{Last of the chapters I warned you about. Past this one are the ones I actually wrote myself (AI, not stolen). They might start smaller, but I'll get into the swing of things quickly.}
The dawn after the deal came in colder than the last. Griffin Walker stood at the edge of the junkyard with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his oil-stained jacket, staring out at the horizon as the smog-drenched sun rose over the skyline.
It should've felt like any other day. Three cars waited in the lot behind him—beaten-up sedans and one gutted hatchback, nothing that raised alarms. But the weight in his chest told a different story.
The truck.
He tried to shake it off as he walked toward the workshop, boots crunching over gravel. These cars were simple gigs, according to the messenger. No upgrades, no armor, no strange requests. Still, he didn't trust it. Not anymore.
By midmorning, Griffin was elbows-deep in the first car's engine block. His power worked quietly through his fingers, nudging the worn parts into new formations. To anyone watching, it would look like genius-level intuition—like he just knew how to make things work. But it was more than that.
He could feel the materials—the tension in old wires, the weakness in cracked metal. He didn't command them, but he understood them instinctively, the way a musician understood the difference between a sharp and a flat. With a scrap of copper tubing and a cracked distributor cap, he made the ignition hum like it hadn't in years.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of sweat, grit, and quiet repairs. Griffin kept his head down, refusing to think about who these cars were for. He didn't ask questions. He never had. But today, it wasn't as easy.
Shortly after lunch, a familiar voice called out. "Yo, Walker!"
Griffin turned. Benny stood just inside the gate, backpack slung over one shoulder, holding up a crumpled newspaper like it was a badge. "You see this?"
Griffin wiped his hands and walked over, taking the paper. The headline slapped him in the face:
BANK HEIST LEAVES 7 DEAD, 7 INJURED — CHAOS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
Below it, a grainy still from traffic camera footage showed a matte black armored truck smashing through a blockade. A red circle was drawn around it.
"Two cops, five of the robbers. Can you believe that?" Benny asked. "They lit the place up. Like a war zone."
Griffin said nothing.
"You okay?" Benny asked.
"Yeah," Griffin lied, folding the paper and handing it back. "Thanks."
He walked away before the kid could say anything else.
In the workshop, Griffin dropped onto his stool and stared at his bench. His tools lay neatly arranged, but all he could see was the truck in his mind—the reinforced suspension, the hidden compartment in the rear axle. He built it. Maybe not the guns, maybe not the plan, but the escape? That had been him.
He pressed his palms to his eyes.
"You didn't know," he whispered. "You didn't know."
But that didn't matter. People were dead. Good ones. Cops with families. And he was complicit.
When he finally stood again, it was dusk. The last of the cars had been repaired and rolled out of the lot, the gang's courier giving him a nod that meant more work was coming. He didn't respond.
That night, the junkyard was quiet.
Across the city, in a secure operations room deep beneath a nondescript government building, a panel of monitors cast cold blue light over three figures.
A man in combat gear with silvering hair stood with arms crossed. Sentinel.
Beside him, Slade leaned against the wall, fingers steepled, watching silently.
On the central screen: footage of the heist aftermath. Smoldering vehicles, panicked civilians, a bird's-eye view of the armored truck vanishing into a tunnel.
A tech analyst spoke without turning. "The modifications are nonstandard—fabricated locally. Whoever built this wasn't working from a blueprint. It's custom. Efficient. Intuitive."
Sentinel narrowed his eyes. "You saying someone here in the city put that monster together by hand?"
The analyst nodded.
Slade finally spoke. "So either they're working with the gang, or they're a pawn."
Sentinel turned toward the map on the wall. A red marker pulsed over the southern sector.
"Either way," he said. "We find them."