Jacob got back to Cooper's Auto on momentum and denial.
The last miles felt like driving through cotton—streetlights smearing into pale streaks, his hands moving without his mind fully authorizing them. The BMW still ran, but it ran like a wounded thing dragged by stubbornness alone. The engine note had thinned into something strained and uneven, and every vibration through the steering column felt like a complaint.
When the roll-up door lifted, it didn't feel like a convenience.
It felt like the shop was swallowing him.
He coasted inside with the headlights off, guided only by the dim spill of the bay lights and the memory of the space. The door slammed shut behind him, cutting the world's sirens and rotors down to a distant, muffled suggestion.
For a moment he just sat there, helmet still on, hands locked to the wheel.
His chest rose and fell too fast.
The inside of his mouth tasted like pennies.
He could still see the head-on collision when he blinked—metal folding, glass bursting, the impossible moment his car had died and then refused to stay dead. He could still feel the officer's gun, the desperation, the terrible split-second where his hand had moved on its own and pulled violence into existence.
The BMW idled with a wet, sick rhythm.
Then it made a sound that wasn't angry anymore.
A thin, pitiful whine—like the car itself was finally allowed to feel pain now that no one was watching.
The idle stumbled.
The dash lights flickered.
Jacob swallowed hard and reached up with shaking fingers, undoing the helmet strap. The latch popped free. He pulled the helmet off and set it on the passenger seat like it was something poisonous he didn't want touching his skin.
His face in the shop light looked wrong for what he'd done—too young, too pale, eyes hollowed out by adrenaline's withdrawal. He stared at the cracked windshield, the scars of impact, the smoke residue on the hood.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and he didn't know if he meant it to the car, to the city, or to himself.
The BMW shuddered again.
Then it shut off with a final, exhausted wheeze—like a creature lowering its head to the ground because it couldn't hold it up anymore.
Silence rushed in.
Not peaceful silence. The heavy kind. The kind that pressed down on his shoulders and forced him to remember that the chase had been real and the fear on people's faces had been real and his own rage had been real.
Jacob sat in that silence until the trembling in his hands stopped being purely adrenaline and started being something else.
Guilt.
He forced himself to stand.
He couldn't afford to collapse. Not here. Not now. If he sat down, he'd drown in it.
The HUD bloomed into view at the edge of his vision, crisp and indifferent.
CHASE COMPLETE: EVADED (WILDERNESS EXIT)HEAT: 5 (ACTIVE)TOTAL EARNINGS:$412,900FUNDS: DEPOSITEDBOUND VEHICLE STATUS:CRITICAL
The number felt obscene. Money as a reward for terror.
Another line appeared.
RECOMMENDATION: SYSTEM REPAIR (SAFEHOUSE ONLY)NOTE: Manual repair insufficient at current damage level
Jacob stared at the BMW and felt the sickest part of the system's power settle into him:
He could erase consequences.
He could rewind damage like the world was a tape.
That didn't make what happened okay. It just made it easier to keep going.
He walked into the workshop recess, opened the system shop with a thought, and found the repair option pulsing like a heartbeat.
FULL SYSTEM RESTORATION — $210,000 — SAFEHOUSE INSTANT
Jacob's jaw clenched. "Do it," he said, voice raw.
The air in the bay shifted—not with sparks or theatrics, but with pressure, like the room itself was being held in a giant hand and gently squeezed. The BMW creaked—metal remembering shapes—and then the damage began to unwrite itself.
Cracks in glass sealed into smooth panes. Bent panels straightened with slow, unnatural grace. Scrapes faded. The smell of burnt oil and scorched rubber thinned until it was just the usual shop scent again—metal, dust, faint grease.
When it was finished, the BMW sat pristine and gleaming, blue-and-silver livery flawless under the lights.
Jacob didn't feel relief.
He felt numb.
Because the car looked untouched, but he wasn't.
He stepped back, stared at the perfect machine, and wondered—briefly, sharply—how many times he could break the world and then pay to pretend it hadn't happened.
The system pinged again.
SYSTEM SUGGESTION: RELEASE FOOTAGEREASON: Narrative stabilization / myth controlOPTION: AI MODULE AVAILABLE (MEDIA TWEAKING)
Jacob's stomach tightened. "No."
The system didn't argue. It simply offered.
PURCHASE: AI MEDIA MODULE (BASIC)COST: $12,000FEATURES: compositing / identity masking / scene synthesis (limited)
Jacob stared at the office desk where the untraceable laptop waited, and he felt the truth he didn't want to admit:
The city was going to tell a story no matter what.
If he didn't shape it, the police would. The news would. The forums would. The myth would run away from him and grow worse teeth than he could imagine.
He bought the module.
The laptop screen lit automatically, already opened to the WANTED // PUBLIC NODE interface. The chase footage appeared in a timeline—coast road, canyon turns, the climb up stone that had made the anchor's voice crack.
Jacob watched it and felt his throat tighten.
From the outside, it didn't look like a man panicking. It looked like a force of nature learning it could hurt things.
The system highlighted a segment—an urban street moment, close to the chaos, close to civilian cars and sidewalks.
A prompt appeared, simple and cold:
SYNTHESIZE WITNESS SHOTGOAL: Disrupt "driver identity" assumptionsMETHOD: Insert bystander near-miss (face visible)RESULT: Confirms driver and bystander are different individuals
Jacob's skin prickled.
He understood instantly. A cheap magic trick, but one the public would swallow whole because people loved explanations that made the impossible feel manageable.
If the public saw Jacob nearly struck by the BMW—face visible, clearly not in the driver's seat—then anyone trying to pin Wanted on "that new guy Jacob Cooper" would sound ridiculous. You couldn't be behind the wheel and on the sidewalk at the same time.
It was a lie.
But it was a lie that protected his fragile "normal" life.
Jacob sank into the desk chair, hands trembling as he watched the AI module do its work. The system built the insert with unsettling competence—lighting matched, motion blur added, grain smeared to fit 2001's low-quality footage. It placed a version of Jacob at the edge of the street, half a step from death, recoiling as the blue-and-silver BMW screamed past.
His face was clear for a heartbeat—wide-eyed, startled, human.
Then it was gone, swallowed by the chaos of the chase.
Jacob watched the clip on loop once.
He felt sick.
He watched it again.
He felt emptier.
The system ran a final checklist.
DRIVER IDENTITY: MASKED ✅META STRIP: COMPLETE ✅WITNESS INSERT: COMPLETE ✅PUBLISH?
Jacob hovered over the trackpad.
He thought of Mia's face in the porch light, tired and kind.
He thought of Dom's voice saying, That's not racing.
He thought of Brian's eyes, hungry and suspicious, and the way Brian had been too close to the chase tonight—too close to dying for a ghost.
Jacob exhaled slowly and clicked Publish.
The site confirmed, calm as a ledger:
PUBLISHEDPROPAGATION: ACTIVEMIRRORS: CREATED
And then the city reacted.
Not with focus.
With noise.
The early internet did what it always did: it argued, it laughed, it panicked, it made theories and then ate them and made new ones. The laptop's monitor window filled with scrolling posts, message boards lighting up, chatrooms spitting out lines faster than any one person could read.
But this time the "Jacob Cooper" insert didn't become a lead.
It became a gasp.
A human moment inside a nightmare.
"HOLY—DID YOU SEE THAT GUY ON THE SIDEWALK?""HE ALMOST GOT SMOKED.""THAT'S INSANE, SOMEONE COULD'VE DIED.""BRO THAT CAR IS A DEMON.""YOU CAN'T CLIMB ROCK LIKE THAT. YOU JUST CAN'T.""THE BYSTANDER LOOKED TERRIFIED—WHOEVER HE IS, HOPE HE'S OK.""POLICE TRIED TO KILL IT. IT GOT BACK UP.""WANTED ISN'T A PERSON ANYMORE."
People didn't try to pull the bystander thread.
They didn't want to.
He was just a face in the chaos—an unlucky stranger almost erased by the myth, a reminder that the legend had weight and could crush anyone nearby.
The arguments stayed where the city wanted them:
Was it real?Was it staged?Was it a movie?Was it a curse?Was it a machine?Was it even human?
And under all those questions, one feeling spread fastest:
Fear.
Not fear of a driver.
Fear of an idea that had stopped behaving like a man.
Jacob sat in the dim office corner of his impossible shop and watched the city digest his lie exactly the way he'd hoped—messily, emotionally, without direction.
He didn't feel clever.
He felt tired.
Outside the office, the BMW M3 GTR sat restored and gleaming as if it had never limped into the bay with a pitiful whine.
Jacob stared at it through the doorway and felt something cold settle into his chest:
He had bought himself distance.
But the myth was still growing.
And every time he fed it—every time he tried to steer it—he could feel it tugging him further away from the person he was pretending to be.
....
Brian O'Connor showed up at the station like a man walking back into a life he didn't fully fit anymore.
The fluorescent lights hit him the second he stepped through the doors—flat, unforgiving, turning everyone's skin the color of paperwork. His mouth tasted like stale beer and regret. His cheek still carried a faint tenderness where Vince's fist had clipped him days earlier, and the memory of last night's chase sat behind his eyes like a migraine made of headlights.
He hadn't slept.
He'd driven until dawn and then sat in his car outside his apartment with the engine off, hands still gripping the wheel, replaying the moment the BMW had climbed stone like it was a living thing.
By the time he finally walked into the bullpen, the place was already vibrating with the kind of tension that meant somebody important was angry.
A television had been dragged out where everyone could see it. The volume was low, but the footage didn't need sound to bruise you—police lights, wreckage, the helicopter spotlight shaking like a nervous hand.
The chase.
Again.
But not the chase from a few days ago.
This one.
Last night.
The room smelled like burnt coffee and too many bodies in one space. Officers stood in clusters, arms crossed, faces tight. A few looked angry. A few looked pale. Everybody looked tired of being embarrassed.
Brian kept his expression neutral and walked in like he belonged.
Someone muttered, "Here comes the hero."
Brian ignored it.
Tanner spotted him and jerked his head toward Bilkins's office. "Lieutenant wants you."
Brian didn't ask why. He already knew.
He pushed open Bilkins's door, and the air inside felt heavier—like the room held pressure the way a sealed container did. Bilkins stood behind his desk, tie loosened, eyes sharp and red-rimmed. Two other men were there as well, neither in uniform—clean suits, calm posture, the kind of corporate control that didn't flinch.
BMW.
Again.
Bilkins didn't offer a greeting. "Sit."
Brian sat.
Bilkins hit a button on a remote, and the TV in the corner of the office switched to a different clip—grainier, dirtier, clearly pulled from the same source that had hosted the first Wanted POV video.
The second one.
The new one.
The clip started mid-chaos: sirens, flashing lights, the BMW's blue-and-silver hood slicing through frame like a blade.
Then it happened—the moment the internet had latched onto overnight.
A bystander on the sidewalk, face visible for a heartbeat, recoiling as the BMW screamed past close enough to steal his breath. The image shook, blurred, then stabilized just long enough to show the man's expression: pure, honest terror.
The clip ended.
Bilkins didn't look at Brian yet. He looked at the BMW men. "You see why I'm losing my mind."
One of the BMW investigators spoke carefully. "This footage is being widely distributed."
Bilkins snapped, "I know it is."
The second BMW man leaned forward slightly. "The suspect's behavior is… escalating."
Bilkins barked a humorless laugh. "Escalating? He used a police cruiser like a battering ram. He drove up a rockface. You want a gentler word for it?"
Brian kept his face still, but his stomach tightened.
Because the bystander's face—
Brian knew that face.
He'd seen it across a counter. In porch light. In the quiet of a garage while cleaning up bottles. Pale, sharp, too young to look that haunted.
Jacob Cooper.
Brian's mouth went dry.
Bilkins finally turned his gaze on Brian. "Where were you last night?"
Brian forced his voice steady. "Off duty."
Bilkins stared at him like he could smell lies. "Funny," he said. "Because the news chopper caught a Mitsubishi in the chase for a minute. Not patrol. Not unmarked. A street car."
Brian didn't blink. "A lot of people drive Mitsubishis."
Bilkins leaned forward, palms on the desk. "Don't play with me, O'Connor. This is not a game. My guys are getting hurt out there."
Brian held his gaze and said the safest truth he could. "I wasn't in the pursuit."
Bilkins' jaw worked. He didn't like it, but he couldn't prove otherwise. Not yet.
The BMW man clicked a pen and nodded toward the TV. "We are also concerned with the appearance of a civilian witness in this new video."
Bilkins' brow furrowed. "The bystander."
The BMW man nodded. "Yes. The presence of that individual… complicates narratives."
Brian felt his pulse spike.
Bilkins gestured at the screen. "Nobody knows who he is?"
The investigator shook his head. "Not at this time."
Bilkins muttered a curse under his breath. "Great. Now we've got copycats, a ghost car, and some unlucky bastard nearly getting killed on camera."
Brian stared at the paused frame—Jacob's face frozen in fear—and felt something cold move through him.
Unlucky bastard.
Sure.
Except Jacob wasn't unlucky enough to be there by chance. Not if Brian's instincts meant anything.
Jacob had been too calm at Dom's. Too sharp. Too aware.
Jacob had told Brian he was undercover.
Now Jacob appeared on a clip on a website that only existed because Wanted wanted it to exist.
Brian's mind tried to reconcile it and couldn't.
If Jacob had been on the sidewalk, he couldn't have been driving.
That was the whole point of the insert.
Brian felt the cleverness of it in his bones, and it made him nauseous.
Bilkins' voice cut in again. "O'Connor. You're still going into Toretto's world. You understand?"
Brian nodded slowly, throat tight.
Bilkins' gaze sharpened. "And you're going to tell me the truth if you know something. Because we're past 'interesting.' We're in 'people die' territory."
Brian swallowed. "Yes, sir."
Bilkins sat back slightly, eyes hard. "Good. Because this Wanted thing? It's not a street racer anymore. It's a disaster waiting for the right intersection."
The BMW men exchanged a glance—controlled, quiet, corporate fear hiding behind professional faces.
Then Bilkins tapped the remote and replayed the bystander moment again, pausing it on Jacob's face.
"Look at him," Bilkins said. "He's terrified. Whoever he is, he's going to end up dead if this keeps going."
Brian stared at the paused frame and felt his gut twist.
Terrified.
Yes.
But also… placed.
Like a chess piece moved onto the board to make an argument.
Bilkins turned off the TV and dismissed the BMW men with a stiff nod. When they left, the room felt smaller.
Bilkins lowered his voice. "You got that look again, O'Connor."
Brian's eyes lifted. "What look."
"The one you get when you're thinking too hard," Bilkins said. "You recognize that bystander?"
Brian held the lieutenant's gaze and felt sweat prick at his ribs under his shirt.
Saying yes would drag Jacob into a world that would chew him up.
Saying no would mean Brian was lying to his own chain of command at the exact moment the city needed him honest.
Brian chose the third option—the one cops chose when they were trying to buy time.
"I've seen him," Brian said carefully. "At Toretto's shop."
Bilkins' face tightened. "Name?"
Brian's mouth went dry. "I don't know."
A lie by omission, and it tasted like metal.
Bilkins stared at him. "You're going to find out."
Brian nodded once, too stiff.
Bilkins pointed at the door. "Get out. And drink some water before you go back in there. You look like hell."
Brian stood and left the office with his mind screaming.
Because the bystander clip had done what it was designed to do:
It severed the easiest link.
It made Jacob Cooper look like just another human being almost killed by the myth.
And that meant Brian couldn't simply suspect Jacob was Wanted anymore—not cleanly, not convincingly, not without sounding like a paranoid cop chasing shadows.
It didn't remove suspicion.
It poisoned it.
Across town, the same video hit Dom's world with a different kind of impact.
It found them through the usual arteries—someone's cousin calling, someone pounding on the door, someone turning on the TV with the kind of urgency that made even Dom look up.
The living room filled again, but this time the vibe wasn't adrenaline.
It was dread.
The footage played, jittery and harsh. Wanted's BMW tore across the screen like a streak of anger.
Then—there, on the sidewalk—Jacob appeared for that heartbeat of time, recoiling as if death had brushed his cheek.
Mia made a sound that wasn't quite a gasp and wasn't quite a sob.
Her hands flew to her mouth again. "That's—"
Letty's eyes narrowed immediately, sharp as a knife. "That's Jacob."
Leon leaned forward, squinting. "No way."
Jesse's voice went thin. "He almost got hit."
Vince, sprawled too comfortably with a beer, sat up like the world had just handed him ammo. "Oh, come on. That dude's everywhere."
Dom didn't speak right away.
He watched the moment again. And again.
Not because he was trying to enjoy it—because he was trying to read the truth inside the blur.
Jacob's face had been clear.
Jacob's fear had looked real.
And the absurdity of it landed hard: the new guy from the shop, the one with the impossible Supra, the one Dom had started to suspect was a mechanic for something bigger… appearing on camera as a bystander inches from death.
Mia's voice trembled. "He could've died."
Letty's gaze stayed fixed. "He shouldn't even be there."
Vince snorted. "Or he staged it."
Mia snapped, turning on Vince with a sharpness that surprised even her. "Shut up."
Vince blinked, then scowled. "What? You don't think it's weird? The ghost nearly runs him over and—what—now he's a victim? That's convenient."
Dom's eyes slid to Vince, and the look was heavy enough to make Vince's mouth close.
Mia's voice softened, but her anger didn't leave. "He helped clean up. He didn't act like—" she stopped, struggling for words. "He didn't act like someone who wanted attention."
Letty's mouth tightened. "Everybody wants something."
Dom finally spoke, low. "That clip doesn't prove anything," he said.
Mia looked at him, desperate. "It proves he's not the driver."
Dom's gaze didn't move from the screen. "It proves he wasn't in the driver seat in that moment," Dom said carefully. "That's all."
The room went quiet.
Because Dom wasn't trying to scare Mia.
He was trying to keep them alive.
Letty nodded slowly, like she'd been thinking the same thing. "You don't know what's real on that tape," she said. "You just know someone wants you to see it."
Mia's eyes flicked back to Jacob's face frozen in fear on the paused frame, and something tender moved across her expression.
"He looked terrified," she whispered.
Dom's jaw tightened. He didn't disagree.
He just felt the weight of it: Jacob had been in his yard days ago. Jacob had laughed with Jesse. Jacob had helped clean. Jacob had looked at Mia like she mattered.
And now the city's ghost had nearly killed him on camera.
Absurd.
Unfair.
And deeply, deeply dangerous.
Because even if Jacob wasn't Wanted…
…Wanted had now brushed close enough to him to make Mia care.
Dom turned the TV off with a sharp click that felt like a decision.
"Everybody stays sharp," Dom said. "And nobody—" his eyes flicked to Vince, then to the room, "—nobody goes looking for that ghost."
Vince scoffed quietly. "We're not scared of some—"
Dom's gaze pinned him. Vince shut up.
Mia stood, restless, the worry on her face too honest. "We should check on Jacob."
Letty exhaled slowly. "Or we should not drag him into our mess."
Mia's voice broke slightly. "He's already in it."
Dom didn't answer immediately.
He could feel the trap tightening from two sides: cops and corporations on one end, street pressure and myth on the other. And now Mia's heart—soft, stubborn—pulling toward the new guy caught in the blast radius.
Dom hated it.
He understood it.
He looked at Mia and softened his voice just enough to sound like a promise. "I'll handle it," he said.
Mia nodded, but her eyes stayed worried.
Because everyone in that room had seen it:
Jacob Cooper had nearly died on screen.
And whether the clip was real or not, one thing was now true in Dom's world—
the ghost had reached into their circle.
....
he next morning, the LAPD stopped talking about speed.
Speed was humiliating, sure—but speed was explainable. Speed was horsepower and gearing and a driver with nerves.
What they couldn't swallow was survivability.
In a fluorescent-lit conference room that smelled like burnt coffee and printer toner, crash photos sat spread across a table: a Crown Vic folded in on itself, the kind of front-end damage that usually came with a fatality report. Close-ups of shattered plastic, bent steel, glass embedded in upholstery.
And beside it, frame grabs of the BMW.
Blue and silver.
A car that had taken a head-on and then started again.
Bilkins looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His eyes were red-rimmed, his patience gone.
"Tell me how," he said, voice flat. "Tell me how that car gets up after that."
A traffic investigator flipped through a stack of stills with a tight mouth. "If it was a race shell," he said carefully, "you could explain some of it. Reinforcement. Cage. Weight distribution. But—"
"But it was moving like it still had a spine," Tanner cut in.
A tech from motor pool—grease under his nails, uniform shirt too clean for the way he looked at the photos—scratched his jaw. "Those Crown Vics can take a beating," he said, almost defensively. "But they're not built for head-on against—against whatever that was."
BMW's people were on speakerphone now, their voices coming through the tinny line like corporate ghosts. The engineer didn't talk much, but when he did, the room went colder.
"The behavior and recovery suggests structural reinforcement beyond civilian specification," he said. "We cannot account for that vehicle as a production unit."
Bilkins' knuckles whitened on the table. "So someone built a tank with a BMW badge."
Silence.
Then the engineer added, careful as a scalpel, "Or someone built something that looks like a BMW."
No one liked that answer either.
Because "someone built a tank" was scary.
But "someone built something that only pretends to be a car" was worse.
In the bullpen, officers replayed the broadcast on a loop, not out of fascination anymore, but out of a grim need to make the impossible obey reality if they watched it enough times.
Brian stood near the back, arms crossed, face blank. He didn't volunteer anything. He didn't need to.
He kept seeing the same moment on screen: the BMW dead at an angle, officers surrounding it with guns drawn, then the engine cough—like it was spitting blood—and the car waking up furious.
And he kept seeing the other clip too—the "bystander" moment, Jacob Cooper's face blown wide with terror on the sidewalk.
The absurdity sat in Brian's chest like a stone.
It didn't help him.
It didn't clear Jacob.
It didn't indict him either.
It just made the case feel like it was being played by someone else's rules.
Dom didn't wait long.
He didn't send Vince. He didn't send Letty. He didn't send anyone who would bring heat into Jacob's doorway.
He went himself.
Late afternoon slid into early evening when Dom's Charger rolled into an industrial pocket Jacob would've sworn nobody should've found. The street was quiet—too quiet—warehouses closing their eyes for the night, chain-link fences holding their breath.
Jacob saw the car through the office window and felt his stomach drop.
For one violent second his body wanted to do the old thing—run, hide, disappear. The system had given him a shop that could swallow secrets, and his first instinct was to crawl deeper into it.
Then the knock came.
Not hard. Not aggressive.
Just… present.
Jacob opened the door with his face neutral and his pulse hammering.
Dom stood in the alley light, hands loose at his sides, expression unreadable but not hostile. He looked too large for the narrow space, like the alley had to widen around him.
"You Jacob?" Dom asked, like he was confirming something he already knew.
Jacob nodded. "Yeah."
Dom's eyes flicked over Jacob's face—not the way a cop looked, not the way Vince looked. Dom looked like he was reading wear and tear.
"You alright?" Dom asked.
The question landed harder than any suspicion would've.
Jacob's throat tightened. He managed a small shrug. "Yeah."
Dom didn't accept the shrug. He waited.
Jacob exhaled slowly and let a safer truth out. "I saw it," he said quietly. "The… the car. The chase. I was close."
Dom's jaw tightened. "The video."
Jacob nodded once.
He expected Dom to grill him about it—why he was there, what he saw, what he knew.
Instead Dom's voice came lower, and for the first time Jacob heard something like real concern under the control.
"You almost got killed," Dom said.
Jacob swallowed. "Yeah."
Dom stared at him for a beat longer than comfortable, then nodded once, as if filing it away in a place that mattered.
"That ain't right," Dom said.
Jacob didn't know what to do with that. The words didn't belong in Jacob's experience of authority figures. They weren't accusation or demand. They were… solidarity.
"Come inside," Jacob said before he could talk himself out of it.
Dom stepped into the shop.
Jacob felt his heart spike—not because Dom might recognize tools or parts, but because the BMW was back there. The real secret. The thing that could shatter this fragile "Jacob Cooper" mask in one glance.
But Cooper's Auto did what it had been built to do.
Dom's gaze drifted around the main bay—lift, tools, shelves, the kind of ordinary grit Dom understood. He didn't wander toward the shadowed recess. He didn't notice the geometry that didn't match. The system's concealment held the space like a folded curtain.
The BMW stayed invisible behind that fold, silent and pristine, like a god choosing not to be seen.
Dom nodded at the shop. "You really opened this?" he asked.
Jacob forced a small smile. "Yeah. Just… starting."
Dom's mouth twitched. "You picked a hell of a time."
Jacob almost laughed, but it came out thin. "Yeah. Guess I did."
Dom leaned back against the workbench, posture relaxed but eyes still sharp. "Mia saw that clip," he said.
Jacob's chest tightened.
Dom continued, voice steady. "She was worried."
The warmth and guilt hit Jacob together—sweet and poisonous. "I'm okay," he said quickly. "Tell her I'm okay."
Dom watched him, then nodded once like he believed the "okay" about as far as it could be believed.
"You should come back," Dom said.
Jacob blinked. "Back?"
"To the house," Dom said. "To the shop. Wherever. Don't matter." His gaze held Jacob's. "You got pulled into something you didn't ask for. That happens in this city. Doesn't mean you gotta be alone in it."
Jacob's throat went tight again, and this time he couldn't hide it with a shrug.
He looked away for half a second, then back. "Why," he asked softly, because he needed to understand. "Why do you care?"
Dom's expression didn't soften, but it shifted into something older.
"Because," Dom said, "I know what it looks like when the city decides you're collateral."
Jacob felt the words like a hand on an old bruise.
Dom pushed off the bench. "Come by tonight," he added, like he was offering something normal on purpose. "Beer. Food. No drama."
Jacob nodded slowly, because saying no felt like turning away from a lifeline. "Alright."
Dom's gaze lingered one last time on Jacob's face, as if trying to memorize it the way he memorized engines.
Then Dom headed toward the door.
He didn't glance into the back fold.
He didn't see the blue-and-silver legend parked in the darkness like a secret heartbeat.
When the door shut behind him, Jacob stood in the quiet shop and let his shoulders sag.
Relief hit him so hard it made him dizzy.
Then guilt followed—hot and immediate.
Dom had come here because he cared.
And Jacob had let him.
All while the thing Dom feared—and the city hunted—sat ten steps away, hidden behind a lie the building itself was helping him keep.
Jacob turned toward the shadowed recess.
Even unseen, he could feel the BMW in there—like a presence.
Like a promise.
Like a threat.
And for the first time since the canyon, Jacob didn't crave speed.
He craved a different kind of escape:
One where he didn't have to keep lying just to be allowed to belong.
...
The station felt smaller once the federal cars showed up.
Not physically—LAPD buildings were built to swallow people—but spiritually, like the air had been claimed by someone who didn't ask permission. The bullpen that usually ran on burnt coffee and routine resentment ran on something sharper now: embarrassment, fear, and the quiet understanding that this case had grown past the department's ability to keep it contained.
Bilkins saw the suits before Brian did.
Two black sedans in the lot, clean and unmarked. People who walked like they were allowed to be anywhere. People who didn't look around for approval because they already had it.
Brian felt it hit his gut—because he'd been a cop long enough to recognize the change in posture from the room the moment someone "bigger" entered.
Tanner muttered, "You gotta be kidding me," like he'd cursed it into existence.
Bilkins didn't curse. He just straightened his tie as if the movement could hold the building together.
The FBI agents didn't storm in.
They arrived with the calm of inevitability.
One man, one woman, both in suits that looked too expensive for the fluorescent light. Their badges appeared briefly, flashed like punctuation.
The woman spoke first. "Lieutenant Bilkins?"
Bilkins nodded. "That's me."
"We're here regarding the vehicle incident—what the media is calling 'Wanted,'" she said, as if the nickname was just a file label and not a growing infection in the city's bloodstream. "And the digital footage that's been circulating."
Bilkins' jaw tightened. "We've been on it."
The man with her stepped closer, eyes scanning the TV cart in the corner where someone had paused the latest clip on the bystander moment—Jacob's terrified face, frozen mid-flinch. "We've reviewed the video," he said. "Both versions. The first POV post and the second with the civilian near-miss."
Bilkins' tone sharpened. "That bystander's not our suspect."
The FBI man's gaze didn't even flicker. "We're less concerned with the bystander and more concerned with the vehicle's capabilities."
Brian felt a cold line form down his spine.
Because that was the difference between the LAPD and the FBI. LAPD wanted the driver. The FBI sounded like it wanted the thing.
Bilkins crossed his arms. "Capabilities."
The woman didn't bother dancing around it. "The durability. The recovery after catastrophic impact. The sustained performance outside expected mechanical limits."
Around them, officers pretended not to listen and listened anyway.
Bilkins' face flushed. "We don't have an explanation for that."
The FBI man nodded once, as if the admission confirmed what he already believed. "That's why we're here."
Tanner couldn't keep quiet. "So what, you're taking over?"
The woman's smile was polite and cold. "We're coordinating."
Bilkins' eyes narrowed. "Coordinating how."
The FBI man's voice went lower, more precise. "We want whatever kept that vehicle operational."
The sentence landed like a weight.
Not who drove it.
Not why.
Whatever kept it running.
Bilkins held his stare. "It's a car."
The FBI man didn't blink. "It behaved like more than a car."
Brian felt the room tighten. Even the loudest cops seemed to go still for a second, because saying it out loud made it real: that something about this wasn't normal crime anymore. It was now categorized as threat, technology, asset.
BMW's people made sure they were heard too.
The speakerphone on Bilkins' desk chimed in with that controlled corporate tone Brian already hated. "We appreciate federal involvement," the BMW rep said. "Our primary concern remains the protection of proprietary design concepts and the prevention of further reputational damage."
Bilkins' expression twitched. "Reputational—"
The BMW rep continued smoothly, "The public is associating BMW with a violent escalation. We want that ended. And we want to identify any source of illicit engineering that resembles our competition prototypes."
Brian watched Bilkins' hands curl into fists, then unclench.
This wasn't just pressure anymore.
This was a vise: the FBI demanding a technological explanation, BMW demanding a corporate explanation, city officials demanding someone to blame, and the public demanding spectacle.
Bilkins looked at Brian suddenly, eyes sharp. "O'Connor."
Brian straightened.
Bilkins' voice was flat. "You're going back in. Toretto. His circle. Anything. Names. Shops. Whoever's feeding this."
Brian nodded once, but his throat was tight.
Because now it wasn't just a street case. If the FBI wanted "whatever kept it running," then this chase was going to turn into something uglier than arrests.
It would become acquisition.
And people got hurt when agencies started thinking in terms of assets.
The FBI woman turned slightly toward Bilkins, tone cordial as a knife. "We'll need full access to your evidence. All footage. All reports. We'll also be assigning personnel to work the media angle. This second clip—" she gestured at the paused frame of Jacob nearly dying, "—is generating public sympathy. That's noise we can use, but it's also a distraction."
Bilkins didn't like hearing his city described as "noise."
But he didn't have the leverage to argue.
He just nodded, and the nod looked like swallowing something bitter.
Brian stood there feeling the room get colder and more official around him. He felt the chase shifting from a street myth to a national problem.
And in the middle of it all—absurdly, inexplicably—he saw Jacob Cooper's face frozen on the screen, wide-eyed with terror.
A bystander.
A victim.
A human detail the internet had latched onto.
Brian couldn't tell if it made Jacob safer…
…or if it just made him a convenient piece on someone else's board.
That night, Jacob arrived at Dom's house like someone returning from a storm.
He drove the Supra slow and quiet, plates shining under streetlight like a lie that had learned to behave. He parked at the curb and sat for a second with his hands on the wheel, staring at the house's porch light as if it might flicker off the moment he stepped out—like belonging was something that could be revoked by the universe without warning.
He was halfway up the walkway when the door opened.
Mia didn't wait for him to speak.
She crossed the small distance and wrapped her arms around him hard.
Jacob froze for a heartbeat—muscles locking out of reflex, the old instinct to keep space. Then the warmth hit him, the simple human certainty of contact, and his arms moved around her like they'd been waiting for permission.
Her voice came muffled against his shoulder. "Oh my God."
Jacob swallowed. "I'm okay."
Mia pulled back just enough to look at his face, eyes shining with anger and worry braided together. "You were on that video," she said, as if accusing the universe. "You almost—"
"I know," Jacob whispered.
Behind her, the house felt crowded in a familiar way—Dom near the doorway, arms crossed, gaze steady but not hard. Letty leaning against the frame, expression sharp, eyes scanning Jacob like she expected to find bruises. Leon and Jesse visible inside, both looking like they'd been carrying worry longer than they wanted to admit.
Even Vince, further back, watched with an expression that was unreadable in the low light—less triumphant than before, more unsettled.
Dom stepped forward, voice low. "You sure you're alright?"
Jacob nodded. "Yeah."
Letty's eyes narrowed. "You look like you haven't slept."
Jacob let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh. "Yeah," he admitted. "That's… probably true."
Jesse blurted, unable to hold it in. "Man, we saw you—like—right there—" he gestured vaguely, as if the footage was still hovering in the air. "That car—Wanted—almost took you out."
Jacob's chest tightened. He forced his voice steady. "It was close."
Leon shook his head slowly. "That's crazy."
Mia's hand stayed on Jacob's arm like she was anchoring him to the porch. "We thought you were—" she stopped, swallowing emotion. "We were worried."
Jacob's throat ached.
He didn't know how to accept care without feeling like he'd stolen it.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
Dom's voice cut in, calm. "Don't apologize for being in the wrong place."
Jacob's eyes flicked to Dom, surprised.
Dom's gaze held him. "City's getting ugly," Dom added. "You didn't ask for that."
Jacob nodded once, because arguing would be admitting how much he actually had asked for—how often he'd chased speed like it was salvation. He couldn't tell them the truth. Not here. Not now.
Mia squeezed his arm. "Come inside," she said. "Please."
Jacob let her guide him across the threshold.
The house smelled like food and beer and life. A normal mess—couches lived in, plates half cleared, the kind of warmth that didn't feel like it was trying to trick him.
And as he stepped into it, Jacob felt something he hadn't felt since arriving in this world:
Not safety.
Not peace.
But the fragile, dangerous sense that people might actually care whether he made it through the night.
He didn't see the way Dom watched him with suspicion braided into concern.
He didn't notice Letty's gaze lingering on him a beat too long, as if she were trying to catch a tell.
He only felt Mia's hand still on his arm, steady and real.
And somewhere far away, in an office lit by fluorescents and pressure, the FBI was making it clear what came next:
They didn't want a ghost story.
They wanted the engine of the ghost.