Chapter 7: Heisenberg's Explosive Debut
Tuco's office wasn't an office so much as a throne room with fluorescent lighting. The windows wore bars like jewelry. A Saint icon watched from the wall with tired eyes beside a poster for a defunct reggae night. The air tasted like accelerant and cheap cologne; it vibrated with a frequency you could mistake for music if you didn't value your teeth.
Adam didn't go inside. He sent Jesse in with strict instructions and a piece of advice that sounded joking and wasn't: "If he looks at your hands, show him your palms. People trust what they can see."
Jesse swallowed. "And Mr. White?"
"He'll make an impression," Adam said, and his smile was almost fond. He had seen this episode. He knew how it ended, but he also knew that the moment before an explosion is still a moment where a million other things could happen.
Walt arrived in his green button-down like an apology someone had ironed. He walked past Adam with his head up and his mouth set, and the look he gave Jesse was a benediction and a dare. Adam leaned against the car outside, felt the weight of the desert heat on his skull, and calculated escape routes he would never take.
Inside, the meeting mutated from conversation to humiliation with the speed of a weather system. Jesse took a beating instead of giving offense; the sound of it carried like the echo in a concrete stairwell. Adam's fingers tightened on the car roof. He did not go in. This was Walt's crucible, and Jesse's. Not Adam's.
Then the silence arrived, a vacuum that sucked all the air out of Adam's lungs for a heartbeat, followed by Walt's voice through the open window: "We may be scared of you, but I'm not scared of chemistry."
A beat. An object arced. The world held its breath.
From where he stood, Adam saw the shiver in the glass—a tremor in the air—and then the building blinked white. The sound rode the blast a second later, a thunderclap in a small room, and Jesse's yelp chased it out the door like a dog kicked by surprise. Dust bloomed from the doorway. For a half second, the mural of the saint seemed to flinch.
Adam laughed once, involuntary, not at pain but at audacity rewarded. "Bold," he said to the sky. "Very bold."
The door flew open. Walt and Jesse tumbled out with the brittle efficiency of men who had just discovered a new axis their world spun on. Jesse's nose leaked red. Walt's eyes gleamed like a man who had pulled a sword from a stone he didn't believe in thirty seconds earlier.
"Get in," Adam said, door already open.
They drove three blocks in silence before Jesse found his voice. "Did you see that?" he demanded of the dashboard, as if it had.
"I did," Adam said. "And now Tuco knows your names."
"Just 'Heisenberg,'" Walt said, and the word fitted itself to him like a custom jacket.
Adam glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He filed the name under Useful. He also filed the expression under Worrying. Men high on their own boldness make different choices tomorrow.
They parked behind a warehouse once the adrenaline faded enough to allow strategy. Jesse leaned against the corrugated metal and dabbed his nose with a wad of napkins that looked like they'd lost a fight. Walt stood with his hands on his hips, breathing hard, as if the desert weren't air but a test of will.
"You took a risk," Adam said. He kept his tone neutral. Praise would feed the wrong thing. Critique would injure the wrong thing. Information would do.
"It was calculated," Walt said.
"It was awesome," Jesse said, and winced when the smile pulled his busted lip.
Adam nodded. "You got what you needed: respect and time. Use both. Make product. Deliver it fast. Don't give him a chance to change his mind about preferring the money to the insult."
Walt looked at him, a flicker of thanks behind pride. "We will."
Hank's presence pressed at the edges of the day like a weather front. Adam felt it even before the phone pinged with a casual heads-up from a contact who owed him a favor: DEA stepping up patrols on the South Valley. He adjusted their routes while Jesse blinked at him like magic should have a ticket price.
Back at the unit, they packed. Adam sold 6 kg as soon as the cooler iced the heat down. There was a rhythm to it now—prayer beads counted in kilograms; a ledger that blinked double like a magician's mirror.
Sell 6kg meth.
[Asset recognized: drugs (methamphetamine), 6 kg.]
[Confirm sale for $300,000?] Y/N
Y.
[Sale confirmed. Double-profit applied.]
[Proceeds: $600,000 credited.]
Balance: $1,360,000
Jesse slumped against the rolling door after, eyes closed, head thumping gently to the beat of his own pulse. "Man," he said, voice raw. "That was…that was some comic-book crap, yo."
Walt didn't laugh. He stared at his hands like they were new. "Chemistry," he said again, softly, as if praying to it.
Adam said nothing. Admiration crowded against a wall of worry in his chest. He thought about how power introduced itself in small increments until you forgot the size of your first bite. He thought about how Tuco laughed with all his teeth and how some men, when you make them feel small, stomp on whatever's lower than their shoe.
Outside, the sun fell with the theatricality of a stage actor. The desert cooled. Adam stood and let the first night wind crawl inside his shirt and remind him that he was an animal with blood and bones that healed faster now. He watched Jesse do a small dance for no audience but the one in his head and let himself smile.
"Don't throw rocks at drug lords," he said conversationally.
Jesse snorted a laugh he regretted for his lip. "Tell that to Mr. White."
Walt said nothing. He didn't have to.
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