173: Chapter 173: Secret Meeting in the Basement, Acceptance by the Tech Faction

Twelve miles west of Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida,

in an underground safe house at a private yacht marina on the Atlantic coast.

This safe house was built directly beneath the marina berths, within a bedrock layer about forty feet deep.

It was originally a backup communication node prepared for the president's emergency evacuation during the Cold War,

and was later quietly acquired and remodeled by Musk through a shell company under SpaceX.

At this moment, Edward Warren and Elon Musk were sitting on an old leather sofa on one side of the room.

Edward held a coffee cup, his posture as steady as ever, occasionally glancing at the fragment of an old navigational chart on the opposite wall that had been replaced by an electronic nautical chart.

Musk rested his left hand on his knee, his fingertips gently tapping his patella, occasionally turning his head to glance at Prant sitting at the other end of the room.

Prant sat in an old swivel chair with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression serious.

He had never met Joshua before,

and the person who made him transfer all those classified files before the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago was precisely this Tech Faction official from the Deep State.

Yesterday evening, Musk contacted him via an encrypted channel, and the message sent was extremely brief:

"Biden will send the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago within twenty-four hours to arrest you on the grounds of classified files you took when leaving office. It is recommended that you immediately transfer all files that may be used as evidence to a safe location."

Prant did not entirely believe it at the time.

He had spent four years in the White House and knew better than anyone that things like a departing president taking classified files were never seriously investigated in Washington circles.

But Biden had seemed like a different person in recent months,

transforming from that sluggish sleepyhead into a ruthless Cold War figure who dared to impose martial law at the Hoover Dam and let the Secret Service surround the Federal Detention Center to forcefully intercept him,

he no longer dared to measure the other party by past standards.

Therefore, just to be safe, he still had people transfer all the files locked in the basement safe and study room secret compartments in Mar-a-Lago to somewhere else.

Then the next morning, the FBI people really came.

After confirming that Whitfield had searched the estate in vain, Prant immediately dialed Musk's phone.

Then he was brought here and saw Joshua.

Joshua stood in the exact center of the room, with blond hair and blue eyes, a youthful face, a dark suit, and a pair of gloves on his hands, the left hand black and the right hand blue.

His standing posture was very casual, as if he were waiting for a few old friends in his own living room.

Edward and Musk had long been used to his appearance, and each holding a coffee cup, they simply nodded at him.

But it was Prant's first time seeing him.

He looked at the blond-haired and blue-eyed young man in front of him, then looked at the pair of gloves with different colors and materials that obviously did not belong to any human factory product, was silent for a moment, and then spoke.

In his tone, there was neither fear nor flattery, but rather the straightforwardness of a businessman on the negotiating table confirming the other party's quotation sheet.

"I am very grateful that the Deep State is willing to help me."

"But you must also need me to do something for you."

"Speak."

Joshua looked at him, his tone flat:

"The people from the Longevity Faction have already started cooperating with the current Biden."

"They plan to execute a long-term plan called 'Earth Lockdown' on Earth after repelling the million-strong fleet of Grey Alien."

He paused for a moment, gently resting his right hand wearing the blue glove on the edge of an old chart table beside him,

"What are your thoughts on this?"

Musk straightened up from the back of the sofa, placed his coffee cup on his knees and cupped it with both hands, supplementing for Joshua:

"The so-called Earth Lockdown, to put it bluntly, is to stop all human exploration activities into outer space and use all scientific research funds to invest in the virtual reality industry."

"Making all of humanity wear VR headsets every day and live in a virtual world."

"The Longevity Faction intends to use this method to completely lock down the possibility of Earth's technology breaking out of the Solar System."

"No one understands virtual reality better than me!" Prant said this sentence calmly and firmly,

there was no exaggerated expression on his face, and his tone was completely unlike when he shouted MAGA to tens of thousands of people at a campaign rally, passionate and stirring,

"If Biden wants to do this, he definitely won't do it as well as me."

Joshua's cold blue eyes lingered on Prant's face for a moment, and then moved slightly.

That was the look of a high-ranking official who had seen countless people seriously scrutinizing a stranger for the first time.

Edward moved the coffee cup away from his mouth and placed it on the sofa armrest, exchanging a glance with Musk.

Musk's eyebrows twitched very slightly.

The two of them had previously watched Prant repeatedly say "no one understands better than me" in various rallies and interviews on TV, always thinking it was a persona deliberately created in front of the camera,

an exaggerated performance that drove opponents crazy and made supporters fanatical.

But today, sitting in this underground safe house surrounded by old charts and radio equipment,

listening to Prant say the sentence "no one understands virtual reality better than me" to Joshua with a tone as flat as discussing which appetizer to add to the menu, they realized he was not faking it.

He was just that kind of person.

Joshua suddenly smiled.

The smile was very shallow, just a slight upward curve of the corners of his mouth, but in this underground safe house, it was an unprecedented occurrence.

"You mean... the officials of the Longevity Faction are all blind and chose the wrong person?"

"I am not specifically targeting the gentlemen of the Deep State."

Prant put down his arms crossed over his chest, rested them on his knees, leaned forward slightly, his tone still steady and firm,

"But purely in terms of personal ability, I am definitely more excellent than Biden."

The curve of Joshua's mouth deepened by a few fractions.

"Good."

"According to your logic, us finding you means that our Tech Faction has more discerning eyes than the people of the Longevity Faction, and is better at selecting talent?"

"Of course." Prant nodded meeting Joshua's gaze, without even half a second of pause,

"From the moment we met just now, I knew that you are that one-in-a-million talent scout."

"Only a talent scout can recognize a steed of a thousand miles."

"The gentlemen of the Longevity Faction clearly do not possess this vision."

"They chose the wrong horse and picked Biden, this inferior horse."

Joshua smiled more happily.

His gaze swept across Prant's face, his tone carrying undisguised appreciation.

"Prant, you indeed qualify to receive assistance from our Tech Faction and become one of us in the Tech Faction."

Edward and Musk sat side by side on the sofa, one holding a coffee cup that had already cooled down, the other raising his left hand from his knee and resting it on the sofa armrest.

Back then, in order to enter the Tech Faction, Edward had died once with liquid zero on the ruins of the Hoover Dam, and Musk had been shocked by the shocking scene in his second underground basement where Joshua struck him with a bolt of lightning into the meeting room, accompanied by hundreds of special forces soldiers collapsing all over the floor.

Both of them had risked their lives just to prove that they barely qualified to be probationary employees of the Tech Faction.

Yet from the moment Prant walked in to being officially accepted, it was merely a short conversation.