Chapter 5: Mapping the Board
POV: Marcus
If Marcus was going to survive Breaking Bad, he needed to understand the board before Walter White flipped it upside down. Two months until cancer. Two months to prepare for the chaos that would consume Albuquerque like wildfire.
The industrial district hummed with late-night energy, trucks rumbling through streets that never truly slept. Marcus sat in his Honda Civic outside Los Pollos Hermanos, watching the last customers filter out into the December cold. The restaurant's cheerful yellow signage promised family dining and wholesome values, a beacon of corporate normalcy in a neighborhood slowly surrendering to urban decay.
At 11:30 PM, the last employee locked the front doors and drove away in a beat-up Toyota. Marcus waited another twenty minutes, letting the parking lot empty completely before making his move.
The alley behind Los Pollos reeked of grease and rotting vegetables, dumpsters overflowing with the detritus of legitimate commerce. Marcus pressed his palm against the restaurant's rear wall, feeling for the familiar heat that preceded his power. The outline appeared instantly now, his control improving with practice, though each door still felt like swallowing broken glass.
The portal opened into a storage room lined with industrial shelving. Boxes of chicken breading, gallon jugs of fryer oil, cleaning supplies arranged with military precision. Everything exactly as it should be in a functioning restaurant.
Marcus moved through the space with careful steps, documenting everything. The walk-in freezer held nothing but frozen poultry and vegetables. The office contained standard paperwork—tax forms, employee schedules, vendor invoices. All legitimate, all boring, all perfectly legal.
But on the manager's desk, clipped to a duty roster, was a name that made Marcus's blood run cold: Gustavo Fring, Assistant Manager, scheduled for morning shift supervision.
He was already here. The polite Chilean businessman who would build the Southwest's most sophisticated drug empire was currently managing chicken inventory and employee schedules, hiding in plain sight behind corporate efficiency and community involvement.
Marcus photographed the schedule with his phone, memorizing Gus's work patterns. Monday through Friday, 6 AM to 2 PM. Weekend coverage on rotation. Perfect cover for someone who needed to maintain a facade of legitimacy while building a criminal organization.
The restaurant felt different now that Marcus knew its true purpose. The spotless kitchen would eventually supply more than fried chicken. The basement would house equipment that had nothing to do with food service. The friendly manager who helped customers with their orders was already planning murders with the calm precision of a chess grandmaster.
"He's already here," Marcus thought, standing in what would become the administrative heart of a meth empire. "The monster under the manager uniform."
The door home opened in the storage room wall, and Marcus stepped through carrying knowledge that felt like lead in his stomach. Gustavo Fring wasn't a threat that would emerge later—he was a threat that already existed, patient and methodical, waiting for the right opportunity to reveal his true nature.
Pharmacy customers were more talkative than Marcus had initially realized. Three days of careful listening revealed a shadow economy that operated alongside Albuquerque's legitimate businesses, fueled by desperation and serviced by people who'd given up on legal solutions to their problems.
Tuco Salamanca controlled territory that stretched from the river to the interstate, his reputation built on violence so casual it had become almost artistic. Dealers spoke his name in whispers, customers crossed themselves when his organization was mentioned, and everyone agreed on one fundamental truth: Tuco was completely insane.
Marcus found him on a Thursday night in a parking lot behind a closed auto parts store, conducting business with the theatrical flair of someone who genuinely enjoyed inflicting pain.
The dealer was maybe nineteen, all nervous energy and acne scars, holding a paper bag like it contained his life savings. Probably did. Tuco examined the contents with the focused attention of a jeweler appraising diamonds, counting bills twice before stuffing them into his jacket.
"Twenty short," Tuco said, his voice carrying across the empty parking lot with unnatural clarity.
"Come on, man," the dealer pleaded. "It's all I got. My guy didn't pay me yet, but he's good for it. Tomorrow, I swear."
Tuco smiled. It was the most terrifying expression Marcus had ever seen, containing no warmth or humor, just the promise of violence delivered with genuine enthusiasm.
"Twenty dollars," Tuco repeated, pulling a knife from his pocket. "You disrespect me for twenty dollars?"
The beating lasted three minutes. Tuco used the knife's handle like a club, methodically working his way across the dealer's body with the patience of someone who'd found his calling. Blood looked black under the sodium streetlights, pooling on asphalt that had probably absorbed similar stains dozens of times before.
When it was over, the dealer lay motionless while Tuco laughed—high-pitched, musical laughter that echoed off the surrounding buildings like a hyena's call. He wiped the knife clean on the dealer's jacket before walking away, whistling a tune Marcus didn't recognize.
Marcus crouched behind a dumpster thirty feet away, hand gripping the Death Note in his jacket pocket. Tuco deserved to die—had earned it with interest—but the Grey Code demanded certainty. Full name, exact age, absolute confirmation of guilt.
"Not yet," Marcus decided, watching Tuco disappear into the night. "But soon."
The dealer stirred as Marcus approached, spitting blood and trying to sit up. Broken ribs, probably, and a concussion that would leave him dizzy for weeks. But alive, which was more than most people got after disappointing Tuco Salamanca.
"You need a hospital," Marcus said.
The dealer looked up with eyes that had aged ten years in three minutes. "Can't. Questions."
Marcus helped him to his feet, noting the way he favored his left side and the blood trickling from his ear. Brain injury, possibly serious. Without medical attention, he might not survive the night.
"There's a clinic on Fourth Street," Marcus said. "Free care, no questions asked."
"Thanks, man. I owe you."
"No, you don't. Just get help."
Marcus watched the dealer stumble away, probably toward more drugs instead of medical care, and added another name to his mental list of people who needed killing. Tuco was a cancer on Albuquerque, and cancers required surgical removal.
Jesse Pinkman looked like someone playing dress-up as a criminal. The baggy clothes, the sideways cap, the swagger that screamed "look at me"—all of it felt performative, a twenty-four-year-old kid trying to convince the world he was dangerous.
Marcus spotted him at a convenience store on Central Avenue, buying cigarettes with the careful deliberation of someone making the money last. Jesse counted bills twice, sorted change by denomination, and thanked the clerk with genuine politeness that contradicted his carefully cultivated street image.
Following him required creative use of the door ability. Marcus would create a portal ahead of Jesse's route, scout the destination, then open another door to stay parallel. Like leapfrogging through space, each jump bringing him closer to understanding the young man who would become Walter White's partner in destruction.
Jesse's aunt's house sat in a neighborhood that was sliding toward decay but hadn't quite arrived yet. Middle-class homes with decent paint jobs and maintained lawns, occupied by people who still believed their property values might recover. The kind of place where a meth lab could operate for months without attracting attention, as long as the operators were careful.
The RV in the backyard looked innocent enough—a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder that had seen better decades, parked under a tarp like a sleeping beast. But Marcus knew what lay inside: amateur chemistry equipment, bags of pseudoephedrine, and the beginning of an empire built on blue crystal.
He created a door into the neighboring yard and watched through chain-link fence as Jesse entered the RV with the nervous energy of someone who knew he was in over his head. Lights came on inside, followed by the sound of equipment being moved around. Jesse was cooking, probably producing the low-grade product that would soon catch Walter White's attention.
After an hour, Jesse emerged counting money—not much, maybe a few hundred dollars—and sat on the RV's steps like someone carrying the weight of the world. He looked young, scared, like a kid playing with explosives without understanding the consequences.
"He doesn't deserve what's coming," Marcus thought, watching Jesse smoke a cigarette with shaking hands. "None of them do."
Jesse would lose everything before this was over. His girlfriend, his family, his freedom, his innocence—all of it sacrificed on the altar of Walter White's ego and greed. He'd be manipulated, betrayed, enslaved, and nearly murdered multiple times, all because he'd had the misfortune to be Walter's former student.
Marcus could prevent it. A word in the right ear, an anonymous tip to the DEA, a simple accident that removed Jesse from the equation before Walter ever needed a partner. Clean, easy, merciful.
But Jesse was also essential to Walter's transformation. Without him, Walter might never become Heisenberg. Might never build the empire that would ultimately destroy itself and take down worse monsters in the process. Saving Jesse might doom hundreds of others.
The ripple effects were impossible to calculate, the moral mathematics beyond human comprehension. Marcus sat in someone else's backyard, watching a doomed young man count drug money by moonlight, and wondered if knowing the future was a blessing or a curse.
At home, Marcus spread a map of Albuquerque across his kitchen table and began marking locations. Red pins for drug territories, blue for legitimate businesses that would become fronts, yellow for locations where significant events would occur. The map looked like a battle plan, which was exactly what it was.
Fifty locations memorized over two weeks of reconnaissance. Twenty major players identified and catalogued. Distribution networks mapped from street dealers to cartel suppliers. The board was set, pieces positioned for the game that would begin when Walter White received his cancer diagnosis.
Tuco controlled the northeast quadrant with violence and intimidation. Gus was building his empire behind the facade of legitimate business. Jesse was cooking amateur meth in his aunt's backyard, unaware that he was about to become the most important person in Walter White's transformation.
And somewhere in the city, Walter himself was teaching chemistry to bored teenagers, going home to a pregnant wife and disabled son, living the quiet desperation that would soon explode into something monstrous.
Marcus stared at the map until the pins blurred together, trying to see patterns that might reveal the optimal intervention points. Save too many people and the timeline fractures unpredictably. Save too few and the suffering continues unchecked.
Ryuk materialized in the kitchen chair across from him, crunching an apple with theatrical enthusiasm.
"Quite the war room you've built," the death god observed. "Planning to conquer Albuquerque?"
"Planning to survive it."
"Same thing, really. You've got the Death Note, you've got the doors, you've got perfect knowledge of what's coming. Most humans would use that combination to become kings."
"I'm not most humans."
"No, you're not. Most humans act. You just watch and plan and agonize over moral implications. It's boring."
Marcus looked up from the map, meeting those yellow eyes. "Would you prefer I start killing randomly? Write names until the notebook runs out of pages?"
"I'd prefer you do something. Light Yagami was a monster, but at least he was an interesting monster. You're just... careful."
"Careful keeps me alive."
"Alive and powerless. What's the point of having godlike abilities if you're too paralyzed to use them?"
Marcus folded the map, ending the conversation. Ryuk was right about one thing—planning without action was just elaborate procrastination. But action without understanding was how empires crumbled and innocents died.
Two months until Walter White's cancer diagnosis. Two months to prepare for the chaos that would follow. Marcus had mapped the board, identified the players, and established the rules he would live by.
Now came the hard part: deciding whether to be observer or player in the game that was about to begin.
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