Chapter 11: The Fugue State
POV: Skyler
The hospital room smelled like disinfectant and broken promises, fluorescent lights humming overhead with the persistence of mechanical insects. Skyler White sat beside her husband's bed, watching him sleep with the careful attention of someone trying to solve a puzzle that might destroy her life.
Walter looked smaller in the hospital gown, vulnerable in a way that made her chest tight with conflicting emotions. Relief that he was alive. Fury that he'd disappeared for forty-eight hours without explanation. Fear that the explanation, when it came, would be worse than not knowing.
The doctor had been gentle but clinical in his assessment: acute dissociative fugue state, likely triggered by the stress of his cancer diagnosis and treatment. Memory loss was common, the doctor explained. Sometimes permanent. Sometimes the mind simply couldn't cope with trauma and created gaps to protect itself.
Walter stirred, eyes opening slowly like curtains being drawn back from windows that had seen too much.
"Walt?" Skyler leaned forward, studying his face for signs of recognition. "How are you feeling?"
His expression was perfectly vacant—confused but not distressed, like someone waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room. "I... where am I?"
"Presbyterian Hospital. You've been missing for two days."
Walter's brow furrowed with what appeared to be genuine confusion. "Missing? I don't... I remember grading papers in the kitchen, and then..." He shook his head slowly. "Nothing. Just pieces. A grocery store? Someone was yelling?"
The performance was flawless. If Skyler hadn't known her husband for sixteen years, she might have been completely convinced. But she did know him, knew the way his eyes focused when he was calculating, the micro-expressions that leaked through his careful control.
"He's lying. But why? What happened during those forty-eight hours that's so terrible he'd rather fake brain damage than tell me the truth?"
The door opened, admitting Marie's worried face and Hank's careful professional assessment. Her sister rushed to the bedside while Hank hung back, cop instincts warring with family concern.
"Walt, thank God," Marie said, squeezing his hand. "We were so worried. The whole family's been looking for you."
"Marie?" Walter's voice carried just the right note of recognition tinged with confusion. "What... why is everyone here? Did something happen?"
Hank stepped forward, his questions gentle but precise. "Walt, we found you at a Food 4 Less in Los Alamos. You were... undressed. Confused. Do you remember how you got there?"
Walter's face scrunched with apparent effort. "I remember... driving? Maybe? And feeling hot. Very hot. But everything else is just..." He gestured vaguely. "Gone."
Skyler watched her husband perform confusion with Academy Award precision. The details were perfect—specific enough to seem real, vague enough to avoid contradiction. If this was an act, it was the performance of his lifetime.
But it was an act. She knew it with the certainty that came from sharing a bed with someone for sixteen years. The question was whether she wanted to know what he was hiding.
Maybe some truths were too dangerous to uncover.
POV: Elijah
While Walter performed his medical charade, Elijah met Jesse at the RV's hiding place in the desert. The iconic vehicle sat baking in the afternoon heat, a beige monument to their recent brush with death. Jesse emerged from the driver's side carrying industrial cleaning supplies and wearing the expression of someone who'd spent two days thinking about mortality.
"This is it, man," Jesse said without preamble. "We scrub every surface, every fingerprint, every molecule of DNA that might connect us to Tuco or that desert shack."
Elijah activated his Probability Assessment, calculating the risks of leaving evidence behind.
If Hank finds DNA traces linking them to Tuco's operation: 78% probability of arrest within 72 hours.
Cost: $1,200.
They worked in methodical silence, wiping down every surface with bleach solution, burning clothing that might carry forensic traces, disposing of equipment that could link them to methamphetamine production. The desert heat made their hazmat suits into portable saunas, but thoroughness was more important than comfort.
"You know what bugs me?" Jesse said as they loaded contaminated materials into garbage bags. "You talk about all this like it's just another day at the office. Like we didn't almost die in that shack."
Elijah paused in his cleaning, recognizing the edge in Jesse's voice. "We survived. That's what matters."
"Survived because you knew shit you shouldn't know. About Tuco being crazy, about Hank investigating, about escape percentages and survival odds." Jesse's stare was sharp as broken glass. "Normal people don't think like that, Marcus. Normal people freak out when psychos kidnap them."
"He's starting to see through the facade. Jesse's more perceptive than Walter gives him credit for. He recognizes that my detachment isn't natural—it's learned, calculated, inhuman."
"This is my job," Elijah said carefully. "Risk assessment. Contingency planning. It's what you pay me for."
"No, man. We pay you to move product and find buyers. This other stuff—the predictions, the probabilities, the way you always know what's gonna happen—that's something else."
Jesse was right, and they both knew it. But the truth was literally unspeakable, protected by the Entity's curse that turned honest explanations into absurd gibberish.
"Maybe we should quit," Jesse said suddenly. "Cash out while we're ahead. Before someone ends up dead."
"Quitting now looks suspicious," Elijah replied. "Tuco dies right after we establish contact? That raises questions we can't answer."
"You talk like this is a job, not our lives."
The accusation hit harder than Elijah expected. Jesse saw him as cold, calculating, inhuman—which was accurate but incomplete. The Entity's game had forced him to choose between emotional authenticity and survival, and survival required the kind of detachment that looked like sociopathy from the outside.
They finished cleaning in silence, each lost in thoughts too dangerous to share.
Three hours later, Hank Schrader knocked on Elijah's motel room door. The DEA agent's presence filled the doorway like contained thunder, all professional courtesy and barely concealed suspicion.
"Marcus Reid? I'm Agent Schrader, DEA. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your business relationship with Jesse Pinkman."
Elijah's probability assessment activated silently.
If I act nervous: 45% chance Hank investigates deeper. If I act bored: 78% chance he dismisses me as irrelevant. If I act helpful: 67% chance he becomes suspicious of my knowledge.
Cost: $900.
Bored was the safest option. Elijah invited Hank inside with the resignation of someone accustomed to bureaucratic inconvenience.
"Jesse sold me a phone last month," Elijah said, settling into the room's single chair. "Decent price, worked fine. I had no idea he was involved in anything illegal."
Hank studied the sparse motel room with cop eyes, cataloging details. "You're a logistics consultant. What exactly does that involve?"
"I connect buyers with sellers. Legal stuff, mostly. Industrial equipment, surplus inventory. Pretty boring, actually."
"And Jesse was selling you phones?"
"One phone. Used iPhone, if I remember correctly. I needed a backup for business calls."
Hank's instincts were clearly pinging—something about the situation felt wrong to him, but he lacked concrete evidence to pursue the feeling. Elijah maintained his facade of mild cooperation, answering questions with just enough detail to seem truthful without providing information that could be verified or contradicted.
After twenty minutes, Hank closed his notebook with visible frustration. "If you think of anything else that might be relevant, here's my card."
The moment the door closed behind him, Elijah collapsed onto the bed with shaking hands. Too close. Far too close. His carefully constructed cover identity was developing cracks under the pressure of official scrutiny.
"My bank balance is down to $4,200. I'm bleeding money on probability calculations just to avoid arrest. I need a major income source immediately, or I'll lose access to the powers that keep me alive."
The Entity's game was designed to be unsustainable—supernatural abilities that cost money, forcing him into increasingly desperate situations to fund his own survival.
His phone buzzed with simultaneous messages. Jesse: We need to talk. Alone. Dexter: Lila knows something's wrong with me. I need your advice.
Two crises, two timelines, both demanding immediate attention. The centrifuge was spinning faster, threatening to tear him apart through sheer velocity.
Walter was released from the hospital that evening, returning home to Skyler's fragile forgiveness and their children's confused relief. The fugue state cover story had held, but Elijah knew it was temporary protection at best.
He booked a red-eye flight to Miami, already calculating how to manage Jesse's suspicions while dealing with Dexter's Lila problem. The Entity's curse was a juggling act with grenades, and he was running out of hands.
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