60: Chapter 60 Throat-Grabbing Interrogation, Order to Annihilate the Manor Issued

Rabu paused here.

Those large, pupil-less, pitch-black eyes scanned from Diana to everyone behind her, and then he delivered an ultimatum.

"Hand over Prince Dao Dun now, and we can let bygones be bygones regarding your abduction of him."

"But if you don't, don't blame us if everyone here executes Item Seven of our mission protocol."

"There will be nothing left alive in this estate."

Diana's first reaction after hearing this was not fear, but deeper confusion.

In her panic, she had previously convinced herself she had sorted out the most logical chain of events:

The noble Aliens were the Deep State itself;

The Deep State came to hunt down the Hopkins Family because she hadn't killed Edward and Musk cleanly.

But now, that short Alien named Rabu was asking them for a guy named "Prince Dao Dun,"

And this name—she had turned it over in her mind completely...

Including the secret prisoner rosters of the Hopkins Family from the past three generations, the list of every target secretly disposed of by the Colt Association, and the files of all peripheral forces that Northrop Grumman had ever negotiated with...

Not a single hair matched.

She straightened up, looked at Rabu, and in her voice, astonishment overcame fear.

"Your teammate... was abducted?"

"This... on Earth right now, who could possibly have the guts? Who could have the strength?"

She wasn't dodging the question.

She was genuinely confused.

In her cognitive framework, the technological level of these two Grey Aliens before her had long since crushed all armed forces on Earth.

They could fly with anti-gravity, were immune to the siege of anti-materiel missiles, and could bat bullets back along their original paths just with their gloves.

While Diana felt creeped out by all this, she also concluded that the Deep State was inherently Aliens,

And those century-old political and business groups that engaged in infighting in Washington every day were just facades pushed to the surface.

But Rabu's warning just now to "hand over the hostage" directly overturned her entire makeshift causal chain.

If someone could abduct an Alien's teammate, then who was that person, and which organization did they belong to?

Could that organization be even more... than the Aliens themselves?

She didn't finish the thought.

Keating moved a small half-step from the side, lowered his voice to a level only the few people around could hear, and spoke to Diana in the silence.

"Miss, the reason Walsh and Musk know of the Aliens' existence is because Edward Warren disclosed this intelligence to them."

"And the reason Edward knew was because his son, Link, saw a group of people in the underground garage of the Las Vegas City Hall who called themselves the 'Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department' subdue and take away a living Grey Alien with some kind of weapon."

"These people... are the organization that Walsh and Edward repeatedly mentioned in their data."

"It seems that the Grey Alien who was taken away is Commander Bibi and Rabu's teammate, Prince Dao Dun."

In that instant, Diana's entire brain felt like it had been reconnected to a power source.

Her eyes, which had been frozen for several minutes due to high tension, blinked violently,

Then, though her tone was under control, she couldn't help but let a hint of urgency slip through, barely suppressed until the very end.

"The Deep State... captured an Alien?"

"Yes," Keating said, lowering his voice, but every syllable was as clear as possible,

"According to key terms previously intercepted by the Colt Association from the information exchange lines between Edward and Musk, that group that took the Grey Alien all claimed to belong to the 'Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department'."

"Edward and Musk both repeatedly mentioned the same inference in their closed communications: the Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department is the legendary Deep State."

In that instant, Diana matched this piece of information with all the fragments she had previously pieced together in her mind.

It wasn't the Deep State sending Aliens to hunt down the Hopkins Family; it was the Deep State that had captured the Alien first;

This Alien's teammate had come looking for them;

And the Hopkins Family being targeted was purely because the Hopkins Family was misjudged to be part of the same force on the periphery of that information chain.

She looked up at Commander Bibi, and before speaking, she took one more step in her mind:

If she could guide the Aliens' focus toward the Deep State at this moment, letting this advanced civilization from Zeta Reticuli solve the real ghosts hidden under layers of the federal bureaucracy themselves,

The Hopkins Family would never have to worry about the threat of being hunted again.

Driving the wolf to devour the tiger—killing two birds with one stone, achieving two goals at once.

"Noble Commander Bibi, noble Rabu," she bowed her head again, slightly bent her knees, and lowered her posture another notch lower than before,

"Your teammate, Lord Prince Dao Dun, was absolutely not captured by the Hopkins Family."

"The one who captured him was an organization called the 'Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department'."

"According to our current investigation, this organization is the entity hidden deep within the Lighthouse Country's system, referred to by some as the Deep State."

"The Hopkins Family is merely a supplier of military equipment for the Lighthouse Country and has never participated in any secret operations targeting advanced civilizations such as yours."

"Lord Prince Dao Dun must still be in their hands, not here with us."

After she finished speaking, that scheme of "driving the wolf to devour the tiger" had already begun to bloom in the shadows.

If she could get them to find the Deep State and pull out those big ghosts that had been pressing down on her family by the roots...

Commander Bibi's black, oval-shaped eyes contracted slightly.

Diana caught that change, but she interpreted it as "the other party is seriously considering her explanation."

Until Commander Bibi raised his right hand wearing the black glove. The movement was unhurried, with the same composure as his tone when he ordered Rabu to "treat them with courtesy" just now. His five black fingers slowly opened toward her.

A violent and silent pulling force radiated from the center of the glove, forming a local gravitational field that pulled Diana entirely off the ground out of thin air, effortlessly throwing her across the distance between the three of them into Commander Bibi's hand, regardless of her struggles.

Commander Bibi's black glove gripped the area below Diana's neck and above her collarbone,

The material of the glove was icy, smooth, and temperatureless when it touched her skin, and it did not transmit any of the muscle tremors that would occur when human skin touched.

Commander Bibi slowly lifted Diana's body, her toes leaving the ground, with no room for him to let go.

"Since you refuse to cooperate, then after 'treating you with courtesy' ends, it is time for war."

Diana's hands instinctively grabbed the arm that was choking her neck,

But the surface texture of that arm felt like gripping an icy stone pillar that had been buried deep underground for too long; there was no elasticity of muscle, no body temperature, and no feedback that you could shake by applying force.

She hung in mid-air, her legs instinctively kicking,

But every struggle only made that glove tighten further above her collarbone.

The air in her chest cavity was compressed so it could only go out and not in; every word she wanted to utter from her throat was pressed down to the bottom of her trachea by that glove.

She barely squeezed out a few intermittent syllables through her teeth.

"Prince Dao Dun... really isn't... I..."

"Then where is my Prince Dao Dun?"

"At... the Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department... there... the Deep State... not me... not the Hopkins Family..."

Rabu, listening from the side, grew impatient, tilted his head, and interjected:

"According to the comparison results from our intelligence database, your Hopkins Family is one of the five major military-industrial giants of the Lighthouse Country, controlling the vast majority of the planet's national defense manufacturing capabilities and classified information channels."

"In the cognitive system of Earth humans, you are the legendary Deep State!"

"You are not working for the Deep State; you are the Deep State itself!"

"We have not come to the wrong place!"

"So, don't try to fool us; hand over Prince Dao Dun!"

Hearing this, Diana suddenly felt a wave of extremely bitter, indescribable stagnation surge up from the depths of her throat.

It wasn't the suffocation from being choked; it was as if something deeper had been struck.

For the first forty-two years of her life, she had lived as the Hopkins Family, as the behind-the-scenes manager of Northrop Grumman, and as the heir to a century-old military-industrial giant.

She had hated her father for twenty years because he deprived her of the qualification to inherit control of Northrop Grumman,

Not because she coveted the company itself, but because she felt that this family was not high enough, not deep enough, not "Deep" enough, and she could and should have made it higher and deeper.

But now,

An Alien from Zeta Reticuli, right to her face, used the words "You are the Deep State" to judge her family,

And she was being choked in mid-air, unable to even explain.

She suddenly thought of Charles.

Charles, in that dilapidated auto repair shop, changing brake lines for an old pickup truck, with old tires bought on credit by nearby workers stacked on the shelves next to him, black grease smeared on the knees of his coveralls,

Saying to her, "There is always someone better, there is always a sky beyond the sky; the Hopkins Family is nothing special."

She thought that was cowardice at the time.

Now, being held in mid-air by a black glove, she finally understood,

That wasn't cowardice; it was the rational choice made by a clear-headed person who had long seen through the fact that the four words "military-industrial giant" meant nothing outside of Earth.

Commander Bibi's glove tightened violently.

Diana's throat bone was pressed by that force, emitting a tiny, short, muffled sound as if it were about to crack.

Her lips turned purple from lack of oxygen, her ankles kicked weakly in the air, not even amounting to futility.

"Prince Dao Dun is in your hands."

"You have already admitted the fact that the Deep State captured him."

"The Deep State is your Hopkins Family."

"Where is he? Speak!"

Diana squeezed out the last bit of usable breath, her throat hoarse as if rubbed with sandpaper:

"It is the Deep State... but it is not us... it is the Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department... that is the one..."

"Rabu."

Commander Bibi did not let go, his tone completely stripped of the gentle elegance from before, replaced by an extremely concise instruction that was so cold it made one's spine tingle,

And every word he used was diametrically opposite to what he had used when boasting about the demeanor of an advanced civilization in front of Rabu, yet they came from the same throat.

"Since they will not hand over Prince Dao Dun, then every living thing in this estate area must die."

"Extending down from the desert outside the estate, all carbon-based life in the deep soil layers, including the earthworms underground, must all be dug up and burned!"