Chapter 104. The Benefits That I Need, And It Will Go Sideways (Probably)

"You know what I don’t get," Jay said, and his voice had the considered, unhurried quality of someone settling into a conversation he’d been wanting to have.

He was standing slightly apart from the other two, arms crossed, looking down at Tyler with the detached interest of someone who had already decided where the evening went and was now narrating it.

"I genuinely don’t get it..."

"You track us. Right? You know our schedules better than we know them."

"You know where we’re going to be and when. And somehow you still end up here."

Tyler said nothing.

"That’s not rhetorical," Jay said. "I’m actually asking."

"What happened tonight? What did your little spreadsheet tell you?"

"It probably told him he’d be fine," Cody said. "Clearly."

"Clearly," Jay said. "So there’s a mistake in the spreadsheet."

"That’s what I’m trying to understand. Where’s the variable you didn’t account for?"

"Jay," Tyler said, and his voice was controlled but unsteady at the edges, the voice of someone choosing words carefully from a position that gave them hardly any options. "I don’t want any trouble..."

"I never wanted any of this."

"I know you don’t," Jay said, and he said it without mockery, which was somehow worse than if he had. "That’s the thing."

"You’re the most inoffensive person I’ve ever had a problem with. I’ve thought about this." He crouched down to Tyler’s level, elbows on his knees. "You don’t do anything."

"You don’t say anything."

"You’re not loud, you’re not in anyone’s way. You’re just... there. And somehow that’s enough."

"Then please... leave me alone," Tyler said.

"See, that’s what doesn’t work." Jay stood back up. "Leaving you alone means acknowledging you exist, and acknowledging you exist means we have to deal with the fact that you’ve been tracking our schedules for six weeks and filing it away somewhere in that head of yours."

"That’s not nothing, Tyler. That’s someone who’s building a case."

"I’m not building anything," Tyler said. "I’m surviving."

The word landed in the alley with a specific weight, and for a moment none of the three of them said anything.

Then Cody said, "That’s a bit much."

"Is it?" Tyler said.

"You’re not surviving anything," Cody said. "You’re at a university, in a nice city, living in a house that clearly isn’t student housing. You’re fine."

"I’m on the ground," Tyler said.

"Because you walked into our Thursday," Cody said, as if this resolved something. He spoke with the comfortable certainty of someone who had organized the facts of a situation to suit their needs and felt no obligation to change it.

"I wasn’t near you on purpose," Tyler said. "I recalculated the route."

"I added seventeen minutes, and I went around the north side of the faculty block specifically to—"

"You added seventeen minutes to avoid us," Tobin said, "and still ended up here."

"Yes," Tyler said.

Tobin laughed, not unkindly, which was its own category of unpleasant. "That’s actually a little bit sad. What a fucking loser you are!"

"I’m aware," Tyler said.

"Look," Jay said, and his voice had shifted into the register of someone delivering something he considered reasonable. "Here’s what I think the actual problem is."

"You’ve never learned to be invisible in the right way."

"You walk around like someone who’s trying not to be seen, which is different from actually not being seen. People notice effort, and it draws attention."

"I’ll keep that in mind," Tyler said flatly.

"I’m serious," Jay said. "I’m giving you real advice."

"Jay." Tyler’s voice was quiet but deliberate. "Please."

The plea landed like a last resort, uttered not from belief in its efficacy but from a lack of alternatives. It was the type of request people make when their desire for what they seek is strong enough to bear the burden of asking for it.

Jay looked at him for a moment.

"No," he said.

He spoke the word simply, without cruelty or justification, making it the clearest and most definitive version. He looked at Cody.

A silent understanding passed between them, reflecting the compressed communication of individuals who had experienced enough situations together to develop their own shorthand.

Cody moved.

Tyler’s arms came up, the instinctive response of someone who had been in this situation before and knew the geometry of it.

"Stop," Tyler said. His voice had changed—not louder, but more compressed, more urgent, the voice of something tightening past a certain point.

"Please, just stop... I haven’t told anyone..."

"I’m also not going to tell anyone!"

"Whatever you think I’m going to do, I’m not going to do it. I’m not—I’m not a problem for you."

"I’ve never been a problem for you... I just want to finish my degree and go home!"

"That’s all I want... I’m not worth any of this."

The final sentence felt distinct from the rest. It was softer.

Cody paused.

"That’s probably true," Cody said, not unkindly; this was characteristic of him—his cruelty was not personal, which made it, in some ways, more complete. "You’re not worth a lot of what goes into this, honestly."

"Then stop," Tyler said.

"We’re here now," Cody said. "Seems like a waste to just leave a pussy like you."

"Who’s going to stop us?" Tobin said, and there was no malice in it, just the genuine curiosity of someone asking a reasonable question about the logistics of the situation.

He looked up and down the alley. Both ends empty.

The service gate at the far end locked. Distant streetlight at the entrance, and beyond it, a road with no one on it.

"It’s two AM. The campus security checks the east boundary at one and then not again until four."

"He knows that," Jay said, looking at Tyler. "Don’t you."

Tyler said nothing.

"You mapped security rotations too," Jay said. "I know you did because that’s what you do."

He paused. "So you already know there’s nobody coming."

Tyler’s hands were on the ground now, one of them on top of his glasses, the other pressed flat against the alley concrete. He was looking at the ground.

He had the specific stillness of someone who had stopped trying to reason their way out of something and was now simply waiting for it to finish.

"Yeah," Tobin said. "There’s nobody."

"And by other means... you’re fucked." Jay laughed.

Mike stood at the street entrance for exactly as long as it took him to decide what he was doing and how he was going to do it.

’This shit again... a man who can’t protect himself needs to die right away, to be honest,’ Mike thought. ’But this moment... it’s also good for my benefits, and it goes both ways.’

He pulled out his phone. "Executing time."

He filmed for thirty seconds, capturing Tyler’s brutal beating and their derogatory remarks, which sufficed. The alley lighting was poor but functional, allowing the three standing figures to be identified based on their size and movement. The sound from the alley was clear on the audio.

Tyler made a crying and pleading sound to ask them to stop, but the three of them keep fucking him up.

’Alright, I think that’s enough...’

Mike pocketed his phone.

He walked into the alley.