Some of you reading this are probably asking yourselves why I'm bothering to write it in the first place. Truth is, I'd love nothing more than to live out my retirement in the relative comfort that suburban America provides, and to forget all about my past.

But I can't do that. My war may be over, but I still have a job to do. I have to see this age off, to leave behind my story so that future generations will remember me. The real me, free of the hyperbolic legends that have sprung up about me, free of the pariah caricature that the Patriots and their proxies drew of me. The true story of my life needs to be told, the whole truth, and nothing but.

To have come to this point in my memoir, you've no doubt read a lot of unbelievable claptrap. You've read unbelievable stories, the stuff of fantasy and science fiction. Stories with people like Psycho Mantis, Vulcan Raven, or Vamp, whose supernatural abilities defied the laws of reality, or heroes whose bodies and souls were the playthings of an ancient conspiracy with no regard for personal freedom or self-determination. Through it all, there's one common thread: It all sounds unbelievable as sin.

I wouldn't blame you for discounting the words in this memoir. It'd be easy enough to dismiss everything I say as the demented ramblings of a senile coot. My doctor tells me that I'm pushing eighty, after all. For all I know, I really am nothing more than an old fool who long ago lost his grip on reality. But if you've kept reading through everything I've written so far, then you must see some sense in what it is I'm saying. That, or your suspension of disbelief is the stuff of legends. So I want to thank you, first of all, for sticking with me so long. And I beg your pardon in advance for taxing that trust to the utmost with what it is I'm about to tell you.

Because while my exploits may be almost common knowledge by now, thanks to the internet finally living up to the ideal of free information exchange, there's one story that I've always kept close to my chest. One mission I've never shared with anybody, at least outside of those who took part in it. It's almost embarrassing to write about, given the subject matter, which is why I've kept it close to the chest for this long. But it's got to come out sooner or later. And I'm not getting any younger.

It was in the wake of the Manhattan Incident that the book of my life began to draw to a close. Events that came to a head in 2014, when the Patriots were deposed from their centuries-long reign over the world, had their foundations laid in 2009, on a chilly April morning, the day before the 220th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as the first President of the United States. What began as an act of kidnapping by a terrorist faction became one of the greatest tragedies in New York's history. By the next morning, the President and his predecessor were both dead, along with thousands of innocents, and Manhattan Island looked like God had driven his snowplow through it.

What happened that day had long-reaching consequences, a sort of domino effect upon the rest of the world, and the United Nations had its hands full playing damage control. Entire countries fell into chaos as America withdrew within its borders to lick its wounds. Nations that relied upon an American military presence to act as deterrence suddenly found themselves defenseless. The global situation grew increasingly unstable – all according to plan, of course, as the Patriots steered events their way, shaped the world in their own image.

And as war closed in around those nations who lost their American military backing, they began to realize the futility and the costliness of maintaining their own standing armies. It's here that the War Economy of the 2010s has its roots. Private military contractors grew in demand; private armies, without loyalty or ideology, began fighting broad-scale proxy wars on behalf of entire nations, driving their economic development and lining their own pockets with blood money. By the end of the year 2009, what would evolve into the War Economy had started to take hold of the entire world – all because of what transpired on that fateful April day.

It's important that you understand the framework of the War Economy that was responsible for the rise of the PMCs, because the story I'm about to tell concerns one PMC in particular. You probably had never heard of Pegasus Wings before now, and that's okay; they were nothing special. Numbered no larger than three hundred and fifty men at their peak, many of which were culled from the ranks of deserters, war criminals and the dishonorably discharged. Though considerably less professional than the PMCs that ran in the final days of the War Economy, they nevertheless raked in a fair amount of income from their deployments. Never made the kind of waves that the companies under Liquid's banner did though. At least, nowhere on Earth.

What you DID probably hear about was that report released in early 2010 that warned of the rising availability of black market nuclear materials. That was probably one of the last instances of information being freely distributed among the masses, before the Patriots seized total control of the digital flow of information. Well, Pegasus Wings was responsible for that, at least in part. By the middle of 2010, you see, they were able to secure for themselves a decommissioned Soviet nuclear missile.

Now, by this point, the SOP system didn't yet have complete control over every single gun in the world (that was a far more gradual process than the growth of the War Economy), but the Patriots did have a death grip over the world's stock of WMDs, and they were rushing to take control of what they didn't already own. That Soviet missile was one of the only ones of its kind left: a naked nuke, unfettered by nanocontrol.

You should also know by now that the specs for Metal Gear REX – the nuclear-equipped walking death mobile that I destroyed on Shadow Moses Island in 2005 – had been on the black market for years by the time of the Manhattan Incident. And while years of anti-Metal Gear weapons development had, by that point, reduced the strategic importance of Metal Gear considerably, having one in your arsenal pretty much ensured that nobody but the ballsiest of nations would ever give you grief. Even if you didn't actually have a nuclear stockpile, owning a Metal Gear acted as an effective bluff and countermeasure, as long as you had a good enough poker face to convince the rest of the world that you had something for it to fire.

So it came to pass that a nuclear weapon fell into the hands – or, more fittingly, for reasons that will become apparent later, the hooves – of Pegasus Wings. And, to make an already bad situation that much worse, so too did a black market cookie-cutter copy of Metal Gear REX.

If you've read this far, then you should be pretty familiar with my stance on nuclear proliferation, and on Metal Gear in general. But to reiterate both succinctly, I've dedicated my life to making sure they both die out. So when our contact in the Navy, a young Lieutenant Commander whose name I've conveniently forgotten in my old age, passed word to our group, Philanthropy, about Pegasus Wings' exciting new toy, there wasn't much else that Otacon and I could do but set out for another mission.

Pegasus Wings had set up shop in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Our connections secured for us a landing spot at an old World War II-era airstrip that wasn't far from their island. Parachuting onto the island directly wasn't an option. Forgetting for now that dropping down onto a strip of land that small from the height that we'd need to be at to avoid detection was like throwing a dart at a bull's-eye the size of a barnacle, I'd probably be shot to death hours before I even hit the ground. Flying in via helicopter wasn't an option either, for similar reasons. What self-respecting mercenary army wouldn't have a handy stockpile of anti-air munitions on hand? No, I had to keep a low profile, and that meant aquatic insertion, my least favorite, yet most frequent, method of infiltration.

I slapped on a pair of fins and some scuba gear and made for the island. It wasn't so far out from the airstrip – we could see it from our landing site, even – so it didn't take me long to reach it. An hour and some change, if I remember right. I emerged from the ocean to find a dock that featured an industrial sized crane, dangling a long steel wire tipped with a hook the size of a sedan over a tanker berthed in the harbor. On the side of the tanker was an emblem of two blue, feathered wings, spread wide with their tips arcing upward like a grin. Between them was the face of a horned, midnight blue warhorse, with vacant black eyes and a doleful expression on a face that shouldn't have been capable of emotional expression.

You're not stupid, I hope, so you probably gathered that it was the emblem of Pegasus Wings.

Searching the ship seemed as reasonable a starting place as any, so I boarded and had myself a look around. It was easy enough to find my way about the place; the ship was the same class as the U.S.S. Discovery, the tanker that I'd infiltrated almost three years prior, and the layout was close to identical. It was markedly better furnished, however, stocked from bow to stern with high-tech electronic equipment and weaponry. The bridge looked like something out of Star Trek, very much unlike the spartan, computer-operated bridge of the Discovery. Plush chairs sat in front of complex, glowing consoles, and a gentle, humming pulse ran through the room. Lining the upper decks were gun emplacements, point-defense batteries, and missile racks; the ship was a floating fortress, armed to the teeth and fully capable of doling out as well as soaking up punishment. But more to the point, and most importantly, the ship was completely deserted. I searched that ship from one end to the other, and didn't encounter a single soul.

I contacted Otacon to inform him of my findings. “Maybe the ship itself is the Pegasus Wings HQ,” he postulated. “Speaking from experience, a mobile command base would definitely have its advantages.”

I thought about the cargo plane that I'd spent so much of the last few years aboard, the safe haven that had protected Otacon and I as we became wanted men, and couldn't help but agree. “But then, what about the island base?” I asked. “Some kind of supply depot, maybe? Even then, that still wouldn't explain the crew's whereabouts. You'd think that, even with most of the crew on dry land, they'd spare a handful of people to guard the ship.”

Otacon didn't have an answer for me, so I signed off and continued my exploration. I made my way down into the hold, following the familiar path through the mess hall (somewhat more lavishly furnished than the one aboard the tanker that lay dead in New York harbor) down to the engine room, and wove through the criss-crossing, dimly lit corridors that took me into the deep recesses of the ship.

The first few areas of the hold were completely empty, save for some empty wooden crates that lay tipped over, spilling packing peanuts, Styrofoam, and not much else. Whatever was being stored there had been moved some time ago. A film of dust coated most surfaces, and much of the remaining metal equipment – scattered crowbars here and there, a forlorn forklift in a distant corner – had begun to rust from disuse. Blame the salty air.

The last section of the hold was the same kind of cavernous room where I had discovered Metal Gear RAY in the bowels of the Discovery. But, to my mild disappointment, there was nothing there this time, save the same service walks and gantries that lined the walls of the Discovery's hold.

Again, I contacted Otacon. “There was definitely a Metal Gear aboard this ship,” I told him, “but it looks like it's been moved out already. That explains the heavy lifting equipment out on the dock.”

“The only place it could possibly be now is the island,” Otacon told me. “It must be the assembly point and staging area for Metal Gear. And if they've evacuated the ship completely, then it could be that they're planning to ditch it and fortify the island.”

My stomach churned unpleasantly at the idea of another mercenary nation being founded on a remote island. This whole “Outer Heaven” business had been in vogue for far too long. Closing the link with Otacon, I made my way back out of the hold and off of the ship. I sped down the dock, determined to put an end to this new mercenary rebellion before it could begin in earnest.

The gate that led into the island proper was left cracked open. I found that more than a little perplexing. The only weapon I had on me was my modified M9 Beretta, and tranquilizers wouldn't be much use in a firefight, but I held it like a lifeline as I stole into the base, keeping it level and ready to fire at a moment's notice.

But the island base, too, was empty, and a massive contrast to the well-maintained and modern ship that sat vacant and forlorn in the harbor. This place reeked of obsolescence. There weren't any obvious indicators as to its age, but from the level of decay and the look of its equipment, I pegged it at around the 1970s at the latest. Otacon suggested that it and the airstrip that we had landed on used to be parts of the same facility.

The base's layout was simple: A barracks on the far left side, a rectangular hangar in the middle of the base, and a larger, circular, domed structure. Inside the barracks, there wasn't much besides rusted bunks standing row on row and a mess hall that stank of long-expired food. I did find a rusted Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle on a moldy old mattress. The relic caught my eye immediately, and I tried cycling it on the slim chance that there was still a round loaded. I wasn't altogether surprised to find that the action was rusted solid, but I was a little disappointed.

Leaving the barracks, I checked out the smaller, rectangular hangar. Not much in there; some rusted old trucks with moth-eaten furniture inside the cabins. I didn't recognize the model off the top of my head, but they looked as old as the facility itself, and each of them was stamped on the doors and hoods with a faded white star, a symbol that I recognized as the old American Army logo. That struck me as particularly unusual; there wasn't enough space on the island to justify the presence of one truck, let alone several. And why were there American trucks in the same base as a Russian rifle?

I left the hangar and took one last look around the place, but there wasn't much to see that I hadn't already seen. Steeling my nerves and once again gripping my Beretta, I made for the domed structure. There was a wide gate, like the entrance to a garage, and beside it a door. I gripped the door's handle, took a deep breath, and tentatively nudged it open.

The door to the hangar had groaned something awful when I'd opened it. Those hinges hadn't been oiled in who knows how long. But this one opened smoothly, with nary a sound. I noted the difference and stepped into the room, my gun held at the ready. Yet even in the darkness of this hangar, I could tell that it, too, was devoid of human life. There were no sounds besides my footsteps as I edged into the building; no telltale smells of sweat or cologne – or flatulence, if you'll believe it – that always gave away human presence. I was quite alone.

I was well past exasperated by this point. It isn't that I minded the lack of enemy soldiers to shoot and sneak past, but I was hoping to find something besides a worthless gun, Styrofoam and rancid odor on this mission. Pegasus Wings had a presence here; the ship was evidence enough of that, but what that presence was, I couldn't determine. Three hundred and fifty soldiers had vanished, taking with them a Metal Gear and a nuclear missile. Part of me felt like giving up, going back to the Nomad and getting some goddamn dinner, but I couldn't just let a malignant mercenary army remain in possession of a nuclear delivery system, so I resolved to keep searching.

My hand groped along the near wall, searching for a switch to provide the hangar with some illumination. I found it at last, taking it in my hand and pulling it down. It resisted, only slightly, but complied in the end. There was a spark from the switch, the sound of electric equipment stirring and coming to life, and suddenly, the hangar was bathed in fluorescent white light.

I don't find myself at a loss for words often (in fact, it's been said that I talk too much, for too long) so try and understand just how flabbergasting the sight before me was. I'll try to convey it with words, but whether it's my memory dulling with time, or that room being too wondrous for words to do justice by, I don't think I'll be able to do it right.

For starters, it was huge. I don't think the exterior of the building really captured just how big it was going to be on the inside. The place was enormous and shaped like a sports stadium. It was a single room, circular in shape. And every surface in the room was chrome. Everything, every panel, every instrument, the very walls themselves, reflected the fluorescent light from the ceiling. It was like being inside a lightbulb.

The instruments themselves – how to put this? I hate to bring up Star Trek again, but those are the best terms I can describe it in. You know the way that forward-thinking sci-fi tries to cast a certain futuristic look and feel onto everything? Trouble is, they're always trying to envision that future in present-day terms. It's hard to capture the look and feel of the far-flung future when you're constrained by the limitations of contemporary times, so everything winds up having this weird, sort of archaic feel to it. It's meant to look futuristic, but you can tell that it isn't.

Well, that's the way that the equipment in that room looked: like old equipment dressed up to look futuristic. The interior layout winded and spiraled downward. The whole thing reminded me of the seating in a football stadium, the way the consoles were arranged in the circular pattern, tapering down to a wide pit. I was standing close to a ramp that led from the entrance I'd come through to the bottom. It was wide, wide enough to comfortably accommodate one of those trucks that I'd found in the hangar. I guess they were used to run supplies up from the bottom of this room to the outside world. Or the other way around. Whichever.

As much as the scale of the place hit me, the quality of its maintenance was what really made it stand out from the rusted-out carcass that was the base. This place was so unlike that; it had a life to it, a pulse. I couldn't help but wonder what it could possibly have been built for.

Well, actually, it was three things that stuck out. The scale. The quality of its maintenance. And the big honking arch in the center of the pit at the bottom of the room.

Otacon rang me, said that he'd been keeping up on the visual data transmitted from my nanomachines. To say he was excited would be a gross understatement. I couldn't recall him ever being so animated, especially in the wake of his sister's death in Manhattan not so long ago. “Can you believe it?” he asked me, almost giddy. “It's like the Guardian of Forever! Think it'll take you back in time if you walk through it?”

I didn't have the slightest idea as to what he was talking about. I've had a lot of time on my hands during my retirement, and this place gets cable, so I've since been able to educate myself on classic Star Trek. Actually, it's a funny story. Hearing “Guardian of Forever” on an episode brought me back to the memory of that day, reminded me of that mission I'd gone on. It's what prompted me to write this chapter, incidentally.

Where was I? Oh, right. Otacon. He wanted to know everything about that room, demanded that I bring back some sort of sensitive equipment for him to study. “Scientific curiosity,” he called it.

“Otacon,” I said to him tentatively, not wanting to burst his bubble too maliciously, “is that the same scientific curiosity that pushed you to develop REX?”

He got quiet, responding a few moments later with a mollified “touché ,” and signed off before I could apologize. I sighed to myself, pressing a palm to my forehead and squeezing my thumb and index fingers against my temples. I felt bad for hurting him like that – who wouldn't kick themselves after inventing a world-ending machine like REX? – but that man needed a spine in the worst way. Figured I'd bring him a shiny piece of metal and call it an apology gift.

Putting aside Otacon's oversensitivity for another time, I walked down the ramp and holstered my Beretta; there wasn't any point in keeping it out. This place was as lifeless as the rest of the island, empty, and eerily sterile. Every step I took echoed loudly, reverberating off of the chrome walls; my every footfall came back to me as the stomping of a colossus.

I looked down as I walked, noting silently the black, rubbery tire tracks running down the length of the ramp. “There's one hypothesis confirmed,” I said to the empty room. When I came at last to the pit at the bottom, I stared up at the arch which towered above me.

This entire island was one of contradictions – the modern wonders of the tanker berthed outside, the hollow, derelict military barracks, the science fiction look and feel of this... whatever the hell this room was, and even the arch itself. So completely unlike anything else on the island. The military base may have been old; this thing was ancient. Like something out of a National Geographic article about ancient Egypt, or Rome, or some other dead civilization.

It was bigger up close than it had looked from the top of the room, more than big enough enough to accommodate the trucks in the hangar next door. It's funny; I could tell just by looking at it that it was old, but age didn't cause the thing to lose any luster. It was beautiful, exquisitely and ornately carved with inlaid patterns that I didn't recognize or understand, at least at the time. But even without comprehending, I couldn't stop staring.

At the pinnacle of the arch was the bust of a unicorn, resplendently white in the room's fluorescence. It stared down at me with shimmering eyes, an expression of serenity adorning its long face. I didn't realize that a horse's face could express something as abstract as serenity, but I guess that shows what an ignorant bastard I am.

It was the centerpiece of the room. Possibly of the base itself. I got the distinct impression that this building was built around the arch, that the arch was the sole reason for this base's existence. There was a sacredness about the place that was just starting to creep onto me. It felt holy. Consecrated. Like a monument to some ancient faith or creed that nobody alive could now remember. Suddenly, I felt compelled to touch the arch, to feel it. To make that ancient history come alive just by feeling it against my hand.

But the buzzing of the Codec interrupted me before I could do something as stupidly sentimental as that, and I shook off the feeling. Otacon's voice still sounded droopy, but he was definitely intrigued by what it was we were seeing. “This room is important,” he told me, “though how, I don't exactly know. But we know that Pegasus Wings came here, and we know that they brought a Metal Gear. It's a small island. There aren't many places for them to have stashed it.”

I looked at the ground on a whim, and noticed something peculiar. The tire tracks ran from the end of the ramp, down the center of the arch. But they didn't come out of the other side.

Well. That was telling. "Otacon," I said. “This archway... there're tire tracks that run right to its opening, but that don't run out the other side. I think whatever goes through here... comes out someplace else.” I allowed myself to press a hand against its frame. To my surprise, it felt warm, almost hot, to the touch. "That shouldn't be possible. Should it?"

"Site-to-site transportation of matter? I mean, we have been referencing Star Trek pretty liberally so far."

"Try to think outside the realm of science fiction, Otacon," I sighed.

"Well... I wanna say no, but it's hard to argue with the evidence, isn't it? Teleportation's something we've seen before. Maybe this is just the same thing on a macro scale."

I chewed that over. Psycho Mantis had that kind of ability, vanishing and reappearing on the other side of the room without so much as a telltale puff of brimstone. But transporting an entire army from one place to who the hell knows? That was a whole league apart from him. Now, the question was, who would have the resources to put together something like that, to build a machine that violated all the laws of physics, that could be exploited for military purposes? Some podunk, small-time private army? No, someone else had to have bankrolled this.

Not too difficult to guess who, I hope. I doubted they were involved with Pegasus Wings and their activities, but a facility with technology of this caliber could only have come from the Patriots. But the island didn't look like it was home to any kind of active presence; nothing outside of the dome facility was being maintained. Maybe this was some project the Patriots had been working on, but abandoned. Maybe Pegasus Wings found it and got it working again. But how did that fit together with the Metal Gear, with the nuke?

“Snake...” Otacon's voice was hesitant. I could predict what it was he was about to say, and I could guess why he held it back. “Do you think that they took Metal Gear through that teleporter?”

“It sounds incredibly stupid,” I said. “Naturally, that's probably exactly what happened." I snorted, wondering why and how shit like this fell into my lap time and time again. "You know what this means, of course."

Otacon hesitated to answer. So I went ahead and supplied the words that he was so afraid of saying. “I have to follow them, Otacon. I need to see where they've taken Metal Gear.”

He tried to protest, but his heart wasn't exactly in it. He had to have come to the same conclusion that I did. We couldn't very easily let a Metal Gear remain in the hands of potential terrorists. No way we could justify that, after spending four years breaching the sovereignty of recognized nations to destroy their Metal Gears. I knew damn well that whatever damage that Metal Gear caused, whatever blood it spilled, would be as much on my hands for my inaction as it would be on Otacon's for inventing it, if I walked away.

Otacon finally agreed with my assessment. There was more equipment arranged around the arch, control panels that glowed dimly, and padded, rotating chairs that faced away from their stations. He directed me to one of them, talked me through the process of starting the machine up. I'm not sure how he knew what to do to get it to work. Sure, he was always good with computers, but these were archaic machines from another era, hooked up to an ancient portal that would take me God knows where. Figured he'd have a little bit of trouble with them, but he talked me through the process like it was nothing. Maybe it was my nanomachines again, relaying information to him, or some other damn thing. I don't know; my skillset doesn't include the intricacies of computer science.

But he got that computer to work, and as it hummed to life, the glow on the monitor readout intensified. The fluorescent light dimmed, and in the dead center of the arch, floating in midair, the tiniest ball of yellow light appeared. I watched it, mesmerized, as it grew in size, very quickly filling the massive frame of the arch. The fluorescent light winked out altogether as the light shone radiantly from every inch of the portal's maw.

It's funny. That unicorn bust that I was looking at before, the one that looked so white and beautiful and inviting—it was the one thing in the room that didn't reflect the yellow light from the portal. If anything, it darkened, shriveled, and turned a sinister ebony. The look of serenity twisted into a grim scowl, and finally extended into a mocking sneer.

And I? I stared back defiantly, refusing to be cowed by a shaped piece of rock.

“Snake,” said Otacon timidly as I stared into the sea of gold. “Did you ever see Stargate?”

“See, now that's a reference I can understand.” I replied. I stared deep into the portal, trying to discern something – a recognizable shape, some hint of what lay in store for me beyond – to no avail. “I saw it in theaters, actually. The guy at the ticket booth said I looked like Kurt Russel. Why?"

“Suffice to say, it's more than a little relevant right now,” said Otacon, forcing some cheer into his voice.

No kidding, I thought. “I could be out of contact for a while. If I'm not back in seventy-two hours, I'm not coming back at all. Take off and find help. Find Jack. Come in after me, and finish whatever I've started. We can't let this one get away, Otacon.”

“I'll come for you, Snake,” said Otacon. There was a hardness in his voice, a resoluteness that I wish he'd carry himself with more often. It was, and still is, very becoming. “But you make sure that I don't have to. Don't make me lose you the way I lost Emma.”

I couldn't help but smile sadly at the company he was putting me in. “Hold the fort, Hal,” I said quietly.

Filling my lungs with what could have turned out to be my final breath of Earth air—or my last breath of air, period—I stepped into the brightness, letting it swallow me, engulf me in its shining heat.

And then I was gone.

Author's Notes:

Edited as of 7/7

-Adjusted formatting
-Fixed punctuation errors
-Minor changes to lines of narration and dialogue
-Additional dialogue between Snake and Otacon added