Metal Gear, it's characters and settings belong to Konami/Hideo Kojima, and are being used here without permission.

 

 

Privideniya ~ Chapter 2

 

Notes: If anyone catches the literary reference in this chapter, I'll write you a drabble or something.

 

* * *

 

When he had been a boy, Ocelot spent a decade stationed in Siberia; the snowy forests west of the Lena River. The GRU unit that had raised him from childhood was there to supervise the building of a nuclear research facility. One so far to the north that no one would think to look for it.

 

The young men called it Kolyma, after the prison camps that had once stood in the area, black flecks on the snowy white landscape. In those camps, a thousand political enemies of Communism had mined coal and gold until they dropped from pneumonia or consumption. The old men didn’t call it anything at all.

 

The facility’s namesake – the old Kolyma camps – had been razed to the ground during the Thaw, but there were still bales of barbed wire, black with rust, hidden in the deep snow drifts. You had to watch where you stepped; a scratch from one of them meant a regimen of tetanus injections from the camp surgeon, a trained veterinarian named Bukolov.

 

All the old prisoners had been pardoned; allowed to return to Moscow and Petersburg, to any family that might happen to still be alive.

 

In the winter, there were shortages of everything. Ocelot remembered the black bread that had been rationed to them, how it had to be soaked in the snow before it was soft enough to eat. There was no sun for six months at a stretch, only the ominous blue glow of the Aurora Borealis. Sometimes it was so cold that skin would freeze on contact with the air.

 

They had given him an old fur-lined Red Army coat which was so big on him he had to roll the sleeves and the bottom hem hung down to the soles of his scuffed and muddy boots. It was the smallest coat they could find, and even then he still had some growing to do.

 

Back then, he had been fond of saying to himself, “If I live through this winter, then I can live through anything.”

 

* * *

 

Inside, out of the wind, it was easy to forget about the cold entirely.  Harder now than it had once been to shake the chill out of his joints, but Ocelot was used to challenges.

 

He strode through the corridors of the fortress, not so quickly as to attract unnecessary attention, but with a definite purpose in mind. It wouldn't do for anyone to suspect that he had been up so long before reveille. That would only cast suspicion on him.

 

There was nothing he wouldn't be able to deflect, Ocelot was certain, but it annoyed him when people thought they were more clever than he was.

 

He followed the gleaming white corridors to the main wing; his mind wandered ahead, around familiar corners and into rooms that he could only remember when he didn't try to.

 

A few weeks ago, when he had first arrived, curiosity had compelled him to look for his old quarters. To find the wall against which his wooden bunk with its hard mattress had been nailed. To see what was now in the corner where there had once been a little table and a chess set with chipped pieces and one black knight that was missing a head.  Ocelot had played the game obsessively until he was fourteen, but then stopped abruptly, tired of winning every time without a challenge.

 

Ocelot knew that his mind was still as sharp as it had been all those years ago, that he could still anticipate half a dozen moves in advance. But when he had gone back through the grid of corridors to the intersection where he knew that familiar room used to be, he had realized he wasn't sure anymore whether it was through the door to the east or the door to the west.

 

He had lost more than that along the way, but none of it was important.  Ocelot had long ago stopped living for the past, and for the future. The present was the only thing he needed to survive.

 

The crisp tapping of boots echoed down the hallway from just ahead of him, around the next corner. Ocelot recognized the tread, sharp and crisp as rifle reports. But he made no indication except for a slight tightening around his eyes. He knew those measured footfalls well enough to know that this was a meeting he couldn't hope to avoid.

 

He kept his eyes lowered slightly, as though lost in thought, as he rounded the corner. He threw his shoulders back sharply, because even someone like him seemed practically harmless when he looked startled. "Lieutenant. Good morning."

 

The young officer halted, but Ocelot could see that he wasn't any more surprised to see Ocelot here than Ocelot was to see him.  He snapped to attention, raising his hand for a salute.

 

His name was Alexei Vulich. He was 24 and a veteran soldier, one of three or four dozen men who were all that remained of the former Gurlukovich Army.

 

The first thing that almost everyone noticed about Vulich was that he wore his uniform very well. Even a shabby, standard-issue coat that had been patched many times, that was faded from being worn through long desert campaigns, seemed to have been tailored to fit his broad shoulders and straight back. The cuffs of his shirt were never too short; his boots were always polished. He would have been mortified to ever find a button missing from his uniform.

 

Because of this, people assumed that Vulich didn't have many talents beyond his immaculate uniform. It had taken Ocelot until after Olga Gurlukovich's death to realize that was a mistake.

 

Not one that it was too late to correct. But a mistake all the same.

 

Vulich lowered his hand, leaning back slightly on his heels. "I didn't think you'd be up so early, Shalashaska."

 

"I thought you might say something like that." Vulich's sharp black eyes darted over him, sizing him up like a young predator. Ocelot ignored it. "You're still awfully young."

 

Vulich raised an eyebrow as his gaze landed on Ocelot's boots. "And you've been outside. What were you doing?"

 

It took Ocelot a split second to realize how Vulich had known that. There had been dew on the grass outside and that the cuffs of his pants were still damp from it. It took him only another moment to realize that Vulich was going to be more trouble than he was worth one day. And when that time came, Ocelot was going to enjoy putting a bullet through the middle of that handsome, wolfish face…

 

"Just having a cigarette," Ocelot said affably.

 

"You're not in America anymore, Shalashaska. You don't have to go outside to smoke."

 

"I think I prefer it all the same, Lieutenant."

 

Vulich narrowed his eyes, but didn't reply. Like any good officer, he knew when to fight and when to simply hold his ground. "Another three soldiers have gone missing," he said after a moment.

 

"Deserters?"

 

Vulich pressed his lips thin and didn't answer that either. "That leaves thirty-eight men. Not counting me." He glanced at Ocelot. "Not counting you."

 

"Have you sent anyone to track them down?"

 

"I can't spare the manpower," Vulich said. "Everyone is working 12-hour shifts just to keep a perimeter around the facility. Besides…" He shook his head. "If I see those three again, I'll kill them myself. I don't have any patience for traitors."

 

"Of course you don't," Ocelot said easily. He already knew that Vulich suspected him of betraying Sergei Gurlukovich. The Lieutenant wasn't sure yet how to act on that suspicion, but it was there, chewing at him. A tight knot in the pit of his stomach, a distasteful tightness in the back of his throat…

 

"It's good for morale to have an execution once in a while," Ocelot said.

 

Vulich snorted. "Ridiculous."

 

"Do you think so?"

 

"Did they teach you that in the KGB? I'm not a fucking Stalinist…"

 

Ocelot found it harder than he should have to reply without laughing. "What are you then? Something more… progressive, perhaps? Maybe you're an entrepreneur. You snapped up control of Sergei's army like a regular venture capitalist."

 

"I'm a patriot," Vulich said sharply. "And I am a Russian."

 

Ocelot raised an eyebrow. "Easy, Lieutenant. I haven't heard a denial like that in fifty years."

 

"And that is exactly the problem. People have become complacent. They don't believe in anything anymore."

 

"We live in a post-modern world, I suppose," Ocelot said with a shrug. "What do you suggest we do, Lieutenant? Take away their televisions? Liberate our comrades from their possessions? You could build a wall, right through the center of, say, Berlin…"

 

"You're making fun of me." Vulich narrowed his eyes. "At least when people were hungry, at least when they were afraid… that was something."

 

Ocelot rolled his eyes. He'd heard all this before; Vulich never got tired of speeches. "Something indeed," He said. "I don't think you know what it was."

 

"It was something worth fighting for, which is more than we have now," Vulich said coldly. "All the right ideas were there, the doctrine is sound. It's people that ruined it…"

 

"But it's something you could believe in?"

 

"Why not?" Vulich tilted his chin back arrogantly. "What else am I supposed to believe?"

 

"That is a good question." But one that Ocelot already knew the answer to. A stinging pain bit into the knuckles of his left hand; it wouldn't let him forget… "There's nothing you can believe in, Lieutenant. There's nothing certain. There's nothing that means anything, and nothing that matters."

 

Anger crested like a wave behind Vulich's eyes. The lines of his face seemed to become even sharper for a moment. It was even more satisfying than Ocelot had hoped to see him upset.

 

"I suppose that you speak from experience," Vulich said coldly.

 

"I suppose that I do," Ocelot said. "You're still young, Lieutenant. You'll understand once day. If you live that long, that is."

 

"What is that supposed to mean?"

 

Ocelot shrugged. "Nothing much. Just… that Gurlukovich troops aren't known for their longevity. Maybe those three deserters are on to something that you haven't realized yet."

 

"What are you going to do to my men, Shalashaska?" Vulich said quietly. All the color had fallen out of his face. "They've been through enough…"

 

"Do to them? I thought I was helping you out, Lieutenant. A favor… to Sergei's boys." Vulich had the look of a man who had been tossed out of a plane at 30,000 feet but, for the moment, was trying not to panic. He didn't seem about to move out of the way, so Ocelot went around him. "Pardon me, Lieutenant. Look at the time… I have to be in the lab soon. It was pleasant talking to you, though."

 

He walked away. He was almost to the end of the corridor before he heard Vulich's footfalls again, heading in the opposite direction. They weren't so sharp anymore; he dragged his feet a little, muddying the crisp sound.