The door didn’t just open—it exploded.
Boris hit it with a shoulder like a runaway freight train and the cheap wood shattered inward. The two partners stormed through the splinters and stepped into a chemical kingdom that smelled like sin, ammonia, and fast money.
The meth lab spread across the room like a mad scientist’s fever dream—glass beakers bubbling, burners hissing, coils of tubing twisting like snakes in a medicine cabinet from hell. Blue crystals glittered on trays under the lights like a jeweler’s display for the damned.
The lab boys scattered.
They skittered for exits, trapdoors, and side halls like cockroaches when the kitchen light flips on. One dropped a flask that shattered like a gunshot. Another dove through a half-open door.
Jonny didn’t even blink.
Neither did Boris.
They weren’t here for the roaches.
They were here for the king roach.
Across the room stood a man in a yellow HazMat suit, still as a corpse at a wake. Calm. Waiting. Like he’d been expecting them all along.
Jonny walked toward him slow and easy, the way a man strolls up to the gallows when he knows someone else is wearing the rope. His Glock came up smooth and steady.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
The man tilted his head. Behind the mask you could almost hear the smile.
“Oh, you know,” he said softly. “You all know exactly who I am.”
He leaned forward a fraction.
“Say my name.”
Jonny squinted at him.
“Do what?”
The detective scratched the side of his jaw like a man trying to remember where he parked his car three hangovers ago.
“I don’t… I don’t have a damn clue who the hell you are.”
The man stiffened.
“Yeah you do,” he said, a little sharper now. “I’m the cook.”
Silence.
“I’m the man who killed Gus Fring.”
Boris snorted.
“Bullshit,” the pug growled. “Cartel got Fring.”
The yellow-suited figure cocked his head.
“Are you sure?”
Boris glanced up at Jonny.
Jonny looked like a man who’d just realized he left the stove on in another life. He slowly shook his head.
The man straightened, confidence swelling in his voice like a brass band warming up.
“That’s right,” he said. “Now…”
He pointed at himself.
“Say my name.”
The room hummed with burners and boiling glass.
Finally Boris spoke.
“Heisenberg.”
The man spread his arms like a conquering emperor.
“You’re goddamn right.”
But the pug wasn’t finished.
“Werner Heisenberg,” Boris continued calmly. “Father of quantum physics. Author of the uncertainty principle. Winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize.”
The yellow suit froze.
“You also ran the Nazi atomic program during World War II,” Boris went on, straightening his tie. “And after the war—”
“All right, all right!” the man snapped, waving his hands. “They get it now.”