Jeff closed the System Shop tab and opened a darker window instead an invitation-only black market gateway tucked behind layers of spoofed DNS and ghost servers. He signed in with the handle the system suggested during setup: REMY_RUN. The interface was clinical, efficient, brushes of neon on black. Jobs scrolled in a steady feed: armoured transfer, courier pickup, jewellery lift and, buried in a mid-listing, the ones he was built for: GETAWAY DRIVER — HIGH RISK / HIGH PAY.
He clicked.
The briefing popped up in plain, merciless text: time, street map, choke points, response times for local law, escape nodes. Payment. No names. No moral commentary. It felt like a job board for sins. The system overlaid the route on his HUD, marked cameras and signal towers, estimated pursuit vectors. He liked the math.
He accepted three nights in a row.
Before each run he did what he'd learned from a thousand cinematic nights and the hush of his AI: preparation. Headphones in, playlist synced not to mood but to microseconds beats that mapped to shifts, brakes, gear changes. The AI offered tempo suggestions, latency windows, and cue points. He uploaded the route, the timing, the likely police arrival windows. The car's transformation module warmed like a throat clearing for song.
Job One Bank Lift, Suburban Branch The plan was tidy in its brutality: a quick in-and-out from a small, poorly defended branch. He'd be waiting in a van that looked exactly like every delivery vehicle in the industrial park. The crew hustled inside, grabbed the cash, and walked back to the van as practiced. He kept his foot light on the clutch, the engine a slow growl. His earbud pulsed with a steady rhythm. When the third crewman slid into the passenger side, Jeff launched.
The route was choreography. Out of the lot, left at the light, three turns before the motorway on-ramp. He timed his approach to the beat: a downshift on the snare, a launch on the bass drop, a handbrake flick on the cymbal. Cameras caught him as a blur. He dropped into racing mode; the chassis lowered, the grille closed, and the AI streamed a live sensor bloom: two cruisers at 1.2 miles, drone sweep in 90 seconds. He flicked the jammer; the nearest cop's drone stuttered, vision smeared into green static. Two corners later he opened the rear hatch and dispersed an oil slick as a tail of dark paint. The first cruiser kissed the slick, spun a lazy arc, then corrected too late.
By 90 seconds he hit the motorway and the van became a shadow. The crew counted aloud, breathless with numbers that meant money. The HUD flashed payment received. Jeff let the song play to its last beat and then turned it off like a switch. He did not celebrate; he catalogued. Each job taught him a new cadence.
Job Two Armoured Transfer Intercept, Industrial District This one was more dangerous: an armoured truck, heavy cash, predictable route. The crew staged a fake breakdown to lure the truck into a choke. Jeff's role was pure geometry: position, block, extract, vanish. He set up in a neat alley that let him dive perpendicular and strip the truck of momentum.
When the trap sprung, the armoured vehicle surged metal and weight, a problem to be solved. Jeff used the transformation module to raise clearance and shift torque forward, letting the V16's grunt meet the truck's inertia. He tapped the AI: deploy EMP non-lethal, short radius. The truck died like a beast cut by a single nerve. Its radios went silent; doors unlocked courtesy of the crew's cracker. Sirens were close. Jeff executed a textbook escape: a bait turn into a cul-de-sac, a sudden reversal, and a blast of smoke to sever pursuit heat signatures. The plan unravelled and reknitted in his hands. The HUD told him who'd viewed the job afterwards; that little voyeur list was useful.
Job Three City Vault Run downtown, night time This one felt cinematic in a way that should have been illegal on multiple levels. The crew used distraction teams to pull police resources away. Jeff's run would thread a path through narrow avenues, under flyovers, and across tram lines. He memorized the beat map carefully this run needed the kind of timing Baby taught: every inch matched to music, every turn calibrated to rhythm.
He chose a track that matched the city's heartbeat: fast handclaps, a tight bassline, a metronome hi-hat. The first spin off the lot was perfect a synchronous ballet of engine tone and downshift, sneakers and screech. A pursuing interceptor clipped his rear quarter, metal kissing metal nothing critical, the nano-weave held and Jeff answered not with fury but with finesse: a counter-steer that fed weight to the front, a surge on the next beat that opened a new vector between parked delivery trucks.
At one junction he used the transformation module to split the chassis slightly a narrow mode that allowed the car to snake through a collapsed service lane. The AI whispered distances, and Jeff moved his hands like a conductor whose score had been written in asphalt. When the team dumped the vault on a trailer and linked it under tow, he shifted into armored mode, raised shields, and drove the convoy with an authority that felt almost paternal.
They were home with the haul before the city realized a performance had happened. Payment landed, reputation rose. Fleet names in dark forums flashed him a new respect. He had become, in three runs, efficient and invisible, a ghost with a plate that read POES.
Between jobs he stayed disciplined. He peeled off a portion of his take into upgrades, the kind of small investments that compounded into bulletproofing and slightly faster recharge cycles for the Dydon Core. He avoided reckless jobs no kidnappings, no hits. There was a line he wouldn't cross, because some things were better left out of the ledger.
The runs also tuned him emotionally. The music made him calm; it made the chaos make sense. In the quiet between hits he learned to count the beats of his life like gear ratios. He learned that speed, when married to patience, was the most dangerous weapon.
On the fourth night, after a successful rooftop handoff that left satellite traces confused and cops with questions they couldn't answer, Jeff logged back into the black market to claim his cut. A new message blinked at the top: PRIVATE INQUIRY: RIO CONTACT. READ: URGENT.
He opened it with the same calm he applied to a corner. The message was brief, unsigned, and precise: We saw what you did. We need a driver with your timing. Come to Lisbon. Ask for a man named Carvalho. Tell him POES sent you.
The cursor blinked like a starting light.
Jeff smiled, the quiet kind that meant a new line had been drawn on his map. The world he'd woken into had contours now: rhythm, risk, reward and a destination that smelled faintly of salt and smoke. He packed a bag, set the car to long-range mode, and let the AI queue up a playlist that felt like a promise.
As he left the safehouse, the last song faded on his lips. The road ahead thrummed. He had a reputation to build, and the family he'd found if only in silhouettes and engine notes wanted a driver who could keep time.