright with green foliage. His memories of the VR scenario were confused but even with drugs aiding temporal distortion, the scenario hadn’t covered more than a few weeks. He had never seen this landscape in any season other than fall. And yet, he knew it, knew the smell of the trees and the position of their branches, the depth of the park and the location of a playing court, which he could not see from his current position. He had not gone outside in the VR simulation, that he knew. “It’s… familiar,” he said at last, hands tight on the softening wooden window frame, chipping paint brittle as burnt paper under his fingers.
“What do you mean? You’ve been here before?”
He turned to Hal, partner gray and somehow dull in the poor light filtering through the dark clouds and dirty windows, “No,” he said immediately, then paused, sighed. “I don’t know. It feels like they’re still fucking with my head.” He pushed the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose, focused on the pressure there, the slight coolness of his hand. “Does this look familiar to you?”
“No,” said Hal without any reflection, and Snake glanced at him. He was looking out the window with a blank face, examining the scenery, but without any hint of recognition.
“What are the chances this could still be VR, that they’ve developed a system which can duplicate even taste and smell, and fine sensory perception?” He closed his hands tightly on the windowsill, felt the rotting wood begin to give under his fingers, slivers pricking his palms.
“Pretty low. We’re years away from that kind of detail. Of course, if this were VR, I would be too, so you’ll just have to trust yourself.” He turned to Snake, pale eyes shining, smiling softly.
Snake stared back, words stuck in his throat like fish bones. He hadn’t believed it, couldn’t have believed it while in VR, that Hal might not exist, that his entire life was a lie. It was laughable, that he only started to doubt it now when the man was right in front of him. There is no Hal Emmerich. You created him. It was ridiculous. It was beyond ridiculous. Jack had had the same crisis years ago, and he had rebuked him for it then. How could he now be seriously contemplating the idea that his life was a lie? Hal was real. But, if that was reality, what were his memories of this place? “How do I know what’s real?” he asked, gruffly, channelled the fear and uncertainty into an interaction he was used to, operative and advisor. Hal saw the change come over the soldier, and it passed over to him like a cloud’s shadow over the plains on a windy day, any trace of light-heartedness or amusement replaced by serious contemplation.
“I think…” began Hal slowly, eyes wandering to stare at the park below, considering,
“that maybe I was wrong. If you really are trapped in a VR simulation that you’ll never be able to prove, then you’ll have to trust others. You’ll have to wait for me, or Jack, or Meryl, to get you out.” His eyes swept slowly back up, met Snake’s again. They were steady and thoughtful, straightforward at a time when nothing made sense and logic was useless and infuriating.
“And if they’re all just a figment of my imagination?” he asked, in a cold tone. “If you’re just a figment of my imagination?” Every soldier had some philosophy in them, somewhere, and Snake was certainly no exception. He had never thought he would be caught up in the whole existentialist debate though, and certainly not in the middle of a mission.
“That’s not really an easy question to answer,” said Hal, somewhere between thoughtful and reprimanding. Snake gave him an irritated look. “Well,” continued Hal with a slight shrug, “you can sit around waiting for someone to give you a blue pill. Or was it red?” He paused. “Anyway, you can wait for someone to bail you out. You can trust yourself, if you think this is all VR, if you think what your mind’s telling you is true, and hope someone will break you out eventually. Or you can trust that I’m real, that your old memories are true – that there is a Hal Emmerich and he’s standing right here talking to you. Either way, it’s blind trust.” Hal smiled, rather crookedly. “And, I guess, that means I know which way you’ll choose. Trust yourself, or someone else. Hard choice.” He sighed and took off his glasses, began to polish them clumsily on the front of his shirt, giving him an excuse not to meet Snake’s eyes. “I don’t blame you,” he said in a quiet, light-hearted tone.
There was a silent pause. Hal cleaned his glassed. Snake, mouth suddenly dry and heart constricting painfully with each beat, made to reach out to him with a not quite steady hand. He swallowed thinly and dropped his hand, managing a matter-of-fact tone.
“Don’t be so melodramatic. I trust you; I trust you with my life all the time.” Snake tugged at the hem of his t-shirt, heart only managing to pump one wave of frigid adrenaline through him before he pushed it up in a strong movement. They were there, all of them, dark and pale, wide and thin, raised and puckered. Relief wrapped around him like a blanket, warm and heady. Hal looked over, glasses still wrapped in his own shirt, stared at the scars criss-crossing his partner’s torso, at the raised line under his ribs with confusion. Snake dropped the shirt back and grabbed Hal’s shoulder in place of it, the engineer looking up at him now, face clear and open without the glasses. His shoulder was warm and tense under Snake’s hand, the form narrow and familiar. Snake lent in close, so that their foreheads were almost touching. “I trust you, with everything I have. It’s what got me out of there. So don’t think I don’t.” That and love, but it would take more than the high of fading drugs and relief to make him admit as much.
Hal nodded once, eyes wide and star-bright, lips curved just slightly, in an expression Snake recognized with a speeding heart. He made to reach out to Snake and dropped his glasses; they hit the linoleum with a clatter, and he flushed. Snake didn’t glance down, instead dropped the scalpel to wrap his free arm around Hal’s waist and pull him close in a quick movement. Before the engineer had time to protest Snake had pressed their mouths together decisively, claiming the love he saw there and everything else with starved lips. It took Hal only slightly longer than a second to reciprocate, presumably due to shock at intimacy in a mission-like situation; he wrapped a long hand around Snake’s neck and shifted to fit himself more closely against the soldier. Even with his nerves screaming at the danger of it, the embrace was familiar and comfortable, and something more. The engineer’s warmth in his arms, Hal’s hands on his skin and their mouths hot against each other, filled him with a warmth he wasn’t used to missing, and had never really missed before. It was vivid and exhilarating, and filled a deep, aching need.
He moved to find a better balance; Hal made a surprised noise low in his throat and shifted, his foot knocking against something causing him to shift further. Snake released him and he glanced down quickly, cursorily, before returning bright, shining eyes to his partner.
Snake grinned, and retrieved the engineer’s glasses for him, scooping up the scalpel at the same time. When he met Hal’s eyes again they were calm and steady, and almost business-cold. Almost. He nodded. There would be time to star watch later.
“C’mon, let’s go.” He handed the glasses back, Hal wrapping long fingers around the cool metal; they were warm and dry as they brushed against Snake’s hand.
Snake waited for a return nod and then turned to the stairwell door, and that was that. Hal followed him down, shuffling quietly, fingers on the metal rail making it thrum.
At the bottom, Snake pulled the door open and walked out into the ground floor hallway, scanning carefully as he moved, scalpel a poor weapon in the long open space. Hal trudged along behind him without a word.
He followed his memories to the front door, aware that it was dangerous but unable to see any other path than exploring the entire building for another exit, and that would just be looking for even more trouble.
The front entrance, in the middle of a dark foyer, was dark and mildewed, pale slivers of light shining through the wooden boards nailed to the doors and windows which led to the outside, cutting pale slits in the darkness. Snake padded silently over the floor, surface slightly slippery with dust and grime, the only sound that of Hal shuffling. The place reminded him of nothing so much as a crypt.
The front doors, boarded up with cheap particleboard, stuck stubbornly for a minute before giving under his weight, creaking open and letting forth a cloud of dust into the dreary day outside. Snake looked out, ready this time for the familiarity of the long cement drive, autumn trees and thick lawn. He walked out onto the porch without flinching, hurrying on down the cement stairs without looking back.
The air outside was cool and fresh,
although in the breeze he caught the hint of pollution that suggested a large
city. The front lawn was in the same state of disrepair as the back, and there
were no traces on the cement drive to suggest recent use, although it would
have been difficult to tell in any case. They followed the path, and almost
immediately were past the trees and could see the main city some miles beyond,
the dirty funnels and factories of
“Still look familiar?” asked Hal, bare arms crossed in the cool autumn air.
“Not the city. But the grounds, yes.” At the edge of the uncut grass was a low stone wall, only waist height, but more than a foot thick, enclosing the park. Snake walked right past it without looking, eyes focused on the road, the suburban sprawl ahead of them. His mind was busy calculating the best route to take, the nearest transport, the easiest way of procuring cash with none of his own and no tools. Whatever this place was, he wanted nothing more to do with it, just to get the hell out. He paused only when the sound of Hal’s shuffling walk disappeared and turned, eyes on the engineer rather than the tall mansion-like building behind him. He was huddled against the biting wind, long dark tendrils of hair wrapping around the pale skin over his neck like vines.
“Look,” said Hal, indicating a granite block sitting on a cement platform on the left side of the stone wall.
L.E.T. Genetics and Research, 1971 had been carved into the granite in a plain, clean font.
The two men stood, wind whipping their hair around their faces, staring at the block of concrete and polished granite in silence. Snake traced the ornate letters with dark eyes, carving them into his mind.
Finally, he turned to look at Hal, who met his gaze with surprise and uncertainty. Snake looked back at the sign, and the abandoned mansion behind it. In the distance, a jet’s white billowing exhaust sliced the blue sky silently in half while the men watched the derelict building below it.
“…What the hell.”
Snake knew without looking that they wouldn’t find any answers.