Her vision was muddy. Bits of light staggered across her eyelids; flashes and droning noises.
” …worked — a dream… did you find — ?”
The swimming sounds collected and through the pain of her scalp and the sharp twist of her wrists, she felt herself flung against the floor.
“This the girl?”
What had happened? There was a sulfuric smell, smoke and a dankness- a pressure that, before her eyes could focus, told her she was underground.
“Yeah, Gray’s killer…”
That’s right.. Mary felt for the micro-uzi she knew wouldn’t be there, and came up assured and bitterly aware that she hurt all over. She’d been with Rommel when he’d fallen asleep.. Jack took the gun Cliff had left, but she was armed. She’d waited for his eyes to flicker in dreams before she chanced to stand. Rommel, all furrowed brow, slumped across the table, made the gun feel mysteriously cold and heavy in her hand.
With the barrel to his neck, she delicately browsed the reports.
Nothing.
Everything they had was days behind her own information.. so Cliff had been wrong. Mary removed the useless glasses from the bridge of her nose and sighed with exasperation.
She couldn’t let anyone infiltrate the hideout before her- she had planned to use Gray when she found he had a contact inside but Rommel had shown up, she couldn’t chance for Gray’s lead on the terrorists to be shared…
And now she’d have to kill one more..
“..Mar..ia..”
Her finger on the lock of the safety hesitated.
“..Maria..”
“…?”
“Maria.”
“Mary, right?”
A booted foot jostled her conscious. She feigned terror and braced herself against the wall.
“Cut the act, honey- we know what your capable of.”
Crouching close, he grinned with her gun in his hand. His breath stank and he blended in with the dirty mess of scrap metals and rock and grit of the tunnel she was in. Standing, he motioned to the men behind him.
“Lets make this short and sweet, ok?”
So they were going to kill her after all. There was nothing around her to use in desperation- her realization that hostages didn’t necessarily have to be alive pulled the muscles in her hand to convulsively clench and unclench..
Mary shuddered, and wondered if the fear creeping up her back was real or an afterthought of her act.
He pushed the nozzle to her cheek and Mary recounted the times she had done the same.. imagined her victims, and brooded over her detached mess of fear, guilt, and an overpowering curiosity of what this was going to feel like…
Ba-dum.
Her heartbeat drowned her labored breathing.
Whoever wins the battle does not end. The loser is set free from the battlefield, while the winner must remain there. And the survivor will live out his life as the warrior until the day he dies.
Ba-dum.
…the day he dies.
Ba-dum.
-and piercing the beating a chinking sound manifested through the stifling corridor.
The others behind the man shifted with sudden discomfort as the clinking filled the hall and broke the eerie silence the barrel embedded in her cheek commanded. The gritty man falter and looked to his left, “S-sir?”
“Your scaring the poor girl..”, a gravelly voice spoke, following the jingling footsteps just beyond her view. “That’s no way to treat a guest.”
The men stepped back in fearful salute.
A figure swathed in black turned the corner with a saunter and a gun; a revolver spinning round his finger.
The revolver stilled, and through the black hat pulled down to shadow his face, Mary knew she was being observed.
After a long moment, the man in black broke his glare and turned from her, returning nonchalantly to spinning his revolver.
“So Mary, was it? Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?… I’ve got a proposition for you…”
She didn’t hide her surprise in the blinking of her eyes through the cold sweat on her brow.
“Gray was a sort of asset to us here… and we know you’re interested…in fact, we’ve been watching the two of you for sometime.. Funny how thing work out, eh?”
He removed the black hat that thus far had shaded his features and saw an old face peering at her.
Ocelot.
“This sleepy town is full of surprises… Gray met our planted spy rather conveniently-”
Ocelot motioned to the man that had pointed her gun to her head and he looked uncomfortably on edge- sweat stained. “..and became our little mouse… He’d be sure to tell his ‘insider’ of movement outside, new help, dispatched comrades, but you know all that, don’t you?”
Mary shifted…
“Now now, don’t be shy.. Gray knew nothing about you, and I’m awfully curious… The question is, Mary, who’s side are you on?”
“Alice, your uncle wants you downstairs in five minutes..”
Alice ignored the voice and held the picture of her father away from her face so that she could observe how, if she tilted it just right, it looked like he was just outside her window… the blue of his sky and the real one through the glass melted together and just beyond her reach, a few steps away, her father stood, smiling and waiting.
She’d take his hand, and behind her, Uncle would frown as she returned to London and forgot the gun, the target, the tests…
“Alice?”
“Where’s Dad? “
“He’s not coming back… “
“Why?”
“He’s got responsibilities, Alice… you’ll see, when you grow up, things are different..”
“Big Boss is dead. …Naked Snake is no more…”
“Your Dad’s not coming back, Alice.. “
She’d spent her entire life trying to find out the man behind the name; the father she’d barely known. Years of training under her father’s legacy gave her the strength she needed but he eluded her- they had kept her in the dark…
“Alice, death is necessary… you have to see the bigger picture!”
Through her tears, Alice dashed her damp blonde hair from her face viciously.
“He wouldn’t do this! Dad wouldn’t do things this way!”
The mess of blood and the stench of bodies strewn about in heaps made her sick with anger and restlessness and repulsion.
“Outer Heaven is done, Alice… we have to do what we can to uphold what your father left behind… The Next Generation Special Forces need you to be strong..”
She had never questioned them. When they had asked her to help them with the foundation of what was to be Shadow Moses, she did everything she could.. she killed for them. She had denied herself childhood and let “Alice” fall away into the recesses of her heart… the little girl that cried for those she killed, the child that was afraid of death, the one that waited for her father’s hand.
And all she had gotten in return was lies.
When Rosebud Village was ‘marked’, she fought for the innocent lives that would be lost… and was removed from the team to live a quiet life, secluded from what would be the political war and bloodshed of years to come. Removed from the only life she’d known.
She found that Rosebud Village simply disappeared from the map and knew what had been done. After three years, Alice acknowledged her inability to live with what she knew… What had replaced her guilt was the most consuming hatred and rage for the “special operations” that had taken her life and the lives of the people of the village-the political fires burned away her innocence, her father, and now more would die..
Alice had resolved her new purpose:
To find and destroy with her own hands the new leader of the Next Generation,
and waited for what was to be the opportune moment to take back what was rightfully her fathers..
Fortune allowed it to fall into her lap.
“Mary” tried to hide her intense desire to shy her face away..
6 years ago and she knew that demeanor, that revolver from the descriptions- it was unmistakable. For the sake of disguise, her hair was black now, and she had matured since those days- but she was dangerously aware that if she was recognized, it was all over.. Her heart beat with excitement and terror and hatred all in one.
“Well, what do you say..?”
She swallowed hard, and fueled her confidence with her fear.
“Can you be our little mouse, Mary?”
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