Chapter 11: The Ride-Along
POV: Marcus
March 7th, 2008. The day Walter White would see Jesse Pinkman escape a drug bust and realize his former student was in the game. Marcus knew it happened today—he just didn't know where until Hank mentioned it over morning coffee at the diner.
"Big bust this morning," Hank had said, cutting into pancakes with aggressive enthusiasm. "Anonymous tip about a meth lab in the south valley. If it pans out, gonna be a hell of a show."
Marcus had nodded and made appropriate civilian noises about supporting law enforcement, all while calculating travel times and door placement strategies. Now he sat in his Honda three blocks from the target location, watching DEA vehicles converge like sharks following a blood trail.
The house squatted in a neighborhood that had given up pretending respectability decades ago—boarded windows, dead lawns, the kind of place where gunshots were just another form of neighborhood noise. Perfect cover for a meth operation, and perfect cover for someone who needed to observe without being observed.
Marcus created his first door in an alley behind the target house, stepping through to emerge in a vacant lot that offered clear sightlines. The second door appeared in the wall of an abandoned garage, providing access to a hiding spot with multiple escape routes. By the time Hank's convoy arrived, Marcus was positioned inside the house itself, crouched in a closet with a door cracked open just wide enough to see everything.
The DEA moved with practiced efficiency. Hank kicked in the front door while Gomez covered the back, their team flowing through the structure like water finding the easiest path. Emilio and Krazy-8 scrambled for weapons and escape routes, but they were outnumbered and outgunned from the moment the raid began.
Outside, Walter White stood next to Hank's SUV wearing the uncomfortable expression of someone who'd realized he was dramatically out of his element. The ride-along was supposed to be educational, a chance for Hank to show off his work to his cancer-stricken brother-in-law. Instead, Walt looked like he was watching his own execution.
Then Jesse exploded through a second-story window.
The young man tumbled naked except for a gas mask, limbs flailing as he hit the ground and rolled behind a car. For a moment, he lay stunned, probably wondering if he'd broken anything important. Then survival instinct kicked in and he sprinted toward the street wearing nothing but desperation and chemical protection equipment.
Marcus watched Walter's face as Jesse ran past him. Recognition flickered first—the teacher seeing a former student in an unexpected context. Then shock as Walt processed what Jesse's presence meant. Finally, calculation as the pieces clicked into place with almost audible precision.
"Jesse knows the business. I know the chemistry."
Marcus could practically see the thought forming in Walter's mind, could watch the exact moment when a desperate man realized he'd found his salvation. The cancer had given Walt a death sentence, but Jesse Pinkman had just provided a reprieve.
It was happening exactly as Marcus remembered from the show, and he felt a strange mixture of relief and dread settling in his chest. Relief that his knowledge of the timeline remained accurate. Dread that he was allowing it to unfold without intervention.
He could have prevented this. Could have warned Jesse about the raid, could have ensured the young man was anywhere except this house when the DEA arrived. Could have saved Jesse from becoming Walter White's partner in the empire that would eventually consume them both.
But he'd chosen to let events proceed naturally, and now the machine was in motion. Jesse would go home terrified about potential arrest. Walter would track him down within days. The partnership that would reshape Albuquerque's drug trade was about to begin.
"I'm complicit now," Marcus realized, watching Jesse disappear around a corner while Walt tried to process what he'd witnessed. "I let this happen. I chose to let this happen."
The raid concluded with Emilio and Krazy-8 in handcuffs, their operation dismantled with the thorough efficiency that made the DEA feel good about their budget allocation. Hank emerged from the house grinning like someone who'd just won the lottery, already composing the report that would make his career statistics look impressive.
"Hell of a thing, Walt!" Hank called, clapping his brother-in-law on the shoulder. "This is what we do. Take scumbags off the street, make the community safer."
Walter nodded and made appropriate responses, but Marcus could see the gears turning behind his eyes. Walt wasn't thinking about community safety or successful law enforcement. He was thinking about a half-naked kid in a gas mask who'd just shown him a path toward financial salvation.
After the convoy departed, Marcus used his doors to eavesdrop on the post-raid debriefing at DEA headquarters. Hank and Gomez sat in an office that smelled like stale coffee and institutional disinfectant, filling out paperwork with the enthusiasm of people who'd rather be kicking down doors.
"Distribution patterns on this stuff make no sense," Gomez said, reviewing evidence logs. "Lab was small-time, but the product was showing up in four different cities simultaneously."
"Maybe they had multiple labs?" Hank suggested.
"Nah, chemical signatures were identical. Same cook, same equipment, same everything. But somehow this shit was in Phoenix and El Paso on the same day it was being cooked here."
Hank frowned, studying reports that defied logical explanation. "What, they teleporting it?"
"I'm serious, Hank. We're seeing this pattern more and more. Product moving across state lines with no vehicle logs, no border crossings, no transportation infrastructure we can identify. It's like dealers have figured out how to move drugs through thin air."
Marcus's blood ran cold. His door ability was creating investigative anomalies, patterns that would only become more pronounced as his operation expanded. Every time he moved product between cities, he was leaving a trail of impossible logistics that clever agents like Hank would eventually notice.
"Maybe we're dealing with something new," Hank said. "New smuggling method, new technology, something we haven't seen before."
"Or maybe we're dealing with someone who's just that good at staying invisible."
Marcus created a door back to his apartment, leaving the DEA to puzzle over distribution patterns that challenged their understanding of physical reality. He'd need to be more careful going forward, introduce deliberate delays and false trails to make his operations look more conventional.
The conversation continued behind him, two dedicated agents trying to make sense of evidence that didn't fit their worldview. They'd keep investigating, keep looking for explanations that made logical sense. Eventually, they might start looking in directions that made Marcus uncomfortable.
"Another variable to manage," he thought, emerging in his kitchen where Ryuk was waiting with his eternal apple. "Another complication in an already complex game."
"Enjoying the show?" the death god asked, crunching fruit with theatrical enthusiasm.
"It's proceeding according to schedule."
"Your schedule or the universe's schedule?"
Marcus poured himself a glass of water, using the mundane task to organize thoughts that felt increasingly scattered. "I'm not sure there's a difference anymore."
Outside his window, Albuquerque continued its slow transformation into the battleground where Walter White would become Heisenberg. The pieces were moving exactly as they should, following a pattern that Marcus had memorized from countless hours of television viewing.
So why did he feel like he was losing control of something he'd never actually controlled in the first place?
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