Chapter 10: The Teacher
Jesse's house smelled like actual cleaning products for the first time since I'd started visiting.
The change hit me the moment I walked through the door. Trash bags lined up by the entrance, waiting to go out. The coffee table wiped down. Windows cracked open to let air circulate. And Jesse himself—showered, wearing clean clothes, moving around the kitchen with something approaching energy.
"Yo, Pete! You want a beer? I actually restocked."
"Yeah, sure." I settled onto the couch, noting the absence of drug paraphernalia on every surface. The ashtrays were still there, but they'd been emptied. "Place looks different."
"Right? Got tired of living in my own filth, I guess." Jesse handed me a Corona and dropped into the chair across from me. "You were right, man. That stuff you said about getting your shit together. I've been thinking about it."
Three weeks since the ambush. Three weeks of laying low, building capital, running Badger and now Combo as message carriers while I operated from the shadows. My face wasn't hot anymore—Tomas's friends had either given up or moved on to other targets. The $500 in my wallet represented careful accumulation, deal by deal, tip by tip.
But the real progress was sitting in front of me. Jesse Pinkman, looking more alive than I'd seen him since transmigration.
"That's good, man. I'm glad."
"Yeah, well." Jesse took a long drink. "Don't get too excited. I'm not like, reformed or whatever. Just... less of a mess."
We talked for a while about nothing important. A movie Jesse had watched. A girl Badger was trying to impress. The kind of conversation that normal people had, the kind that didn't involve dead drops and territory maps and the constant calculation of risk versus reward.
Then Jesse said something that made my blood freeze.
"Yo, you remember Mr. White? From high school?"
I kept my face neutral. Took a casual sip of beer. "Chemistry teacher? Yeah, I think so."
"Ran into him at a gas station the other day. Dude looks rough." Jesse shook his head. "Like, sick rough. Turns out he's got cancer. Lung cancer."
The words hung in the air. I forced myself to breathe normally, to not react, to not show any sign that this information meant anything more than casual gossip.
"That sucks," I said. "He was... what, your teacher junior year?"
"Sophomore. Boring as hell but smart, you know? Like, actually knew his stuff." Jesse stared at his beer. "Weird seeing him like that. All thin and pale. Made me think about mortality and shit."
Walter White has his diagnosis.
The thought echoed through my NZT-enhanced mind, triggering a cascade of timeline calculations. In canon, Walt's diagnosis came right before his 50th birthday—September 2008. But this was March. Six months early? Or had my presence already shifted things?
It didn't matter. What mattered was the sequence that followed: diagnosis, desperation, the ride-along with Hank, seeing Jesse escape from the drug bust, the blackmail, the partnership, the empire, the destruction.
The clock had started ticking.
"You okay?" Jesse's voice cut through my calculations. "You got quiet."
"Just thinking." I set down my beer. "Cancer's heavy stuff. What kind did you say?"
"Lung. Stage something—he didn't really talk about it." Jesse shrugged. "Just bought his stuff and left. Probably didn't even recognize me."
He will soon, I thought. He'll recognize you when he needs a partner who knows how to cook meth. He'll track you down and change both your lives forever.
But I couldn't say any of that. So I changed the subject.
"You got a PlayStation hooked up? I'm bored as hell."
Jesse's face brightened. "Dude, yes. I just got GTA. You play?"
I hadn't touched a video game since my life as a hedge fund analyst, where free time was a theoretical concept. Pete's muscle memory offered nothing—he'd been too busy getting high to develop gaming skills. But sitting on a couch with Jesse, controller in hand, doing something normal and stupid and meaningless—that sounded exactly like what I needed.
"I'm probably terrible," I admitted.
"Good. Then I'll finally have someone worse than me."
An hour later, I'd crashed seventeen stolen cars, gotten killed by the police eleven times, and managed to complete exactly zero missions. Jesse's coaching ranged from genuinely helpful to mockingly cruel, often in the same sentence.
"No, bro, you gotta tap the brakes—tap them, not slam—oh man, you went right into the river. That's actually impressive. I've never seen anyone hit the river from that angle."
"This controller is broken."
"The controller is fine. Your thumbs are broken."
I smiled despite myself. For one hour, I wasn't a transmigrator with supernatural powers and meta-knowledge of impending doom. I was just a guy who was terrible at video games, hanging out with a friend.
Small pleasures. The kind that kept you human.
Eventually, Jesse's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, typed a quick response, and set it aside.
"Combo's got some party going this weekend. You should come."
"Maybe." I handed back the controller. "I gotta take care of some stuff first. Business stuff."
"The consulting thing?"
"Yeah."
Jesse nodded, not asking for details. He'd learned that I didn't elaborate on work, and he was smart enough not to push. "Cool. Well, you know where to find me."
I stood, grabbed my jacket. At the door, I paused.
"Hey, Jesse?"
"Yeah?"
"That teacher. Mr. White." I kept my voice casual, curious. "You think he'll be okay? With the cancer and all?"
Jesse considered the question. "I don't know, man. Cancer's cancer. Some people beat it. Most people don't." He paused. "Why?"
"No reason. Just... it's heavy. Makes you think about stuff."
"Yeah." Jesse's eyes went distant for a moment. "It does."
I left the house with my timeline rewritten in my head. The six-month window I'd been counting on had collapsed. Walter White was sick. Walter White was desperate. And desperate men did desperate things.
The walk home took me through quiet streets, the evening air cool against my skin. I ran numbers as I walked: $500 in savings, $15,000 target for surgery and recovery. At my current rate, I'd need three to four more months. But if Walt approached Jesse soon—if the partnership formed in the next few weeks—
I needed to accelerate. Push harder. Take bigger risks.
Or watch helplessly as Jesse got pulled into an orbit that would eventually destroy him.
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