The freeway was a ribbon of light and speed, but it was also a stage.
Jacob felt it now—how the air itself seemed crowded with eyes even when the helicopters fell behind. The chase had spilled into the country's bloodstream, into radios and televisions, into the mouths of strangers who would wake up tomorrow and tell the story like it happened to them.
And the worst part was that the BMW—his bound vehicle, his impossible lifeline—still wanted more.
It kept pulling.
It kept asking the horizon to come closer.
Jacob's hands stayed steady on the wheel because they had to, but inside the helmet his jaw was clenched hard enough to ache.
He watched the next exit sign approach in a blur of reflective green.
He didn't choose the exit because it was clever.
He chose it because it was messy.
Because the freeway was honest speed, and honest speed was trackable. On the street, the world broke into angles and shadows and split-second decisions—places where a car that shouldn't exist could disappear the way a rumor disappears when you try to grab it.
He signaled out of reflex—an absurd gesture at this velocity—then dove across lanes with surgical violence, slipping into a gap that shouldn't be there.
A sedan's brake lights flare; a horn blared; a driver's mouth opened in a silent shout as Jacob flashed past.
The off-ramp rose.
Concrete walls closed in.
The BMW's tires sung over the rougher surface. Jacob braked hard, not enough to kill speed but enough to keep the car from becoming a missile. The rear wiggled—controlled, contained—and he felt the Level 2 stability holding it together like invisible hands.
Behind him, far back now, the sirens were thinner.
But they weren't gone.
They never feel gone until they are.
Jacob dropped into surface streets, and 2001 Los Angeles greeted him like an old bruise: darker corners, fewer cameras, neon signs buzzing with tired light, billboards that look like they've been sunbaked for years.
The roads weren't as clean. The lane paint was faded. The city felt less like a polished machine and more like a living thing with scars.
Police radios crackled in the distance—he couldnt hear words, but he could hear urgency. Somewhere, officers were guessing his exit, calling units to grid the streets, throwing nets where they thought he'd be.
He didn't give them "think."
He gave them wrong.
A hard right into an industrial spur road that looked dead at this hour. Another turn into a corridor of warehouses. He killed the headlights for two heartbeats—just long enough to vanish between pools of sodium light—then flicked them back on before the darkness could swallow his depth perception whole.
His breathing turned ragged in the helmet.
Sweat trickled behind his ear, trapped by padding. His hands ached from the tension of holding the wheel like it's the only real thing in the universe.
The HUD hovered at the edge of his vision like a patient predator.
HEAT: 4ACTIVE BOUNTY: $75,000TOTAL (CURRENT): $—UPDATINGTIP: Line-of-sight broken = evasion probability increased
He took an underpass and the city briefly became a throat of concrete. Echo swallowed his engine note. The BMW's exhaust became a thunderclap that bounced off walls and returned as ghosts.
When he emerged, he saw it: a patrol car ahead at an intersection, parked at an angle, roof lights off but engine idling. A roadblock in the making, but incomplete—one officer, one car, waiting for confirmation.
Jacob's stomach dropped.
He couldn't outrun the sky anymore—he already did—but he couldn't outrun math.
Enough patrol cars, enough intersections, and the city becomes a grid that closes around him.
He needed a hole.
Not a street.
A place.
The system pinged again, softer this time, almost intimate.
SAFEHOUSE ROUTE SUGGESTION: AVAILABLE NOTE: Breaking visual contact triggers safehouse eligibility.
Jacobdidnt't understand what that meant. It felt like a trick.
But he was out of time for philosophy.
He slipped into a narrow access lane behind a warehouse, a strip of pavement barely wide enough for the BMW's shoulders.
The car fit like it was made for it, mirrors clearing by inches. He killed the lights again and let the M3 roll on momentum, engine dropping to a lower growl.
The darkness was thick here. Only a few distant streetlights seeped through the gaps between buildings.
And then, at the end of the lane, he saw a roll-up door half-shadowed by an overhang. Beside it: a faded sign, old paint flaking, letters barely legible.
COOPER'S AUTO(…as if the city itself is laughing at him.)
Jacob's throat tightened so hard it hurt.
His name.
His name was on a shop that shouldn't exist.
He almost blew past it out of pure disbelief.
But the HUD highlighted the door with a faint, cold outline.
SAFEHOUSE DETECTED ACCESS: GRANTED (CHASE ACTIVE)WARNING: Entry will sever pursuit tracking if completed unseen.
He didn't get to wonder how. He didn't get to question whether this is fate or a system-generated lie.
He only got to decide whether he wanted to live.
Jacob swingung the BMW into position and rolled to the door. The engine idled with a tight, impatient vibration. He expected the door to be locked.
Instead, the roll-up shudders—then began to rise on its own with a soft mechanical rattle, as if someone inside heard him coming and decided to let him in.
The opening revealed darkness and the faint smell of oil.
Jacob drove in.
The moment the BMW's nose crossed the threshold, the outside sound seemed to dull, like the building was swallowing it. He killed the engine and the sudden silence hit him like a slap. The ticking of hot metal became deafening. His breath inside the helmet became the only storm left.
...
Silence hit Jacob like a delayed collision.
The roll-up door slammed down behind him with a final metallic clang, and the sound of the city—sirens, rotors, horns, the whole violent choir of Los Angeles—got cut into something distant and muffled, as if the building swallowed noise the way a throat swallows breath.
For a few seconds he just sat in the driver's seat, hands still on the wheel, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed forward through the windshield.
The BMW ticked as it cooled—tiny, sharp pops in the metal. The smell of hot oil and brake heat hung in the cabin like smoke that hasn't decided whether to leave.
Jacob's breathing wss too loud.
Then his hands began to shake.
Not from cold. Not from weakness. From the sudden absence of danger. His body didn't know what to do when it isn't being hunted, so it kept hunting itself.
Tremors rippled through his fingers, up his wrists, into his forearms—an aftershock of adrenaline that refuses to let go.
He fumbled the helmet strap with clumsy, numb hands. The latch resisted, then gave. He pulled the black racing helmet free, and cool air hit his face like a splash of water.
His features in the dim shop light looked wrong for the violence he just survived—sharp cheekbones, pale skin, eyes too bright and too tired at the same time. Twenty years old in the face, haunted in the gaze. A Cillian Murphy look-alike who seems like he belonged in a quiet room thinking dangerous thoughts, not on a freeway outrunning helicopters.
He stared at the dash, at the faint reflection of the hood's blue-silver ghost, and something in his chest tightened so hard he had to lean forward like he's been punched.
He was supposed to be in a courtroom.
He was supposed to be waiting for a sentence.
Instead he was here—alone in an unfamiliar garage with a legendary car cooling under flickering lights—feeling the sickest kind of relief: the kind that makes you guilty for being glad you escaped.
A laugh broke out of him, thin and ugly, and collapsed into a half-sob before it could finish.
He pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth like he can hold the sound in.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered to nobody.
The system answerd anyway.
A crisp overlay blooming at the edge of his vision, calm as a ledger.
CHASE STATUS:EVADEDTOTAL CHASE EARNINGS:$132,600FUNDS: DEPOSITEDHEAT: REDUCED (TEMPORARY)REWARD:SAFEHOUSE UNLOCKED
A second line appeared, softer, almost matter-of-fact.
SAFEHOUSE: COOPER'S AUTO (CONCEALED)FUNCTIONS: GARAGE / MECHANIC BAY / WORKSHOP / SHOP ACCESS
Jacob inhaled, slow and shaky.
The name—Cooper's Auto—landed in his gut like a stone. His name shouldn't be on anything in this world. It shouldn't be painted on a sign, stamped into a place, waiting like a trap dressed up as a gift.
Yet the building feels… ready. Like it had been sleeping, and his arrival woke it.
The overhead lights hummed to life one by one, old fixtures sputtering before they steady. The space revealed itself in patches: stained concrete, tool pegboards, a hydraulic lift that looked used but solid, shelves stacked with boxes and parts that smell of rubber and dust. There was an office corner with a cracked vinyl chair and a desk scarred by years of elbows.
And behind the second bay, there was a shadowed recess where the building's geometry turns wrong—an extra depth that shouldn't exist based on what he saw from outside. A pocket. A fold.
A place where a car that shouldn't exist could be hidden.
Jacob got out of the BMW on legs that felt unfamiliar in their stillness. He walked a slow circle around the M3 GTR, fingertips grazing the panel where the PIT hit scraped paint.
The damage was there—thin scars, a little roughness—but the metal beneath felt too intact. Too strong.
His mind flashed back to the Crown Vic's front end buckling instead of his rear quarter panel, and a chill crept up his spine.
He should be dead. Or in cuffs. Or both.
Instead the car is standing here like it's smug.
The HUD flickered again.
ABILITY:SPEEDBREAKER — UNRESTRICTED
No timer. No rationing. No cooldown.
A lever in his skull that could thicken time whenever he needs it.
Jacob's stomach rolled.
It's one thing to have speed. It's another thing to have power over the world's tempo and know—deep down—that the kind of person he used to be would've abused it until something broke.
Maybe until he broke.
He stepped away from the car and into the shadowed recess behind the bay, drawn by the wrongness of it.
The air changed back there. Cleaner. Colder. Like the building held its breath in this pocket.
A second workbench sat under a directed lamp—newer, sturdier, laid out with clean trays, measuring tools, a compact milling unit that looks disguised in plain gray casing.
It didn't scream "future" the way a sci-fi set would. It was more unsettling than that—practical, like something engineered to exist quietly.
Jacob reached out and touches the edge of the bench. The metal was cool, real.
A menu unfolded in his vision with the clean inevitability of fate.
WORKSHOP ONLINEMANUFACTURING: ENABLEDCATEGORY UNLOCKED:NFS-BASED TECHNOLOGY
(FUTURELINE)NOTE: Manufactured goods may be sold.
WARNING: Usage increases attention.
Jacob swallowed. His throat wss raw. His eyes stung.
It wasn't just a hideout.
It was a beginning.
A way to turn the chase into infrastructure. A way to turn panic into product.
A way to plant roots in 2001 with tools from a future this world hasn't earned.
He tried to imagine himself doing it—standing behind a counter, selling miracles to strangers—and the thought makes him feel sick.
Because money always came with consequences for him.
Even in his old world, the problem was never the engine. It was the hunger underneath it. The need to keep going because stopping meant hearing his own thoughts.
He looked at the manufacturing list that appeared like an offer.
FUTURELINE BLUEPRINTS (Tier 0–1):– High-Flow ECU Mapper (Discrete)– Pursuit-Grade Brake Compound–
Adaptive Traction Controller (Prototype)– Reinforced Panel Weave– "BlackBox" Signal Scrambler (Limited Use)
REQUIRES: Funds + Base Materials + Time
Jacob's hands curled into fists at his sides.
He could build. He could sell. He could become valuable enough that the street protects him—not because they love him, but because they want what he made.
Or he could use the shop as a tomb and pray the world forgets him.
Outside, faint through the walls, the city kept moving. Somewhere far away, sirens wailed —distant now, searching streets that will never give Jacob back tonight.
And in that distance, Jacob could almost hear the other sound that matters: the talk. The aftershock of spectacle. The way people repeat a story when they don't have a name for it, so they give it one.
They won't have Jacob Cooper.
They won't have a face. They won't have a plate. They won't even have a clear body type. Just a black helmet behind a dark visor, a blue-silver blur, and the awful moment the helicopters couldn't keep up.
They'd tell it like a ghost story.
They'd call the driver a phantom.
They'd argue whether the car was real or a trick of camera angle and adrenaline.
And because this city couldn't resist turning fear into a nickname, it would land somewhere simple and sharp—something that felt like a label stolen from a wanted poster.
Wanted.
Jacob closed his eyes and let the word exist in the dark. Not as a badge. Not as pride.
As a verdict the world wrote for him without knowing who he was.
He opened his eyes again.
He walked back out into the main bay, sitting on the cracked vinyl chair in the office corner, and stared at the BMW through the half-light.
His chest ached with a loneliness so sudden it was almost funny. In his old life, at least he understood the rules of being trapped. Here, freedom is a stranger's house and the keys feel stolen.
The system stayed quiet for a long moment, then offers one more piece of clarity—cold, precise.
SAFEHOUSE PROTOCOL: ACTIVECONCEALMENT: HIGH (LOCAL)NOTE: No external records. No registered utilities.TIP: Choose your first build carefully.
Jacob's breath trembled on the way out.
He thought of the first time he ever drove fast enough to feel invincible—and how quickly invincibility turned into a habit, and how habits turned into consequences, and how consequences turned into that courtroom.
He looked at the workbench again, at the future crammed into a menu.
Then he looked at the BMW.
A legend parked on stained concrete, cooling like a beast that just tasted blood.
Jacob put his face in his hands.
For the first time since he woke up in this world, he let himself feel it all at once—the terror, the relief, the grief for a life he left mid-sentence, and the sick, bright spark of possibility that scared him more than the cops ever did.
Because now he wasn't just running.
Now he could build.
And if he builds, the myth of "Wanted" won't stay a ghost story for long
..
Brian O'Connor didn't sleep.
Not really.
He lay on his back in a cheap apartment that smelled faintly of detergent and old carpet, staring at the ceiling while the chase replayed behind his eyes in perfect, merciless loops—blue and silver flashing under streetlights, a black helmet where a face should've been, the way the suspect car took a PIT like it was a shove in a crowded bar instead of a maneuver meant to end the night.
And the worst part—what kept Brian's mind from settling—wasn't the speed.
It was the discipline.
That driver didn't drive like an amateur drunk on adrenaline. He didn't drive like a kid trying to become a story. He drove like someone who'd already been hunted before.
Someone who understood spacing and weight transfer and how to keep a machine balanced at the edge of catastrophe.
Someone who, for a few seconds, made Brian feel like he was the one in an inferior car.
By morning, the station smelled like burnt coffee and stale stress. A TV in the corner ran the same loop of helicopter footage—grainy, shaky, zoomed too far—but still unmistakable. The anchor's voice had already drained into numb repetition, but every time the blue-silver coupe streaked through frame, the room's energy tightened.
Officers watched it like gamblers watching a bad beat.
Brian stood at a metal table with a folder spread open and the kind of headache that felt like a nail behind the eyes. He'd already done the obvious things. Twice.
No plate. No readable VIN in the footage. No clear driver face—helmet, visor, black like a swallowed secret. No match on paint scheme in any local DMV records, because nothing in the database looked like that car.
Even the make and model were suspect.
People kept saying "BMW," but there were moments in the video where it looked like something else entirely—too low, too aggressive, too… wrong.
He'd run every angle anyway.
He'd called dispatch, asked for exact pursuit times and routes, then checked every unit log for any moment someone got close enough to touch the car. One cruiser reported "side contact" and "suspect vehicle remained stable." Another wrote, bluntly, "vehicle unusually durable."
Unusually durable was a polite way to say it didn't behave like a car should behave.
He'd requested any traffic cam footage that might've caught the freeway exit, but in 2001 there weren't eyes on every corner—just scattered cameras near major interchanges, and even those were low-res, often pointed at the wrong lane, sometimes dead. The few frames he got were smeared with compression artifacts and motion blur until the BMW looked like a streak of light with a mouthful of shadow.
He'd checked tow yards for a wrecked blue BMW with police paint transfer. Nothing.
He'd checked hospitals for crash injuries that might've matched a driver pulling himself out of a miracle. Nothing.
He'd canvassed the container yard, found fresh tire marks and the faint scrape of paint on a container corner, but the workers he spoke to just shrugged and lied the way men lie when they don't want cops lingering in their world.
Everyone had heard the story. Nobody knew anything.
Or nobody wanted to.
Brian rewound the tape again in the evidence room, fingers tapping the VCR's cheap plastic buttons harder than necessary. The monitor flickered. The footage jumped.
There it was: the moment the car drifted, corrected, and snapped around into a full 180—too clean, too confident—before surging away back through the formation.
Brian paused on the frame where the spotlight caught the hood.
Blue and silver. Jagged lines.
A car that looked like a brand.
A car that looked like a warning.
He leaned closer until the screen's static buzzed in his ears.
Wanted.
The nickname had already spread through the station like a virus. It started as gallows humor—"What do we call the ghost?"—and ended up on whiteboards and in radio chatter like it had always been his name.
Because "ghost" was too soft.
Because "Wanted" sounded like a poster, sounded like an insult, sounded like a dare.
Brian sat back, jaw tight.
He wasn't supposed to take it personally.
But it felt personal anyway.
Because Brian wasn't just a cop. He was a car guy who'd learned to put that part of himself in a box. He'd learned to be professional, to be procedure, to be the man behind the badge instead of the man behind the wheel.
And then a black-helmeted nobody showed up in a blue-silver myth and made the sky lose him.
And now Brian couldn't stop hearing that engine note in his head like it had carved itself into him.
A knock sounded at the evidence room door.
Brian looked up.
Sergeant Tanner—thick neck, tired eyes, impatience worn like a second uniform—didn't wait for an invitation.
"Lieutenant wants you," Tanner said. His voice had the rough edge of a man who'd already had this conversation three times this morning. "Now."
Brian stood, the chair legs scraping the floor. "About Wanted?"
Tanner's mouth twitched like he hated the name. "About the fact the whole country saw an LAPD chase turn into a magic trick."
The hallway to the lieutenant's office felt narrower than it used to. People's eyes followed Brian—some curious, some resentful. Everybody wanted to blame somebody when a suspect vanished on live television.
When Brian walked in, Lieutenant Bilkins was standing by the window with his hands on his hips, staring down at the parking lot like he could bully answers out of concrete.
His tie was loosened. His shirt sleeves rolled. His face had the kind of red tint that meant stress, not sun.
He didn't turn around at first. He just said, "Close the door."
Brian closed it.
Bilkins finally faced him, and Brian saw something in his eyes that wasn't just anger—it was pressure. The kind that comes from higher up, from phones ringing, from city officials asking why the police let a ghost make them look stupid.
"You come up with anything?" Bilkins asked.
Brian kept his voice calm because that was what you did in front of a superior. "No plate. No identification. No match on paint. No stolen report that fits. No tow yard hits. No hospital hits."
Bilkins' jaw clenched. "So we got nothing."
"We've got behavior," Brian said, unable to help himself. "He drove like he's trained. Like he knows how to manage a car at the limit. He didn't panic."
Bilkins stared at him a beat. "You impressed, O'Connor?"
Brian felt heat climb his neck. "I'm saying he's not some kid joyriding."
Bilkins exhaled hard through his nose, then motioned toward the TV in the corner of his office. The footage was paused on the same blurred shot Brian had been studying. A blue-silver streak. A black helmet.
"Do you know what the brass wants?"
Bilkins said. "They want a name. They want a face. They want a perp walk to feed back into the same news cycle that just embarrassed this department."
Brian didn't answer. He didn't have anything that would satisfy that.
Bilkins continued, voice lower. "We pulled the timeline. We pulled witness calls. We pulled every lead we can scrape off the pavement."
He picked up a folder from his desk and tossed it onto the table. It slid to a stop in front of Brian.
Brian opened it.
Photos. A map with circles. Notes. A grainy still of a crowd near an industrial stretch—cars angled, people gathered.
A street race.
Bilkins tapped the still with a blunt finger.
"Your suspect blew through a race meet during the chase. Witnesses called it in after the fact. Said it was like a jet. Said the cops weren't even close. Said they didn't see the driver's face, just a black helmet."
Brian's eyes lingered on the crowd in the photo. He recognized the vibe immediately even without clear faces: the way cars were parked, the casual ownership of the street, the hush-before-the-launch energy.
Street racing wasn't just a hobby in L.A. It was a network.
A web of mechanics, drivers, lookouts, buyers.
"Who was there?" Brian asked, though he already knew what Bilkins was going to say.
Bilkins' expression hardened. "Dominic Toretto."
The name landed heavy in the room.
Brian had heard it in training. Heard it in whispered briefings. A local legend with grease under his nails and the kind of influence cops pretended not to respect.
Bilkins leaned forward slightly. "You know what I think? I think this 'Wanted' ghost didn't just pick that street by accident. I think he ran to something. To people. To cover."
Brian kept his face neutral, but his mind was already spinning through possibilities. If Wanted had shot through a race, he might've been looking for crowd cover, yes—but he also might've been drawn to the one place in the city where speed was currency.
And if Toretto's circle had even touched that car—if they'd seen it up close, heard it, tracked it—
They might be the only ones who could point to where the ghost disappeared.
Bilkins' voice sharpened. "The department's gonna lean into what we can lean into. We can't catch a ghost with uniforms and Crown Vics. So we do it the old way."
Brian looked up. "Undercover."
Bilkins didn't blink. "Undercover."
Brian's throat felt tight. "You want me to go after Toretto now?"
"I want you in his world," Bilkins said. "Yesterday. I want you in his shop, in his circle, in his trust. I want you where rumors show up before they hit the street."
Brian's fingers tightened on the folder without him noticing. He thought of the footage again—blue and silver sliding out of a PIT, the car refusing to break, the way it accelerated until even helicopters fell behind.
He thought of how that looked to a racer.
Not like a suspect.
Like a miracle.
And miracles don't stay secret in that world.
Bilkins watched him carefully.
"This isn't just about cars, O'Connor. This is about making an example. And right now the only road that leads to 'Wanted' runs through Dominic Toretto."
Brian wanted to argue. Wanted to say they were building a case on a hunch, on proximity, on the lazy assumption that every fast thing in L.A. belonged to Dom.
But he also knew how it worked. The department didn't do well with mysteries. It didn't like ghosts. It needed something it could put in handcuffs.
And if "Wanted" really was a ghost—if he really existed outside normal records—then the only people who might touch that ghost were the ones who lived where laws got thin and engines got loud.
Brian nodded once, slow.
Bilkins' tone softened just a fraction—not kindness, but a reminder of the stakes.
"You're good behind the wheel. You're smart. You can get close. But don't forget what you are."
A cop, Brian thought.
A cop who loved cars.
A cop who was about to lie to people who lived by something he secretly understood.
Brian closed the folder. "When do I start?"
Bilkins didn't hesitate. "Today. You're going in early. Get to his shop. Get a feel. Make contact. Don't push too hard—Toretto smells badges."
Brian stood there for a moment longer, feeling the shift in his life like a gear change he didn't initiate.
He'd joined the department thinking he'd be chasing criminals.
Now he was chasing a myth.
Now he was being sent into the orbit of Dominic Toretto because somewhere in that orbit—under neon, under grease, under loyalty—there might be a black-helmeted ghost the city had started calling Wanted.
And Brian couldn't tell which thought unsettled him more:
That he might find the driver…
Or that part of him hoped the ghost stayed free, just a little longer, so Brian could keep chasing the impossible.