Chapter 1: Into the Meth Lab
Adam Stiels died on a Tuesday at a green light.
Rain turned the asphalt into a mirror that doubled the world, traffic lights smeared into long red and green scars over the slick. His wipers thumped a metronome he had long ago stopped hearing. The glass of his phone glowed on the passenger seat, an email subject line he'd written in a fit of optimism: "Lab Funding Proposal—Phase II." He glanced at it for the fraction it took the truck to appear.
The horn wasn't a sound so much as a shove, a brass knuckle to the ribcage of the air. Yellow grille. Steel higher than his window. The impact came like a door kicked in; the corner of his hood crumpled, his body became a thrown object tethered to a seatbelt. There was the sound of breaking glass and then a hellish wind of white powder from the airbag. His chest burned where the belt cut across; there was metal, a taste like pennies, that coppery edge of blood flooding the mouth. The world tilted sideways, dragging the street's neon across his vision in a wet smear. He tried to breathe and got a mouthful of talc, coughed, blinked tears into lines down his cheeks.
Cold bled in through a rupture somewhere. His ears rang. The streetlight above him swung in and out of view through the cracked windshield like a pendulum. He thought, absurdly, about balances—ledgers that never quite closed, columns of numbers he'd hoped to write into the world, one result after another until there was proof that he existed.
"Not yet," he said, or wanted to. What came out was a croak.
His pulse was a desperate bird. A woman screamed in the distance, footsteps, then the pitch of another truck braking too late, another slam that turned the ringing into a wall that ate everything else. He tasted more blood. He saw his hand, smeared with white and red, reach toward the phone. The screen had spiderwebbed, his name fractured into a dozen Adams between shards.
He was dying. The realization arrived with a strange cleanliness. Not panic—clarity. Numbers zeroing out. He could see the ledger: debts and credits, responsibilities and the narrow path between cowardice and mercy. The thought flitted through: There had to be a way to turn even this into an advantage.
The world narrowed to a bright point, like the sun seen through a magnifying glass.
It popped.
He fell through.
It wasn't a fall of body but of reference points. He wasn't moving and yet the world moved around him, stripping his senses and then painting them back in. A smell came first: a harsh ammoniac bite that seized the back of his throat and made his eyes water. Then heat, dry and palpable, like an oven door opening. The sound of something bubbling, a hiss like a thousand soda cans cracking open in chorus. Under it all, a faint country song from a radio with bad reception and a periodic two-beat chirp that his memory, helpfully and unbelievably, labeled as an RV battery warning.
He opened his eyes.
Desert light pushed at every crack in the vehicle's seams, and the interior was a museum of grime: duct tape, stained countertops, a stove blackened by use and chemicals, glassware arranged in clusters like alien flora. A man in tighty-whities and an apron moved with furious precision in the center of the chaos, blue eyes narrow behind fogged goggles, bald head shining. Another man, younger, with a knit cap and a motormouth face, bounced on the balls of his feet, as if the floor were made of ants.
Adam knew them. Recognition slammed into him so hard it was like a second impact. Walt. Jesse.
Breaking Bad. S1E1. Jan 20, 2008—post diagnosis, pre-emblematic hat as religion. His brain rifled through a mental index card box of episodes, found anchors. This was the day they'd first cook in the RV, the day things became a fuse.
He laughed. It came out choked and delighted and borderline hysterical. He swallowed it. The apron man—Walter White—froze, lab spoon held like a conductor's baton over the simmer. "Who the hell—"
"Yo!" Jesse's voice cracked. "Who's this guy? Walt—Mr. White, man, what—"
Adam's adrenaline snapped into a trained smile, a salesman's weapon. He raised his hands, palms out, backing away from the door he had somehow…stepped through? No door. He had been—no time for metaphysics. He reached for the thing like an instinct, like wading into cold water: confidence.
"Relax," he said, tone pitched calm. "Name's Adam. I'm not here to rip you off. I'm your buyer."
The second sentence hung there, the most useful lie the world had ever invented. Walt's jaw tightened; Jesse's eyes popped wider, then narrowed with suspicious hope. The chemical stink curled into Adam's lungs and ignited a rational joy: he knew this place, these people, their trajectories. He had an advantage that looked like destiny.
A line of text slid across his mind like a projection on the back of his eyelids.
[Noble System initializing…]
The words were crisp, white on a black nothing, and threaded with a faint sine-wave tone that felt like it came from the base of his skull. He did not flinch. He had expected something like this—no, he had wanted it. A system. Powers granted by a narrative god who loved ironic entrepreneurs.
[Welcome, Adam Stiels. Noble System (Dormant) now active.]
[Principles: Non-intelligent, transactional interface. Recognized assets: drugs, firearms, bodies (classified as "bad people" by moral heuristic). Functions: double-profit on asset sales, physical upgrades (strength, stamina, durability, healing).]
[Interface: Mental ledger accessible via thought-command: balance, inventory, sell(asset), upgrade(strength), upgrade(stamina), check(assets).]
[Initial Status: Balance $0. Strength 1x. Stamina 1x. Durability baseline.]
"Buyer?" Walt said, cautiously, spoon still held above the bubbling.
"Yeah," Jesse said, recovering first. "Like, like a distributor. I told you we needed one, Mr. White."
Adam let the words fold into each other—fiction smoothing the rough edges of reality. He made a small show of glancing around the RV, eyes catching on the glassware, the precise thermometer. "The product's good?" he asked Walt, as if he didn't already know.
Walt's eyes measured him. There was fear there and something else—a greed he had yet to teach himself to despise. "It's pure," he said, defensive and proud. "Ninety-nine percent."
"Cool cool cool," Jesse said, rubbing his palms on his jeans, jittering. "You got cash, man? Because we don't front, that's like, day-one stuff."
"I have cash," Adam lied first, then decided to make it true. He reached into the pocket of the jacket that had somehow made the transition with him; it was a cheap department store blazer, charcoal, smells of rain and broken glass a ghostly memory. He pulled out the wallet, thumbed bills. Not enough. Not for what he needed.
He took a breath and thought: balance.
The ledger flared into view.
Balance: $0
Inventory: 0
Upgrades: Strength 1x; Stamina 1x; Durability baseline
Assets: None logged
Commands: sell(asset), upgrade(strength), upgrade(stamina), check(assets), balance
He thought: sell 1kg meth.
[Error: Asset not held.]
Right. He suppressed a manic smile. First things first.
"Let's do a sample," he said, nodding toward the counter. "You show me what I'm buying. And I'll show you I'm serious."
Walt didn't like ceding ground, even pretend ground. He hesitated, then looked to Jesse, who shrugged, then looked back at Adam with a smirk that was half challenge, half plea.
Adam stepped forward, careful not to spook them, letting the heat from the cook roll over him. The blue crystals on the tray looked like fallen sky. They had the kind of clarity that sells itself. He pulled a small plastic bag from his jacket—one he did not own a minute ago, one that felt like a joke the universe had played in his favor. He palmed a pinch of sugar he'd slipped there from a diner packet in his pocket during his last stop in the other life—no, different. His brain was a centrifuge; he made a choice. He moved, light-fingered, and swapped the smallest sample toward Jesse, who snatched it up like a magpie and stared at it with reverence.
"Yo, taste your product!" Adam said, letting the taunt wear a grin.
Jesse blinked, dug a thumbnail into the shard, touched tongue. His face went from cocky to betrayed in a heartbeat. "This ain't meth, man! What is this—did you just—Mr. White, he's messing with us!"
Walt's nostrils flared. "Enough," he said, but his eyes—noted. He clocked Adam's hands, the smoothness of motion, the confidence. He didn't see an addict. He saw a man who could be useful.
Adam laughed softly, hands raised in surrender. "Relax. That was a joke. Your real product is"—he gestured—"excellent. I'll take a kilo."
"A kilo?" Jesse's pupils sparked into dollar signs. "That's fifty G's, yo."
"Fifty," Adam agreed. He paused. "Cash on delivery. You want to get paid today or wait for some corner boy to ghost you?"
Walt considered. He was at the point in his story where money was not yet a dragon's hoard but a dragon's hunger. The hospital folder sat unseen in his passenger seat in another life; the chemo bills whispered. He nodded once, decisive. "Fifty," he said.
Adam's heart kicked. He thought: sell 1kg meth.
He imagined it like dragging an icon from one folder to another. He pictured placing the kilo—this specific kilo—into the ledger's "sell" field.
[Asset recognized: drugs (methamphetamine), quantity: 1 kg.]
[Confirm sale for $50,000?] Y/N
He thought Y.
[Sale confirmed. Noble System double-profit applied.]
[Proceeds: $100,000 credited.]
The ledger ticked.
Balance: $100,000
There was no chime in the RV, no shimmer. Just a feeling like his bones settling into new weight. He smiled slow. "Done," he said, and pulled a bundle of cash from a hidden compartment in an old gym bag he had not had a moment ago.
But the money was there. Reality complied with the ledger. Walt's eyes widened an imperceptible fraction; Jesse swore softly, reverentially.
"Damn," Jesse said. "Okay, okay. You're for real."
Walt reached out, lifted a banded stack, flicked the edges. "You'll come back," he said, making it both question and demand.
"I'll come back," Adam said. He slid into the character fully now, the one whose voice had been waiting for a stage: a man who didn't waste words, who thought three moves ahead, who had a little too much fun. The system lay like a silent engine purring beneath his thoughts.
He took another breath of ammonia and heat and smiled through it. "And next time," he added, glancing at Jesse, "try not to eat your profits."
"Yo, I knew it," Jesse said, but his grin came easy. The prank had passed the test; Adam had measured his temperament and won a sliver of trust by not taking himself too seriously. People forgave confidence if you let them laugh.
They made the handoff with a choreography of men who needed it to be professional: weights checked, bag zipped, Walt writing nothing down but memorizing everything. Adam kept his mouth moving just enough to keep the conversation steered—no names, just numbers and drop points. He volunteered a burner phone number he'd picked up from a strip mall kiosk just outside of town; he had walked there minutes or hours ago in another life. The system made certain details grease themselves.
Outside, the desert was an anvil. The RV door opened to a heat that blurred the edges of distance. The sky was so big it made him feel like a mistake in a math problem. He stepped down into sand that wanted to pour into his shoes and felt the absurdity of his two lives try to occupy the same footprint.
Walt's voice followed him, dry and gravelly, already retreating back into the lab. "Next time, we set the terms."
"Sure," Adam said, without turning. "Next time, you'll have more product."
Jesse appeared at his shoulder, conspiratorial. "You got a name, man? Like, for real? Or should I call you, like, Mr. Guy?"
Adam smiled, showing teeth. "Call me Adam."
"Adam," Jesse repeated, trying it on. "Cool. I'm Jesse."
"I know," Adam said, and kept walking.
On the short hike back to where the scrub grew thicker near the dry wash, he let the act dissolve. He inhaled and coughed desert dust. The sun hammered every thought into a small coin. In his mind, the ledger gleamed.
Balance: $100,000
Strength: 1x
Stamina: 1x
Durability: baseline
He thought: This is real. Breaking Bad. Jan 2008. Walt's diagnosis behind him; Skyler's suspicion ahead. Emilio still breathing. Krazy-8 alive, a problem on a short fuse. Tuco waiting like a storm. And me, with a system that turns fifty into a hundred with a thought.
He tasted the metal memory again and decided he didn't mind. It would remind him what it cost to hesitate.
Night began to smudge the horizon. He found the beater car he'd bought with cash that hadn't existed an hour earlier. The engine coughed awake like a chronic smoker. He pointed the hood toward Albuquerque's ragged lights and merged with the road, a new life sliding into an old story's groove.
When the first billboard for a cancer clinic flashed past, he watched it leave in the mirror and let himself feel a sympathy that wasn't weakness but information. Walter White wanted control. He would offer it, dressed as opportunity.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Unknown number. He answered.
A pause filled with static, then Jesse's voice, too loud. "Yo, Adam? Mr. White says don't be late next time."
Adam laughed into the wind of his open window. "Tell him to make more meth."
He hung up, and the desert unfurled like a ledger that could be balanced after all.