Chapter Text
The Boss is sitting on a pile of bodies.
It’s undoubtedly a good look for him.
Some of them are still groaning, and some yelp as he slides off the pile, fingers and calves falling under the biting edges of the combat boots. The sedatives are wearing off. American voices; a relative rarity on the base, these days.
The cell door slides closed with relative ease, given the weight of the doors; the bright jingle of the keys makes an almost absurd counterpoint.
Miller at least has the good grace to look embarrassed. And oh yes, this is it. This is what he’s been looking forward to, even while he was herding Intel staff to the lifeboats, even while he was sweating to open up a barricade.
Miller has some explaining to do.
He wants to sit down with a glass of something contraband and enjoy this.
“17 all told, Boss. Not including the 6 of our staff you recovered.”
“And where are they?”
“Ah- sickbay. Just for shock. They have counsellors.” He jingles the keys in his pocket; he’s too stubborn not to meet the Boss’ eye.
“You don’t really wear this thing so much as sit inside it,” he grumbles.
“Got your money’s worth out of it, though.” He pokes a finger at the little grey comma of a deflected bullet, just over the solar plexus.
“Thoughts, Ocelot?” He says, fussing at the straps.
“Good men, bad commander. I’d say I can persuade ‘em round, given enough time. You’re probably not looking at anything more than bodies for the combat unit, but-“
“Not what I’m getting it. The invasion.”
His voice is slightly muffled by the blast-shield.
With a frown of effort, he unclips the leg plates.
“I consider this kind of thing embarrassing.”
“Yes Boss”, he says, re-directing his gaze.
“I mean the invasion. Another PF making inroads on Mother Base? Not good for the image.” The apron of ceramic plates lifts off. “I don’t want it to happen again.”
He turns his face to the cell door; look at the pile of groaning bodies. Some of them are starting to swear, but quietly.
“I’d think they’ve been warned off, Boss.”
He steps out of the suit greaves- they remain standing behind him. The things are ceramic reinforced down to the ankles, and must weigh 6 pounds each. Hadn’t seemed to slow him down as he swarmed, with predatory grace, up the side of R&D’s first deck.
Hell of a sight.
“Ocelot?”
“Sir?” he said, tearing himself away from the memory.
His eyes flicker, incrementally, to the door. Miller.
“What do you think?”
His professionalism rubs up against pettiness, sometimes; this time, professionalism wins.
Diplomatic, but always the smiling assassin.
“If he is, Boss, I don’t think he’d think of himself as a spy. Like Costa Rica.”
“Did I ever tell you about that?”
Your files did.
“You seemed a mite peeved about it. Honestly? Miller’s no stealth operative, but I don’t think even he’d go about this so clumsily.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him, if that’s what you want.”
“Hmm. Do.”
The Boss is now entirely free of the battledress- he rolls a shoulder with a muted sigh of relief.
He can’t help but stare. Lines of keloid tissue criss-cross his form.
“Any reason for the inspection, Major?”
“None of your scars are on your back.” He chuckles; it sounds honest, because that’s what he was shooting for. “Never been much of a coward, have you?”
“Never been smart enough to run. You?”
“Worst I ever got was from my old Commander.”
“Friendly fire?”
“Not exactly friendly. Discipline was a little stricter in the USSR than in the decadent west.”
It’s jovial- deflect, divert, decry- but he feels the pull of the tissue as he crosses his arm now. (Electricity doesn’t burn, it blisters; if you hold it long enough.)
“Hmm. We’ll have to get together and compare scars sometime.”
He folds his arms only for something to do with his hands.
“Now, for me; I’d like to shower out of my clothes, for once. Have the armoury pick that up, will you?”
“Boss.”
The man saunters away, and he is forced to consider. Return to his quarters and- consider.
A lictenburg figure crosses his torso, hip to rib; it should have faded after a few days, but it stuck around. Was never able to figure that one out.
A lot of his early life was inexplicable.
1976
He didn’t even get back to the airport.
A phone call yanks him out of a dreamless reverie; and that’s a bad sign; messages from the Hospital come by teletype, by dead drop, by messenger; what is so urgent that he needs to be called about it?
He hears the siren wailing in the background of the call, as the orderly stutters. (It is a military hospital, after all.) Another bad sign.
All the lights on one floor of the hospital are on, and that’s the worst sign of all- if all the lights are off, then a hospital is at peace for the night; If all the lights are on, then the hospital is functioning normally, but at higher capacity- one floor of lights suggests a very specific problem that nevertheless needs numerous people to deal with it.
Constantinou was standing inside the door of the anteroom - shaken too, the sick feeling of sudden bright lights and sudden noise at too-late-in-the-night, too-early-in-the-morning. The Ocelot arrived, first of the response; well, after he had checked on his other patient. The man was still dressed, too at this hour; did he never sleep?
Paniyi was flapping his hands. “Major-“
In one, swift movement, he had picked up the man’s shoulders.
“Where.” It was not posed as anything other than a threat.
"In room 76. The guards have already been dealing with him."
"De-"
He moved into the room loudly. This animated an unfortunate tableau.
(The subject- hooded and tied to the chair, a bad sign- flinched visibly when the door hit the wall (another bad sign.) He spoke little (it was important not to speak at this point) but slid one hand under the makeshift hood, covering the subject's eyes. Removing the hood revealed a badly beaten face- but what was worse, beaten in the wrong way. The cheekbones, outer edges of the chin- all valuable targets. But the eyes, too difficult to replace. The point of the chin- too easy to drive the head up or down and paradoxically interfere with the spinal cord. the nose- a solid palm strike would drive it up into the brain pan. Cuts to the forehead! It was a wonder he wasn't braindead.)
Ocelot exited the room at speed. The door caught on the plaster.
"I left you with a healthy subject."
Panayi gave a small, helpless shrug; his gaze hung level with the lights.
“Your guards, Major. They don’t listen to me.”
Ocelot turned to one of the guards in question; if you were close enough, you would have seen the sweat begin to bead on his forehead.
“I suspect they’re not listening to me either.”
He moved towards the unfortunate guard. (Constantinou could not help but notice that the other guards took small, unobtrusive steps away from the marked man.) With an oddly fond gesture, he placed his hand on the back of the man’s neck, level with his collar; for a bizarre second, he was sure it was the prelude to a kiss.
“Zero’s man, aren’t you?” he said, softly. What could be seen of the man’s eyes through the visor was starkly apart; more white than pupil, or iris.
(He heard the guard beside him counting, softly, under his breath.)
He drew the man’s head down sharply; he drove the heel of his hand up.
There was a godawful howl, and the man collapsed; his nose was already bloody, with the skin split on the bridge. The other guards dutifully pulled him aside. The one called Ocelot has his hand laced through the small hairs at the back of his head; he gives them a small tug as he stares (now apparently in a world of his own) at the view through the two-way mirror.
“He’s awake.”
“Yes.”
“And conscious.”
“Yes. Some form of drug resistance training, we suspect.”
The Ocelot nods, a bare tilt of the jaw. “And how did he find out?”
“One of our interns. Snuck in on the back of an old ID and told him. Ethics,” he gave another helpless shrug. “The Hippocratic oath goes a little deeper than the paper you sign it on.”
That earns him a sharp look; the pale eyes slide left; penetrating, cruel. Evaluating.
He turns; a dismissive gesture. (He tries not to sigh with relief.)
Ocelot approaches Panayi, and-
The oddest thing, the most bizarre on a night full of upset-
He sniffs.
His chin rises, his beaky nose pointing to the ceiling; his eyes slide closed.
“Hmm.”
He turns to Constantinou.
“I would suggest that you begin to move people out of here. Off this floor. Now.”
___
A simple process, then. More old-fashioned. Simpler than they had been pursuing. Violent denial. Of everything, and nothing in particular; the subject needed to be unseated mentally as he had physically.
"What's your name?"
Before he had time to reply, a slap. His glove thumped flatly into the cloth of the makeshift hood.
"What's your name?"
Another slap. The head under the bag turned with it, leaning into the gap between his slightly raised shoulder- that was a bad sign. He was still recoiling from the blows, still rolling with the punches; still trying to minimize the damage.
He grabbed at the jaw under the hood- thumb and middle finger in the hollow of the cheeks (a snake-handler’s hold, for milking venom) and steadied the head. He was still breathing, this dead man. Still trying to regulate his breathing, and trying to find out more- his left foot slightly forward, feeling for movement; keeping his ears clear. It was impressive, after a fashion. Might well have been what the Boss would have done.
What a pity it would have to be broken.
He set the head neatly forward- then reeled back and let his hand lash around, a flat arc. The tendons of the neck stood out as it recoiled against the full force of the blow.
It tried to speak. "H-"
A very bad sign.
"What's your name?"
His hand caught at the fold of the cloth-
(he felt the leather of his glove drag against skin-)
before he even gathered that he had taken the bag off.
Handsome perhaps; before the treatment. Before the technicians had had their way. The surgeons had drawn little flight-paths, dotted lines, up and over his cheekbones, across the bridge of his nose; he was split chin-to-lip by a black arrow. The gag cut an ugly, too-white gash into the flesh of his cheeks. More than that; a cauliflower ear was just starting to fade up, and purplish bruising mottled the right cheekbone (a left-handed assailant, there).
(Ocelot shook his head, sadly. It would be an insult to cowboys to call Zero’s people “cowboys”.)
The eye that was not beginning to swell shut was bloodshot, but bright. Defiant, through the remnants of the drugs. One blue eye rolled over to his face. He didn’t like to be seen here, like this. He knew he was getting out of control, the control he valued so highly, but still; he paused.
The subject was breathing hard, through the gag, but the eye was holding steady.
It was-
(that you and he are not in collusion)
on the wrong side.
He gave the face one last ringing slap- just for good measure, just to enjoy the fresh crunch of skin on muscle and pain- and threw the bag back over his head.
---
The nurses have been sent away now; the porters fled long before that. Panayi was gone, and not responding to calls; Constantinou was the last left.
The one called Ocelot emerges. The surgical light from the white room pools behind him, blindingly white; it must be a haze, in there.
There is blood on his knuckles. His eyes are wild- no; they have wild in them, controlled and cruel, the way only humans can do.
His great coat is askew; is thrown off; he loosens his scarf as he turns.
“I’ll need you to make preparations again, Doctor.” It’s breathless; he grunts with effort; growls with frustration as he unbuttons his sleeves. “As quickly as you can.”
(He is frozen. This figure cannot be in his life; it cannot be part of his future. It cannot be a part of anyone’s future; that cannot be borne.)
He undoes his belt, this Ocelot- wraps the leather around his fingers, squeezes; draws some comfort from the creak and groan, the strain.
His teeth are gritted, almost, when he speaks. His voice is hoarse.
“A little more than violence is indicated, Doctor. I advise you to leave.”
Blood rims the edge of his teeth; he has bitten his tongue, this Ocelot.
He hisses.
“Leave.”
---
It takes 72 hours, all told.
“What is your name?” he had said finally, flexing his fingers; feeling the wear in the small muscles of his hand. There was silence. That was good. Silence could indicate the beginning of the breaking point. It often did, with military types.
72 hours, it had taken, before this Phantom had given up. Given it all up. His old name, his old number. Whatever else he had. The figure in the centre of the room is still, bowed over; his spine a broken arch, his broad hands slack against the nubs of his spine. The skin is slick.
He’s sweating. They both are.
His sharpness is dying down, this late into the session; he can see the edges of things now, the real colours. However, this is moment is what he lives for, and he tries to savour it; the mind being pried loose from the body, turning; becoming a variable, separate thing.
It’s his reward, to see it.
(It’s still not enough.)
“What’s your name?” he says again.
The silence lengthens; past the point a whole mind might throw it.
The moment is right, he judges; and the connection is live.
He strides back to the centre of the room; drops his hand onto the slick skin at the base of the neck.
It doesn’t move.
When it doesn’t move, he moves his hand down; lets it turn into a pet; a caress.
(It’s still not enough.)
It’s beautiful, this broken thing. Frustrating, and beautiful; he will be the only one to ever see it, and even he must forget, soon.
(The anger is still boiling over; it mixes, frothes, meets the rush of cold blue coming the other way; the years spent, and the pining, and the careful, systematic, careful, always careful devotion, and the rage, and the denial, and it mixes, like scolpamine concentrate, mixing to a colour that is dark and somewhere between, something not-quite and never-so; something he would deny, yes, but fall head-first into given the chance; with abandon, with gluttonous intent; and never re-surface; this dark, heady colour, between wine and blood, that robs the head of control and the heart of balance and the hand of restraint.)
((It’s always been like this.))
((-
An idea occurs))
Pity it couldn’t have lasted longer.
He leans down. "Your name is Snake.” He says. “Also known as Jack. Also known as John. Also known as Naked Snake.” like two old friends sharing a joke together, they must look. “Also known as Boss."
It doesn’t move, the figure under his hand. It waits.
Perfect.
(He allows himself the levity, now that he can see the true edges of things again, the correct colours. It comes out dry and cracked, a little above a whisper; it has the shape of a joke, but it comes out a confession.)
“Welcome back, Boss.”
The Phantom breathes.
---
Dr. Constantinou was surprised, the next morning, to find himself on his own in the briefing room. Given the events of the past week. Panayi was arrogant and laissez-faire, perhaps, with low regard for the majority of his patients; but he was conscientious. Should be moreso, now. The whole ward was tender as a bruise; stories were being told about the late night; the screams, the things they had seen; porters will always chatter, nurses will always gossip. He was terrified of losing funders, especially generous ones, like this mysterious “Nil” Foundation; and they had demanded absolute silence. By all rights and traditions, he should have been here first thing, kissing boots and begging forgiveness. And of course, the one they called Ocelot-
The door slammed open behind him, making him jump.
“Apologies, Doctor; business, you know how it is,” he said, striding around the table. The American- he was American, to judge by his voice- wore boots with the small silver stars, attached to clasps, on the heels. (The word for them escaped him just at the moment.) They rattled as he walked, sounding (to Constantinou’s ear) like a tray of surgical implements being carried by a clumsy surgeon.
“No… of course.” He turned in his chair, fractionally; spying out the door. (He was trying to be polite or, rather, trying not to panic.) “Have you, ah- did Dr Panayi contact you before this morning? Will he be attending today?”
The Ocelot was silent. For perhaps a little too long, and uncomfortably so. His eyes were fixed on a point about four feet to the left of (and three feet behind) Constantinou’s left ear.
The silence grew and expanded. And grew, and grew. One could moor ships in it.
Suddenly, he realised that the eyes of this Ocelot were not on the wall; now he was being watched; very closely, and with the keen attention that the lepidopterist gives the butterfly.
“I’m sorry; you were asking about your fellow medics.” The one called Ocelot said. “Your junior colleague, I’m afraid to say, has been dismissed from the operation. Sad, but we find it’s important not to have dissenters on-staff in any capacity.” The Ocelot leaned back in his chair, one finger to his lip. “He’s been fully compensated, of course, and given a glowing reference. Shouldn’t have any trouble finding work. Hell, kid cares about his patients that much, any hospital’d be happy to have him.”
“That’s… good. Lenient. I’m… I’m sure he just- wanted the best. For your- patient,” he croaked.
The one they called Ocelot was silent, now; continued watching him, watching his eyes.
“He wasn’t the one who helped out mutual friend to escape.” Says the Ocelot.
In the eerie silence, he found himself listening for something- a snapping string, a break. None is given.
“And… Dr. Panayi?” he said finally.
The one called Ocelot watched him, in silence, for a full five seconds, before replying: “Dr Panayi has been dismissed on a more… permanent basis.”
The silence reverberates like a gong. The one called Ocelot leaned back; folding his hands neatly together on the table. Apparently, he was studying the fine stitching on the thumb of his left glove.
Constantinou had had this feeling before; it was the ominous, feet-stuck-in-tar quality he found in nightmares.
“Doctor, I’m going to ask you a question.” Says the Ocelot. His hand goes to his top pocket; he follows it with his heart in his mouth, but it’s only a slip of card. He slides the stiff card over the table. “Ever seen this before, Doctor?”
Neatly inscribed, in black capitals: XOF.
“Hof,” he tries, harsh on the H. “A Russian word? I’m afraid I don’t recognise it.”
“Mmm. Neither do I.” he slides the card back; it disappears into his coat. “Only your Dr. Panayi did.”
Ah.
Of course. It was exactly his kind of trick, the poor fool. Always thinking he was ready for something beter; always ready to move up. He’s pinned by the eyes again when he looks up.
“Besides,” says the Ocelot, picking at his glove. His voice is quiet; somewhat confessional. “I need someone who agrees to this plan. I don’t need someone who enjoys it.”
Strange, how the mind pulls into focus in moments like this. His throat was occluded by a rising ball of panic, and his palms felt the prickling heat that precedes sweat but his mind (determined to preserve him) was absolutely clear.
“Your thoughts on the plan, doctor?” he said.
His mind was working furiously, but the words fell directly into his mouth. “If I disagree- if I fail to carry out the “plan” as you have described it- you will find another doctor?”
It had been a question, but the look in the Ocelot’s eyes told him it was a statement. He nodded, slightly, eyes still fixed on him.
“My work,” he said simply. “I have other patients. They will die without my help.”
Ocelot nodded. It didn’t seem to move him either way.
He was attaining a view of what his must do; the seesawing of his practical and visceral thoughts had been nauseating, but he was reaching an uneasy equilibrium. “Do you intend to carry out this “plan” on anyone else?”
The voice was quiet. ”Not if this succeeds, no.”
His viewpoint stabilized, coalesced; tinged with bilious black though it was.
The one thing that was absolutely clear to him- though perhaps he had known this without the intervention of his conscious mind- was that the one called “Ocelot” was prepared. For what? Any emergent need that his “plan” would bring up. And a single doctor would be something less than a blip in his radar, should he disagree. Unless this (and he had seen the notes) this travesty was correctly enacted, this maniac would find another subject- and this one would not have been willing, not even at the start, like the first man had been; not even in the slightest.
At least a single man could act as a barrier between light and absolute darkness.
He knew what he must do. He stood up.
“My job is to preserve as many healthy human lives as possible,” he said simply. “If your plan fails, it will not be because I did not comply.”
“So glad to hear it, doctor,” came the quiet voice.
“And now you will excuse.” He said- his English was getting sloppy, but he did not care- and he turned on his heel to leave.
“Doctor?” The quiet shape leaned back, in the peripheral of his vision.
He turned back, fighting himself every step of the way.
“Take the eye first,” the voice says.
The door slams; he moves away too fast.