Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Cleanup
August 2010
The air in the Superlab was thick with heat, chemicals, and exhaustion. Rosalía wiped the sweat from her brow, the sting of it in her eyes almost as irritating as the ache in her muscles.
Maybe it was the fact that they'd finally reached a purity of 99.6%—a number they'd never hit before—yet the achievement was lost on her.
Right now, all she wanted was to smoke something and collapse on the couch watching whatever was on TV.
Rosalía was just glad that they were done with the actual cook. She hadn't been home in three days.
She scrubbed at the basin, humming with the faint tune crackling from a small radio she'd pulled out of a forgotten locker—one of the guard's, maybe Gus's. Its sound threaded through the steady drone of vents and the distant clatter of Jesse and Walter at work.
A stolen luxury.
Her humming carried on a beat too long before she realized she music had stopped, the radio had fallen to static before a clipped voice cut through.
"Three days after a deadly King's County chase, a wounded deputy fights for his life in the ICU. Officials confirm he is in a coma, but the Sheriff's Department has yet to release further details or an official statement."
The message was choppy and covered in static, like it was being transmitted all the way from Georgia itself.
"Meanwhile, questions are mounting about how a third gunman was overlooked in the chaos. We'll keep you updated as the situation develops."
The music started back up, and Rosalía's furrowed her brow as she narrowed her eyes at the basin she was cleaning.
It was weird. News from Georgia playing in New Mexico? What was that about?
She reasoned that it could have been some out-of-state signal bleeding through. Maybe the news outlets run out of story's to cover. Or perhaps they were covering something up.
It wouldn't be the first time.
Rolling her shoulders, she tried to shake off the lingering unease. None of it mattered. Not to her. All she wanted to do was finish cleaning the lab and get home.
She grabbed a fresh sponge, dunked it into the soapy water, and got back to work, letting the familiar motions of cleaning settle her nerves.
"Yo, guys!" Jesse called out from somewhere in the lab.
Rosalía paused, but couldn't see where he was over all the equipment.
She heard a loud, frantic banging before Jesse's voice reached her again, echoing off the barrels of methylamine. "Yo! Lía, Mr White! Anybody!"
Rosalía pulled the gun from her boot as she sprinted toward Jesse, finding him on the ground with one of Gus Fring's guards on top of him.
A guttural, inhuman growl rumbled from him as Jesse screamed.
Without hesitation, Rosalía raised her gun, aimed straight for his heart.
With an ear-piercing bang, she pulled the trigger. She kept her rm raised, ready to fire at a moments notice. The guard didn't stop. He pressed down on Jesse, harder than before, his growls getting louder.
His jaw snapped open and shut, skin slick with sweat, eyes glowing a sickly yellow. The air around him reeked of copper, shit, and decay.
Jesse's screams got louder and Rosalía unloaded another bullet into the man without hesitation. The shot landed center mass, but it didn't slow him down.
The washing machines rumbled on in the background, oblivious, like the world hadn't just changed forever.
Rosalía's mind didn't have time to spin—Jesse was screaming, pinned beneath the guard, who wouldn't relent. She adjusted her aim in a single, fluid motion, sliding from his chest to his head, and pulled the trigger again.
The bullet hit and the guard dropped, crumpling onto Jesse with a sickening thud. Rosalía's arm stayed raised, gun still locked in place, her breath heavy as she stared at the body in disbelief.
What was that?
Her eyes flicked to the first wound—the bullet had hit exactly where the heart should be. But he hadn't reacted. Hadn't even stumbled. How the hell had he kept moving?
Dextrocardia.
It was a rare congenital disease where the heart is in an abnormal position in the chest. If his heart was on the right instead of the left, then her first shot would've completely missed its target.
But that didn't explain why he hadn't flinched. Not even from the pain. Unless he was high—so drugged that his pain receptors were completely fried. But Gus wouldn't hire a guard who indulged on the job. He was judgmental enough about her and Jesse, as it was.
Her gaze drifted lower, and that's when she saw it—the way his skin sagged on the bone, the unnatural gray tinge coating his skin.
Rosalía swallowed hard.
She barely had time to process before Walter clamped a hand on her shoulder, his grip grounding her back to reality. She turned, eyes locking onto him, then Jesse who was still on the floor.
The three of them exchanged wide-eyed looks. The lab was dead silent, aside from their breathing and the steady hum of equipment.
"Yo," Jesse was the first to break the silence, running a hand through his hair, eyes wide. "What the fuck was that?"
No one had an answer for him.
Instead, Rosalía comforted Jesse until he calmed down enough to form eligible sentences.
No one knew what was happening.
The guard was dead, but Gus was out there, watching. The red light on the camera pulsed in the corner of the room, a silent reminder.
"We can't stay here." Walter said, his eyes catching the camera.
Nobody argued.
While Jesse and Walter gathered their belongings, Rosalía crouched beside the guard, methodically checking him over.
Eyes, mouth, ears, nose, arms, legs—she probed each carefully, making sure there was no sign of life, no hidden threat.
If he wasn't dead before, he certainly was now.
He still looked human—mostly. But the decomposition was unlike anything Rosalía had ever seen. His flesh had deteriorated unnaturally, rigor mortis should have set in—yet he had attacked Jesse.
She shook her head, she needed a sample; something to study later. There was no way they could call the authorities—they were cooking meth in a hidden lab and were already at the top of the DEA's most-wanted list.
Grabbing a knife from a nearby bench, a large scooping tool, and a specimen jar, she crouched over the body. With calm, practiced movements, she cut into Gus' guard, methodically working as if this were just another experiment.
"Lía, you really have to do that now?" Jesse asked, face scrunched in disgust.
The boys still couldn't fathom how she handled bodies so calmly—they remembered times they'd left such decisions to chance.
Lucky for them, Rosalía had always stepped in to clean up the mess.
Rosalía shot a sharp glare at Jesse.
He froze, then raised his hands in surrender, eyes wide and shifting nervously, careful not to get between her and whatever experiment she had planned this time.
"It'll only take a second." She couldn't resist.
She scraped the knife against the jar, letting the last of the remains fall inside before screwing on the lid. She stuffed it into her bag, then slung the bag over her shoulder and joined Walter and Jesse by the door.
"You good to go?" Walter asked.
Rosalía tapped her bag and gave a sharp nod.
Walter swung open the air-lock door and they were immediately assaulted by the smell of blood. The room's heat wrapped around them, amplifying the copper and iron that coated the air.
Jesse threw a hand over his mouth and keeled over, retching violently onto the grated platform. His vomit splashed down through the gaps, landing on the lockers below.
Walter gagged and pressed his hand to his nose. Curiosity getting the better of him, he pushed forward. Rosalía followed closely behind, breathing slowly, her mind cataloging every detail.
Something about it made her gut tighten, this was different.
This wasn't just death, it was a massacre.
The laundry floor was a scene of carnage, coated in blood.
Men and women lay scattered—some with bite marks, some missing limbs, and others nothing more than twisted piles of flesh.
She raised her gun and stepped forward onto the blood-slicked floor, almost expecting a Cartel member to appear and open fire.
Half of the washing machines sat idle, the other half groaned as they ran their endless spin cycles.
The space which was normally alive with the voices of hundreds of workers chatting to each other, was noticeably quiet.
Rosalía's eyes swept the floor, taking in the bodies scattered across the warehouse. The workers were all dead, and she knew it wouldn't be long before the cops arrived.
With her gun raised, Rosalía led Walter and Jesse toward the garage door when something shifted in her peripheral vision.
A loud growl filled the space before a man jerked into view. His steps were uneven as he caught sight of her.
Even at a distance she could see he bore a remarkable resemblance to the dead guard in the lab.
Jesse's eyes went wide. "Bitch!" He stumbled backward, tripping over a fallen crate and nearly landing flat on the blood-slicked floor.
Walter stepped closer to Rosalía, his hand outstretched as if his presence could help calm the man down. "It's okay... we're not—"
A low, menacing growl cut him off. The man's vacant eyes locked on him, and his slow shuffle quickened as he drew closer.
His skin was gray and leathery, sagging on the bone like decomposition had well set in. Fresh and congealed blood streaked his torso. His left arm was missing, torn away at the shoulder leaving a jagged, raw stump.
Like the guard, he was unaffected by the injury.
Each step was stiff and jerky as he got closer. His vacant eyes tracked them as he made his way around a bench stacked high with fresh linen.
She had seen this before—the guard in the lab, the same grotesque, decaying presence.
The grip on her gun wavered, not from fear but from thought. The longer she waited, the more she could learn.
The man couldn't have been more than ten steps away. If they could tied him down, she could examine him properly. Figure out what was going on. Dissection. Tissue sampling. She took a half-step forward, already working through the details.
"Lía—don't," Jesse pleaded, already knowing what she was thinking.
"Shoot it already!" Walter yelled, panic lacing each word, urging her to react before it was too late.
Rosalía ignored them both, eyes locked on the figure.
Step by step, he drew closer—three long paces away, each one deliberate, and unnatural.
She waited as long as she dared, letting him get as close as possible, taking in every twitch, every movement.
He was almost on her when she pulled the trigger, the bullet lodging itself into the man's brain. He dropped to the floor, dead.
They were corpses. Walking corpses. The dead were walking.
How was this even possible?
Somehow, she knew that things would never be the same after this.
"What the fuck was that?" Walter ground out, voice thick with disbelief.
"The same thing happened to Gus' guard! I thought we could take some samples and—"
"—Risk your life?" Walter asked.
"I'm sorry, I thought I could figure out what was going on." Rosalía said.
Walter scoffed at her arrogance, then reminded himself it was Rosalía, not Gretchen standing before him—though sometimes the two sounded and looked far too similar. "There has to be an explanation for this," he muttered, thoughts scrambling.
"Go ahead and explain it then," Rosalía said, her tone calm and sharp. "Everything I've considered so far either doesn't add up or has already been disproven."
Walter's gaze flicking to the body. "There are poisons—neurotoxins—that can mimic death, slow metabolism to near zero. Some drugs can suppress pain to an extreme degree—"
"That wasn't suppressed pain, Walter, he didn't even flinch! And look at his skin—rigor mortis doesn't set in while someone's still moving." Rosalía reiterated.
"Then maybe it's a pathogen," Walter countered. "A neuroinvasive infection attacking the brainstem. Rabies can make animals hyper-aggressive, cause convulsions, erratic movement—"
"Rabies doesn't make people invincible!"
"It mutates. Bacteria, viruses—they evolve. It could be something new, something we haven't seen before." Walter countered.
"Yo! Both of you, shut the hell up!" Jesse waved his hands between them. "Who gives a crap if it's rabies, parasites, or some freakin' virus—"
A loud clang of metal hitting the floor cut him off, followed by a low, wet growl.
Rosalía's eyes snapped to the source, one of the dead laundry workers had risen from the ground. Her body jerking unnaturally as she slowly made her way towards the three.
"Back inside, now!" Rosalía barked, raising her gun without hesitation.
Walter and Jesse scrambled ahead, slipping over the blood-slicked floors as they retreated toward the lab. The door clanged shut behind them with a hiss, sealing them inside.