Snake was used to seeing Otacon do nothing besides work on his computer for days at a time, especially after botched missions like the last one. He considered it a necessary facet of life, something Snake had to endure to survive, and as much as he liked Otacon, the time he could spend relatively alone suited him fine. But this time, something was wrong - a greater amount of frustration in Otacon's movements when he typed things or clicked at the mouse, a total avoidance of the question when Snake brought him cups of the sticky-sweet tar-black slime Otacon thought of as coffee and casually asked how he was doing, and quite a bit more swearing than usual. He knew Otacon couldn't be completely dishonest with him for long, and so, that evening, Snake bought a curling sandwich for an exorbitant price from the young woman at the hotel counter, gave it to Otacon, and then, perched on the edge of their bed, started redressing his bandages while Otacon failed to eat it. Eventually, Otacon took a bite of one of its corners, and said, off-handedly – "I'm sorry, Snake. Just trust me that there's no need to worry."

"About what?" Snake asked, peeling off a layer of browned tangled gauze.

"Er – remember when I was teaching you all those proverbs on the Tanker?" Otacon looked around at Snake for the first time in a while. Snake looked back, expressionlessly. "Well, Mei Ling got really mad. And she's managed to get backdoor access to my system via an exploit she built into the Codec app, and used that window of opportunity to install the weirdest piece of malware I've ever seen."

"Malware? While we're running for our lives? Why would she do that?"

"Revenge," Otacon said, dully. He tapped back a dialogue box. "Like I said, it's nothing serious. I have full access to all the functions necessary for our survival – all of the cracking systems and everything. It only responds to certain file types, see, and certain file locations." Otacon lifted off the top layer of bread on the sandwich and fished out the relish, which he dropped into the bin at his side. "She was really careful to make sure that as long as I'm using this legitimately, nothing bad will happen."

"But we can't risk it," Snake snapped, looking at the deep cut on his arm. The knots in the suture were coming undone, and needed replacing. It was his own fault for not stitching it up right. "You need to call her and get her to get rid of it. Nothing good ever comes from revenge, you know."

"No," Otacon responded. "I can't do that." He shoved his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "This - It's a challenge from her to me. It's what she wants."

"So she's challenging you to see if you can remove the malware?" Snake hooked the blade of the scissors underneath the broken thread and pulled the loop out easily. "What's that going to achieve?"

Otacon tapped furiously at the keys.

"The problem is that whenever I disable one of the functions it – oh! Look at this!"

"Look at what?"

"Look at that."

Snake looked. It was a line of white code that looked the same as all the other lines of white code.

"So?" he eventually asked, dropping the curl of bloodied suture into the plastic box the sandwich had come in.

"So? Do you know how long it took to find this? This little function lets it copy itself onto unused portions of the hard disc - it's what's making it so hard to manually delete. If I get rid of that, I should – there we go. Now I just need to wipe everything that responds to this string here - "

White code rolled on the screen.

"Doesn't seem to me like she'd be that obvious," Snake started, vaguely, and Otacon cut in -

"You're right, Snake. She wouldn't. If I do that she'll have a subroutine in place which will trigger and when it does then – ah, there we go - "

Otacon settled down, and began to type, carefully and with renewed enthusiasm. Snake, sensing he wasn't wanted, slunk into the shower and scrubbed off as much dried blood as he could before Otacon gave a howl of 'Snake' and he came out again, trying to preserve his modesty with a cheap hotel towel.

He asked, "What is it?"

"I've gotten rid of the program," Otacon explained, watching the screen gingerly. "The only problem is that when I cleared off the last process, it seemed to trigger another little trap of hers. I'm sure it's all gone, but - "

He swallowed and poked at a small folder in the centre of the desktop. It was labelled 'Congratulations!!!'

"It dumped that," he said. "I mean, I told you. I trusted her not to do anything ridiculous. But if I click this it might do something worse. She was uploading a lot of the nanomachine drivers to her system with the trojan in the Codec program, and I'm thinking it might do something strange to you, Snake." He shook his head. "She can't stop your heart, or make you go blind, but she could make you fall asleep, or get aroused, or vomit, or need to pee all the time, or make your voice go really high."

"Open it," Snake said. "If she does something bad we call her up and get her to undo it."

"But I'll lose!"

"But I don't care."

Otacon said, "right," and opened the folder.

"Ah," he said. "So that's why she was challenging me."

He hugged the monitor to his body. Snake caught a glimpse of a row of picture thumbnails, which were mostly flesh-coloured, but Otacon covered them up as soon as possible.

"What are those?"

"Never you mind," Otacon said, flushing deeply. "They're – uh - " He turned. "Snake, go to bed."

"We're sharing a bed, remember?"

Otacon rolled his eyes. He looked down at the monitor against his chest. He looked across at the wall, and then at Snake. Snake looked back. Otacon looked away again.

"You didn't earn this," he said. "I did. I did her puzzle, I played her game, and she gave me her – reward – oh my, the last one has her contact details – I - " He pulled his glasses off his face, like a scientist in a B-movie. "Snake. Go back and finish your shower. You mind sleeping in the bathroom tonight? It's just for one night, I swear – I mean, you have to understand, I didn't even know she thought about me like – oh, my, that's a ketchup bottle in – please, Snake. Sleep in the bathtub. For me?"

Snake sighed, and went into the bathroom.