Brian went to the hospital because he couldn't breathe with the story trapped in his chest.
He found the place by following a name he'd barely had—an address, a room number, a whispered update in a hallway at the station that had been delivered like it was just another line in a report.
The lobby smelled like disinfectant and old coffee. The lights were too bright and too tired at the same time. People moved through the space with that quiet, exhausted urgency of families who'd learned how to wait.
Brian wore plain clothes, but he still felt like he didn't belong. Like guilt had become a second uniform.
He asked at the desk, voice controlled, and the nurse checked a clipboard.
"Marisol Vega," the nurse said, pronouncing it gently, like the name deserved care. "Family's with her."
Marisol.
The name landed hard. Not "female driver." Not "suspect vehicle." Not "associated party."
A person.
Brian walked down the hallway and saw them before he reached the room—her family gathered like a small fort built out of bodies. A woman with red-rimmed eyes holding a paper cup she hadn't sipped. A man with his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles looked painful. A teenage boy pacing in a tight loop, jaw clenched.
They looked up when Brian approached.
Hope flared in their eyes the way it flared when someone walked in who might bring comfort.
Then the woman's gaze fixed on Brian's face and her expression changed into relief so sharp it was almost gratitude.
"Oh," she whispered, stepping toward him. "You're here."
Brian froze.
"I—" he started.
The woman didn't let him finish. She grabbed his arm with both hands like she needed something solid. "Thank God," she said, voice trembling. "She kept talking about you. We didn't know if you were coming."
Brian's throat tightened.
He didn't know what to say that wouldn't shatter them.
The man stepped closer, weary eyes studying Brian like he was trying to match him to a story Marisol had told. "You're her boyfriend, right?" he asked quietly, not accusing—just needing to place the world into a shape that made sense.
Brian's mouth went dry.
He could've corrected them. He could've said the truth and let it stab through the room like glass.
But looking at their faces—looking at the desperate, fragile relief—Brian couldn't do it. Not right then.
He nodded once, stiff and small, like his body made the decision before his conscience could protest.
"Yeah," Brian heard himself say. "I'm… I'm here."
The woman's eyes filled instantly. "She's been so strong," she whispered, as if strength was a prayer you could repeat until it became true again.
They ushered him to the door with gentle urgency, like bringing him in might pull Marisol back toward life through sheer force of love.
Inside the room, the air was colder.
Machines hummed softly. Tubing and wires ran like vines across white sheets. The monitors beeped with steady indifference, the numbers rising and falling as if her suffering were just data.
Marisol lay still beneath the hospital blankets.
Her face was bruised. One arm was wrapped. Her chest rose and fell with mechanical assistance, the ventilator's rhythm doing the work her body couldn't do alone. A line ran into her arm. Another into her neck. Her hair was pulled back, and she looked smaller than Brian expected—smaller, younger, vulnerable in a way the chase footage never showed.
Brian stood at her bedside and felt his knees threaten to give.
He'd seen wrecks before. He'd seen injuries. He'd told himself it was part of the job.
This wasn't part of the job.
This was the job becoming something ugly.
The family lingered at the door, watching him watch her.
The woman—her mother—wiped her eyes and whispered, "We'll give you a minute."
Brian turned his head quickly, as if the movement could hide the tears already threatening his eyes. "You don't have to—"
"We want to," she said softly, and the kindness in it made Brian's chest crack.
They stepped out and pulled the door mostly closed, leaving Brian in a room full of machines and the quiet horror of consequence.
Brian sat down in the chair beside Marisol's bed.
He stared at her hand—bandaged, still—and reached out slowly as if touch might be too loud.
He rested his fingers lightly against her knuckles.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The words didn't fix anything. They barely felt like language.
His breath hitched anyway.
He thought of the black Corvettes moving like predators.
He thought of radios calling it an "interdiction."
He thought of Sunny's cold eyes saying it was necessary.
He thought of the way the chase had folded her car like paper because she wasn't the ghost they were hunting—she was just close enough to be crushed.
Brian's throat tightened until he couldn't swallow.
And then he broke—quietly at first, a shaking breath, then tears that came too fast and too hot, because he couldn't keep pretending this was acceptable.
He bowed his head and covered his face with his hand, shoulders trembling in a way he would've mocked in another man.
"I don't know how to stop it," he whispered into the room, voice wrecked. "I don't know how to stop them."
The machines kept humming.
Marisol didn't move.
And Brian realized, in the most brutal way, that his role in this was no longer "undercover investigation."
It was complicity unless he chose something different.
Jacob heard about the crash the same way he heard about everything now—through ripples, through voices, through the city's nervous system carrying bad news faster than sirens.
He was at Cooper's Auto, wiping his hands after finishing work on a racer's car—something small, ordinary, human—when the TV in the office corner replayed the clip: wreckage, lights, a crumpled car, ambulance red splashing over concrete.
A name scrolled beneath it.
A face flashed in a still photo.
A young woman who looked like she'd smiled often.
Hospitalized.
Ventilator.
Critical.
Jacob stood perfectly still as the report played.
He felt his pulse slow and then spike.
He felt heat rise behind his eyes.
He didn't cry.
He didn't go numb.
He got angry in a way that scared him.
Not hot rage like a shout.
A boiling, contained fury that made his hands shake.
Because he knew—he knew—this wasn't an accident.
This was enforcement "adjusting."
This was the city's new rule: squeeze until something breaks, and if what breaks isn't the ghost, it's still acceptable.
Jacob's jaw clenched until it hurt.
He turned off the TV with a sharp click that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet office.
Then he moved.
Not fast. Not frantic.
Purposeful.
He got in the Supra and drove to the storage lot under a sky that looked too calm for what he felt. His hands were steady on the wheel, but his knuckles were white.
He unlocked the container.
He stepped inside and flicked on the work lamp.
The BMW M3 GTR sat there like a sleeping weapon.
Blue and silver. Perfect. Patient.
Jacob stared at it and felt something shift inside him—something dark deciding it was done being patient too.
The system appeared instantly, as if it had been waiting for this emotional state.
MOST WANTED PROTOCOL: FULL KIT AVAILABLEPURSUIT COUNTERMEASURES: EXPANDEDLETHALITY: NOT REQUIREDCONTROL: MAXIMIZE SURVIVABILITYNOTE: Heat will spike severely.
Jacob didn't ask what it cost.
He didn't care.
He began installing everything the system offered—every "Hot Pursuit" countermeasure and defensive package it would let him mount, not as visible weapons, but as integrated systems: field emitters, electronic disruption pulses, kinetic push technology, tire and chassis reinforcement beyond sanity, stealth layers that made sensors lie.
The work didn't look like a human mechanic's work.
It looked like reality being edited around a machine.
Jacob felt each upgrade settle into the BMW like new bones.
He felt the car's "presence" deepen—an invisible pressure at the edges of the container, like the air itself had learned to fear it.
When the final installation completed, the HUD updated, calm as ever:
FULL PURSUIT PACKAGE INSTALLEDSTATUS: READYWARNING: Your next chase will not resemble your previous chases.
Jacob exhaled slowly, hands trembling.
He stared at the BMW and thought of Marisol on a ventilator.
Then he thought of every kid who'd tried to copy the myth and paid with blood.
Then he thought of Dom's family—Mia's soft voice in the kitchen, Dom's steady concern, Vince's shame and anger.
Jacob's fury crystallized into a decision that felt like stepping off a ledge.
He returned to Cooper's Auto, opened the untraceable laptop, and posted a single update on the Wanted site.
No video this time—just black background, white text, and the edited voice laid over it like a mask.
"Turn your cars off," the voice said. "Stay home."
A pause.
"Tonight, I'm doing a run."
Another pause, colder.
"If you want to live through this city's new rules… don't be on the road with me."
The post ended there.
No threats.
No boasting.
Just an ultimatum.
The city reacted like it always did when the myth spoke—only this time the reaction wasn't excitement first.
It was fear.
Forums filled with arguments and panic.
"He's warning us.""He's declaring war.""He's trying to keep people off the streets so no one else gets hurt.""Or he wants the roads clear so he can do something worse.""If he says stay home, I'm staying home.""Nah, this is cap. I'm not letting some ghost tell me what to do.""Bro after that girl got wrecked? I'm staying inside."
In the real scene, the street went quiet in a way it hadn't in years.
Some crews canceled runs outright. People turned scanners on and listened from their bedrooms. Organizers texted each other short messages full of profanity and worry.
Even Dom's world felt it—like the air had changed.
Dom watched the post on a small screen, jaw tight, and didn't speak for a long time.
Letty muttered, "This is bad."
Mia's voice was quiet. "Or it's… mercy."
Vince swallowed hard. "He's serious."
And somewhere in a hospital room, Brian sat with red eyes and a clenched jaw, hearing the words secondhand and feeling the sick twist of them:
Wanted wasn't just reacting anymore.
He was setting terms.
And the city—terrified, fascinated, exhausted—was about to find out what happened when a myth decided the streets belonged to him for one night.
...
Jacob didn't sleep.
He sat in the shipping container's stale air with the work lamp off, the BMW's blue-and-silver body barely visible in the dark, and listened to his own breathing until it stopped sounding human and started sounding like a countdown.
The ultimatum he'd posted—turn your cars off, stay home—had spread faster than any siren. It had done what he wanted it to do: it had scared the careless ones into staying inside. It had made the street scene hesitate. It had put a thin layer of emptiness on the roads that might keep someone like Marisol from being crushed again.
But emptiness also made a stage.
And Jacob had decided he was done being dragged into someone else's plan.
So he closed the last door behind him.
He sold the private lot.
Not with a realtor. Not with paperwork that left trails.
He opened the system shop on the untraceable laptop and selected a cold, clinical option that made his stomach twist:
ASSET LIQUIDATION: PRIVATE STORAGE LOTFEATURES: full records purge / ownership chain re-route / payment clean depositWARNING: irreversible
He hit confirm.
The system didn't celebrate. It didn't ask if he was sure.
It simply made the world… change.
Somewhere, "Jacob Cooper" stopped being attached to fence codes and lease agreements. Somewhere, a paper trail that hadn't existed the way normal paper trails existed was erased with the same casual efficiency the system used to restore a wrecked car.
Jacob still went through the motions anyway, because his body needed ritual to believe anything mattered.
He wiped the BMW down inside the container until the cloth came away clean. He wiped the steering wheel. The shifter. The door handle. He even wiped the inside of the container door like evidence could cling to metal like guilt.
Then he removed the lock and left it on the ground.
No signature.
No ownership.
Just a steel box in a sea of steel boxes that now belonged to nobody who mattered.
When he was done, the system confirmed what his fear had demanded:
OWNERSHIP RECORDS: PURGEDSURVEILLANCE LINKS: SEVEREDTRACE RISK: MINIMAL
Jacob stared at that last word until it felt like an insult.
Minimal.
Not zero.
Never zero.
He slid behind the wheel anyway.
Helmet on.
Visor down.
The BMW's interior wrapped around him like a second skin, and for a moment he felt the old, sick comfort of it—how the cockpit turned the world into a manageable line, how the engine note made everything else small.
He placed the pistol on the passenger seat, not theatrical, not angled for a camera—just there. A reminder that the next people to arrive wouldn't necessarily come with handcuffs first.
Jacob didn't want to shoot anyone.
He also didn't want to be executed again.
He started the engine.
The M3 GTR ignited with a low, controlled growl, too smooth for something that had become such a violent symbol. The upgraded car sounded almost calm, and that calm made it feel worse—as if the machine was perfectly at peace with whatever Jacob had decided.
He drove out of the lot and into the city, and this time he didn't hide.
He didn't weave into side streets. He didn't vanish.
He posted the location.
Not to one forum thread.
Not to one whisper circle.
He blasted it across the same channels that always carried the myth—message boards, mirrors, the Wanted site itself—dropping coordinates and a simple line of text that read like a dare carved into concrete:
"You want me? Here."
Jacob watched the post propagate in real time on the laptop balanced in his peripheral vision—mirrors spawning, shares multiplying, the city's nervous system lighting up.
Then he parked.
An abandoned industrial lot on the edge of everything—wide, flat, dead warehouses leaning like tired giants, enough open space that nobody could pretend it was an accident. A place the city would recognize as a stage.
He killed the headlights.
Left the engine idling low.
And waited.
Minutes passed like hours.
Jacob's breathing was steady inside the helmet, but his heart beat heavy and slow, like it was dragging the weight of his decision through his chest. He stared through the windshield at the empty lot and imagined all the ways this could end.
A clean arrest.
A violent extraction.
A bullet.
A fire.
He didn't flinch.
He'd been running for too long.
If they wanted the ghost, they could come take it from his hands.
The first sound was rotors.
A helicopter, distant at first, then closer—thump-thump-thump growing louder until the air above the lot felt pressed down by invisible weight.
A news chopper found the location before the police did, because of course it did. The city loved a story too much to let the ending happen off screen.
A spotlight swept once across the asphalt, searching, then snapped onto the BMW like it had been guided. The beam pinned the blue-and-silver hood and made the paint flare bright in the dark, turning the car into a shining wound in the middle of dead concrete.
Jacob didn't move.
He sat there, helmeted, still, a silhouette behind glass.
The helicopter circled, camera locked, and the broadcast voice spilled into the night through a thousand televisions like a prayer spoken by someone who didn't believe it:
"—we're receiving reports that the driver known as 'Wanted' has… has posted what appears to be his location—this is live—repeat, this is live—he is stationary—"
Stationary.
That word made Jacob almost laugh.
The ghost had stopped running.
The city didn't know what to do with that.
Then the sirens arrived.
Not one or two.
A wave.
Red-blue lights painted the edges of the lot as units poured in, converging from multiple entrances with coordinated spacing. They didn't rush blindly. They set angles. They formed lines. They moved like they'd practiced this in a room with fluorescent lights and diagrams.
The task force was coming.
Jacob watched the first black Corvette C5 slide into view at the far edge of the lot, low and predatory, lights dark at first… then snapping on in a synchronized burst that made the entire scene feel like a trap closing.
Behind it came more—black shapes, identical, coordinated.
And behind them—regular cruisers, support units, the noise of local enforcement brought along to make the show look official.
The spotlight stayed on Jacob the entire time, as if the helicopter feared he might evaporate if it blinked.
Jacob sat motionless while the ring tightened.
He could see officers stepping out behind doors, weapons drawn, voices shouting commands that didn't quite reach him through the helmet's muffling:
"Hands up!""Driver, show your hands!""Out of the vehicle!"
The city watched. The chopper hovered. The lights strobbed.
Jacob's gloved right hand drifted toward the steering wheel, settling there like a promise.
His left hand didn't reach for the gun.
Not yet.
He stared at the approaching wall of law and machinery and intent, and the only thing he felt—beneath the fear, beneath the anger—was a strange, hollow calm.
He had given them exactly what they wanted.
Now he would see what they were willing to do to take it.
...
The BMW idled in the center of the abandoned lot like a held breath.
Jacob sat behind the wheel, helmet on, visor down, the world reduced to strobing red-blue light and the steady, predatory circle of vehicles tightening around him. He could see the black Corvettes at the edge of the formation—low, identical silhouettes that didn't look like patrol cars so much as instruments. He could see regular cruisers behind them, doors open, officers crouched, weapons drawn, voices layering into a single frantic command that meant the same thing in every language:
Come out. Give up. Let us end the story.
The news chopper hovered overhead, spotlight pinning him so hard it felt physical—like the beam had weight, like it pressed on his hood and through his windshield and into his ribs. Somewhere far away, millions of eyes watched the same fixed image: a myth sitting still for once, letting the city gather around it like a crowd around a bonfire.
Jacob didn't reach for the gun.
Not because he was merciful.
Because the gun didn't solve what was coming.
A car did.
And then the system spoke—quiet, intrusive, as if it had been holding this card in reserve.
ASSET RELOCATION: INITIATEDNEW SAFE STORAGE: WILDERNESS SITE (REMOTE)ACCESS: SINGLE-USER / LOW SIGNAL / NATURAL COVERSTATUS: PURCHASE COMPLETENOTE: ESCAPE VECTOR UPLOADED (MAP ROUTE AVAILABLE)
Jacob's throat tightened.
He hadn't asked for it.
He hadn't even thought the request.
The system had done it anyway—like a guardian, like a handler, like a parasite that loved him most when he was cornered.
A new hole in the world to disappear into.
A new den.
A new lie.
For a heartbeat, it almost made him want to laugh.
Then the ring closed another notch.
A megaphone barked, distorted by distance and fear. "DRIVER! HANDS UP! OUT OF THE VEHICLE NOW!"
Jacob's fingers flexed once on the steering wheel.
He could feel the task force's posture changing, even from inside the car—the way officers shifted their weight, the way Corvettes angled subtly, ready to surge. This wasn't a negotiation. It was a countdown to force.
Jacob's breathing slowed.
He made a decision that wasn't noble or clever.
It was simple:
I'm not letting them take me.
He pressed the clutch, dropped the BMW into gear, and mashed the throttle.
The rear tires broke loose instantly.
Rubber screamed.
The BMW spun in place in a violent, controlled circle, rear end whipping, engine rising into a savage howl. Asphalt dust—fine and dry—exploded upward in a thick brown cloud, mixed with tire smoke that turned the spotlight beam into a white, glowing fog. The neat picture the helicopter had been broadcasting—ghost car in the open—collapsed into chaos.
From above, the camera operator cursed. The spotlight jittered, searching for an outline, but the cloud ate definition. The BMW became a shadow inside a storm it had created.
On the ground, officers flinched back instinctively, coughing, blinking, shouting.
"WATCH IT—!""VISUAL LOST—!""HE'S MOVING—HE'S MOVING—!"
The task force Corvettes held their lines better than the cruisers—they didn't panic, didn't rush blindly into the smoke—but even they hesitated for a fraction of a second, because hesitation was what you did when the prey stopped acting like prey and started acting like weather.
Across the city, in Dom's living room, the TV's glow painted everyone's faces pale.
Mia sat forward so hard her hands dug into her knees. Letty stood behind the couch, arms crossed tight, eyes locked on the screen. Leon muttered something under his breath that sounded like prayer. Jesse looked like he might throw up. Vince wasn't grinning anymore—he stared at the TV with his mouth slightly open, caught between fear and awe.
Dom didn't move.
He watched the smoke bloom and understood immediately what it was: not just showmanship—control. A driver making his own cover because the world refused to give him any.
Mia whispered, voice shaking, "What is he doing?"
Letty answered without looking away. "Making them blink."
Dom's jaw tightened. "He's starting it."
On the broadcast, the anchor's voice climbed into panic. "—we've lost a clear view—there's a—there's a massive smoke cloud—police appear to be—oh my God—"
Because the BMW launched out of the cloud like something born from it.
Not drifting. Not easing.
Launching.
The blue-and-silver hood cut through the dust with one headlight flaring, the engine screaming, the front end aimed like a battering ram.
The nearest cruiser—one of the regular black-and-whites that had edged too close trying to hold the circle—had barely enough time to flash its brake lights before the impact.
The BMW hit it hard—front to side—metal on metal with a sound that made every viewer flinch.
The cruiser snapped sideways like it had been kicked by a giant. The frame buckled. The door crumpled. The whole vehicle folded into a spinning, scraping pile of sparks that slammed into another unit and stopped as a twisted heap of scrap and shattered glass.
For half a second, the lot went silent in shock, even with sirens wailing—like everyone's brain needed a moment to accept what their eyes had just seen.
Then the task force moved.
Black Corvettes surged forward in coordinated angles, lights snapping on in a synchronized burst. Regular units scrambled. Officers shouted. The megaphone voice dissolved into overlapping commands.
The helicopter spotlight caught the BMW again as it tore across the lot's edge and punched out onto the street, leaving the dust cloud behind like a curtain falling.
On the TV, the anchor's voice cracked with adrenaline. "—he has made contact with a police vehicle—repeat, contact—this pursuit is now moving—"
Dom's living room erupted.
Jesse blurted, "He just destroyed it!"
Mia covered her mouth, horrified. "Someone was in that—"
Letty's eyes stayed hard. "They tried to cage him."
Vince whispered, almost numb, "That's… that's war."
Dom exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound controlled and grim.
"That's not a chase anymore," Dom said. "That's a battle."
And outside, under the real sky, the pursuit officially began—sirens surging in a wave, Corvettes tightening formation, the city's streets about to become the arena where the myth of Wanted stopped being hunted…
…and started hunting back.
...
The moment the BMW tore out of the dust cloud and turned the nearest cruiser into scrap, the city stopped calling it a pursuit.
It became a battle on wheels.
The black Corvettes surged as a unit—low, identical, predatory—closing angles with a coordination that felt rehearsed. Not the sloppy swarm of Crown Vics. Not the old "follow and hope" routine.
These cars hunted like they'd been built to hunt.
And Jacob—helmet on, visor down—didn't run like prey.
He drove like a man who had decided there would be no clean ending.
No surrender.
No polite stop on the shoulder.
Just motion and impact and making space with force.
A Corvette clipped his rear quarter first—testing contact, probing.
The BMW absorbed it with a violent shudder and stayed straight, tires biting. Jacob didn't flinch. He kept the throttle steady for half a heartbeat—baiting—then snapped the wheel and tapped brakes just enough to shift weight. The Corvette committed deeper than it should've, and Jacob surged away, not with a clean escape but with a brutal shoulder-check into the lane that forced the Corvette to lift off or hit a civilian car.
Brian, in one of the Corvettes, felt his stomach drop.
He'd expected speed. He'd expected evasive lines.
He hadn't expected the BMW to treat impact like currency.
It wasn't using gadgets. It wasn't doing anything "impossible" yet.
It was simply doing the oldest, ugliest math on the road:
Mass. Angle. Commitment. Pain.
The radio chatter was tight, clipped, professional.
"Keep pressure. Don't overcommit."
"Box at the next junction."
"Watch civilian traffic."
Sunny's voice cut in, hard and angry, the friendly act gone.
"This is Caldwell. Target is actively ramming units."
Brian's hands tightened on the wheel as he watched an LAPD cruiser—one of the old black-and-whites—try to form a block ahead. It angled in too far, driver too eager, too desperate to be the one who ended the story.
The BMW didn't brake.
It slammed the cruiser broadside.
The impact sounded like a building collapsing.
The cruiser lifted on two wheels, tipped, and rolled once in a shower of sparks before smashing into the curb and coming to rest twisted and smoking.
Brian's throat went dry.
That wasn't "outmaneuvering."
That was vehicular warfare.
On the news chopper feed, the anchor's voice climbed into real fear.
"—this is escalating—police vehicles are being struck—motorists are advised—"
In living rooms, people stopped cheering and started calling family.
At Dom's house, the room filled again like it always did when the ghost appeared. The TV's glow painted faces pale.
Mia stood with her arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide and wet. Letty paced, jaw clenched. Vince stared like the bravado had been physically ripped out of him. Dom didn't move—only his eyes worked, reading the chase like he read engines.
"That's not a chase," Leon muttered.
Dom's voice came low. "That's a fight."
Mia whispered, horrified, "Someone's going to die."
Letty snapped, "They already tried to kill him."
Dom didn't answer because there was no clean side anymore.
Only consequences.
The Corvettes tightened.
Two came up to bracket the BMW—one on the left rear quarter, one on the right—trying to hold it in a narrow lane, trying to force it into a controlled slowdown where they could box it clean.
Jacob answered the old way.
He hit back.
He let the right Corvette come close enough to commit, then snapped the BMW's rear end toward it in a controlled fishtail. Metal kissed metal. Not enough to spin himself—just enough to knock the Corvette's nose off line.
Then he drove the BMW's rear bumper into the left Corvette's front corner with a brutal nudge that made the Corvette's suspension bounce and its driver lift off instinctively.
The BMW surged forward into the gap his own violence created.
No tricks.
No tech.
Just brutality applied with discipline.
The task force stayed with him anyway.
That was what they were built for.
The Corvettes didn't fall back like Crown Vics. They didn't get gapped by raw acceleration. They absorbed contact better, recovered faster, held lines with more confidence.
Brian could feel it in the steering—this car wanted to stay planted, wanted to keep pressure.
But every time they got close enough to be effective, Jacob made it ugly.
He slammed through another attempted block—plastic barricades exploding, a cruiser shoved sideways like it weighed nothing. He clipped a second unit hard enough to fold a fender into the tire, sparks spraying as it skidded to the shoulder.
The radio chatter sharpened with strain.
"Units down—"
"Maintain spacing—don't bunch—"
"Task force, don't let him break the line—"
Sunny's voice again, colder now:
"Command, requesting lethal authorization."
Brian flinched at the word.
The response came clipped.
"Negative. Maintain capture protocol."
Sunny's laugh was harsh. "He's turning patrol cars into scrap!"
Brian forced his voice into the channel. "Sunny, stay on the plan."
Sunny's reply was venomous. "Stay in your lane, O'Connor."
Brian swallowed hard, and the guilt he'd been carrying since Marisol turned heavier.
Because he could see it now:
This wasn't going to end with a clean arrest.
Not with Jacob driving like this.
Not with Sunny furious and humiliated.
Not with the city watching live, hungry for an ending.
The BMW hit a long arterial road and the battle widened.
Traffic scattered. Drivers braked and swerved. Some abandoned lanes entirely, pulling onto shoulders, hands shaking on wheels.
Jacob used the open space to build speed, and the Corvettes matched him, engines rising in disciplined harmony.
A roadblock formed ahead—two cruisers angled, a narrow lane left open like a funnel.
Jacob didn't take the funnel.
He took the cars.
He aimed for the weaker point—an older cruiser whose angle was off by inches—and drove straight through the gap between bumper and barrier, clipping the cruiser hard enough to shove it into the blockade line and crack the formation open like an egg.
The Corvettes surged through behind him.
The chase roared into the next stretch of city like a wave breaking.
And everywhere people watched—on highways, on sidewalks, on television screens—the same realization spread:
Wanted wasn't using miracles.
He wasn't bending reality.
He was winning the old way—by being willing to hit harder, risk more, and keep driving through the pain.
The city had wanted a myth.
Now it was watching a man turn steel into an argument.
...
One of the Corvettes broke off under Sunny's order like a chess piece being moved with cold intent.
"Unit Three—peel off," Sunny snapped over comms. "Cut ahead. Close the mouth."
The black C5 drifted out of formation cleanly, lights still strobing, slipping down a parallel artery the way a predator took a shortcut through brush. It didn't chase the BMW's taillights anymore. It hunted the next ten seconds.
Brian stayed on the BMW's tail with Sunny, the two remaining Corvettes tightening into a brutal bracket—one on each side of the blue-and-silver car, their noses creeping up, their lines squeezing. They weren't trying to scare him now.
They were trying to pin him.
Jacob felt it immediately.
Not in a tactical, radio-code way. In his bones.
The Corvettes pressed in close enough that the BMW's cabin filled with the hiss of their tires and the angry bass of their engines. Side mirrors vibrated with proximity. Their fenders hovered inches from his doors, and the message was simple:
We touch you on purpose now.
Jacob kept both hands locked on the wheel, helmet on, visor down. He didn't look at their faces long enough to see if there was hatred behind their windshields. He didn't need to.
He could feel Sunny's aggression in the way the right Corvette leaned—always a fraction more invasive, always trying to take a little more space than physics should allow. Brian's Corvette on the left was steadier, still controlled, but even that control had teeth now—pressure without release.
Jacob's identity remained swallowed by glass and helmet—Wanted, not Jacob, a silhouette in the middle of two black predators.
The street ahead narrowed into a corridor of shuttered businesses and parked cars, and at the far end of it—under the harsh wash of a streetlight—Jacob saw the third Corvette.
Unit Three.
Waiting.
Angled like a blade across the lane, perfectly positioned to turn the street into a dead end.
Jacob's stomach dropped.
He felt it in an instant: the trap was no longer "chase until you tire."
It was: slow down, or hit steel.
Jacob didn't want to make this choice.
He didn't want another wreck.
He didn't want another body in a hospital bed.
He didn't want to become the thing the city already believed he was.
But the Corvettes on either side tightened, and Sunny and Brian pushed harder, bumper-close now, front quarters kissing the BMW's sides in subtle nudges—attempting to bleed his speed, force the brake, force the surrender.
Jacob's hands clenched until the gloves creaked.
He saw the blocker Corvette growing in the windshield—closer, closer, its headlights dead center, its stance low and confident like it believed the street belonged to it.
He had a heartbeat to choose:
Brake and be crushed between them.
Swerve and risk civilians, parked cars, curbs.
Or do the only thing that kept him from being swallowed.
Jacob chose the ugliest option.
He stayed on the throttle.
The BMW surged forward, and the Corvettes on either side surged with him, still pinning, still grinding their presence into his doors like they could slow him by force.
Brian's breath caught in his throat.
He saw the blocker ahead. He saw the closing distance. He saw the trap's geometry collapsing into inevitability.
"Back off!" Brian barked into comms, voice cracking. "We're too close—"
Sunny didn't.
Sunny held pressure like rage was an accelerator.
"Hold him," Sunny snarled. "Hold him—don't let him break!"
Jacob's world narrowed to pure impact math.
The blocker Corvette didn't move out.
It didn't open a gap.
It committed to the cut-off like it wanted to end the myth with a perfect, clean capture.
Jacob couldn't stop. He couldn't slow. Not with two cars grinding him from both sides and the blocker closing the throat of the street.
The collision arrived like a thunderclap.
The BMW hit the blocker Corvette's angled front corner—hard—while Sunny's and Brian's Corvettes slammed into Jacob's sides almost simultaneously, a three-way convergence of steel and momentum.
Metal screamed.
Sparks exploded.
The blocker Corvette's nose bucked, then lifted—caught wrong under the combined force, ramping up as its suspension compressed and failed to hold the angle. For a horrifying fraction of a second, the black C5 climbed like it was trying to escape the road entirely.
Then it flipped.
It rolled up and over the converging mass—over the BMW's hoodline, over the strobing lights, over Brian's windshield—an airborne slab of black steel turning end-over-end in the harsh streetlight.
Brian saw it coming over him like a falling building.
Time didn't slow.
His body did.
His hands locked on the wheel, frozen, breath trapped, eyes wide as the Corvette rotated above them, underside exposed—mangled, scraping sparks out of the air—before it slammed down behind in a violent, grinding crash that threw debris like shrapnel.
The sound was not a car crash anymore.
It was a catastrophe.
The blocker Corvette hit the asphalt and folded, tumbling into a twisted, smoking heap that skidded into a parked vehicle and stopped as a ruin.
The chase line broke.
Everything staggered for half a heartbeat—cars wobbling, drivers correcting, sirens stuttering as radio chatter turned into frantic shouting.
Sunny's voice—usually cold—went sharp with shock.
"What—what the hell—?"
For the first time, the professional mask slipped. Sunny stared through his windshield at the wreck he'd ordered into place—the unit he'd redirected—now flipped into scrap by the geometry he'd created.
His hands trembled on the wheel.
He hadn't planned that.
He'd planned a box, a slowdown, an arrest.
Not a flying Corvette.
Not a mangled pile of black steel that would be replayed on every screen in the country by morning.
Brian's terror arrived a beat later, heavier than adrenaline.
He felt nauseous.
He felt cold.
He saw the Corvette rolling overhead again in his mind, saw the underside, saw the sparks, saw the way it came down wrong.
He heard Marisol's ventilator in the back of his skull like a warning.
He whispered, barely audible, "Oh my God…"
And Jacob—helmeted, bruised, furious—kept driving.
Not because he wanted to.
Because if he stopped now, they would kill him.
On the news chopper feed, the camera operator screamed an expletive and zoomed frantically. The anchor's voice broke into raw panic.
"—a vehicle has—has flipped—oh my God—this is—this is—!"
Across the city, in Dom's living room, everyone reacted at once.
Mia stood up so fast her chair scraped back, hands flying to her mouth, eyes wet. "No—no—"
Letty went still, eyes wide for the first time in days. "Jesus…"
Leon swore, voice shaking. Jesse looked like he might vomit. Vince stared at the TV with his face drained of color, the earlier bravado dead.
Dom didn't move for a long moment.
Then his jaw tightened hard enough to show the muscle.
"That's what happens," Dom said quietly, voice like gravel, "when you hunt somebody like an animal."
On screen, the wrecked Corvette burned under streetlights.
Sunny's shock turned into a hard, ugly anger—at Jacob, at himself, at the plan that had just eaten one of their own.
Brian's terror curdled into something worse: realization.
This task force wasn't just dangerous to the ghost.
It was dangerous to everyone around it—including themselves.
And somewhere inside the helmet, Jacob Cooper stared down the road through shaking breath and felt the decision he'd been forced into settle like a curse:
They'd built a trap to end a myth.
And the myth had answered in the only language the trap understood—steel.
....
The two remaining Corvettes stayed with Jacob like wolves that had lost the pack but not the hunger.
They didn't try to re-form a neat box anymore. The flipped unit had shattered the illusion of "clean." Now it was raw pursuit—engine screaming, tires hot, radios spitting clipped commands nobody was listening to the same way.
Jacob cut hard into a parking structure as if the city itself had offered him a vertical escape route.
Concrete swallowed sound. The sirens echoed into a warped, metallic howl. The BMW's engine note bounced off walls and returned as ghosts, making it feel like the structure had teeth.
He climbed.
Floor one—tight turn, ramp, a flash of painted arrows.Floor two—another spiral, concrete pillars whipping past inches from his mirrors.Floor three—cars parked in tired rows, their windows reflecting strobing lights like frightened eyes.
Above, the news chopper tracked him like a vulture circling wounded prey. The spotlight swept down through the open gaps in the structure, catching the BMW in bright slices, losing it, catching it again. The entire chase became a vertical spectacle—sound and light and motion winding upward.
And the whole city watched.
At the top level, Jacob stopped.
Not because he was tired.
Because he was choosing a moment.
The BMW rolled to a halt at the far end of the roof deck, opposite the side where the helicopter hovered just above the level—low enough that the downwash made dust and loose trash skitter across the concrete.
The spotlight pinned him again.
Blue and silver. Helmeted silhouette. Still as a statue.
For a heartbeat, it looked like surrender.
Then the two Corvettes arrived—Brian on one side, Sunny on the other—rolling in together and forming a two-car block between Jacob and the only obvious exit ramp.
They didn't step out.
They didn't rush him with guns like desperate street cops.
They stayed in their cars, engines idling, the Corvettes angled like a closing jaw.
Then the loudspeakers came on—tinny, amplified voices shoved into the open air.
"Driver of the BMW!""Shut the vehicle off!""Hands visible!""You are under arrest!"
Sunny didn't sound friendly anymore. Even through the speaker distortion, his voice carried anger—tight and personal, like he hated the fact that he was still here and the ghost was still moving.
Brian's voice didn't come through the speaker, but Jacob could see him behind the Corvette's windshield—rigid posture, eyes locked, the terror from the flipped unit still living somewhere behind his control.
Jacob sat in the BMW, hands resting lightly on the wheel, helmet swallowing his face.
He stared at them through the cracked, strobing light.
He saw what they were doing: trying to end it without stepping out, trying to make the arrest happen by pressure and geometry.
He also saw the helicopter hovering too close, hungry for the shot that would make this the final chapter.
Jacob's chest rose and fell slowly.
Then he moved his thumb.
Not to the gun.
Not to the shifter.
To something the world didn't know existed.
The EMP.
The system didn't speak. No prompt. No countdown.
Just a quiet click in Jacob's mind—like a switch thrown.
For a fraction of a second, nothing changed.
Then both Corvettes went dead.
It happened so fast it looked like the city blinked.
Headlights cut out.Roof strobes died mid-flash.Engines coughed once—like lungs collapsing—and fell into silence.
The loudspeakers cut off mid-command, leaving the last syllable hanging in the air like a broken wire.
On the roof deck, the sudden absence of sound was shocking—concrete, wind, rotor wash, and the distant hum of the city below. Two black predators reduced to inert metal in an instant.
Sunny slammed his hands on the steering wheel, eyes wide.
Brian's mouth opened slightly—pure disbelief.
On the broadcast, the anchor's voice cracked.
"—we… we just lost their—did their vehicles just—?"
Dom's living room erupted in panic.
Mia stood with both hands over her mouth, eyes wet and huge. Letty swore, voice low and sharp. Leon stared like he couldn't breathe. Jesse looked like he was going to be sick.
Dom didn't move.
But his eyes—his eyes went colder, because he understood what that meant:
This wasn't a driver outmaneuvering cops anymore.
This was a driver rewriting the rules under them.
Jacob didn't wait for them to recover.
The BMW launched forward like it had been held back by a chain and the chain just snapped.
It hit the dead Corvettes' blockade at speed.
Not gently. Not threading.
Blowing through.
The first impact shoved Sunny's Corvette sideways like a door kicked off its hinges. The second hit forced Brian's Corvette to bounce and spin, tires squealing on powerless steering, metal scraping concrete.
The two black cars were torn apart just enough to open a gap.
And Jacob took it.
He didn't brake.
He aimed for the top-level barrier at the roof's edge.
For one horrible heartbeat, it looked like suicide.
Then the BMW slammed into the barrier at an angle—not straight on—and rode up the concrete lip like a ramp.
The front wheels lifted.
The rear followed.
And the BMW went airborne.
The helicopter was hovering just above deck height on that side, spotlight aimed down, rotors chopping the air. The camera tracked the leap too late—because nobody expected a car to fly off a parking structure.
But it did.
The blue-and-silver BMW rose into the helicopter's space—close enough that everyone watching could see the perspective shift violently, close enough that the downwash whipped the BMW's smoke-free body and made its paint flare like a comet.
For a split second, the BMW passed only a couple of metres from the helicopter—so close the spotlight washed over the hood in blinding white, so close the camera caught the helmeted silhouette through the windshield like a ghost staring straight into the lens.
Then gravity took it.
The BMW dropped.
The landing hit like a bomb off-screen first—then the camera swung and caught it: the BMW smashing down onto a lower street with a brutal suspension compression, tires exploding into smoke, sparks spitting from the undercarriage as it absorbed the impact.
It should have died.
It didn't.
It bounced once, corrected, and drove away—engine screaming back to life with angry confidence.
The city watched the impossible happen in real time.
On the roof, Sunny sat in a dead Corvette, face lit by the chopper's light, shock turning into pure hatred.
Brian stared down over the edge, hands still on his wheel, chest tight with terror and awe and the sick feeling that he'd just witnessed something that would haunt him forever.
On TV, the anchor's voice broke into helpless disbelief.
"—he just jumped—he just jumped a parking structure—ladies and gentlemen, we have just witnessed—"
Dom's crew reacted like it was a death in the family.
Mia made a small, broken sound and stumbled back into the couch. Letty's eyes were hard, but her hands trembled. Vince stared at the screen with his mouth open, whispering, "No way… no way…"
Dom finally spoke, voice low and grim.
"He's gone."
And down on the streets below, the BMW vanished into the grid again—leaving powerless Corvettes behind, leaving sirens scrambling to catch up, leaving the helicopter circling a rooftop where the hunt had just been humiliated in front of the entire city.
The cops were left in the dust.
And everyone—enforcement, street scene, and civilians alike—understood the same terrifying truth:
Wanted had stopped being something they chased.
He was something that could leave whenever he decided.