40: Chapter 40: The alliance had barely been formed when the guns went off.

"So I have to join you? Join you to unlock the secret of immortality?"

Walsh asked softly.

The distinct irony typical of a veteran intelligence bureaucrat was tucked between his words—not hostility, but a slight sting from being calculated so precisely that he couldn't even be bothered to feel annoyed.

"Of course," Musk said, devoid of his usual business humor. His tone was identical to the one he used when he decided to send the first reusable Falcon rocket into orbit.

"You've already seen it. I possess technological resources that no other private entity in this world has, along with weapons capable of paralyzing all your men instantly without causing them any harm."

"If we join forces, we can not only truly research what can be extracted from this eyeball, but also ensure that when those people try to kill us, they'll find the door is much thicker than they imagined."

Walsh did not reply to Musk.

He turned to his old friend.

The light made his graying short hair and gray-blue eyes look somewhat weary.

Within them was a trace of exhaustion he hadn't seen in a long time—not since the back of the Naval Academy gymnasium thirty-two years ago.

"Eli."

Edward's voice was not as sharp as Musk's, nor did it have that excessive polish of a politician.

He pulled over a worn, old iron chair from the leg of the table and sat down, not sitting upright, as if he had no intention of maintaining any posture today.

"You just said this thing made you understand what those people in the Deep State really want, and you've also taken Kramer, who was buried in the ground eighty years ago for speaking the truth, to heart."

"I'm not going to tell you how right you are, because you already know. What I want to tell you is something else."

He reached out and pointed at the translucent box in Walsh's hand, where the iridescent blue light was still slowly swirling within the liquid.

"You knew the moment you got this eyeball that these people wanted to keep immortality in their own hands."

"When you were on Chestnut Street, you knew that what was buried under the Hoover Dam wasn't a project, but the kind of insatiable greed in the human heart that never dies."

"But you didn't let go. You didn't stop in front of that graveyard, and you didn't pass the situation off to someone else after you got the bullet coordinates."

"You kept digging."

He tucked his hands into the front of his jacket, his voice lowered just enough to drown out the low-frequency humming of the air conditioning duct beneath the iron table.

"I don't know what it is... Back at the Naval Academy, when those Marine Corps guys knocked out your back teeth behind the gymnasium and blood soaked your uniform, you didn't say a single word."

"From that day on, I knew you would never stop for the rest of your life."

"We people... don't we always talk about 'family heritage'? But you, Eli, never relied on family. You relied on yourself, on that version of you who never once set down the burden from beginning to end."

"That's why you're afraid today holding this eyeball, because you know what those people are really trying to hide."

"But you also know they still won't dare to let you live."

He leaned forward slightly, his gaze level, just as calm as it was decades ago on the destroyer gangway when he looked at his old classmate with a mouth full of blood.

"Eli."

"I know that trying to convince you to join this plan and go crazy with us two doesn't sound like something a normal person would say."

"But there is one thing you should understand better than I do: these people won't give you a second choice."

"From the moment you knew what they wanted, they only had one answer for you..."

He didn't finish.

Walsh stared at him, unmoving for a long time, and then released his grip on the translucent lid, his muscles relaxing by a fraction with the motion.

He tapped his knuckles on the cold steel of the tabletop.

"Ed, back at the Naval Academy gymnasium, when I had my back teeth knocked out, you were right there beside me, and you grabbed the son of a Marine Corps colonel by the collar and threw him onto the iron rack of the rowing machine."

"I knew back then that you'd always have the ability to package other people's misfortune into stepping stones for yourself."

He paused, coughed, and then continued.

"You've been using me since Chestnut Street."

"You baited me with those vague words, making me confirm the Hoover Dam matter for you, then making me discover the Aliens myself, go to the graveyard myself, and retrieve the bullet myself."

"You used me to dig out this eyeball, then brought a rocket expert and a squadron of mercenaries to intercept my cargo."

He tilted his head, a short, sharp laugh actually catching in his throat.

"It's exactly the same as back at the Naval Academy; I was lying on the ground with a mouth full of blood, and you used the situation to become the leader of the Western Gang."

Edward didn't speak, nor did he refute it, his mouth twitching slightly.

Walsh resealed the airtight box, pushed it to Trent, and stood up to straighten his collar, which had been ruffled by the shock.

"But then again, being used isn't entirely a bad thing."

He waved his hand toward Walsh, pointing toward the blockade Musk had set up in the distance outside the window.

"At least if I really am going to die, I've got you and him to cushion the fall."

"Besides..." He paused, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening.

"I also want to know if this eyeball can actually decode anything."

Edward's mouth curled up slightly.

Musk turned his head and, in a tone that sounded like he had known the answer all along but was still somewhat surprised, gave a short hum:

"Welcome aboard, Director."

"You're not the last one. The more people who know about this, the less valuable immortality becomes."

"Long Live Alliance," Edward straightened his posture, pronouncing the three words clearly, as if casting a deciding vote on the Senate floor.

"Eli, you are now the third person in the Long Live Alliance."

"We may be meager right now, but with you, the Long Live Alliance will surely grow stronger and stronger."

Edward walked over and shook hands with Walsh, the grip not heavy, yet exactly the same as the exchange of glances after the destroyer exercise ended years ago.

Meanwhile, Trent Molloy finally slowly propped himself up from the wall.

The aftereffects of the neural disruptor on his head hadn't fully dissipated, and it felt like someone was tapping on his thickest nerve in his temple every few seconds, but he managed to stand.

He hugged the sealed document bag in his arms tighter, scanning Musk with a gaze that still held wariness.

"Give me the protection frequency parameters for this thing of yours another day." He pointed at his own forehead toward Musk.

"Sure," Musk actually turned his head and thought seriously for two seconds. "A dual solution with headphones and earplugs. I'll have someone send it to your email when we get back."

...

The dozen or so people on the ground who had been hit by the neural disruptor began to wake up one after another.

The first to wake up was a female intelligence officer who had blocked most of the impact with her shoulder and arm before being hit at the door.

The moment she opened her eyes, her right hand instinctively went to the gun at her waist, then she realized there was no more sound of gunfire nearby, and the people standing at the opposite corridor entrance were no longer in an attack posture.

As the dozen or so people regained consciousness, they all heard a short, steady verbal order—Walsh's own voice.

Evacuate.

Stand down.

In less than three minutes, everyone had retreated to the front area of the abandoned warehouse and orderly accounted for their equipment.

Musk now put away his previous bantering confidence and glanced at the thin morning mist rising outside as dawn approached.

He stepped closer to the workbench, his voice lowered to be heard only by the three of them.

"We can't stay in this shielded room for long."

"Since those people in the Deep State could frame Kramer for suicide eighty years ago, they certainly won't lack a reason to keep an eye on this building now."

"Less than twelve miles east of Los Angeles, I have a closed test site that is completely isolated from the outside world."

"It's surrounded by private land and is a place the Starlink team uses for independent radiation stress testing. No one can get near that area without triggering the security system."

"Take that box there, and you can talk all night long about the Alien eyeball without holding back."

Neither Walsh nor Edward wasted any words.

Trent added another layer of shockproof wrapping to the sealed document bag containing the eyeball box, and Walsh had already turned and signaled to the waiting electric vehicle outside the corridor.

The three of them walked side by side—Edward on the left, Musk on the right, and Walsh in the middle—walking out toward the evacuation point along the old corridor lined with soundproofing panels.

As he walked, Walsh specifically turned his head to ask Edward:

"So, why did you name your organization the Long Live Alliance? It sounds like an opera troupe."

The curve of Edward's mouth bent slightly—not the precise, composed expression of a politician, but more like he had been asked by an old classmate and was finally letting out something he had prepared in his heart but hadn't had the chance to say seriously.

"Those people in the Deep State, they got Alien technology and want immortality, want to be thousand-year turtles and ten-thousand-year tortoises, so I just named it after their tastes."

"A bunch of ten-thousand-year turtles." Walsh repeated this in the dry tone typical of a veteran intelligence bureaucrat, then let out a very short laugh from his nasal cavity.

"You've loved giving people nicknames since your time at the Naval Academy, and now you've even given your opponents such an ugly one."

"Ugly names are easier to remember."

Edward replied casually, not stopping his pace.

The two Retainers following at his side,

two young men in dark casual clothes with no extra expression on their faces, followed silently behind him.

Musk pushed open the iron door leading to the outer driveway in front, a rare, relaxed smile on his face.

He looked back at Edward and Walsh and said:

"The 'ten-thousand-year turtle' thing is a good one. If we can really scrape off a piece of Alien cell on the spot and get it into my lab, you two might be able to live for nine hundred years."

The three walked out along the quiet gravel parking lane in the industrial area, their pace neither fast nor slow, the air still lingering with the warmth of relaxed nerves after the recent brief chaos.

No one expected these to be the last words Walsh would ever speak.

The gunshot rang out without any warning.

It was a sniper rifle.

The bullet came through from the top of an abandoned water tower at least two hundred meters away, with an initial velocity of nearly eight hundred and fifty meters per second.

The sound was dampened by the silencer and the broken iron walls of the abandoned warehouse area into a low, dull vibration that hardly sounded like a gunshot.

Walsh didn't even have time to finish the tail end of the smile that was still on his lips.

Right in the center of his forehead, a small cloud of red and gray mist exploded.