Chapter 7: The Smuggler's Proposal
POV: Tess
She watched him sleep in the corner of the pump station, studying the miracle worker everyone whispered about in the tunnels beneath Boston. Tess had seen impossibilities flow from his hands—blue energy that healed wounds defying medical science, combat awareness that tracked threats before they appeared, movements that belonged more to dreams than reality.
But watching him now, exhausted and vulnerable with his head resting against rusted pipes, she saw something else entirely. The loneliness of someone carrying weight alone. The careful distance he maintained from everyone except when medical necessity demanded proximity.
Adam Collins was powerful. But power didn't make someone less human.
Detection had woken him—she could tell by the way his breathing changed rhythm before his eyes opened. Whatever enhanced senses he possessed never truly rested. Living with constant awareness of every heartbeat, every threat, every death beyond his ability to prevent.
"How long have you been awake?" he asked quietly, voice rough with exhaustion.
"Long enough." Tess moved from the shadows where she'd been keeping watch. "We need to talk."
He sat up slowly, muscles protesting from the previous night's surgery marathon. Three Firefly operatives saved, two civilians patched up, one infected child cured through abilities that made reality bend. All while hiding in sewers that smelled like rust and desperation.
"If this is about payment—"
"It's about partnership."
The word hung between them in the stale underground air. Adam's enhanced senses probably detected her elevated heart rate, the way her hands clenched with nervous energy. She'd been planning this conversation for weeks, watching how he operated, understanding what he needed that he wouldn't ask for.
"I handle QZ politics," she said, laying out the proposal she'd rehearsed. "Smuggling routes, information networks, supply chains. You provide medical support, security, and emergency healing when things go wrong."
His Detection was probably reading her emotional state like an open book. Genuine offer, not manipulation. But also attraction to his mystery, testing whether he was threat or ally. The careful evaluation of someone who'd survived too long to trust easily.
"Fifty-fifty split on everything," she continued. "Profits, risks, decisions. Equal partners."
"Why?" Direct question. No games.
"Because you save people without asking their politics first. Because you could have let me bleed out in that alley and didn't. Because everyone else in this hellhole wants something from you, but I want something with you."
Adam's laugh came out bitter and tired. "Partnership with me means becoming a target. FEDRA wants to weaponize me. Fireflies want to control me. And now infected are evolving specifically to counter my abilities."
"Then we deal with it together."
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or cautious hope. "When was the last time someone offered to share the burden instead of add to it?"
"You know what you're signing up for?"
"Mystery man with impossible abilities who can heal fatal wounds and fight like something out of a movie? Yeah, I figured out the basics." Tess moved closer, studying his face in the emergency lighting. "What I want to know is whether you're in this alone or if you're smart enough to accept help."
He considered for a long moment, probably using those enhanced senses to map her intentions with surgical precision. Finally: "Fifty-fifty."
She grinned and extended her hand. "Partners."
His handshake was firm, warm, real. The beginning of something that felt like trust.
"He accepted. But he's still hiding the big secret. Whatever made him this way, whoever he really is, that stays locked away. Can work with that. Everyone's got secrets in the apocalypse."
What mattered was the choice. Adam had chosen partnership over isolation. That was enough to build on.
POV: Adam
Three days later, their first real smuggling run proved Tess's instincts about partnership were better than his pessimism about trust.
"Simple job," she'd said while planning the route through her network maps. "Deliver antibiotics to buyer outside QZ. Standard run."
But Detection had painted the ambush before they walked into it—six armed smugglers waiting in the abandoned office building where the exchange was supposed to happen. Elevated heartbeats. Weapons ready. Tess's contacts had betrayed them to a rival gang.
"Back door," Adam murmured, enhanced senses tracking movement through the building. "They're positioned to pin us in the main corridor."
"How many?"
"Six confirmed. Maybe more in reserve."
Tess cursed creatively, then shifted into tactical mode that reminded him why she'd survived this long in Boston's underground. "Can you handle them without killing anyone?"
The question caught him off guard. Most people assumed his abilities meant willingness to use lethal force. Tess was thinking about consequences—unnecessary deaths meant blood feuds, escalation, more problems down the road.
"I can try."
The first smuggler came around the corner expecting easy prey. Instead, Shambles swapped his assault rifle with a brick from the rubble-strewn floor. The man's confusion lasted exactly long enough for Tess to clock him unconscious with her own weapon.
Two more rushed them from opposite directions. Stone Skin activated automatically as bullets sparked off Adam's hardened flesh. The shooters stared in shock until Shambles relocated their ammunition clips to the far end of the hallway, leaving them with expensive clubs.
"What the fuck—" one started.
Tess's knockout punch finished the sentence.
Three down. Three to go.
But the last shooter was trigger-happy and panicked. His wild spray caught Tess in the shoulder, spinning her around before Adam could react. Blood spread across her jacket in patterns that made Detection scream warnings about arterial damage.
Time dilated into surgical focus.
POV: Tess
Pain hit like a sledgehammer, followed immediately by something impossible—warmth spreading from where Adam's hands touched her wound. The ROOM ability erupted around them in a blue sphere of controlled space where reality bent to his will.
"You're gonna feel weird, not hurt," he warned, voice carrying the calm authority she'd heard him use with dying patients.
The bullet extracted itself from her shoulder without cutting skin, guided by spatial manipulation that made physics look like a suggestion. Tissue sealed under Counter Shock's electrical healing. Blood flow redirected and stabilized. Thirty seconds of impossible medicine that left her whole and unharmed.
She stared at her shoulder where healthy skin had replaced the bullet wound.
"What are you?"
Not suspicious this time. Awed.
"Someone trying to help," he answered honestly, the blue energy fading from around his hands.
She laughed—part relief, part amazement, part recognition of just how far beyond normal her new partner operated. Leaning over, she kissed his cheek gently.
"Weirdest goddamn partnership ever."
But the smile that answered her was the first completely relaxed expression she'd seen from him. The first time he'd looked at someone without the careful distance he maintained everywhere else.
Trust had been forged in pain and healing.
Walking back through the tunnels afterward, Tess asked the question she'd been building toward: "Those moves, that healing—you from some government program?"
Adam's laugh was bitter, carrying weight of secrets she couldn't fathom. "Something like that."
Close enough to truth to satisfy her curiosity. Far enough from transmigration to keep the real secret safe.
Partnership sealed. But even with trust growing between them, she could feel the loneliness that still wrapped around him like armor. Whatever had made Adam Collins into the miracle worker of Boston's underground, he carried it alone.
The real question was whether friendship could eventually bridge that gap, or if some burdens were too strange to share.
For now, equal partners was enough.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
Can't wait for the next chapter of [ Breaking Bad: Shadows of the Desert Empire ]?
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them (20+ chapters ahead!). No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1