Chapter 1: The Fall and The Awakening
POV: Marcus
December 15th, 2024. Rain hammered the windshield in sheets, turning the highway into a kaleidoscope of red taillights and fractured reflections. Marcus squinted through the downpour, his wipers struggling against the deluge.
The marathon was finally over. Sixty-two episodes of Breaking Bad consumed in three sleepless days, the finale still burning behind his eyes. Walter White's final moments, Jesse's escape, the empire of lies crumbling to dust—it felt more real than his own life.
His phone buzzed on the passenger seat. A text from his manager: Can you cover Sarah's shift tomorrow?
Marcus reached for it without thinking. Just for a second. Just to—
The semi-truck's horn screamed through the night, but Marcus's eyes were on the glowing screen. When he looked up, eighteen wheels of steel and momentum filled his vision.
"God, if I could've just warned them..."
The impact shattered time itself. Metal shrieked. Glass exploded. His consciousness tore apart like wet paper, each fragment carrying a different agony. The pain transcended physical—it was the universe unwinding, reality collapsing into a single point of impossible suffering.
Then nothing.
Then everything.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
An alarm clock. Not his alarm clock. The sound stabbed through his skull like rusty nails. Marcus groaned and fumbled for the snooze button, his hand hitting unfamiliar angles and surfaces.
This isn't my apartment.
He sat up, blinking in the gray dawn light filtering through venetian blinds he'd never seen before. The room was small, cramped, filled with furniture that belonged in a secondhand store. The walls were beige—that particular shade of beige that screamed "low-rent housing."
Marcus stumbled to his feet, vertigo making the world tilt. In the corner stood a mirror, cracked along one edge. The face staring back at him made his breath catch.
It was him. But not him. Younger—maybe ten years—with harder lines around the eyes and a scar along his left temple he'd never had. Same brown hair, same green eyes, but this version looked like it had seen things. Done things.
Memories crashed into him like competing tidal waves. Two lives, two histories, existing simultaneously in the same skull. Marcus Sullivan, 34, pharmacy manager from Des Moines, dead in a car crash. Marcus Sullivan, 29, night shift supervisor at Albuquerque Pharmacy, very much alive.
His phone—this Marcus's phone—lay on the nightstand. The date made his stomach drop: December 15, 2007.
"Seventeen years," he whispered, then started laughing. Hysterical, broken laughter that echoed off the cheap walls. "I'm in the fucking show."
Because that's what this was. Albuquerque, December 2007. Walter White was three months away from his cancer diagnosis. Jesse Pinkman was cooking meth in his RV right now. Tuco Salamanca was alive and terrorizing dealers across the city.
Marcus knew it all. Every twist, every death, every moment of tragedy that was coming. He could prevent Hank's murder, save Jane from her overdose, stop the plane crash that killed 167 people.
Or he could save himself.
The drive to Albuquerque Pharmacy took twenty minutes through streets that existed in his memories but felt alien under his feet. The store squatted in a strip mall between a nail salon and a check-cashing place, fluorescent lights buzzing behind security glass.
"You're late," Lisa said as he walked through the employee entrance. She was restocking behind the counter, her gray hair pulled back in a tired ponytail. "Again."
"Sorry," Marcus mumbled, grabbing his name tag from the office. Lisa Martinez. He knew her now—had worked with her for eight months, covered her shifts when her mother was sick, shared countless nights of mundane retail hell.
But she was also new. A stranger wearing a familiar face.
The antiseptic smell hit him like a physical blow. This was real. The cold bite of the air conditioning, the hum of the security cameras, the way his feet ached after an hour on the linoleum—all of it undeniably, impossibly real.
"Earth to Marcus," Lisa called from behind the pharmacy counter. "Mrs. Rodriguez is asking about her prescription."
He moved on autopilot, checking the computer, counting pills, going through motions his body remembered even if his mind was reeling. Every customer, every transaction felt like proof that this wasn't a dream or a coma hallucination.
Walter White had cancer growing in his lungs right now. Probably didn't even know it yet.
Jesse was somewhere in the city, cooking amateur meth with Emilio and Krazy-8.
Tuco was beating dealers with tire irons over twenty-dollar shortages.
Gustavo Fring was building his empire behind the facade of Los Pollos Hermanos.
All of it happening simultaneously, the machinery of tragedy already in motion.
"I can save them," Marcus whispered, his hands shaking as he sorted medication. "Or I can save myself."
The choice sat in his chest like a tumor, growing heavier with each passing hour. Knowledge was power, but it was also burden. How do you carry the weight of futures that haven't happened yet? How do you choose who lives and who dies when you know the script but can't predict the changes?
A customer approached—elderly man with kind eyes, asking about blood pressure medication. Marcus processed the transaction mechanically, but his thoughts were seventeen years in the future, watching Walter White die on a meth lab floor.
"Have a good night," the man said, and Marcus nodded without really hearing.
The hours crawled by. Each tick of the clock brought February closer, brought Walt's diagnosis, brought the moment when a high school chemistry teacher would transform into Heisenberg and drag everyone down with him.
At 3 AM, Marcus locked up and walked to his car—this Marcus's car, a ten-year-old Honda Civic with a dent in the passenger door. The night air was crisp, carrying the scent of desert and distant rain.
Halfway home, something strange happened. Heat bloomed in his palms, sudden and electric. He flexed his fingers, frowning. Stress, probably. The psychological toll of waking up in the wrong decade would manifest somehow.
He dismissed it, focused on driving, on processing the impossible reality of his situation.
In his apartment, something waited that would change everything. A black notebook, lying innocuously on his kitchen floor where no notebook had been that morning. Simple. Innocent. Deadly.
But Marcus didn't notice it yet. He was too busy staring out his window at the Albuquerque skyline, counting months until tragedy struck, wondering if he was hero or coward for the choice he was already making.
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