• Each day begins the same, I look forward to nothing.
    Yet something is eating away at my heart. Is it longing? Anger? Hope? Fear?

    These emotions are kept locked away in the deepest corner of my mind, but they brush my consciousness occasionally.
    I'm a soldier, a clone, and expendable as far as they care. They don't see me as real, just another of their science experiments. While they play their politics I risk my life to defend that precious freedom they so dearly desire.

    The people I care about fall away from my side, stolen by death and consumed by the raging fire of the wars I fight inside of me. I reach out to them, but they can't hear my voice as I cry out their names. I want to scream, but something holds me back. It lingers like their faces, haunting and terrifying me.

    No one really cares who I am as long as I do my job. Yet they don't realize there is a soul under this mask of faceless apathy. Sometimes I want to shake them and yell "I'm a human being too, I have a name! David!" David. No one says that name anymore, it echoes like a half-forgotten dream.

    I have precious little time to live, they wanted me to be ready to fight sooner then a normal human, but what they refused to acknowledge they were stealing years from my life. The sands of time trickle through my fingers, I get older every day. My own brother wants my blood on his hands; just because he believes I got the better genes.

    What does it feel like to truly live? Something aches inside of me, and late at night when I'm alone that ache grows into a steady throb that sends tears down my face. My war-hardened heart has forgotten how to love, and now I spend my remaining days trying to hold it together, but I'm slowly fading, falling apart.

    But I'm not dead yet. I will fight for my country, my honor, and I do it with fierce pride that consumes my being. Yes, that's what that something is. The pride I hold so close and the sorrow of everlasting perils. But while I still live, those who oppose America will have to deal with me, Solid Snake, but no one will ever know the troubles that course through my mind.

    No one. But me.