Chapter 19 : The Design
The knock came at six-thirty.
I'd been awake for an hour already, staring at the ceiling while morning light crept through the blinds. My stomach was empty—last meal had been those tacos at midnight. The pre-operative instructions sitting on my nightstand might as well have been a contract with the universe.
"Señor Torres?" A woman's voice. "El doctor lo espera."
I swung my legs off the bed. The tile floor was cold against my bare feet. "Un momento."
The room at Clínica Vargas was simple—hospital bed, small bathroom, window overlooking a courtyard with a fountain. Clean. Professional. The kind of place where questions weren't asked and paperwork existed in a parallel reality to actual identities.
I splashed water on my face in the bathroom and studied the reflection. Hollow cheeks. Sharp cheekbones that weren't aesthetic—just the result of years of meth wearing down the body. A nose that had been broken at least once. Jaw too narrow, chin too weak. Track marks on my arms fading but still visible if you knew where to look.
Skinny Pete's face.
In twelve hours, it wouldn't be.
Dr. Vargas's consultation room smelled like antiseptic and expensive leather. Medical certificates lined one wall, mostly from institutions I didn't recognize but whose legitimacy Deal Sense confirmed were genuine. The man himself sat behind a mahogany desk, white coat crisp, silver at his temples giving him that distinguished surgeon look that probably played well with cartel wives seeking discreet work.
"Buenos días, Mr. Torres." He gestured to the chair across from him. "Please. Sit."
I sat. The chair was comfortable—probably intentional. Relaxed patients asked fewer questions.
He opened a folder on his desk. Inside were photographs. My photographs, taken yesterday during the preliminary examination. Full face. Profile. Three-quarter angles. The clinical documentation of a man who was about to stop existing.
"I've reviewed your case thoroughly." Vargas spread the photos across his desk. "You present an interesting challenge. Not reconstruction from trauma—transformation. A different proposition entirely."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we're not fixing what's broken. We're redesigning what functions." He picked up a photo of my profile. "Your bone structure is actually good. Strong jawline underneath the surface. High cheekbones hidden by lack of subcutaneous fat. The nose has character—broken twice, yes?—but the underlying cartilage is workable."
"What's the plan?"
Vargas pulled out another set of images—computer renderings this time. Before and after comparisons. The before was me. The after was someone else.
"Three primary interventions. First, rhinoplasty. Straighten the bridge, refine the tip, reduce the overall projection by approximately fifteen percent. Second, malar augmentation—implants to enhance your natural cheekbone structure. Third, genioplasty—advancement of the chin to create better jaw definition."
I studied the rendering. The face looking back had my basic proportions but looked like a better-fed, better-rested distant cousin. Someone who'd grown up with money and regular meals instead of meth and chaos.
"Will it hold?"
"Permanent results, yes. The implants are medical-grade silicone—same material used in over two million procedures worldwide. The rhinoplasty is cartilage and bone reshaping. Nothing that will dissolve or degrade over time." He paused. "You won't be unrecognizable. That attracts attention. You'll be a more refined version of yourself. Someone who could be a successful businessman, a lawyer, a doctor."
Deal Sense hummed confirmation. Honest assessment. No overselling. This was Vargas's professional pride speaking—he wanted to do good work, and good work meant realistic expectations.
"Two sessions," he continued. "Today, we address the nose and chin. Week two, the cheekbone implants and any refinement needed from the first procedure. Recovery time between sessions allows inflammation to settle, gives us a clearer picture of final results."
"Total time before I can travel?"
"Three weeks after the final procedure. You'll have residual swelling for months, but nothing that prevents normal activity." He closed the folder. "Cost remains as discussed. Seven thousand today, seven thousand upon completion. Your accommodations and nursing care are included."
Seven thousand dollars. Already paid from the pile of cash I'd built selling information in Albuquerque's criminal underworld. Seven thousand more from what remained in my invisible bag and money belt. Everything I'd earned since waking up in Skinny Pete's body, converted into a new face.
"Any questions?" Vargas asked.
A thousand. None that mattered.
"Let's do it."
The consent forms were in Spanish with English translations. Standard medical-legal disclaimers about risks of anesthesia, infection, nerve damage, asymmetry, unsatisfactory results. I signed Daniel Torres on every line, the fake name rolling off my pen like it belonged there.
Vargas explained the procedure one more time. General anesthesia. Eight hours under. Waking in recovery with my face wrapped in bandages. A week of swelling so severe I wouldn't be able to judge results. Two weeks of gradual improvement. A month before the new face settled into permanence.
"The nurse will prepare you at seven. Surgery begins at eight. You'll be in recovery by four this afternoon." He shook my hand. "I've done this procedure many times, Mr. Torres. Trust the process."
I trusted Deal Sense more than his words, but they aligned. Vargas was competent. Expensive. And most importantly, discreet.
The morning hours crawled.
I sat in my room waiting for the nurse, and the silence gave my brain too much space to wander. Back home—home, funny how Albuquerque had become that—Jesse was probably waking up next to whatever guilt Walter White had most recently deposited in his conscience. Badger and Combo were running the information network I'd built, following the playbook I'd left behind. Everyone operating on the cover story that I was in California visiting a sick aunt.
Nobody knew I was here. Nobody would recognize me when I returned.
The NZT pill sat in my palm, and I stared at it for a long moment. Enhanced cognition during surgery seemed pointless—I'd be unconscious. But the thought of going under without that edge felt wrong somehow. Like stepping into battle without a weapon.
I put it back in the bag. Vargas had said no supplements, no medications other than what the clinic provided. The anesthesiologist needed a clean system to work with. For the first time in seven weeks, I'd face something without NZT backing me up.
You survived thirty-four years in your original life without magic brain pills, I reminded myself. You can survive eight hours of unconsciousness.
The nurse arrived at seven sharp. Young woman, dark hair, professional smile. She didn't speak much English, but her body language said routine—this wasn't her first rodeo preparing patients for undocumented facial reconstruction.
Surgical gown. IV line in my left arm. Vitals checked and recorded. Blood pressure slightly elevated—she noted it without concern. Pre-surgical anxiety was normal.
She wheeled me down a corridor to a prep room adjacent to the operating theater. Through a window, I could see the surgical suite—bright lights, steel tables, machines I didn't recognize but whose purpose I could guess. Someone's face was about to be disassembled and rebuilt in there.
My face.
The anesthesiologist arrived. Older man, silver beard, the kind of calm that came from putting thousands of people to sleep and waking them back up again. He explained what would happen: sedative first, then the tube down my throat, then the medications that would keep me under for eight hours. I'd remember nothing.
"Count back from ten," he said in accented English.
I started counting. Ten. Nine. Eight.
The world went soft around the edges.
Seven.
Six.
[ALBUQUERQUE — SAME MORNING]
Jesse Pinkman woke up at noon because nobody was making him get up earlier.
The apartment smelled like weed and stale pizza. Combo had crashed on the couch sometime around three, and his snoring had been the soundtrack to Jesse's insomnia until about four-thirty when exhaustion finally won.
He stumbled to the kitchen, found the coffee maker empty, and swore under his breath. Pete usually handled the coffee. Pete handled a lot of things lately—the little tasks that kept life running while Jesse focused on not thinking about what he'd become.
Cooking meth for his high school chemistry teacher. Who was dying of cancer. After watching two guys get killed.
Jesse shook his head and filled the coffee maker manually. Water. Filter. Grounds. Muscle memory from years of hangovers and early-morning cook sessions.
Pete was in California. Family emergency. Sick aunt or something. He'd been vague about the details, which wasn't like him—Pete had gotten weirdly specific and organized lately, like getting clean had unlocked some hidden part of his brain. But everyone was entitled to private shit, and Jesse had enough of his own to worry about.
The coffee started brewing. Jesse leaned against the counter and pulled out his phone. Three texts from Mr. White—Walter, the guy insisted, but it felt wrong calling him that—asking about the next cook session. They had product to move and Krazy-8's old network was still out there, customers looking for supply.
Tuco, Mr. White kept saying. We need distribution. This Tuco character can move volume.
Jesse had heard stories about Tuco Salamanca. None of them were good.
But what choice did they have?
Back in Tijuana, in an operating room painted the color of eggshells, Dr. Alejandro Vargas began his work.
The patient on the table—"Daniel Torres" according to the paperwork—lay motionless under general anesthesia. Monitors beeped steady rhythms. The ventilator hissed in mechanical breaths.
Vargas made his first incision inside the nostril, hidden where no scar would show. Rhinoplasty was delicate work—millimeters mattered, bone and cartilage had to be reshaped with surgical precision, and the swelling afterward made immediate results impossible to judge.
But Vargas had good instincts. Thirty years of practice. Hundreds of faces transformed.
This one, he thought, had excellent potential. Once the malnutrition damage healed and the bone structure emerged properly, the man would be genuinely handsome. Not movie-star beautiful—that attracted attention—but solidly attractive in an unremarkable way.
The perfect face for disappearing into a crowd.
---
Hours passed. The sun moved across Tijuana's sky. In Albuquerque, Jesse Pinkman drove to a meeting he didn't want to attend. In Mexico City, cartel accountants moved money through shell corporations. In Washington D.C., DEA analysts flagged unusual patterns in Southwestern drug seizures.
And in a private clinic on a quiet street, Skinny Pete's face was slowly, methodically, irreversibly erased.
I came back to consciousness in fragments.
Light first. Too bright, stabbing through my eyelids. Then sound—beeping, distant voices in Spanish, the hum of machines. Then sensation—my face felt wrong. Swollen. Heavy. Like someone had wrapped my head in concrete and forgotten to remove it.
"Señor Torres." A woman's voice. The nurse from this morning. "La cirugía fue un éxito. Descanse."
Surgery successful. Rest.
I tried to speak, but my throat was raw from the breathing tube. What came out was a croak that didn't sound human.
"No hable." Don't speak. "Mañana." Tomorrow.
I let my eyes close again. The painkillers were doing their work—the discomfort was present but distant, like something happening to someone else. My fingers found the edge of the bed and gripped it. Real. Solid.
I was alive. Changed, but alive.
Outside the window, the sun was setting. Orange light filtered through the blinds, casting long shadows across the recovery room. Somewhere in that direction, eight hundred miles north, my old life continued without me.
The morphine pulled me back toward unconsciousness. I didn't fight it.
Tomorrow, I would see what I'd become. Tonight, I would rest.
The orange light faded to darkness, and I let it take me.
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