Jacob drove out of the abandoned lot with sirens arriving behind him like an afterthought that suddenly remembered it had teeth.
The BMW didn't burst forward in a dramatic roar. It moved with cold precision—one smooth arc out of the lot, a clean turn onto a service road, headlights low, engine note restrained like a predator choosing not to announce itself.
Jacob's hands stayed steady on the wheel.
But his body shook underneath that steadiness—adrenaline still burning, the echo of the fight still alive in his knuckles and shoulders. The helmet muffled his breathing into harsh, rhythmic pulls. He could still feel Sunny's weight hitting concrete, the moment the gun clattered away, the awful intimacy of violence without metal between you.
He hadn't taken Sunny.
That mattered to Jacob more than he wanted to admit.
It was his thin, stubborn line in the sand: I'm not doing hostages. I'm not becoming that.
Behind him, the first police units poured into the lot and found what Jacob had left them: a neatly staged catastrophe that didn't make sense.
An unconscious "racer" on the ground.
A weapon on the hood.
A pristine Civic sitting like a witness.
And no ghost.
The sirens surged, then scattered—because by the time the cops realized the BMW had already slipped away, Jacob was blocks ahead, threading through industrial arteries like he'd never been there.
He broke pursuit the way he always did when he meant it: not by outrunning every car, but by refusing to be where they looked.
A hard cut into a corridor of warehouses. A brief kill of headlights under an overpass. A turn into a service lane that swallowed sound. Another turn into a wider boulevard where he blended into the few late-night vehicles moving like tired blood through the city.
The helicopter never found him.
Not tonight.
The BMW's new stealth upgrades—thermal damping, signal obfuscation—made the night feel thicker, more forgiving. The spotlight didn't "miss" him so much as fail to decide where he was. For the first time in a long time, Jacob felt the net loosen instead of tighten.
When he was sure the sirens had lost their shape behind him, the HUD flickered at the edge of his vision—quiet, clinical, almost satisfied.
COMBAT ENCOUNTER: RESOLVEDTHREAT NEUTRALIZED (NON-LETHAL)REWARD: +$18,000SKILL GAIN:MARTIAL ARTSLEVEL UP:MARTIAL ARTS 1 → 2EFFECT: Reaction speed +2% / Power +2% / Control +1%
Jacob's throat tightened.
He hated the system's calmness about it.
He hadn't "resolved" anything. He'd just survived another night where the world tried to take him apart. And now the system was rewarding his violence with upgrades like it was handing out loyalty points.
He felt the level-up immediately in the most unsettling way: not as a sudden surge of joy, but as a subtle shift in his body's baseline—his breathing settling faster, his muscles feeling fractionally denser, his hands steadier than they had any right to be after what he'd done.
Stronger.
Not by training.
By purchase and consequence.
Jacob clenched his jaw inside the helmet. "Stop," he muttered, but the system didn't listen.
The city lights thinned as he drove toward the private storage lot. The world became cameras and fences and floodlights, sterile and expensive, the kind of place where secrets were stored because money made secrecy easier.
He keyed in the code. The gate opened. The guard barely looked up.
Jacob drove between rows of steel containers until he reached his own. He killed the engine and sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel, letting the quiet swallow him.
Then he rolled the container door open and guided the BMW inside.
The car slid into darkness like it belonged there—blue and silver disappearing as the work light clicked on, the livery becoming a faint promise in the dim.
Jacob shut the engine down and sat in the silence until the ticking of cooling metal began.
He removed the helmet slowly, as if taking it off too fast might let the myth cling to his skin.
His face felt raw in the dim light. His mouth tasted like copper again, though he wasn't sure if it was blood or memory.
He stepped out and stared at the BMW.
The car looked perfect.
Jacob didn't.
He locked the container from the outside and stood there under the floodlights, breathing, trying to locate the part of himself that still felt like a person rather than a response.
Then he drove the Supra home like nothing had happened.
Like he hadn't just knocked out a federal plant and left him as a message.
At the station, it didn't look like a message.
It looked like an embarrassment.
LAPD and FBI personnel stood over the abandoned lot under harsh lights, boots crunching gravel, radios barking. A couple of officers stared at the Civic like it had insulted them personally.
"Where's the BMW?" one asked.
"Gone," another snapped. "Like always."
Sunny regained consciousness in a medic unit with a split lip and a headache that made his skull feel too small. He didn't wake up confused. He woke up angry—at himself more than anyone.
By dawn he was in a briefing room with fluorescent lights and cold coffee, sitting across from men and women who wanted answers they could weaponize.
Bilkins was there, stiff with contained fury. Tanner hovered. Two FBI agents sat forward with that calm, predatory patience they wore like uniforms.
Sunny didn't wear the nice-guy smile now.
His face was bruised. His posture was tight. His eyes were sharp with humiliation.
"Talk," one agent said.
Sunny swallowed once, then did what professionals did when they failed: he turned it into data.
"He's trained," Sunny said.
Bilkins' eyes narrowed. "Wanted?"
Sunny nodded. "The driver. He isn't just fast. He isn't just lucky. He moved like a professional."
The FBI agent's pen stilled. "Define professional."
Sunny's jaw tightened as he replayed the fight in his head, the way the distance vanished, the way his weapon became useless the moment the other man crowded him.
"Close-quarters," Sunny said. "He knew how to collapse space. He knew how to take my line away. He didn't fight like a street punk. He fought like someone who's done it before."
Bilkins scoffed. "Or someone hopped up on adrenaline."
Sunny's eyes snapped to him, cold. "No. Adrenaline is messy. He was… controlled."
The room went quiet at that word.
Controlled.
The FBI agent leaned forward. "Did he speak?"
Sunny shook his head. "Barely. He didn't monologue. He didn't threaten. He didn't want a hostage." His mouth tightened, reluctant respect bleeding through anger. "He could've taken me. He didn't."
The other agent's eyes narrowed. "Then why leave you."
Sunny's voice dropped. "To make us feel stupid."
Bilkins' jaw clenched. "He left your gun."
Sunny nodded once. "On my hood. Like a note."
The FBI agent scribbled something and looked up. "So the driver is trained. Physically capable. Disciplined. Willing to engage."
Sunny swallowed hard. "Yes."
Bilkins leaned back, face tight. "Great. So our ghost isn't just a racer. He's a fighter."
The room didn't like that conclusion.
Because it shifted the problem again—from a car you might trap to a person you might have to confront.
And the FBI didn't look afraid of that.
They looked interested.
"Then we adjust," the lead agent said calmly, as if talking about weather.
Sunny's eyes hardened. "Next time," he said, voice low, "I want real support."
The agent met his gaze. "Next time," she replied, "we don't let him choose the terrain."
Sunny clenched his jaw, and somewhere inside him the humiliation turned into resolve.
He'd come to Los Angeles wearing a friendly smile to move the street scene like a chess piece.
Now he'd met the ghost up close.
And he'd learned the truth the footage couldn't show:
Wanted wasn't just a machine.
He was a trained man inside a myth—one who had started learning how to fight back without leaving fingerprints.
..
Jacob went to the gym the next morning like he was trying to outrun last night without using wheels.
The place smelled the same as always—rubber mats, disinfectant, old sweat baked into the walls. A few regulars moved through weights with blank faces, the kind of people who lifted because it was the only way to quiet their heads.
Jacob wrapped his hands slower than usual.
He could feel something different in his body—subtle, unsettling. His joints felt tighter in the right way. His balance felt… pre-loaded. Like his center of gravity had been moved a fraction toward "ready."
He hated that he could feel it.
He hated that the system had done it without asking.
He stepped to the heavy bag anyway.
The first jab snapped out like it belonged to someone else.
Not just faster—cleaner. His knuckles landed with a crisp pop that made the bag jump. His shoulder stayed relaxed. His wrist stayed straight. His feet were in the right place without him thinking about it.
Jacob blinked, startled by his own competence.
He threw another jab. Then a cross.
The combination flowed like a remembered language—jab, cross, pivot, reset—his hips turning with the punch the way they were supposed to, weight transferring with an efficiency he hadn't earned.
The bag swung hard.
A guy two bags down paused, watching. Jacob felt the gaze and hated it.
He tried something he'd never tried before—an inside step, a quick angle change, a tighter hook.
His body did it anyway.
His glove thudded into leather with a perfect arc.
Jacob stood there for a beat, breathing shallow, feeling a sick twist in his stomach.
This wasn't training.
This was being upgraded.
He tried to make it messy on purpose—threw a sloppy jab, mis-timed a step, tried to "forget" the technique.
His body corrected the error before it could fully happen.
The system had given him a new baseline, and now his muscles refused to lie.
Jacob hit the bag harder, not because he wanted to impress anyone, but because anger needed somewhere to go. He worked until sweat soaked his shirt and his shoulders burned, until his breath came loud and ragged and he could almost pretend this was normal effort instead of stolen mastery.
When he finally stepped back, the bag still swinging, he stared at his gloves with a kind of quiet grief.
He wanted to be good the old way.
He wanted to earn it.
But the system didn't care what he wanted.
It cared what kept him alive.
By afternoon the street scene was talking again.
Not loudly—nobody smart was loud anymore—but the talk had heat.
Because Wanted had returned on a crew run.
Not on television. Not as a viral clip.
In the real night.
Hector's people spread it first, the way they always did: one guy telling another with his voice pitched low, eyes darting, the story passed like contraband.
"He rolled up outta nowhere, man."
"Blue and silver?"
"Yeah. Took the lead like it was his road."
"And the cops?"
"Cops hit it. Scattered everybody."
By dusk, the rumor had grown into a new shape:
Wanted wasn't just a lone ghost car anymore.
Wanted was a presence that could drop into your night and rearrange it.
People argued whether it was intentional or coincidence, whether he was leading crews or just passing through, whether he was trying to protect people or just feeding the chaos.
No one mentioned the scuffle in the lot.
No one even suspected it had happened.
There was no footage. No bragging. No witness who wanted to admit they'd seen something that didn't fit the myth.
The only thing the scene knew was the feeling: the ghost had been close again.
And every time the ghost got close, the city tightened its grip.
At Dom's shop, the aftermath didn't show up as police tape.
It showed up as tension in people's shoulders.
Mia moved through the day with a quiet alertness, eyes tracking street noise the way she tracked invoices—always counting, always anticipating. Brian was there too, leaning on the counter with a cup of coffee he barely drank, gaze distant like his mind was running laps without his body.
Mia glanced at him. "You're quiet."
Brian blinked and forced a small smile. "Yeah. Just thinking."
Mia tilted her head. "About what?"
Brian hesitated.
He couldn't tell her what he knew—not cleanly. Not without dragging her deeper into a world that already wanted to chew her up. But he also couldn't keep the thought from turning over and over in his head until it wore a groove.
He looked out through the open bay doors, then back at Mia.
"About that run last night," Brian said carefully.
Mia's brows knit. "Hector's?"
Brian nodded.
Mia's mouth tightened. "Everybody's talking about it."
Brian swallowed. "Yeah."
Mia studied him for a beat. "Why do you look like it's your fault?"
Brian let out a soft, humorless breath. "It's not."
But his eyes drifted toward the street anyway, toward the idea of a man named Sunny and a plan that wasn't supposed to be on anyone's radar.
Mia leaned in slightly, voice gentler. "Brian… what's going on?"
Brian's jaw tightened.
He thought of the last person he'd spoken to—really spoken to—about Sunny joining that run.
Jacob.
Jacob in his shop, calm, listening, saying thank you like gratitude could exist between a cop and a liar.
Brian stared at his coffee as the thought clicked into something sharper:
He hadn't told Dom.
He hadn't told Letty.
He hadn't told anyone else in that world.
He'd told Jacob.
And then Wanted had appeared on Hector's run anyway—at the exact moment enforcement pressure was trying to flush the ghost into the open.
Brian felt his stomach sink.
It didn't prove Jacob was the driver.
The bystander clip still existed, complicating the easiest accusation.
But it did suggest Jacob knew something—at minimum, that Jacob was connected to the flow of information that made the ghost move.
Brian looked up at Mia, and his voice came softer.
"You ever get the feeling someone's always one step ahead?" Brian asked.
Mia's eyes flicked toward the TV in the corner of the shop, where the news was quietly replaying old footage of the ghost car like it was weather.
"Yeah," Mia said. "Lately, all the time."
Brian nodded slowly.
And in the back of his mind, the suspicion sharpened—not aimed at Jacob as Wanted, not yet, but at Jacob as something else:
A keeper of secrets.
A hinge between worlds.
That night, the Wanted website posted again.
No dramatic title. No flashy design changes.
Just a new clip and a short line of text.
"If I wanted to hurt you, you would already be hurt."
The video was shorter than the others—grainy streetlight footage, chaos implied more than shown. A police siren in the distance. Cars scattering. The ghost's blue-and-silver hood cutting through frame for a heartbeat.
And over it, a voice—filtered, edited, unplaceable.
Not robotic. Not human enough to identify.
Just cold, controlled words.
"I don't hunt you," the voice said. "I don't want your blood. I want to be left alone."
A pause. Then:
"If I had wanted to hurt anyone there… I would have."
The clip ended.
No threats beyond that.
No confession.
Just a line that sounded like mercy and menace braided together.
The city reacted the way it always reacted to a myth that spoke.
Some people took it as reassurance—proof the ghost had restraint.
Others heard it as a warning—proof the ghost could have done worse and chose not to.
Forums lit up.
Racing boards filled with arguments.
Late-night radio callers sounded half thrilled, half terrified.
"He's warning the cops.""Nah, he's warning us.""That's not a racer talking. That's a predator.""If he didn't want to hurt anyone, why keep showing up?""Because they won't leave him alone.""That line—'I would have'—bro that's not normal.""He's not human.""Or he's very human and very tired."
In Dom's world, the post landed like a stone.
Letty watched it and said nothing for a long time.
Dom watched it once, then turned it off, jaw tight.
Mia stared at the black screen afterward, feeling the strange ache of it—because the voice didn't sound like a monster.
It sounded like someone trying not to become one.
And across town, Brian sat alone in his car with the audio echoing in his head and Jacob Cooper's calm face lingering in his memory.
He couldn't prove anything.
But the pattern was starting to feel less like coincidence and more like intent.
And intent always meant a human being somewhere behind the myth—
someone choosing when the ghost appeared… and when it didn't.
...
Brian got called back into the station like he'd been caught doing something wrong even when he hadn't.
The bullpen was quieter than usual—quiet in that tense way that meant everyone had already seen the same thing and didn't know what to do with it. A TV cart sat near the center like a shrine. The Wanted website clip played on loop: grainy footage, the ghost's hood slicing through darkness, and that edited voice—calm, controlled, almost tired.
If I had wanted to hurt anyone there… I would have.
Bilkins stood with his arms crossed, jaw locked. Tanner hovered nearby. Two FBI agents were in the room as if they'd always owned the air.
Brian walked in and felt the temperature drop.
Bilkins didn't bother with greetings. "Close the door."
Brian did.
The lead FBI agent tapped the remote and paused the clip mid-sentence, freezing the screen on a streak of blue and silver.
"That," she said, "is a message."
Tanner snorted. "You don't say."
Bilkins' eyes stayed on Brian. "You hear it the way I hear it?"
Brian kept his voice neutral. "It sounded like a warning."
The other agent leaned forward. "It was a declaration of capability," he said. "He's managing narrative. He's managing fear. And he's doing it on purpose."
Bilkins exhaled hard. "My officers are rattled. The public's rattled. And now the suspect's posting… statements."
Brian's mouth tightened. "He's not wrong," he said before he could stop himself.
The room turned slightly.
Bilkins' gaze sharpened. "Explain."
Brian swallowed. "He's saying he could've made it worse," Brian said carefully. "That means he's… restrained. Or he wants us to think he is."
The FBI agent nodded once, satisfied. "Either way, it indicates planning."
Bilkins looked like he hated the word planning because planning meant the suspect wasn't sloppy. Planning meant the suspect wasn't going to stumble into cuffs by accident.
The lead agent slid a folder across the desk toward Brian.
"Task force," she said.
Brian opened it.
Photos. Vehicle outlines. A list of names. A block of text that made his stomach tighten.
JOINT RESPONSE UNIT — SPECIAL PURSUIT TASK FORCEOBJECTIVE: capture and recover target vehicle capability
Recover.
Not arrest.
Not prosecute.
Recover.
Bilkins spoke through clenched teeth. "When Wanted shows again, we don't do this with Crown Vics."
Tanner added, quieter, "We're getting hardware."
Brian looked up. "Hardware?"
The FBI agent didn't blink. "Enhanced vehicles. Pursuit-rated. Reinforced. Higher-performance. Built to survive contact and maintain pressure."
Brian felt cold creep up his spine.
He'd watched what happened when cops escalated from chase to containment. He'd watched the city turn into a battlefield.
This sounded like escalation with a budget.
Bilkins tapped the folder. "You and Sunny will be attached."
Brian's jaw tightened. "Sunny."
The FBI agent's gaze held him like a warning. "Agent Caldwell is essential to the operation."
Brian didn't bother hiding his disgust. "He's essential to stirring civilians into panic."
Bilkins' eyes flashed. "Enough."
The lead agent's voice stayed calm. "You will do your job, Officer O'Connor."
Brian stared at the folder, then at the paused screen.
He realized what they were really saying:
Next time, the ghost wouldn't just be chased.
It would be hunted.
And Brian—stuck between his cover, his conscience, and the street scene he'd started to care about—was being ordered to help pull the trigger.
Across town, Jacob felt the pressure from the other side before anyone ever knocked on his door.
A street racer had brought him a car—nothing exotic, just a clean import with a rough idle and a desperate owner who spoke too fast, eyes too bright. Jacob worked with the bay door half-open for ventilation, hands steady, mind trying to stay in the simple language of bolts and torque.
He traced a fueling issue, corrected a timing hiccup, replaced a worn line with quiet competence. He stayed stubbornly human about it—no system shop, no Futureline miracles. Just work.
The system let him pretend for about an hour.
Then the HUD flickered at the edge of his vision, bright as a slap.
ENFORCEMENT ESCALATION DETECTEDJOINT TASK FORCE: ACTIVE (LAPD + FED)ASSET: "SUNNY" (COVERT DRIVER)UPGRADE: ENHANCED PURSUIT VEHICLESPROBABILITY: EXTRACTION ATTEMPT (RISING)RECOMMENDATION: Secure myth / reduce exposure / prepare countermeasures
Jacob's wrench paused mid-turn.
He stared at the text until the letters felt like they were pressing into his skull.
Enhanced pursuit vehicles.
That meant the city was adapting to him the way predators adapted to prey.
He exhaled slowly, forced his hands back into motion, and finished tightening the bolt because the customer was watching and Jacob couldn't afford to look shaken.
But inside, something tightened into a cold knot:
He could hide the BMW in a container. He could mask his heat signature. He could rewrite videos.
None of it would matter if enforcement stopped "chasing" and started "extracting."
Because extraction didn't care about traffic laws or public optics.
Extraction cared about owning the thing that made you impossible.
Jacob wiped his hands on a rag and lied to the customer with a polite smile. "You're good," he said. "Take it easy for a day."
The racer thanked him and left.
The bay got quiet again.
Jacob stood alone in the smell of oil and dust, and the system's warning sat behind his eyes like a countdown.
That evening, Dom stopped pretending with his family.
He didn't wrap it in jokes. He didn't soften it with bravado. He gathered them in the house—kitchen table, living room edges, the spaces where family decisions got made—and spoke like a man who understood that leadership wasn't about forcing people forward.
It was about letting them choose.
"You all feel it," Dom said. His voice was calm, but it carried weight. "Heat's rising."
Letty leaned back in a chair, arms crossed, expression hard but honest. Leon stared at the floor. Jesse's knee bounced, nervous energy spilling out of him.
Vince looked guilty, still carrying the bruise of leaving Mia behind, and he didn't interrupt for once.
Mia sat close to Dom, face tight with worry.
Dom continued, voice steady. "Cops aren't just patrolling. They're hunting. And when cops start hunting, they don't care who gets stepped on."
Letty's jaw tightened. "So we stop?"
Dom didn't answer immediately.
He looked at each of them—one by one—like the decision deserved eye contact.
"I'm asking," Dom said quietly. "If we keep jacking trucks, we might be using the heat as cover… but that cover's thinner now. And if it snaps, it won't just be me in cuffs."
Mia swallowed. "Dom…"
Dom's gaze softened briefly for her, then returned to the room.
"You want to keep going?" Dom asked. "Say it. And know what it costs."
Silence held for a moment.
Jesse's voice came out small. "I don't want to get anyone hurt."
Letty nodded once, not mocking him for it. "That's the right fear."
Leon exhaled. "Money's tight."
Dom's jaw tightened. "Money being tight isn't worth burying family."
Vince finally spoke, rough. "I'll do whatever you say."
Dom looked at him a long beat. "Not what I asked."
Vince swallowed. "I… I want to fix what I messed up," he said quietly. "I want to be here. I want Mia safe."
Mia's eyes softened, but she didn't let him off the hook.
Dom nodded once, slow. "Then listen."
He let the question sit again—open, honest.
Because that was the truth of it:
Their world had been dangerous before.
Now it was becoming hunted.
And somewhere in that rising heat, a ghost named Wanted was bending the whole city's pressure points around himself—whether he meant to or not.
Dom's voice stayed steady as he finished.
"If even one of you wants out," he said, "we slow down. We regroup. We don't die for a paycheck."
No one answered quickly.
But everyone felt the weight of being asked like it mattered.
And that—more than any race or raid—was what separated Dom's crew from the rest of the city's noise:
They weren't just a scene.
They were family trying to decide whether survival was still possible without becoming monsters.
...
Brian first saw the new car in a secure motor pool bay that smelled like fresh rubber and old power.
The lights were brighter than they needed to be, like someone wanted every surface visible. Mechanics and techs moved with clipped efficiency. Radios murmured low. Everything in the space said the same thing without words:
This was no longer a normal pursuit.
A line of vehicles sat under the fluorescent glare like black animals at rest—Corvette C5s, all the same model, all the same color: matte-to-gloss black depending on the angle. They looked wrong in an LAPD environment. Too low. Too sleek. Too expensive to be part of "local enforcement."
Brian walked slowly around the nearest one, hands loose at his sides. The C5's body lines caught the light clean, and the modifications were purposeful rather than flashy: reinforced front end, heavier-looking suspension components, wider tires, subtle grille changes that hinted at cooling upgrades. It didn't have the messy personality of street builds.
It looked like a tool designed by people who hated losing.
Bilkins stood a few feet away, posture rigid, face tight. A federal agent—same calm eyes, same measured voice—spoke quietly with a tech. They didn't glance at Brian until he got close enough to matter.
"This is what you're driving," Bilkins said.
Brian stared at the car, then looked back at him. "All of us?"
Bilkins nodded once, sharp. "Standardized fleet. Same platform. Same tuning. Same pursuit package. Less variables."
"More pressure," Brian muttered.
Bilkins didn't deny it. "More capability."
A door behind them swung open, and Sunny walked in like someone entering a room that owed him something.
No friendly grin. No open hands. No easy nickname.
His face still carried the faint aftermath of being dropped—subtle bruising at the lip, a tightness around the eyes that looked less like pain and more like humiliation fossilizing into anger. He wore a black jacket zipped high and the expression of a man who was furious at the idea of being replaceable.
Sunny's gaze hit the line of Corvettes and hardened.
"They're really doing it," he said.
The federal agent didn't look up from her clipboard. "We're deploying new assets."
Sunny's laugh was short and sharp. "Assets." He looked at Brian, eyes narrowing. "They giving you one too?"
Brian didn't answer right away. He didn't like Sunny, but he liked the situation even less: a machine that escalated whenever it didn't get what it wanted.
Sunny's voice dropped, low and bitter. "This is because I got taken down."
Bilkins' jaw tightened. "You got dropped. There's a difference."
Sunny's eyes flashed. "I wasn't dropped by some kid. I wasn't dropped by luck. That was… trained."
Brian felt the word land again—trained—and his stomach tightened, because every time someone said it, the case got less solvable and more dangerous.
Sunny stepped closer to the Corvette, running his fingers lightly along the roofline like he wanted to feel ownership. "They replace me," he said, voice tight, "I'm done. You understand that?"
The federal agent finally looked up. "No one is replacing you."
Sunny didn't believe her. His jaw worked, anger kept behind teeth.
"I'm proving I'm still useful," Sunny said. "I'm proving I'm not just bait."
Brian felt Bilkins watch him, as if waiting to see where Brian stood in this new hierarchy: cop, racer, pawn.
Sunny's gaze stayed hard. "Next time he shows," Sunny said, "I want the shot."
The agent's expression didn't change. "Next time he shows, you follow the plan."
Sunny held the stare a beat too long, then looked away—tight, furious, forced to swallow obedience.
Brian looked at the Corvette again.
All black. All identical.
A fleet built to close distance and keep it closed.
He imagined the BMW ahead of them, and for the first time he didn't picture a chase.
He pictured a cage being built at highway speed.
While enforcement sharpened its teeth in bright motor pool light, Jacob worked in darkness and steel.
The shipping container smelled like cold metal and sealed air. A single work lamp cast a cone of light across the BMW M3 GTR, blue-and-silver paint catching just enough glow to look unreal—like the car wasn't parked, but waiting.
Jacob stood in front of it with his hands at his sides, breathing slowly, feeling the weight of what he was about to do.
Upgrading Dom's Charger had felt like crossing a line.
This felt like crossing something deeper.
Because this wasn't tuning anymore.
This was arming a myth.
The system's HUD floated at the edge of his vision like a patient whisper.
ENFORCEMENT ESCALATION CONFIRMEDPURSUIT TASK FORCE: ACTIVERECOMMENDATION: CountermeasuresAVAILABLE: EMP Pulse (Pursuit) / ESF Shockwave Emitter (Pursuit)
Jacob's throat tightened. He stared at the options until the words blurred slightly.
He didn't want to be the guy who made the streets into a battleground.
He didn't want to hurt officers, or civilians, or anyone.
But the head-on collision had changed something in him. The gun had changed something. The idea of being "recovered" like an asset had changed something in him too.
They weren't trying to stop a racer.
They were trying to take the factor.
So Jacob made his choice the way he always did when he felt cornered:
He chose the option that made him harder to corner.
He purchased the upgrades.
Not loud add-ons, not visible weapons—quiet, integrated defensive systems that would look like nothing at a glance. Things that didn't scream "future" to a casual observer, but would rewrite a pursuit's rules in the moment that mattered.
The EMP module integrated first—no dramatic sparks, just a subtle shift in the car's "presence," like the BMW's electrical heartbeat had gained a new muscle. The ESF shockwave emitter followed—again, no visible change, but Jacob felt it in a strange way: an almost physical awareness of space around the car, like a pressure boundary waiting to be pushed outward.
The HUD updated, crisp and unbothered.
DEFENSIVE PACKAGE INSTALLEDEMP: READY (SHORT RANGE / PURSUIT DISRUPTION)ESF: READY (AREA PUSH / CONTACT BREAK)NOTE: Use increases Heat rapidly.
Jacob exhaled slowly through his nose, then pressed his palm to the BMW's hood.
The metal was cold.
Real.
This was the part that made his chest ache: every upgrade made the car less like a machine and more like a creature built to survive anything.
And every time he did it, he felt himself slipping—incrementally—from "Jacob Cooper" toward "Wanted."
He whispered, almost to the car, almost to himself:
"I'm not doing this to hurt anyone."
The container didn't answer.
The system didn't care.
Only the silence cared, and silence was never kind.
Dom came to Cooper's Auto at dusk with his crew moving like a decision.
Dom's Charger rolled into the alley first, the engine's rumble calm but loaded. Letty was with him. Vince too. Leon and Jesse trailing behind in another car, quieter than usual.
They weren't there to hang out.
They were there because the city had changed again, and Dom didn't like being the last to know.
Dom knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again—harder this time, just enough to show it mattered.
Still nothing.
Letty's eyes narrowed. "He's not home."
Vince's jaw tightened, suspicion rising out of habit. "Or he's avoiding us."
Dom didn't jump to that. Dom scanned the shop front, the street, the alley mouth. He looked at the place like it was an engine bay with a hidden rattle.
"Lights are off," Leon said quietly.
Jesse swallowed. "Maybe he went out."
Vince scoffed. "With what? His magic?"
Letty shot him a look. "Enough."
Dom tried the door.
Locked.
He didn't force it. Not yet. He wasn't a cop. He didn't break into people's lives unless he had to.
But the absence hit him anyway—because Jacob had been around lately. Helpful. Present. Quietly integrating like he wanted to belong.
And Dom had started—against his instincts—to let that matter.
Mia wasn't with them on this visit, and Dom felt that acutely. If she'd been here, she would've worried out loud. She would've softened Dom's edge into something more human.
Instead, the alley held only Dom's silence and the crew's unease.
Letty crossed her arms. "You think he's in trouble?"
Dom stared at the locked door a beat longer. "I don't know," he admitted.
That was rare.
Vince shifted, guilt and jealousy battling inside him. "He's probably fine."
Dom finally turned away. "We'll find him," he said, low. Not a promise to the crew. A promise to himself.
Because Dom could feel the pressure rising. He could feel the street becoming a chessboard. And he didn't like unknown pieces—especially when that piece had just helped sharpen his Charger in ways Dom hadn't fully explained to anyone.
They left the alley without answers.
And in a steel container under floodlights across town, Jacob sat in his BMW with the engine idling low, the new defensive systems sleeping inside it like coiled thunder—unaware that Dom had come looking for him, unaware that the city was assembling a new kind of hunt, unaware that every step he took to survive was also changing the rules for everyone else.