Chapter 8: Tuco's Deal
Skyler's baby shower had camouflage—pastel balloons, cellophane-wrapped baskets, a cake with a fondant bear—but it couldn't hide that it was a surveillance culture with cupcakes. Skyler's smile looked like a woman holding a shield; Marie's looked like a woman holding a mirror. Walt stood where he was told, performed gratitude with an actor's precision, and cataloged the prices in his head.
Adam attended the edges. He drifted past the gift table like a helpful brother-in-law no one remembered inviting. He swapped one beautifully wrapped box with another—his gag for Marie: a squeaking rubber chicken wearing a bib that read "Breaking Wind." When Marie opened it later, the expression on her face traveled from confusion to indignation to the smile you put on because everyone is looking. Adam leaned against the kitchen arch and took private solace in tiny rebellions.
Between sips of lemonade that tasted like its own alibi, Adam's phone trembled with practical demands. Walt and Jesse were drowning in Tuco's bulk order—not in chemistry but logistics. Tuco's men were everywhere and nowhere, showing up early, demanding late pickups, treating schedules like rumors. The math was simple: the more moving parts, the more chances for something to break and then bleed.
Adam excused himself from niceness and found the noise that made sense. He drove to the warehouse where they had set up triage for the cook. The air smelled like solvents and the inside of a latex glove. Jesse's hoodie was plastered to his back with sweat; Walt's eyes had the brightness of a man who hasn't slept but has found faith in repetition.
"Supply?" Adam asked.
"Down to the dregs," Jesse said, flinging an arm toward a crate. "We need, like, more…stuff."
"Chemicals," Walt said, equal parts pedant and provider.
Adam nodded, already moving. He had tongues for a dozen vendors whose idea of "discretion" ranged from "never writes a receipt" to "burns the building down after." He chose three, split orders across town, rotated vehicles, and touched nothing he didn't have to. He carried drums and boxes as if they were groceries, the 4x strength he planned for in his head not yet purchased but already desired.
In the small quiet pockets between tasks, he weighed the upgrade. His balance sat at $1.36M. Strength 4x cost $2M. Debt, again. He remembered the wrench bending, the way the gun dealer's eyes had gone from ragged to respectful. He thought about Tuco's hands on Jesse's face, the future ones, the ones in the desert that would—he did not push the thought away. He cataloged it. He planned for it.
He set one drum down with a thud that echoed the bottom of his thinking. Later, he sold 7 kg and made the math behave enough to sign on the dotted line with his skull.
Sell 7kg meth.
[Asset recognized: drugs (methamphetamine), 7 kg.]
[Confirm sale for $350,000?] Y/N
Y.
[Sale confirmed. Double-profit applied.]
[Proceeds: $700,000 credited.]
Upgrade strength 4x.
[Confirm purchase: Strength 4x for $2,000,000?] Y/N
Y.
[Purchase confirmed.]
[Strength upgraded: 4x. Durability and healing increased.]
[Balance updated: -$940,000.]
It hit him differently than the first time. Not a tuning, but a re-stringing. His muscles hummed. His bones felt like someone had poured steel into them while he slept. He rolled his shoulder, and the joint whispered gratitude. He picked up a crate he would have carried with care yesterday and felt it flirt with weightlessness.
Jesse noticed. "Dude," he said. "Do you have, like, robot arms?"
"Good sleep," Adam said. It had graduated from joke to in-joke.
Walt watched without comment, filed it with the other things about Adam that didn't compute and yet made the world work better when you accounted for them. He wiped sweat from his scalp and went back to his measurements.
Night found them back at Skyler's living room for cleanup Adam hadn't been invited to. Skyler pulled a ribbon from a pile and stared at it like it was a clue. "Who switched Marie's gift?" she asked no one in particular. Walt made a sound that wanted to be a laugh and wasn't allowed to leave his throat.
"Kids these days," Adam said, and Skyler's eyes narrowed like knives.
Tuco was not a child. Tuco was a grenade without a pin on a schedule. He texted at odd hours, called from payphones like a man who thought that made him invisible. He wanted more, faster, cheaper, better. The four words that ruin businesses and bone structures.
Adam invented buffers. He found a second meet man—someone from a smaller crew—and pretended a distribution ladder existed where, in fact, he was the only rung that mattered. He invented supply chain delays on purpose so that when real ones arrived, they could hide among the fakes. He scheduled meets near places that made violence inconvenient: fire stations, churches, diners with too many cameras. He taught Jesse to say "no" with his body, to make his shoulders square and his eyes level, to show Tuco's dogs that he could be a harder chew than their teeth wanted.
And still, the city hummed with the knowledge that someone had thrown a bomb in a gangster's face and told him to call him Heisenberg. Hank's bulletin boards got busier. Patrols drove slower past certain corners. The temperature rose, even as the days cooled.
Adam lay on his motel bed at 3 a.m., stared at the ceiling, and listened to the pipes tick. He felt the 4x strength in the way his breath filled his chest faster, in the way his pulse slowed on command like he had found a dimmer switch. He thought about the day ahead like a machine he loved to hear run.
Balance: -$940,000
Strength: 4x
Stamina: 1x
Durability: improved
He turned to his side and, before sleep took him all the way, smiled into the dark. Let Tuco be chaos. He had chosen to be infrastructure.
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