48: Chapter 48 Siblings' Showdown and Confrontation

When Diana Hopkins pushed open the grease-stained glass door of Carver Auto Repair,

Charles was half-crouched under that Chevrolet pickup, using a torque wrench to tighten the bolts on the newly installed brake fluid line.

His overalls had a large patch of black grease on the knees, his light brown hair was stuck with a bit of debris, and his back was slightly arched, making him look like a grizzly bear lying under an old chassis.

Today, Diana was wearing a sharply tailored ivory linen shirt with dark high-waisted straight-leg trousers, and she carried a crocodile-skin handbag in her hand.

Amidst the oil stains and discarded parts all over the floor, her outfit was completely out of place with the surroundings,

yet she stood there with a cold expression and a straight posture, like a sharp steel rod forcefully driven into a pile of scrap metal.

She did not speak immediately. Charles did not look up either.

The wrench tightened against the bolt, emitting two crisp sounds of metal friction.

Then, Charles's voice came from under the car, flat and steady, as if he were chatting with her about the nice weather or something similar.

"I know what you want to ask, Diana."

"You ordered the shooting of Walsh, and sent people to chase Edward and Musk, but failed to stop them—I know all of it."

"You don't need to bother with any opening remarks in front of me. This place isn't like Washington; there's no need to beat around the bush when speaking."

Diana's lips moved slightly, but she did not interrupt him.

"I don't mean to be sarcastic, either."

The wrench stopped. He slid out from under the car, grabbed a dirty towel from the side, wiped the brake fluid off his fingers, stood up, and looked Diana straight in the eye,

those flat eyes with slightly drooping corners were as calm as always,

"I know what kind of person you are."

"You will never give up until you get the answers you want."

"So, I might as well tell you the answers directly, to save you the trouble and spare us both from those useless probes."

After saying this, he placed the wrench on the tool rack and nodded his chin toward a mechanic behind him.

That mechanic, who looked to be in his forties, usually wore reading glasses while helping people tune spark plugs and had lived in the neighborhood for over a decade, with neighbors calling him "Old Joe,"

It was as if Old Joe had been switched by some silent trigger; the relaxed expression on his face vanished instantly.

He put down the oil can in his hand, and together with the other three workers busy at their respective stations, they stopped simultaneously and walked toward the door in silence, without asking any questions or exchanging any unnecessary glances.

The glass door was gently closed, the blinds on the windows were pulled down from the outside, and the metal rolling shutter was slowly lowered halfway, blocking out the hustle and bustle of the afternoon street outside.

All entrances and exits were closed in less than fifteen seconds.

Charles reached out and pulled an old-fashioned switch on the wall.

The fluorescent tubes overhead flickered a few times before lighting up completely,

the pale light illuminated the center of the empty auto repair shop, leaving nothing hidden,

she and Charles, two lonely figures, stood in front of the half-lifted old Chevrolet pickup, with the tool rack and several rows of neatly stacked old tires beside them.

Diana watched as those who had silently exited returned to their places, watching the rolling shutter stop halfway down, her tone cold:

"Is this the way you talk to me? Closing the gates and having all the death squads hiding around you go out to stand guard."

"To avoid prying ears."

She pressed her lips together slightly.

There was no smile in that curve, only the resentment that had been building up for a decade, which she couldn't suppress any longer the moment she opened the door and saw her own brother lying under a broken pickup truck wearing mechanic's clothes.

She looked around the factory building, her gaze sweeping from the tool rack to that ancient rolling compressor,

she set her handmade crocodile-skin handbag down heavily onto a stained rolling chair nearby.

"Father left you that CEO office in the high-rise in Century City that overlooks all of Los Angeles, but you won't sit in it."

"The Under Secretary of Defense from The Pentagon brought a team to wait at your door today for the B-21 procurement budget, but you won't see them."

"You wear these dirty overalls, cramming yourself in here with a bunch of auto mechanics who can't even speak English properly, and offer credit for brake pads to delivery drivers."

"Do you know what our military industry competitors call us outside?"

"They call us the 'Centennial Grocery Store for Arms Dealers,' because our boss, the fifth-largest giant, has never sat through a single decision-making meeting in the office."

"If the person sitting in that position were me..."

"Edward Warren and Elon Musk, and that Eli Walsh whom you had killed..."

Charles's voice suddenly deepened. It wasn't an increase in volume, nor was it an intentional acceleration of speed, but rather, he injected a kind of force into his tone that demanded attention without needing inflection.

The sarcasm already on the tip of Diana's tongue was choked back down her throat, word by word, by the names he had uttered.

"They believe that beneath the open power systems of the Lighthouse Country, there exists a secret Deep State."

Charles turned and walked to the tool rack, folded the dirty towel he had just used to wipe oil into a neat square, and placed it straight on the shelf,

"And that Deep State has been hiding one thing: the existence of Aliens."

"Aliens..." Diana slowly spat these words from her lips, as if chewing on a smoked sausage that had long passed its expiration date.

She didn't explode immediately; the expression on her face was more of a suppressed contempt.

Then she slightly lifted her chin, looking at her brother, the cold sneer in her heart piling up, suppressed yet becoming even more intense because of it.

"The so-called 'Deep State'... isn't that just us?"

"It's Northrop Grumman, it's Lockheed Martin, it's Boeing and Raytheon, it's us—the centennial military industrial families hiding behind The Pentagon's procurement orders, taking turns to sign the checks."

"Now you are telling me that above you and me, there is another, darker layer... a group..."

She paused slightly, her tone almost carrying an aftertaste of mockery, "... an organization that is hiding Aliens."

She shook her head.

"If that group of things really existed, how could such a secret only be discovered after it reached our ears?"

"Do you think the Hopkins Family's intelligence network is blind?"

"Or do you think that I, a character who wouldn't blink an eye at killing people at Hoover Dam, wouldn't even hear a whisper of the basic news about the existence of Aliens?"

Charles did not refute her. He placed the folded towel into a junk bucket in the corner and turned around slowly.

He was half a head taller than Diana, but that extra height carried no condescension under the greyish-white light of the auto repair shop.

He just looked at her and said quietly, "There is always someone better, and there is always a heaven beyond heaven, sister."

He paused slightly, his voice softer than before but steadier and more impossible to interrupt.

"Do not take yourself too seriously."

"The Hopkins Family is nothing special."

Diana fell silent. Not out of fear, but at that moment, her train of thought was pulled into another dimension by Charles's tone.

She knew her brother; he was not the type of person who would use rhetoric like "a heaven beyond heaven" to scare people.

The only thing he had been good at since childhood was stating facts he had confirmed to be accurate, truthfully and without embellishment.

So when he said "nothing special," he wasn't self-deprecating, nor was he practicing humility; he was telling her a reality that had been set aside on an iron shelf for too many years, one that it was finally their turn to face together.

The Lighthouse Country has been established for nearly three hundred years. Three hundred years... enough for certain things to grow from the colonial chambers of commerce before the founding of the nation, slowly sprouting a layer of power networks that do not belong to any political party or organization, and are not on any election list.

And the Hopkins Family's rise only dates back to her great-grandfather's generation. A little over a hundred years, ranking at most in the top five in the military industry track.

She suddenly recalled a private gathering of defense industry leaders she was invited to two years ago, in an old manor where even cell phones were blocked, where that eighty-something-year-old lifelong director of Lockheed Martin said to her:

"Your family has adjusted the budget clauses for the B-21 too quickly lately..." The tone didn't sound like a compliment; it sounded like a warning.

She didn't pay attention to it at the time, but now, recalling it suddenly, the old man's eyes had been heavy, as if he had long known that some boundary she couldn't touch was being encroached upon.

Diana pulled back her thoughts, lifted her chin slightly, and looked at her brother, whose face suddenly took on a hint of urgency that was hard to conceal.

"So, it is this... these old things that are deeper than us, controlling the entire chain of information."

"Then, the hydroelectric resource gap at the Hoover Dam from 1947 to 1997... does it have anything to do with the b-2 bomber?"

She paused, lowered her voice, and squeezed out the words one by one, "Does it have something to do with Alien technology?"