Chapter 3: Locking Down Krazy-8
Bleach had a chapel smell when it flooded a room. It made confession inevitable.
Jesse gagged into the sink as acid steam ghosted up off the tub where Emilio had been reduced to the kind of problem you solve with a mop. "This is so messed up," he said, voice paper-thin.
Adam handed him a damp cloth and kept his own breathing shallow. "Keep the fan on," he said. "And don't throw up in the drains."
Jesse laughed, a hiccup. "Dude, what is your childhood?"
"Organized," Adam said. He scrubbed. The gloves snapped tight at his wrists and left a ring of pressure that felt reassuring. There was a precision to cleaning that felt the same as chemistry when you were honest about it: steps, sequence, patience. You remove what offends. You catalogue what remains.
Down the hall, the basement door sighed shut on Krazy-8, who watched through lattice as if his eyes were the only tools left. Walt was upstairs, pacing grooves into a rug he would later stare at like it held answers. The house itself seemed offended, a place used to boring dinners now stewing in an unfamiliar moral viscosity.
"We should bounce," Jesse said, scrubbing a tile edge like he could erase memory. "We should, like, leave the state."
"And go where?" Adam asked. "You'd take your problems with you. Better to solve them here, where you know the corners."
Jesse sagged. "I don't wanna die in a laundry basket."
"Then don't climb in," Adam said, and Jesse laughed against his will, shoulders loosening a fraction.
Adam moved through the house like a small, quiet storm. He bagged what needed bagging, labeled what needed labeling; he pulled on practical competence like armor. He caught a glimpse of Walt in the kitchen, staring into middle distance like he could throttle a thought if it moved slow enough.
"Stop," Adam said, quietly, as he passed. Walt's head jerked up. "You're thinking yourself into a box. You need to make a decision."
Walt bristled at being told anything. "About what?"
"About how much of yourself you're willing to spend," Adam said. He kept moving before Walt could decide whether to resent him or thank him.
Later, in the garage, away from Jesse's panic and Walt's silence, Adam stood with a cooler of bagged product and thought about money like oxygen. He ran his thumb over a crystal—reverent at the purity, clinical in its implication—and called up the ledger.
Sell 3kg meth.
[Asset recognized: drugs (methamphetamine), quantity: 3 kg.]
[Confirm sale for $150,000?] Y/N
Y.
[Sale confirmed. Noble System double-profit applied.]
[Proceeds: $300,000 credited.]
Balance: $600,000
Not enough. Not for what he wanted next. He scrolled the upgrade menu with a thought like flicking through a contact list.
[Upgrades available]
Strength 2x — Cost: $1,000,000Stamina 2x — Cost: $1,000,000Durability boost (minor) — Bundled with strength/stamina upgrades
He exhaled. Debt was a tool. He had always believed that. He had calculated the risk of spending more than you had to secure the ability to make what you wanted. He felt the thin smile pull at his mouth.
Upgrade strength 2x.
[Confirm purchase: Strength 2x for $1,000,000?] Y/N
Y.
[Purchase confirmed.]
[Strength upgraded: 2x. Durability and healing minor boost applied.]
[Balance updated: -$400,000.]
It landed in him like a second heartbeat, a resonance from muscles to bones. He didn't feel like a superhero; he felt tuned, like a guitar string tightened to pitch. The mop's handle felt lighter; the cooler, a trivial lift.
When he returned inside, Walt noticed something and couldn't name it. He frowned. "You look…different."
"Sleep," Adam said, blandly. It was easier than explaining that he had borrowed a million dollars from an invisible bank that paid interest in bruises that would fade faster now.
He let himself indulge one petty joy. He left a folded sheet of paper on the counter where Walt would find it, filled with nonsense: chemical symbols that spelled nothing, ratios that ate their own tails. Walt picked it up later and scowled like the page had insulted him personally. "This is gibberish."
"New recipe, Walt?" Adam said. He couldn't help it.
When the day's tasks had been turned into bagged trash and sealed containers and a silence heavy with choices, Adam slipped out before the moment of the first kill. He had no right to be there for Walt's decision with Krazy-8. That was a private sacrament, and it would break a man in a shape that was important for what came next. He would not disrupt the narrative that fed him.
On the drive away, he flexed his hand on the steering wheel, testing. The bones of his fingers felt like they'd been rebarred. He drummed them on the leather; the sound thudded a little deeper than before. He smiled, rueful. "Thrilled by a strength boost," he told the empty car, because it was absurd and precisely his kind of absurd.
He rerouted twice for no reason but instinct, then a third time because a white SUV in the rearview looked like it had more antennae than it needed. Hank Schrader existed in the world like a ripple; even if this wasn't him, the principle held. He ditched his burner into a storm drain and stopped at a strip mall to buy two more.
In the motel that perched over a parking lot like a bird too big for its branch, Adam counted his blessings and his debts. He ordered coffee that tasted like brown water and thought about numbers until the ceiling texture turned into a map again. The ledger hovered.
Balance: -$400,000
Strength: 2x
Stamina: 1x
Durability: minor boost
He slept with the TV on, as if a laugh track could keep certain thoughts from forming fully.