85: Chapter 85 The CIA Arrives, But the Prey Becomes the Prey

"No."

"If you hadn't broken in today, we wouldn't even have known who you were."

He took his hand completely off his gun and gestured toward the badge holder on the ground, its corner broken off.

"To be honest, we're dealing with a different headache right now."

Moran picked up the badge holder, wiped the dust off the leather surface with the back of his hand, but made no move to put it back on, simply clutching it in his hand.

Musk glanced back at the vast, atrium-like shell behind him, and at the white-gray maxillary fragment still clutched in the hand of one of the tactical team members.

Then he turned back, his voice lowered by the chill deep within the bedrock.

"This is the territory of the Deep State's Longevity Faction."

"We are with the Tech Faction."

"The Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction... they are mortal enemies within the Deep State."

Edward took over, filling in the details in a more direct way that Moran could immediately understand.

"Simply put, we received orders from the Tech Faction to come here and investigate this base, which means we've stepped into Longevity Faction territory."

"And the Longevity Faction won't distinguish whether you're MI6, FBI, or NASA."

"By crashing in here tonight, you've effectively run straight into them."

Then Lewis, standing beside Moran, beat him to the punch and calmly stated the conclusion:

"Deputy Director, even though the Tech Faction hasn't issued a kill order against us, the area we just walked into from the main gate belongs to another faction that is fully capable of issuing one."

He lowered his gun muzzle below his knees; his tone remained calm, but every word turned cold.

"That means all of us—including us FBI agents here, the two Deep State 'probationary' personnel we just ran into, and their accompanying armed guards—will be silenced tonight as long as the Longevity Faction is still operating."

Just then, a calm and steady male voice suddenly echoed from deep within the nearby corridor—a passage previously filled with the reverberations of gunfire that no one had yet carefully inspected.

"A kill order? That's right."

"We are here to hunt you all down right now."

"And silence every single one of you here."

The voice was unhurried, as if it were a predetermined fate locked in long ago, even before it reached their ears through the long bedrock corridor.

Human silhouettes emerged from the darkness—not just one, but an entire team.

The leader was tall and thin, with the unique low-visibility insignia of a Central Intelligence Agency tactical team on his shoulder, and the infrared strobe on the side of his tactical vest blinking rhythmically in the bedrock corridor.

Behind him, at the various corridor corners, the increasing number of encrypted short-wave communication lights illuminated the outlines of an entire fully-equipped armed tactical team.

Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Directorate, Kevin Mosby.

Following him in was the Special Cleanup Team directly under the Central Intelligence Agency, converging simultaneously from various entry points of the bedrock tunnel toward the cavity entrance in front of the Warehouse 18 alloy doors.

The Central Intelligence Agency had arrived as well.

At the same moment, Heinlein stepped steadily forward from the back of the team.

He wore an unmarked dark gray tactical vest, the lower edge of its ceramic ballistic plate bumping against the encrypted communication terminal at his waist with a faint rubbing sound.

His pace was not fast, but in the cramped concrete and rock sandwich of the bedrock tunnel, every step carried the composure of someone trained by intelligence systems for decades—the kind that needs to explain to no one why they are there.

"Everyone, drop your weapons!"

"This is a Homeland Security special operations zone authorized by the Central Intelligence Agency!"

"Any refusal to comply will be considered a direct threat to national security. Field disposal authorized; no records will be kept!"

Kevin Mosby stood to the front-side of Heinlein, finishing the standard tactical declaration on behalf of the Director, but Heinlein himself remained silent throughout.

His gaze swept over the Warren Family loyalists crouching on both sides of the alloy doors, the FBI agents leaning against the edge of the cover who hadn't yet reset their Glocks after the slide locked back, and Elon Musk, who stood in the center of the doorway, tilting his head slightly as he sized him up.

Then his gaze landed on Edward Warren.

Musk spoke first.

He shoved the gun he had been holding back into his hip holster, took two steps forward, and spread his hands, his tone sounding like he was welcoming a late-arriving dinner guest:

"The Central Intelligence Agency."

"So you've been working for the Deep State's Longevity Faction all along?"

"We just speculated that the Longevity Faction would send people to silence us, and you appeared right on cue."

"That's faster than Starlink's automatic collision avoidance algorithm."

Edward stood half a step to Musk's side, pulling his jacket zipper down half an inch. His tone was calmer than Musk's, but every word carried that precise, cold chill honed in Senate hearings:

"Heinlein, I had assumed you would at least maintain the facade of an independent agency."

"I didn't expect you to drop the act entirely."

Moran tucked his Glock into his belt, standing between Edward and Musk near the door frame. He looked at Heinlein with the same expression he'd had when cursing Whitfield in the Los Angeles warehouse district—the look of a man who had been betrayed and was ready to burn every bridge:

"Just give us the mission number."

"How many heads do you need to bring back to finish the job for the Longevity Faction tonight?"

Heinlein frowned slightly.

Not out of anger or offense, but with the cold, fast reaction typical of an intelligence veteran hearing a completely unfamiliar keyword.

His brow furrowed, his voice steady but his enunciation heavy:

"Longevity Faction? What Longevity Faction?"

Kevin Mosby stood to Heinlein's right, his M4 still half-raised and pointed forward, his brow furrowed tightly:

"What are you talking about? What Longevity Faction, what Tech Faction?"

"Don't think you can get away with making up a few plausible-sounding code names."

He shifted his aim from Edward to Musk, his tone maintaining the cold, hard edge of a tactical announcement:

"The President has issued the order. If you want to blame someone, blame the fact that you possess the ability of Limb Regeneration but lack the strength to protect it. Destruction is all that awaits you!"

When he finished saying this, he thought he had maximized the intimidation factor while keeping his magazine loaded.

But after hearing this, Musk was stunned for a moment.

The pause was extremely brief, as if his brain had subconsciously performed a full verification upon hearing such an absurd line of logic.

Then he suddenly laughed.

The laughter was pure mockery, born of being genuinely amused.

He wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand and turned to Edward, his words coming out in intermittent bursts between fits of laughter:

"He just... he just said their mission objective tonight is... the liquid zero!"

"Hahahaha! My god!"

Edward didn't laugh out loud.

He leaned against the outer door frame, keeping the curve of his mouth to a minimum, but the weariness in his eyes—the kind he hadn't even shown during gubernatorial candidate debates—was completely replaced by an irrepressible sense of helpless amusement.

He shook his head slightly, not laughing, just letting out a long sigh in Heinlein's direction.

It wasn't mocking their lack of strength, but rather a lament:

A national-level intelligence agency sitting on a global intelligence network was, to this day, still meticulously deploying resources for something the Deep State didn't even consider worth noticing.

The most arrogant, wild, and unbridled laughter of all, however, came from the FBI agents behind Moran.

Lewis Parker pushed his silver-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, choked back his laughter for a few seconds, and then erupted into a roar of laughter from the bottom of his chest, saying to Rivera beside him:

"The mighty Central Intelligence Agency, chasing down here for the liquid zero—for that thing that can make someone grow a new hand—and they brought a whole Special Cleanup Team, for fuck's sake!"

"Did you hear that? He said it was a mission order issued directly by the President! The President! For the liquid zero!"

Rivera laughed along, laughing so hard that a piece of Velcro on his tactical vest came loose, leaning against the bedrock tunnel wall, shaking his head and gasping for air.

Owens simply slung his gun across his chest, freed both hands to press against his knees, and laughed until his voice went hoarse, waving at the dark shadows opposite who were still holding their M4s:

"Brothers, don't you feel embarrassed? The liquid zero! You call that damn piece of shit a national security threat?"

Moran slapped his empty gun against his chest rig, watching Heinlein's face—which remained cold and hard, though the corners of his mouth were beginning to involuntarily pull downward—and shouted the logic out as if slamming it against marble:

"Heinlein, listen up, I'm only saying this once: these two are probationary employees of the Deep State's Tech Faction."

He pointed to Musk, who was standing by the door frame behind him, wiping the lingering mirth from the corner of his eye,

and then pointed to Edward, who stood straight but still wore that damn sigh on his lips.

"The Tech Faction didn't issue a kill order on them."

"According to their theory, the ones coming to silence us next are the Longevity Faction, another faction within the Deep State."

He crossed his arms over his tactical vest and tilted his head toward the rusted metal plaque above them, his expression that of someone assessing a guy who couldn't even get a parking pass for Capitol Hill.

"And your President, in the face of all the monsters and alien wreckage we've run into these past few days, is just a puppet who only knows how to open his mouth and wait to be fed."

"You came running here to get the liquid zero, but to the Deep State, the liquid zero doesn't even qualify as a threshold. They didn't even mention a single word about it when they came to meet Musk."

"You chased it for hundreds of miles like it was some treasure, but in the end, you didn't even touch the edge of the ticket to get into the game."

The expression on Heinlein's face finally cracked, a tiny fissure appearing beneath his composed intelligence bureaucrat exterior.

He tilted his head slightly, looking at Edward, who stood between Musk and Moran.

Edward simply added calmly:

"The liquid zero you're chasing has never been a strategic asset to the Longevity Faction."

"They're coming to kill us tonight."

"Not to steal the medicine, but to ensure that nothing in this base falls into anyone else's hands."