Chapter Text
The factory hummed with a low, almost sentient rumble. Steam hissed from the pipes overhead, twisting through the air like ghosts in a cage. Sparks leapt from the machinery as if the whole place was alive, breathing, watching. Ethan Winters found himself pinned in the center of it all, a chair groaning under his weight as Karl Heisenberg’s hand clamped around his wrist.
The trapdoor beneath him gaped like an open maw. From where he sat, Ethan could hear something below, the grotesque mechanical claws spinning lazily, dripping with oil and residue, ready to shred anything dropped into the room. Wooden planks framed the edge, worn and creaking. One wrong move and it would all end.
“Come on, Winters,” Heisenberg said, voice smooth, almost teasing, yet threaded with that razor-sharp edge of danger. “You know what happens if I let go.”
Ethan’s jaw clenched. “I’m not doing it. Not the plan. Not with Rose.”
Ethan's muscles strained against Heisenberg’s grip, but he couldn’t move, any step, any lurch, and the slightest imbalance would send him plummeting into that nightmare.
Heisenberg leaned closer, the shadows of his mechanical arms flickering across his face. He was enjoying this... Ethan could feel it. But there was more there too. A flicker of something he couldn’t read, something… human.
“Rose,” Heisenberg said softly, almost too softly. “I don’t care about her JUST as some weapon. You don’t have to…” His grip didn’t loosen, but his eyes betrayed a crack in the façade, a hesitation that made Ethan’s gut tighten.
“I said no!” Ethan snapped, fear and anger mixing into a tangible heat in his chest. “I will never let you- use her. You want me to be part of your little game? You’ll have to get me another way.”
Heisenberg’s lips curved into a sardonic grin, but it faltered for a moment. His thumb pressed into the inside of Ethan’s wrist, not cruelly, but in a way that held him in place, intimate and dangerous all at once. The machine below ground hummed, grinding its gears, waiting.
And then, against every instinct, Heisenberg hesitated.
Ethan felt it, a pause in the weight, a fraction of a second where he almost thought he’d fallen. Heisenberg’s hand steadied him, pulled him back slightly, and his voice was quieter now, almost vulnerable. “Wait… maybe there’s another way.”
Ethan’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing. “Another way? You’re still going to use her?”
Heisenberg shook his head slowly. “No. Not that way. Not if it comes to you standing there.” He tilted his head, studying Ethan like one studies an unpredictable machine part, trying to figure out what made it tick. “We can do it differently. I can still beat Miranda, sure. But… I don’t want to let you fall. Not yet.”
Ethan’s chest rose and fell quickly. The threat hadn’t vanished, Heisenberg was still in control, but for the first time in this nightmare, there was a glimpse of… negotiation. A chance.
“Explain,” Ethan said cautiously, every fiber of him taut. He wouldn’t lower his guard, not even a fraction. Not for a man like Heisenberg.
Heisenberg leaned back just slightly, still holding Ethan’s wrist but easing the pressure, enough that the terror didn’t claw at his stomach quite so sharply. The sparks from the machinery caught in his metal coils, reflecting gold and bronze across the workshop. “We change the deal. You help me take down Miranda. You get your daughter safe. I… I get my own satisfaction out of my work.”
Ethan blinked. His mind reeled. Every instinct screamed distrust, but the tension that had made his arms feel like lead was easing, if only a hair. He couldn’t explain why, but there was something about the hesitation, the way Heisenberg had stopped himself at the last second… it unsettled him, confused him.
“You’re serious?” Ethan asked, voice hoarse, disbelief heavy in every word.
“As a gear in my factory,” Heisenberg said, smirking again, but this one was softer, almost earnest. “I want results, Winters. But you… you’re not just a tool. You're.. special, in a way.”
Ethan’s heart hammered. Every fiber of him screamed caution, every survival instinct flaring. He had no reason to trust Heisenberg, and yet… the chair beneath him didn’t feel like a trap at this exact moment. The gears didn’t feel like death incarnate. The mechanical claws waited silently, but the immediate threat had lessened.
Ethan exhaled slowly. “Fine. But I’m watching you. Any trick, and it’s over.”
Heisenberg chuckled low, almost approvingly. “Fair enough. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The factory hummed around them, indifferent to the fragile truce forming in its heart. Sparks leapt, gears clicked, and the air smelled of oil and burning metal. And for the first time, Ethan felt the tiniest flicker of… uneasy alliance.
Heisenberg released a fraction of the grip on Ethan’s wrist, enough for him to breathe, enough for Ethan to feel the cold brush of metal, and yet the tension remained, a taut line between them. Both men knew this wasn’t trust. Not yet. But it was something.
And in the shadows of the factory, beneath the rumble of machines and the scent of oil, the impossible had happened: Heisenberg had pulled him back.