London, 2006 – The Underground Never Sleeps
By the time Owen Shaw was sixteen, the world had already started to feel smaller.
Smaller, because Devon had given him vision.
Street fights? Pointless. Devon taught him how to neutralize a man in three moves.
Hot-wiring? Amateur. Devon made him rebuild ECUs from scratch, then spoof them to act like military AI.
School was optional.
The streets were the curriculum.
"Lesson one," Devon said, tossing Owen a burner phone. "No such thing as secure."
"What about yours?"
Devon smirked.
"Mine doesn't exist."
Owen's eyes lit up.
From that moment, he wasn't just a kid anymore.
He was an apprentice.
System Log: 2010
Devon's private system evolved with him.
[System Level: 57][Skill Tree Access: Hacking | Driving | Engineering | Combat | Espionage][Unlocked Passive: Master Override – Can forcibly control any non-quantum-based software][Unlocked Skill: Ghost Transmission – Send simultaneous commands across 37 endpoints in 0.2s][Unlocked Perk: Combat Drift – While driving, gain a 20% increase in reaction time and vehicle responsiveness]
But that wasn't what mattered most now.
What mattered… was what the LAPD had just launched.
2009 – Los Angeles, Police AI AutoNet Program
The city called it AutoNet a smart, autonomous pursuit AI meant to replace human squad car driving during high-speed chases. It could predict, analyze, and outmaneuver most racers.
They thought it was secure.
They thought wrong.
"You're going into the grid tonight," Devon told Owen as they parked across from a telecom tower."Time to see if you can beat a machine… with you as the weapon."
Owen nodded. Calm. Focused.
Inside the System
Devon jacked in first, routing through three offshore proxies.Owen followed, masked by a false identity rig Devon called "The Specter."
But someone else was already inside.
A whisper of black code. A digital scar twisting live code into viral strings.
"Someone else is in the system," Owen muttered.
"Not someone," Devon replied."Cipher."
The moment her handle flashed, firewalls twisted. The AutoNet core AI became a battlefield.
Code clashed like swords. Devon's scripts overloaded control nodes, redirecting camera feeds and sensor pings.
Cipher struck back injecting an adaptive virus into the autopilot commands.
Owen gasped. "She's rewriting the learning algorithm fast."
"Let her," Devon said."She thinks this is chess. I play war."
He activated his System Override.
[Skill Activated – Ghost Transmission]
Simultaneous countermeasures deployed.Tracer loop scrambled.Target lockdown: Cipher's trace point identified.
Devon hammered the final key, rewriting the neural index.
The AutoNet AI purged itself of her presence.
Cipher's trace disappeared with a single message burned into the command line:
// TOOK YOUR TOY. STAY OUT OF MY CITY.—GHOSTDRIVE
For the first time, Cipher retreated.
Not outmatched by force.
Outclassed by design.
Aftermath – Night Streets of L.A.
Owen stared at Devon as they walked away from the tower.
"You just beat her."
"She was using brute force. I used precision," Devon said, climbing into the driver's seat."Remember this chaos is loud, but silence wins wars."
Owen looked back at the skyline, then down at the laptop still running the stolen AutoNet code.
"What now?"
"Now?" Devon grinned."We tune it."
Meanwhile – Cipher's Hideout
Cipher stood before a shattered console, arms crossed, eyes burning.
"Who the hell is GhostDrive?"
She looked deeper into the traces.
No ID. No signature. No trace.
Just a small note tucked inside her stolen codebase:
YOU'RE NOT READY.
Cipher had never hated someone she didn't know.
Until now.