Chapter 2: The Weight of Knowing
Jesse's idea of breakfast was a greasy diner three blocks from the house. The walk took ten minutes and covered most of a residential neighborhood that had seen better decades. Cracked sidewalks. Dead lawns. Chain-link fences around properties where dogs barked at everything.
Combo had woken up and stumbled home. That left just Jesse and me, which suited my purposes fine.
"You good, man?" Jesse glanced sideways as we walked. "You seem, like, different today."
Careful. I adjusted my gait—let my shoulders roll forward, added a slight drag to my step. Pete moved like someone perpetually unsure where he was going.
"Just tired, yo. Rough night."
"Yeah, for real." Jesse pulled out a cigarette, offered me one. Pete smoked. I took it, let him light it, inhaled without coughing. Muscle memory. "Hey, I was thinking—Rico's got some new shit. Supposed to be fire. You wanna check it out later?"
Rico. The name surfaced from Pete's memories—mid-level dealer, worked the corner near Fourth Street, had a reputation for cutting his product with baby laxative.
NZT made the connections instantly. Jesse wanted to score. Normal behavior. But my gut—
No. Not my gut. Something else. A sensation like a cold finger pressing against my spine. Wrong. This situation was wrong.
"I dunno, man." The words came out before I'd fully processed why. "Rico's been acting weird lately. You noticed that?"
Jesse frowned. "Weird how?"
"Like, I dunno. Paranoid? And that new shit—if it's that good, why's he pushing it? Usually he saves the fire for his regular buyers."
That was pure fabrication. I had no idea how Rico behaved normally. But the wrongness—the warning—pushed me to create distance.
"Huh." Jesse dragged on his cigarette. "Maybe. But dude, we're pretty much dry, so..."
"Let's at least wait till tonight. See who else is talking about it. If it's really fire, word'll spread, right?"
Jesse shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Whatever, man."
The diner was a chrome-and-vinyl throwback with cracked leather booths and a waitress who'd clearly stopped caring decades ago. We slid into a corner table. Jesse ordered pancakes and bacon. I ordered the same, plus eggs, plus toast, plus a large orange juice. The waitress raised an eyebrow at the quantity but said nothing.
While we waited, I studied Jesse across the table. He looked younger than I expected—early twenties, beanie pulled low, oversized jacket draped over a frame that was thin but not malnourished like mine. His eyes had that particular emptiness of someone who'd been numbing themselves for so long they'd forgotten what sharp felt like.
In six months, Walter White would drag him back into cooking. In two years, everything good in his life would be dead or destroyed.
He caught me looking. "Dude, what?"
"Nothing, man. Just... thinking."
"About what?"
About saving your life. About preventing a cancer-ridden chemistry teacher from turning you into a murderer. About whether I have any right to interfere with a story that was, supposedly, just fiction.
"About maybe getting my shit together," I said instead. "You know? Like, this—" I gestured vaguely at myself, the diner, our lives, "—this can't be it, right?"
Jesse stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed—short, bitter, surprised.
"Yo, who are you and what'd you do with Pete?"
"I'm serious, man. Don't you ever think about, like, after? What happens when we're thirty? Forty?"
"We won't make forty doing this shit." Jesse's voice was flat. Honest. "That's kind of the point, right? Live fast, whatever."
The food arrived. I ate like someone who'd been starving—which, technically, Pete had been. The eggs tasted impossibly good. Salt and fat and protein flooding a system that had been running on chemicals and neglect.
Jesse watched me inhale the first plate. "Damn, Pete. Hungry much?"
"Starving." True in more ways than one.
We ate in silence for a while. NZT let me observe everything simultaneously—Jesse's micro-expressions, the other patrons, the sounds from the kitchen, the street visible through the window. Data points assembling into patterns.
Jesse was depressed. Not just the general malaise of a user, but something deeper. His movements were mechanical. His jokes lacked conviction. The usual manic energy I associated with his character was absent.
Pete's memories offered context: Jesse's aunt had died recently. The house we'd slept in was hers, left to him. He was alone except for friends like Pete who weren't really friends at all—just people to get high with.
"Hey." I set down my fork. "You doing okay? Like, really?"
Jesse's head came up. His eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"I don't know, man. You just seem... down. More than usual."
For a second, something real crossed his face—a flash of vulnerability quickly suppressed. "It's whatever. Same old shit."
"The house?"
"Yeah. The house." Jesse stabbed at his pancakes. "Every morning I wake up and it still smells like her perfume in some rooms. And I'm just... I'm just living in her space, getting high, doing nothing with my life. And I know she'd hate it, right? She'd be so disappointed."
"Your aunt?"
"Ginny. Yeah." He wouldn't meet my eyes. "She believed in me, you know? Actually thought I could be something. Now she's dead and I'm proving her wrong every single day."
This is the Jesse that Walter White will exploit, I realized. This guilt. This need for validation from someone who sees his potential. Walt will become that person—the father figure who sees worth in Jesse—and then he'll weaponize it.
I couldn't stop all of Breaking Bad. The timeline was too large, the forces too powerful. But maybe I could give Jesse enough foundation that when Walter came, he'd have somewhere else to stand.
"Maybe you don't have to prove her wrong." I kept my voice casual. Pete's voice. "Maybe you just gotta... start small. Do one thing different."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Something. Anything. Something that isn't this."
Jesse snorted. "Coming from you? No offense, but you're not exactly winning at life either."
"Yeah, well." I pushed my empty plate aside. "Maybe I'm starting to think about that too. Like, there's gotta be more, right? Something besides just... existing until we don't exist anymore."
Jesse studied me. Something in his expression shifted—suspicious but curious.
"What happened to you, man? For real. You're talking like someone else."
Careful. The warning again—not the same cold finger as before, but close. "Rough night. Bad dreams. Made me think, you know? About stuff."
Jesse accepted it. People reinvent themselves all the time; he just didn't expect it from someone like Pete.
We finished eating. I paid—which surprised Jesse—burning through six of my twelve dollars. The wallet felt lighter but my stomach felt human again.
Walking back, I said, "About Rico. Let's skip it today. Bad feeling."
"You keep saying that. Bad feeling about what?"
"I don't know. Just—trust me on this one?"
Jesse shrugged. "Whatever. We'll find something else."
We got back to the house around eleven. Jesse flopped on the couch and turned on the TV—some reality show about people screaming at each other. I excused myself to the bathroom.
The door locked behind me. I sat on the toilet lid and pulled out my phone.
An hour later, a text came through from someone named Denise: yo rico got busted cops everywhere at fourth st spot
I stared at the message. Pulled up Pete's contact list. Found Denise—casual acquaintance, sometimes bought from the same people, liked to gossip.
Rico had been arrested. The "fire" product was part of a sting. Anyone who'd bought from him today would have walked right into surveillance.
I'd felt the danger. Known to avoid it. Without evidence. Without logic.
Deal Sense, something whispered in the back of my mind. The ability to detect when a transaction—any transaction—was dangerous or unfair. Another power. Another tool.
I walked out of the bathroom. Jesse was still watching TV.
"Yo, Jesse. Check your phone."
He did. His eyes went wide.
"Holy shit. Rico got busted? Today?"
"Yeah." I kept my voice casual. "Good thing we didn't go, right?"
Jesse looked at me with new assessment. "Dude. How did you know?"
"I didn't know. I just... felt it."
"That's crazy. That's like, psychic or something."
"Nah, man. Just lucky."
But I filed the information away. Lucky Survivor. Deal Sense. And whatever else might emerge.
Pete's twelve dollars were down to four. I needed real money. I needed resources. And I needed to test how far these abilities could take me.
"Hey." I grabbed my jacket. "I'm gonna go for a walk. Clear my head."
"Want company?"
"Nah. Need to think. I'll catch you later."
I stepped outside into afternoon sun and started walking. The city spread around me—cracked asphalt, struggling businesses, people trying to survive at the margins. My city now. My world.
Somewhere out there was opportunity. Information converted to currency. Knowledge exploited for gain. The same skills Marcus Gilbert had used on Wall Street, applied to a very different market.
First step: learn who controlled what in this territory. Map the power structures. Identify gaps and inefficiencies.
Second step: exploit those gaps without getting killed.
Third step: build enough capital to transform into someone new.
The walk took three hours. I covered most of the surrounding neighborhood, testing something else—whether people noticed me. And they didn't. Eyes slid past like I wasn't there. A woman on her porch looked right through me. A group of teenagers didn't register my passage.
Presence Reduction. The ability to become unmemorable. To fade into background noise.
Not invisibility. Not supernatural stealth. Just... forgettability. The kind of person no one bothers to recall.
Useful. Very useful.
By evening, I had a map in my head. Dealer territories. Traffic patterns. Which corners were watched, which weren't. Where the money flowed and where it pooled.
I found a taco truck and spent three dollars on the best food I'd eaten in Pete's life—or Marcus's, for that matter. Stood in a parking lot eating carne asada while the sun set orange over the Sandias, and felt something I hadn't expected.
Hope.
This wasn't the life I'd planned. But it was a life. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I wasn't just working toward someone else's goals.
Tomorrow, I'd start building something of my own.
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