Chapter 14: The Krazy-8 Intervention - Part 2
POV: Marcus
Thirty seconds of silence. Walt's eyes narrowed, calculating the angles of an equation that included variables he'd never encountered before. Jesse looked between the impossible door and Marcus's face, his young features cycling through confusion and terror with the speed of someone whose worldview was being systematically dismantled.
Krazy-8 groaned, consciousness beginning to return with the persistence of someone whose body refused to accept chemical unconsciousness.
"How did you do that?" Walt demanded, his voice carrying the sharp edge of someone who'd spent his life believing in the fundamental laws of physics. "That door wasn't—"
Marcus interrupted the question by creating another door behind Walt, then a third in the RV's floor. The blue outlines glowed like neon in the vehicle's confined space, each portal offering a glimpse of somewhere else entirely.
"What the FUCK, man?!" Jesse screamed, his voice cracking with the strain of processing impossibility. "What the fuck is happening?!"
"Doesn't matter how," Marcus said, closing the floor door before anyone could fall through it. "Matters that I can. You have a product everyone will kill for. I have distribution nobody can track. Sixty-forty split, your favor. Deal?"
Walt stared at the doors, then at Krazy-8's unconscious form, his mind racing through implications that challenged everything he thought he knew about the world. Here was salvation wrapped in impossibility, rescue delivered by someone who clearly operated outside normal human limitations.
"And him?" Walt asked, gesturing toward Krazy-8 with the clinical detachment of someone who'd already started thinking like a criminal.
"I take him somewhere he'll never talk. You never have to make that choice."
The offer hung in the air like a lifeline thrown to drowning men. Marcus could see Walt processing the alternatives: kill Krazy-8 in cold blood and cross the line into murder, or let him live and risk exposure that would destroy everything Walt was trying to build.
Or trust the man who could walk through walls and offer a solution that avoided both moral compromise and practical disaster.
Walt shook his head, paranoia overriding desperation. "Too many unknowns. I don't know who you are, what you want, or why you'd help us. This could be a DEA setup, cartel recruitment, anything."
Marcus glanced at Krazy-8, noting the way the man's breathing was becoming more regular, his movements more purposeful. "You have about two minutes before he wakes up fully. Then you either kill him—your first murder—or let him go and wait for him to kill you. Or you trust me."
Jesse, panicking, turned to Walt with desperate eyes. "Mr. White, maybe we should—"
"Shut up, Jesse." Walt's voice carried absolute authority, the tone of someone who'd spent decades commanding classrooms full of rebellious teenagers. "Let me think."
But thinking required time they didn't have. Krazy-8's eyes were beginning to flutter, consciousness returning with the determination of someone who'd survived worse than chemical exposure. When he woke up fully, he'd remember everything: the gas trap, Emilio's death, Walter's face.
"Why?" Walt asked, his gaze fixed on Marcus with laser intensity. "Why would you help us?"
Marcus met his eyes without flinching. "Because in about thirty seconds, you're going to become a murderer. And I'd rather have you owe me than fear me."
The honesty was calculated but genuine. Marcus had watched this scene play out in the television show, had seen Walter White's transformation from desperate teacher to cold-blooded killer. Preventing that transformation might preserve whatever humanity Walt still possessed, might create a partnership based on mutual benefit rather than mutual destruction.
Or it might simply delay the inevitable. But delay was better than acceleration, and Marcus was betting that a Walter White who didn't have murder on his conscience might be easier to manage than one who'd already crossed that particular threshold.
Krazy-8's eyes opened fully, confusion giving way to awareness, awareness giving way to rage. He started to sit up, started to speak, started to become a problem that would require permanent solution.
Walt looked at his own hands, probably imagining them around Krazy-8's throat, seeing his future branch into paths that led to either immediate violence or eventual death. The choice was impossible: become a killer or become a victim.
Unless he accepted the third option that Marcus was offering.
Walt extended his hand across the space between them, his fingers steady despite everything he'd just witnessed. "Sixty-forty. I control product quality."
They shook hands over Krazy-8's stirring form, sealing a partnership that would reshape Albuquerque's drug trade in ways that neither man could fully comprehend. Marcus felt the weight of that handshake, the moment when passive observation became active participation in events that would define the next several years.
Without hesitation, Marcus dragged Krazy-8 through the nearest door, the unconscious dealer disappearing into a portal that led to somewhere fifty miles away in the desert. The door closed behind them with a sound like reality snapping back into place.
Jesse stared at the empty space where two people had been standing moments before. "Where did they go?!"
Marcus's voice echoed from beyond the closed door, seemingly coming from the RV's walls themselves. "Somewhere else."
A minute later, Marcus returned through a different door, alone and slightly out of breath from dragging an unconscious man across desert terrain. Krazy-8 was alive, terrified, and probably already walking toward the nearest highway with instructions to leave New Mexico and never return.
"He's alive, terrified, and leaving New Mexico tonight," Marcus announced, closing the door behind him. "You're welcome."
Brief POV shift: Jesse
Jesse's brain felt like it was melting. Nothing about the last five minutes made any kind of sense that he could process. People didn't walk through walls. Doors didn't appear in thin air. High school chemistry teachers didn't team up with guys who could teleport.
But he'd seen it happen. Had watched Mr. White make some kind of poison gas that killed Emilio and knocked out Krazy-8. Had watched a complete stranger step through a hole in reality and offer to solve their problems with methods that belonged in comic books, not real life.
"Mr. White," Jesse said, his voice barely above a whisper. "What the hell did we just agree to?"
Walt stared at the spot where Marcus had disappeared, then at the bag of blue meth that had started this entire nightmare. His expression was unreadable, cycling between relief and calculation and something that might have been fear.
"I don't know," Walt admitted. "But he just saved me from becoming a murderer. That's worth something."
Back to Marcus POV
Marcus stepped through his final door and emerged in his apartment kitchen, where Ryuk was waiting with an apple and that eternal grin that suggested he'd been entertained by the afternoon's events.
"Interesting choice," the death god observed. "Most humans with ultimate power focus on eliminating threats. You chose to prevent your partners from becoming killers."
"They're not my partners yet. But they might be useful."
"Walter White will become Heisenberg whether you prevent him from killing Krazy-8 or not. The cancer is still growing. The desperation is still building. The pride is still there, waiting to be wounded."
Marcus opened a beer and sat down at his table, exhaustion settling into his bones like lead. Using the doors in rapid succession always cost him, but today the price felt particularly steep. Maybe because he'd finally committed to active intervention, finally stepped out of the shadows to become a player instead of an observer.
"Maybe. But now he owes me instead of fearing discovery. That changes the dynamic."
"Does it? Or does it just give him someone to blame when things go wrong?"
Marcus didn't answer. Outside his window, Albuquerque continued its slow transformation into the battleground where Walter White would become Heisenberg. The question was whether Marcus's intervention had prevented that transformation or simply delayed it.
Either way, he was committed now. No more passive observation, no more careful planning from the sidelines. He'd offered Walter White and Jesse Pinkman a partnership that would reshape both their destinies.
The only question was whether any of them would survive the consequences.
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