Chapter 8: The Hank Encounter
POV: Marcus
January 28th, 2008. Marcus knew Walt's ride-along with Hank happened in early March, which meant the DEA agent was about to become the most important law enforcement officer in Albuquerque's drug war history. Time to get noticed—but carefully.
The Owl Café squatted on Central Avenue like a relic from a more optimistic era, its neon sign promising "GOOD FOOD 24 HOURS" to anyone desperate enough to believe such claims. The interior matched the exterior's commitment to aggressive mediocrity—red vinyl booths that had seen better decades, a lunch counter that probably hadn't been cleaned since the Clinton administration, and coffee that could strip paint from a battleship.
Perfect place to accidentally encounter a DEA agent who frequented the establishment during his lunch breaks.
Marcus ordered coffee and waited, reading a newspaper while monitoring the door. At 12:47 PM, Hank Schrader walked in like he owned the place, radiating the kind of aggressive confidence that made everyone else seem smaller by comparison. He was exactly as Marcus remembered from the show—broad shoulders, shaved head, the swagger of someone who'd never met a problem he couldn't solve with volume and intimidation.
"Hey, Rosario!" Hank called to the waitress behind the counter. "The usual, sweetheart!"
Marcus waited until Hank settled onto the stool next to his before making his move.
"Excuse me," Marcus said, looking up from his paper. "Aren't you the DEA agent who was in the news last week? That big bust on the west side?"
Hank's face lit up like someone had just asked him to explain his favorite hobby. "Yeah, that was me and my partner Gomez. Hell of a thing—found two hundred pounds of Mexican black tar in a storage unit. Previous tenant left quite a surprise for the new renters."
"Must be dangerous work."
"Eh, you get used to it. Bad guys are usually too high to shoot straight anyway." Hank gestured to the newspaper. "You reading about the Rodriguez arrest? That's my case too."
Marcus had specifically chosen an article about a recent drug bust, bait for exactly this conversation. "Says here they were using some kind of new distribution method. 'Unprecedented trafficking patterns,' according to your spokesman."
"That's the weird part," Hank said, warming to the subject as his coffee arrived. "These guys were moving product across state lines with no vehicles, no mules, no infrastructure we could trace. Product just appeared in different cities simultaneously. It's like they had a teleporter or something."
Marcus's hand tightened around his coffee cup. His door ability was already creating investigative anomalies, patterns that would only become more pronounced as his operation expanded. "Maybe they're just smarter than you think."
"Maybe. But I've been doing this fifteen years, and I've never seen anything like it. Cartels are getting creative, but this is beyond creative. This is impossible."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we found the same batch of product—same chemical signature, same packaging—in Phoenix and El Paso on the same day. That's four hundred miles apart. No way to move that much weight that fast without leaving traces." Hank shook his head. "Unless they've figured out how to bend the laws of physics."
Marcus filed that information away for future reference. He'd need to be more careful about distribution patterns, maybe introduce deliberate delays to avoid attracting additional DEA attention.
"Speaking of weird," Hank continued, "we found blue meth at a bust last week. Purest stuff I've ever tested. 96% pure. Nobody in New Mexico can cook like that."
Marcus's stomach dropped. Blue meth. Walter White's signature product. But Walt hadn't started cooking yet—that wouldn't happen until after his cancer diagnosis in February. So who was making blue meth in January 2008?
"Blue meth?" Marcus asked, keeping his voice casual. "That's unusual?"
"Unusual? Try impossible. That level of purity requires knowledge and equipment that maybe five people in the country possess. And none of them live in Albuquerque." Hank took a long sip of coffee. "Either we've got a chemistry genius operating under our noses, or someone's bringing product in from a major lab operation."
"This shouldn't exist," Marcus thought, his mind racing through possibilities. "Walt doesn't start cooking until March. So either my memory is wrong, or something is different about this timeline."
"Where did you find it?"
"Street dealer in the northeast heights. Kid claimed he didn't know where it came from—product just appeared in his stash house overnight. No supplier contact, no transportation trail, nothing. Like it materialized out of thin air."
Another impossibility. Product appearing without transportation suggested someone else had access to abilities similar to Marcus's door power. But that was impossible—he was the only one who'd transmigrated from the future, the only one with supernatural abilities in a world that was supposed to follow normal rules.
Unless it wasn't.
"You seem pretty interested in this stuff," Hank observed, studying Marcus with the calculating gaze of someone trained to notice when people asked too many questions. "What's your line of work?"
"Pharmacy night manager," Marcus said, sticking to his cover story. "Boring stuff."
"Pharmacy?" Hank's interest sharpened. "You ever see any pseudoephedrine go missing? Cold medicine, diet pills, anything that could be used for cooking?"
"Sometimes. When I notice, I report it."
"Good man." Hank reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. "You see anything weird—suspicious customers, unusual purchase patterns, people asking questions they shouldn't—you give me a call. Citizens like you make our job easier."
Marcus took the card, knowing he'd never use it but recognizing its value as a potential asset. Having direct access to Hank's contact information might prove useful later, especially if he needed to feed the DEA information about criminal organizations that deserved investigation.
"I appreciate what you guys do," Marcus said. "Must be frustrating when the bad guys stay one step ahead."
"They don't stay ahead for long. Criminals always make mistakes, always get cocky, always underestimate what we're capable of." Hank's grin was predatory. "This blue meth cook thinks he's smarter than the DEA? We'll see about that."
Marcus finished his coffee and left money on the counter, offering final pleasantries before heading for the door. As he walked to his car, he turned Hank's words over in his mind like puzzle pieces that refused to fit together.
Blue meth before Walter White. Distribution patterns that defied explanation. Product appearing without transportation infrastructure.
Either his memory of Breaking Bad was fundamentally flawed, or this world contained variables that hadn't existed in the television show. The possibility sent ice water through his veins, because if the timeline was already different from what he remembered, then his knowledge was unreliable and his plans were built on quicksand.
Ryuk materialized in the passenger seat as Marcus started the engine, those yellow eyes reflecting with what might have been amusement.
"I told you," the death god said, crunching an apple that hadn't been there moments before. "This world smells funny."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you're not the only interesting thing happening in Albuquerque right now. You're not even the only impossible thing."
"There's someone else with powers?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe there are things in this world that weren't in your television show. Maybe your knowledge is incomplete." Ryuk's grin stretched wider. "Maybe you're not as special as you thought."
Marcus drove home through streets that suddenly felt less familiar, carrying questions that had no comfortable answers. Blue meth before Walter White meant either his memory was wrong or his world was different from the one he'd observed through a screen.
Both possibilities terrified him in different ways.
If his memory was wrong, then everything he thought he knew about the future was suspect. Every plan he'd made, every person he'd marked for salvation or elimination, every timeline event he'd prepared to influence—all of it potentially meaningless.
If the world was different, then he was operating blind in a reality that contained variables he couldn't predict or control. Other transmigrators, other power users, other forces that could reshape events in ways that made his knowledge worthless.
"I need to find out who's making blue meth," Marcus decided, pulling into his apartment complex. "And I need to find out fast."
Because if he wasn't the only impossible thing in Albuquerque, then everything he'd planned might be about to become very complicated indeed.
The business card sat in his pocket, a small piece of cardboard that represented a connection to the law enforcement apparatus that would eventually hunt Heisenberg. Marcus had positioned himself on the periphery of that hunt, ready to provide information or misdirection as circumstances required.
But now he wondered if he might end up being hunted instead.
Outside his window, Albuquerque stretched toward the horizon under a sky that looked exactly the same as it had that morning but somehow felt fundamentally different. Somewhere in that maze of streets, someone was cooking blue meth with impossible purity, creating a product that shouldn't exist yet.
Marcus had thought he understood the game board. Now he realized he might not even know all the players.
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