Brian stood in the hospital corridor like he didn't belong to either door.
On his left was Marisol Vega's room—machines breathing for her, monitors counting a life that didn't feel like it should be reduced to numbers. On his right was another room with a different kind of silence: an officer in a coma, head wrapped, face bruised, the aftermath of a night that had turned steel into shrapnel.
Two casualties of the same hunt.
Two bodies paying for a ghost.
Brian leaned against the wall between them, hands shoved in his jacket pockets so nobody could see them tremble. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, his jaw tight from holding back words that wouldn't help.
Sunny stood beside him, posture rigid, face bruised in places that weren't visible under the fluorescent glare but lived in the set of his mouth. The friendliness was gone. The "Sunny" persona had been burned off somewhere between the parking structure and the dead Corvettes.
Sunny exhaled like a man trying not to scream. "That bastard."
Brian didn't answer.
Sunny's voice sharpened. "He did this. All of this. He's a disease."
Brian turned his head slowly. "We did this," he said quietly.
Sunny snapped his gaze to him. "Excuse me?"
Brian's throat tightened. He gestured faintly—left door, right door. "We kept pushing," he said. "We kept escalating. We could've pulled off. We could've backed down when civilians were in the lane. We could've—" his voice broke slightly, then steadied, "—done anything different."
Sunny's laugh was sharp and ugly. "Anything different? He turned our cars off like lights. He jumped a parking structure. He's not a driver, he's—"
"A man," Brian cut in, and the word came out raw. "A man who's terrified and angry and cornered."
Sunny's eyes hardened. "You still sympathizing with him?"
Brian didn't sympathize with the wreckage.
He sympathized with the fact that this whole thing had become a machine that ate people.
He looked at the closed doors again and felt the weight of them press into his ribs.
Sunny's voice dropped. "We should've ended it," he muttered. "Should've put him down the second we had contact."
Brian's stomach turned. "No."
Sunny stepped closer, a fraction, like he wanted to fight Brian too. "No? You saw what he did. You saw that officer." He nodded toward the coma room. "You saw Vega. You still saying no?"
Brian held Sunny's stare, and the anger in him finally had a shape.
"I'm saying we're not executioners," Brian said.
Sunny's mouth curled. "Then you're in the wrong task force."
A nurse passed by and glanced at them sharply. Brian forced his posture to loosen, forced his voice back down.
Sunny didn't bother.
He looked at the doors like he wanted to kick them in and drag the guilt out by force.
Then Brian's pager buzzed.
Not the soft beep of routine.
The urgent vibration that meant now.
Sunny's phone buzzed at the same time.
They looked at each other with the same exhausted recognition.
Back to the station.
Back to the fluorescent rooms where bodies became numbers and mistakes became "adjustments."
At LAPD, the atmosphere had turned predatory.
Not in the street sense—in the institutional sense. The building hummed with pressure: city officials calling, BMW's people insisting, the FBI's calm hunger sharpening into something less patient.
They pulled Brian and Sunny into a conference room where the lights were too bright and the air smelled like burnt coffee and toner. A large screen dominated one wall.
On it: the parking structure feed, paused on the exact moment the two Corvettes died.
Brian watched it and felt his stomach drop all over again.
Headlights on. Strobes flashing. Loudspeaker mid-command.
Then—nothing.
Dark.
Dead.
The room was packed: Bilkins, Tanner, motor pool techs, a couple of engineers, FBI agents in suits that made them look like they'd never bled.
The lead FBI agent pointed at the frozen frame. "Play it."
The footage rolled.
The two Corvettes went dead in perfect, impossible simultaneity.
The loudspeakers cut mid-syllable.
Then the BMW launched through the block and flew off the roof deck like physics had been asked politely to step aside.
A tech from motor pool leaned forward, face pinched, and spoke with reluctant awe. "That wasn't a mechanical failure."
Bilkins' voice was rough. "No kidding."
The tech shook his head slowly. "Both cars lost power like someone unplugged them from reality."
The room went quiet for half a beat.
An engineer—older, grease under his nails, eyes tired—pointed at the screen. "External event," he said. "Not internal. Not fuel. Not ignition. Not a component cascade. It's like the entire electrical system got ripped out at once."
"An EMP," Tanner muttered.
The engineer hesitated. "Not a normal EMP," he said. "Range, precision, timing… those cars were shielded. At least, they were supposed to be. This—" he swallowed, "—this was… targeted."
The FBI agent's eyes gleamed.
Brian saw it and felt sick.
Because where he saw catastrophe, she saw opportunity.
Her voice remained calm, but it carried a hunger that made the air feel colder. "So the target can remotely disrupt reinforced pursuit vehicles."
Bilkins looked like he wanted to throw the screen out the window. "Great."
The agent continued, unbothered. "That means the enabling factor is more advanced than we projected."
Sunny's fists clenched. "We need authorization," he said, voice tight. "We need to take him down hard next time."
Bilkins snapped, "You already took him down hard. Look where it got us."
Sunny's eyes flashed. "Then let me finish it."
Brian felt the room tilt.
He stared at the footage again—the moment the cars died—and felt the ramifications settle into his bones like lead.
Marisol on a ventilator.
An officer in a coma.
A Corvette flipping overhead like a falling building.
The city watching a car jump within meters of a helicopter.
This wasn't a case anymore.
This was an arms race.
And Brian was trapped inside it.
He looked at the FBI agent and realized, with a quiet horror, that the Bureau was no longer even pretending this was about public safety.
They wanted the mechanism.
They wanted to reproduce it, own it, weaponize it.
Their restraint wasn't moral restraint.
It was patience until acquisition was possible.
The lead agent turned to the room. "We escalate resources," she said. "We adjust tactics. We do not lose the target again."
Brian's throat tightened. He heard himself speak before he could stop it.
"And if more people get hurt?"
The agent looked at him like he'd asked an irrelevant question. "Then we reduce exposure," she said smoothly. "We control the environment. We refine the approach."
Brian swallowed hard, because he knew what "control the environment" meant.
It meant more traps.
More staged chaos.
More collateral dressed up as "risk management."
Sunny leaned toward Brian, voice low and venomous. "Next time, you don't hesitate."
Brian didn't answer.
He couldn't.
The guilt was too loud.
...
Jacob got back to Cooper's Auto before dawn with the taste of sirens still in his teeth.
He didn't bring the BMW home.
He couldn't.
Not after what the whole city had just watched. Not after the rooftop leap, the crash landing, the way the chase had torn through streets like a storm. He drove the M3 GTR straight out past the edges of familiar neighborhoods and into the wilderness storage the system had quietly bought—remote, hidden, natural cover—then locked it away like he was burying a part of himself that had started to feel too sharp to hold.
He returned in the Supra like a man trying to look normal again.
When he rolled into the alley behind his shop, the roll-up door lifted and swallowed him, and the silence inside hit like a delayed impact.
Tools hung neatly on pegboard. The lift sat idle. The concrete floor looked too clean for how dirty his mind felt.
Jacob stood in the main bay for a long moment with his hands braced on the workbench, breathing slowly through the ache in his ribs that wasn't physical.
He'd told people to stay home.
He'd tried to keep the streets clear.
And still the night had turned into wreckage.
A Corvette flipping into scrap. Patrol cars smashed. A city watching in fear.
Jacob's jaw tightened until it hurt.
Then his phone rang.
He flinched at the sound like it was a siren.
Mia flashed on the screen.
He stared at it for half a second too long—because Mia's name on his phone still felt unreal, like something he hadn't earned.
He answered anyway.
"Hey," Jacob said, voice quiet.
Mia's breath came through the receiver, quick and tight, like she'd been holding herself together until she heard him pick up. "Jacob."
Just his name—no accusation, no demand. Relief and worry braided together.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Jacob closed his eyes.
Mia didn't know anything about Wanted. Not the helmet. Not the BMW. Not the system. She wasn't calling because she thought he was the ghost everyone was obsessed with.
She was calling because she'd watched a city go feral again and her mind had gone immediately to the people close enough to get hurt.
And Jacob was one of them now.
"I'm okay," Jacob said, and he tried to make it sound true.
Mia exhaled shakily. "Thank God."
Jacob's throat tightened. "Yeah."
A beat of silence held, filled with the faint distant hum of the city waking up.
Mia's voice softened. "I know you weren't out there," she said quickly, like she needed Jacob to understand the shape of her worry. "I'm not calling about—about that. I just… things are getting bad, and you've been around us, and—"
Jacob swallowed. "I get it."
Mia hesitated, then asked the question that wasn't tactical, that wasn't about gossip or plans—just human fear.
"Did you get home safe?" she asked.
Jacob looked around his empty shop, the quiet pressing in, the smell of oil and dust grounding him. "Yeah," he said. "I'm home."
Mia let out another breath, smaller this time. "Okay."
Her voice turned gentler, almost embarrassed by how much it carried. "I just wanted to hear you say it," she admitted. "After the raid… after everything… I keep thinking about how fast things can go wrong."
Jacob's chest ached.
He rested his palm flat on the workbench like it could anchor him. "Thank you," he said, and he meant it.
Mia was quiet for a moment, then said softly, "Don't disappear on us, okay?"
On us.
The phrase hit Jacob harder than it should have.
He swallowed against the lump in his throat. "I won't," he lied gently, because he didn't know how else to answer without breaking something.
Mia seemed to accept it anyway, because sometimes people accepted words just to keep moving.
"Come by the shop later," she said. "Or the house. Just… be around."
Jacob nodded even though she couldn't see it. "Yeah. I'll try."
When the call ended, Jacob stood alone again in the dim bay with the phone in his hand.
The fact that Mia cared didn't make his secrets lighter.
It made them heavier.
Because now he wasn't hiding just to protect himself.
He was hiding while someone kind enough to call at dawn believed he was simply another person trying to make it through a dangerous city.
Jacob stared at the quiet space where the BMW used to sit and felt the truth settle cold in his stomach:
He had survived the chase.
But surviving was getting harder, not because of the cops—
because of the people who would miss him if he vanished.
...
The city held its breath the next day like it was waiting to see whether the adults in the room were going to admit they'd lost control.
By afternoon, every local station was running the same banner across the bottom of the screen. PRESS CONFERENCE.PUBLIC SAFETY STATEMENT. Footage of the rooftop jump looped in the background like an open wound nobody could stop touching.
Jacob watched from the office corner of Cooper's Auto, hands wrapped around a coffee he'd forgotten to drink. The TV's glow made the shop feel colder. The anchor's voice turned solemn, then cut to the podium.
LAPD brass stood stiff behind microphones. The chief's face was practiced calm, but the strain lived around his eyes.
"We want to reassure the public," he said, voice amplified and steady, "that the streets are safe. We are actively investigating and pursuing the individual known online as 'Wanted.' This incident is isolated and targeted. Unrelated citizens do not need to hide in fear."
Unrelated citizens.
The phrase landed like a bandage slapped over a deep cut.
"We are coordinating with partner agencies," the chief continued, "and we will hold those responsible accountable. We ask the community to remain calm and report any suspicious activity."
Jacob didn't believe a word of it.
He'd been inside the chase. He'd felt the difference between law and hunt. He'd watched vehicles die mid-command like power had been yanked from their hearts. He'd watched a black Corvette flip into mangled scrap because the pursuit had become a cage.
This wasn't reassurance.
It was retreat dressed as reassurance.
A public-facing step back because the city had seen too much.
Because someone in a suit had realized that if the public kept watching the police get humiliated on live television, the department would bleed legitimacy it couldn't afford to lose.
Jacob stared at the screen, jaw tight.
To him, it sounded like surrender.
Not moral surrender—strategic.
A recalibration.
We'll say the streets are safe, the statement implied, so you'll stop panicking while we change the plan.
He turned the TV off before the questions started, before reporters asked about "specialized units" and "federal involvement" and "why did the vehicles lose power," questions the podium would dodge with the smoothness of practiced denial.
The silence afterward felt heavy.
He set the coffee down and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the office window, staring out at an alley that looked ordinary.
Ordinary was a costume the city wore now.
And Jacob could feel, like a pressure change in his bones, that enforcement wasn't backing down.
It was going underground.
Just like the street scene always did.
Sunny didn't get reassurance from the press conference.
He got aggravated.
He watched the chief's words on a monitor in a room that smelled like stale coffee and clipped authority, and he felt the frustration tighten his chest until it became almost physical.
"Unrelated citizens do not need to hide in fear," the chief said.
Sunny muttered, "Tell that to Vega," under his breath.
He couldn't say it louder. Not in front of the Bureau people. Not in front of the LAPD brass. The official narrative had to be "safe streets" because the city was trembling and politics hated tremors.
But Sunny's world wasn't politics.
His world was the target.
And the target had just jumped past a helicopter and shut down a pursuit fleet like it was a parlor trick.
Sunny wanted blood for that humiliation.
He wanted vindication.
He wanted to prove he was still useful before the Bureau decided he was a liability and replaced him with something colder.
So when he heard—through a channel that didn't show up on reports—that the street scene had shifted, he moved immediately.
The meets weren't in parking lots anymore.
They weren't on open industrial stretches with underglow and bass and a hundred faces.
They'd burrowed.
Sunny followed the rumor down into the city's lower ribs: an unfinished development site, the kind that sat half-built for months because money stalled or permits died. Concrete skeleton. Rebar. Plastic sheeting snapping softly in wind. A wide subterranean level meant for parking or storage, now lit by scattered work lamps and headlights aimed downward.
An underground meet.
Hidden away from view.
A safety measure.
A statement.
Sunny stood at the top of the ramp for a moment, looking down into the dim expanse, and felt the street scene's intelligence like a slap. They'd learned. They'd adapted. They'd stopped giving helicopters clean angles.
He drove down slowly, posture relaxed, face composed.
But inside, he was coiled.
He scanned faces and cars as he rolled in—smaller clusters, tighter spacing, lookouts posted at the ramp and corners, radios humming low. People didn't shout. They talked in low voices and watched the entrances with a seriousness that said they were tired of being prey.
And then Sunny saw Brian.
Brian stood with Dom's crew near a cluster of cars that had been parked deliberately away from the center—dominating the space without advertising it. Dom was there, shoulders squared, calm as gravity. Letty leaned near him, arms crossed. Leon and Jesse hovered close. Vince hung back, watchful.
Brian was among them, posture too controlled to be truly relaxed. Eyes scanning. Listening more than speaking.
Sunny felt a hot irritation flare in his chest.
Brian shouldn't have been that comfortable here.
Not if he was doing his job.
And yet there he was, in the crew's orbit like he belonged.
Sunny parked and stepped out, keeping his expression neutral. He moved closer—not rushing, just drifting in like a man who had every right to stand wherever he chose.
Brian noticed him immediately.
Their eyes met across the concrete.
Brian's expression tightened—barely—but Sunny caught it. The guilt lived in Brian's face like a second shadow.
Sunny wanted to smile.
Instead he listened.
Dom was speaking to his people in a low, steady tone—not a speech, a briefing. Family talk. Real talk.
"We're changing how we move," Dom said, gaze cutting across the crew one by one. "No more loud meets. No more wide-open runs. We go quiet."
Letty nodded once, hard. "We don't give them angles."
Jesse swallowed. "They're grabbing people, Dom."
Dom's jaw tightened. "I know."
Vince muttered, "They're hunting."
Dom didn't correct him.
He continued, voice calm enough to make it heavier. "We don't trust the LAPD right now. Not with that task force. Not with how they're moving."
Brian's shoulders tightened slightly, as if the words struck too close.
Dom's gaze swept the group again, and for a moment it paused—just a fraction—like he was acknowledging the ghost without naming it.
"And we don't trust Wanted," Dom said, bluntly.
A murmur moved through the crew—agreement, fear, frustration.
Dom held up a hand, silencing it. "But I know one thing," he said, voice lower. "When they came down hard on the street… he fought back."
Letty's mouth twitched, not quite approval, not quite condemnation. "He fought like a cornered animal."
Dom nodded once. "Maybe. But he didn't let them own the night. And after what happened to that girl…" Dom's voice tightened for the first time, just slightly, "I'm not pretending the hunt is clean."
Brian's face went pale for a heartbeat.
Sunny felt a chill at the back of his neck.
Dom's crew didn't like Wanted.
They feared him.
But Dom was acknowledging the uncomfortable truth: the ghost's violence had also been the only thing that made enforcement step back publicly.
The street scene had read it as a kind of protection—messy, terrifying, but real.
Dom's tone steadied again. "We got a way of life," he said. "We live it. We don't hand it over because the city's scared."
Leon nodded. Jesse's jaw tightened. Vince looked uneasy but didn't argue.
Dom continued, calm and absolute. "We'll be more clever. We'll be smaller. We'll be smarter. But we don't stop being who we are."
Mia stood nearby, quieter than the others, eyes heavy with worry. She didn't cheer. She didn't argue. She just listened, and in her listening Sunny saw the thing that made Dom's crew dangerous in a way cops didn't understand:
They weren't just chasing adrenaline.
They were defending belonging.
Sunny let the silence settle and then stepped closer, voice friendly again as if he'd never dropped the mask.
"Dom," he called, bright enough to be heard.
Dom's eyes shifted to him—calm, unreadable.
Sunny smiled like sunlight. "Didn't know you guys did basement parties now."
A couple people chuckled uncertainly.
Brian didn't.
Brian's gaze stayed fixed on Sunny with a tightness that said don't.
Sunny's smile widened anyway, and in that smile there was something sharp, because he'd just confirmed what he needed:
The street scene had gone underground.
Brian was embedded deeper than he should be.
Dom's crew was tightening into secrecy and defiance.
And if Wanted showed up again, it wouldn't be to a loud lot under helicopters.
It would be in places like this—dark, enclosed, full of people who wouldn't scatter into daylight when the sirens came.
Sunny's irritation turned into cold focus.
If the city wanted to pretend it was safe above ground, fine.
He'd hunt where the real city lived—under concrete, under silence, where fear didn't have room to perform.
And Brian—standing there, guilty as ever—could feel it too:
The hunt was moving into the same shadows the street scene used to survive.
And sooner or later, those shadows would collide.