Chapter 20: The Gale Problem
The superlab's climate control hummed with mechanical precision, maintaining the perfect environment for cooking methamphetamine and brewing obsessions. Gale Boetticher stood at his coffee station like a barista-scientist, grinding beans with the same meticulous attention he applied to chemical synthesis.
"Marcus," Gale called out cheerfully. "Care for some caffeine before the evening cook? I've been experimenting with a new Colombian blend."
Elijah accepted the offered cup, watching steam rise from liquid dark as his conscience. Three weeks had passed since his return from Miami, three weeks of Gale's increasingly pointed questions about data analysis and predictive modeling.
"You know," Gale continued, settling into the conversation with academic enthusiasm, "I've been thinking about your predictive models. The statistical accuracy is remarkable—almost preternatural. What algorithms are you using?"
Elijah's stomach tightened. Gale was too smart for his own good, too curious about methods that couldn't be explained without revealing supernatural abilities.
"Pattern recognition," Elijah said carefully. "Behavioral analysis combined with database mining."
"Fascinating." Gale's eyes lit up with the fervor of someone discovering a new intellectual challenge. "I'd love to see your methodology sometime. Perhaps over proper espresso?"
The coffee shop on Central Avenue felt aggressively normal—exposed brick walls, mismatched furniture, the kind of place where graduate students wrote dissertations and middle managers had affairs. Gale had chosen it deliberately, Elijah realized. Neutral territory for an interrogation disguised as intellectual discourse.
"I've been doing some research," Gale said, settling into his chair with predatory comfort. "Remember that DEA raid on Los Lunas you predicted three weeks before it happened?"
Elijah's hands remained steady on his cup despite the alarm bells ringing in his head. "Pattern recognition from police scanner chatter."
"I checked." Gale's smile was warm but relentless. "No unusual scanner activity that week. Radio silence, actually."
The friendly facade was slipping, revealing something harder underneath. Gale wasn't just curious—he was investigating, applying the same methodical approach he used for chemistry to the mystery of Marcus Reid.
"And those cartel informants you identified," Gale continued. "That's not statistics—that's intelligence. Deep intelligence. The kind that requires either government access or..." He paused, studying Elijah's face. "Or something else entirely."
Elijah felt sweat forming at his hairline despite the air conditioning. "I have sources in federal databases. Information brokers."
"Sources." Gale leaned forward, voice dropping to conversational intimacy. "Marcus, I've worked with data my entire career. I know what database mining looks like, what pattern recognition produces. What you do isn't analysis—it's precognition."
The word hung between them like an accusation. Elijah stood abruptly, reaching for his wallet.
"I need to go."
"Marcus—"
"Meeting. Can't be late."
He dropped cash on the table and fled, leaving Gale sitting alone with his espresso and his suspicions. Behind him, he could feel intelligent eyes tracking his retreat, filing away one more data point in an increasingly dangerous equation.
Walter White stood in the superlab's main chamber, adjusting equipment with obsessive precision. Elijah approached him during a break between cooking sessions, timing the conversation for maximum privacy.
"Gale is asking about my methods," Elijah said without preamble. "If he digs deeper, he might find connections to you and Jesse."
Walt's eyes went cold—winter blue, like a gas flame burning at its hottest. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying Gale is too curious. And curious people ask questions that might lead to uncomfortable answers."
It was a lie wrapped in truth, manipulation disguised as concern. But Walt's paranoia was a finely tuned instrument that responded to exactly this kind of pressure.
"You think Gus is using him to investigate us?" Walt's voice carried the edge that appeared whenever his control was threatened.
Elijah shrugged—ambiguous body language that allowed Walt to reach his own conclusions. "I think Gale's scientific approach to problem-solving extends beyond chemistry."
The seed took root immediately. Walt's face hardened as pieces clicked into place—Gale's presence in the lab, his questions about processes, his obvious competence as a replacement cook.
"Gus wants to replace me with Gale," Walt said quietly. "That's why he's here. Training my replacement."
Elijah didn't correct the misunderstanding. Sometimes the most effective lies were the ones people told themselves.
"I want Jesse as my assistant," Walt announced the next day to Gus. "Not Gale."
Gus, always calculating, agreed with characteristic smoothness. "Of course, Mr. White. Whatever helps optimize your productivity."
Gale was reassigned to a different facility, his innocent curiosity weaponized into career exile. The decision happened with corporate efficiency—one day present, the next day transferred, no explanations offered or questions entertained.
That evening, Elijah used his Omniscient Locator to track Gale's location: a modest apartment in the Northeast Heights, windows glowing with warm light. He sat in his rental car across the street, watching shadows move behind curtains as jazz music drifted through the night air.
Probability Assessment: Will Gale Boetticher survive this timeline?
12% probability of survival beyond six months.
Cost: $9,000.
The number hit him like a physical blow. Twelve percent. Statistically doomed. Walt would eventually see Gale as a threat—too knowledgeable, too competent, too willing to please Gus. Jesse would be forced to pull the trigger, another innocent death weighing on his conscience.
Elijah could warn Gale. Could text him to run, quit his job, leave Albuquerque for somewhere Walt's paranoia couldn't reach. But the speech curse would prevent any explanation that mattered, and warning would expose his meta-knowledge.
"I've just engineered the death of an innocent man to protect my position in a criminal empire. The Entity's game has corrupted me completely—I'm no longer just observing tragedies, I'm orchestrating them."
His phone rang, Gale's number appearing on the screen like a confession.
"Marcus?" Gale's voice carried genuine warmth. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable earlier. I'm just fascinated by your mind, the way you process information. Coffee again sometime?"
Elijah's throat tightened. He wanted to scream warnings, beg Gale to run, offer money for disappearance. Instead, the speech curse activated the moment he tried to approach truth:
"Coffee is... great! Like... volcanic... enthusiasm!"
Gale laughed awkwardly on the other end. "You're an odd one, Marcus. But brilliant. Truly brilliant."
The line went dead. Elijah put his head in his hands, feeling the weight of impossible knowledge pressing down like a gravestone. Brilliant and damned. Capable of calculating probabilities with supernatural precision but powerless to change the outcomes that mattered.
Across the street, Gale's silhouette moved past the window—brewing coffee, playing jazz, living his last months in blissful ignorance of the mathematical certainty approaching.
"The Entity hasn't given me powers—it's given me the tools to become complicit in every horror I witness. Each calculation makes me more responsible for outcomes I'm theoretically trying to prevent. I'm becoming the monster I promised myself I'd never be."
Tomorrow, he would return to the superlab and watch Walt's paranoia metastasize. He would provide analyses and assessments that made the empire more efficient, more profitable, more deadly. He would smile and nod as plans took shape that would eventually require Gale's death.
And he would count the cost in dollars spent and souls lost, keeping perfect mathematical records of his own damnation.
The Entity's game continued, cruel and precise, transforming knowledge into complicity and survival into a form of death that left the body breathing.
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