In the labyrinthine service tunnels beneath the old Peugeot factory in Sochaux, tucked between a decommissioned conveyor belt and a stack of 1980s tooling dies, sat the prototype designated 098C .

“You’re building a conscience,” her colleague Marc had scoffed.

The car’s owner was a disillusioned test driver named Sami, who had lost his nerve after a crash. Now he only drove at night, slowly, on empty roads, avoiding every shadow.

Sami stopped in the middle of the road, heart hammering. The radio crackled. A text appeared on the ancient digital clock display:

It never spoke again in words. But Sami learned its language: a subtle lurch, a soft change in idle, a momentary flick of the high beams for no reason. It was guiding him back to the driver he’d been.

Over the following weeks, 098C became his ghostly mentor. It wouldn’t let him lug the engine in fourth gear around a roundabout. When he drifted too close to a pothole, a single dashboard light—one that had never existed before—glowed amber: a small lion’s paw. When he relaxed into a perfect heel-toe downshift, the paw turned green.