Chapter 2: The Predator in Academia
The A+ was a small, crimson mark on the top corner of the page. It should have felt like a victory. Dexing stared at it, the red ink blurring slightly as he held the exam paper flat on the lectern. He’d done it. He’d survived Huang. The equations were solved, the theories delineated, the graphs perfectly labeled. It was over.
Around him, the vast lecture hall was emptying, the rustle of backpacks and the shuffle of feet echoing under the high ceiling. He should feel light. He felt numb. The memory of the alley’s cold air, the thump of the bass, and the crushing weight of a hand on his shoulder was a film over everything, muting the color of his success.
He carefully folded the exam paper into quarters, the crease sharp and precise. A task. Something to do with his hands.
“Mr. Li.”
Dean Fitzpatrick’s voice, amplified by the microphone at the front, crackled through the remaining quiet. Dexing looked up. The dean, a lean man in a tweed jacket that seemed to wear him, was adjusting his glasses. A few stragglers, including Kai from three rows back, paused near the doors.
“If you could all retake your seats for a moment. A brief, unscheduled addition to today’s curriculum.”
A low groan rippled through the hall. Kai caught Dexing’s eye and mimed slitting his throat, sliding down in his seat. Dexing managed a weak half-smire and sank back into his plastic chair. The seat was still warm.
“We are fortunate to have with us today a last-minute guest,” the dean continued, his voice taking on a practiced, promotional lilt. “A visiting scholar whose work in behavioral psychology, particularly the intersection of neurobiology and social hierarchy, has been gaining considerable attention. He’s graciously agreed to give a short talk. Please extend a warm welcome to Dr. Magnus Bjornson.”
The side door near the front of the hall opened.
Polished oxfords, black and gleaming, clicked against the linoleum floor. The sound was deliberate, measured. Then tailored grey trousers, a crisp white shirt rolled up at the forearms, a dark wool blazer. The man moved with a controlled, powerful grace that seemed to shrink the large room.
Dexing’s breath lodged in his throat.
It was the beard, thick and well-groomed. It was the shoulders, which even under the blazer spoke of dense, coiled strength. It was the eyes, scanning the half-empty rows as he walked to the center of the platform with an unsettling familiarity.
Bear.
But not Bear. This was Dr. Magnus Bjornson. His hair was buzzed short, military neat. The tattoos on his forearms, visible now as he placed his notes on the lectern, were not the chaotic club ink Dexing had expected, but intricate, stark black lines weaving patterns that looked vaguely, ominously familiar—serpents, knots, a stylized hammer. Norse, maybe. They were academic in their precision.
The man’s gaze swept the room, impersonal and assessing. Then it stopped. Landed. Zeroed in on Dexing with the unerring accuracy of a missile lock.
Dexing’s pen, clutched in his suddenly cold fingers, slipped and clattered onto the notebook. The sound was deafening in the silent, attentive space. He fumbled for it, his face burning.
Dr. Bjornson did not smile. He merely gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, as if confirming a private hypothesis. Then he looked away, addressing the entire hall.
“Thank you, Dean.” His voice was different. The growl from the club was gone, replaced by a smooth, sonorous baritone that carried effortlessly. It was a voice built for podcasts and conference keynotes. “The topic today is obedience. Not the quaint, philosophical kind. The biological imperative.”
He tapped a key on the laptop connected to the projector. A stark, black-and-white image filled the screen: a simplified diagram of a brain, highlighting the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.
“We like to believe our actions are born of conscious choice. Of free will.” He paused, letting the words hang. “This is a pleasant fiction. Our behaviors, particularly in moments of stress or social threat, are often merely the outcome of a primal negotiation between these two regions. The amygdala screams ‘danger.’ The prefrontal cortex, the so-called seat of reason, attempts to bargain. Often, it loses.”
He began to walk slowly along the edge of the platform, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. His eyes never strayed to Dexing again, but Dexing felt each word like a physical pressure, a spotlight fixed on the back of his neck.
“Consider a simple scenario,” Bjornson continued, his tone conversational, almost warm. “A young organism—naive, untested—ventures into an unfamiliar territory. It is loud. It is dominated by unfamiliar social codes. It is, in essence, a hierarchy it does not understand.”
Kai, in the row behind, leaned forward and whispered, “Is this dude for real? He’s talking about frat parties.”
Dexing couldn’t even shake his head. He was frozen, his eyes glued to the man’s slow, deliberate pacing.
“The organism experiences a threat. A larger, dominant member of that hierarchy asserts control. It places a claim.” Bjornson stopped. He turned fully to face the students, his expression one of cool academic interest. “Now. The organism’s amygdala floods its system with cortisol. Adrenaline. Fight or flight. But the environment is enclosed. Flight is compromised. So what happens?”
He let the question sit in the buzzing fluorescent air.
“The prefrontal cortex, desperate to rationalize, seeks a narrative. ‘I deserved this.’ ‘This is a misunderstanding.’ ‘If I am very still, the threat will pass.’” A faint, dry smile touched his lips. “It is a fascinating, elegant degradation of autonomy. The biology of submission.”
Dexing’s stomach twisted. His own notebook page was blank except for a single, deep pen scratch where his hand had jerked. He could smell it again—engine grease, cheap tobacco, the sour breath in his face. You belong to me.
“The aftermath,” Bjornson said, clicking to a new slide—a graph showing neurological activity over time, “is perhaps more interesting. The immediate threat recedes. The organism returns to its familiar habitat. But the neural pathways have been altered. The memory is not just cognitive; it is somatic. Held in the muscles. In the nerves.” He tapped his own temple. “The next time the organism perceives a similar context, even a faint echo—a smell, a tone of voice, a type of confined space—the fear response is reactivated. It is, in a very real sense, conditioned.”
He turned off the projector. The room brightened, feeling suddenly hollow.
“Obedience, then, is not merely compliance. It is a learned physiological state. A debt incurred by the nervous system itself. One that must be… reconciled.” He gathered his notes. “Thank you for your time.”
The applause was polite, scattered. Dean Fitzpatrick bustled forward, shaking Bjornson’s hand, murmuring thanks. Students began to chatter, gathering their things, the strange lecture already fading into the background noise of their day.
Dexing couldn’t move. He watched as Bjornson nodded at the dean, then stepped off the platform. Instead of heading for the side door, he walked straight up the center aisle. His oxfords were silent on the carpet.
He walked past Kai, who stared openly. He stopped at the end of Dexing’s row.
“Li Dexing,” Bjornson said. His voice was lower now, a private rumble. It wasn’t a question.
Dexing looked up. The man’s eyes were the same dark, assessing points he remembered from the club, but now they were framed by the context of authority, of degrees and titles. It made the memory feel like a dream, and this the terrifying reality.
“Your exam grade,” Bjornson said, his gaze flicking to the neatly folded paper in Dexing’s hand. “An A-plus, I assume? Your focus under pressure is commendable.”
Dexing found no words. He just nodded, a stiff, tiny motion.
Bjornson reached into his blazer’s inner pocket and produced a simple, ivory business card. He held it out between two fingers. Dexing stared at it, then mechanically reached to take it. Their fingers did not touch.
“My office hours are listed,” Bjornson said. “I am here for a month. If you have questions on today’s material… or if you find the concepts have personal resonance… my door is open.”
He held Dexing’s eyes for a second longer. In that second, the lecture hall fell away. There was only the memory of the alley’s neon smear, the crush of the crowd, the predatory claim in the dark. The biology of submission.
Then Bjornson gave a curt, professional nod, turned, and walked back down the aisle, his steps firm and even, and disappeared through the side door.
The hall felt suddenly, oppressively bright and loud. Kai appeared beside him, pulling on his jacket. “What the absolute hell was that? Did you know that guy? He was looking at you the whole time. ‘Organism’? Dude, I think he was talking about you.”
Dexing looked down at the card. It was heavy, textured stock.
Dr. Magnus Bjornson
Visiting Professor, Behavioral Psychology
Office: Hargreaves Hall, Room 414
Hours: By Appointment
No personal number. No mention of The Iron Collar. Just a title, a room number, and an implied invitation.
“He’s the one,” Dexing said, his voice raw. “From the club. Bear.”
Kai’s face went blank, then slack with disbelief. “No. No way. That… that guy in the thousand-dollar blazer? That’s the biker who shoved you?”
Dexing nodded, folding the business card into the same precise quarters as his exam. The two pieces of paper, one declaring his success, the other a cryptic threat, sat together in his palm. They weighed the same.
“He’s not a biker,” Dexing said softly, the truth dawning with a cold, clinical clarity. “He’s a professor. And he just gave a lecture on why I’m afraid of him.”
Kai whistled low. “Okay. That’s next-level messed up.” He peered at Dexing. “You’re not going to see him, right? Office hours? That’s a trap if I’ve ever heard one.”
Dexing stood up, his legs unsteady. He tucked the folded papers into his backpack. The numbness was receding, replaced by a cold, sharp feeling in his chest. It wasn’t quite fear anymore. It was something closer to recognition. A terrible understanding.
Bjornson had dissected him in front of a hundred people. Had given language to the humiliating tremor in his hands, the freezing of his limbs, the somatic memory of that grip on his shoulder. He had framed it as science, not malice. It made the violation deeper, more intimate.
“I don’t know,” Dexing said, answering Kai’s question. He slung his backpack over one aching shoulder. The place where Bear’s hand had gripped him throbbed dully, a phantom weight.
He walked out of the lecture hall, Kai following, their footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. The smell of chalk dust was gone. All Dexing could smell was the faint, impossible scent of leather, clinging to the business card in his pocket, and the cold, metallic fear that was slowly hardening into a decision he didn’t yet have a name for.
The smell of leather followed him all the way to the student union building. It clung to the inside of his nostrils, a phantom scent that made the steam rising from his cheap coffee seem suspicious. He sat with Kai at a sticky table by the window, the A+ exam and the business card lying side-by-side like evidence from two different crimes.
“So he’s a professor who stalks clubs and gives lectures about his own stalking,” Kai said, stirring an unnatural amount of sugar into his tea. “That’s not creepy at all. That’s just academia.”
“It wasn’t stalking,” Dexing murmured, though he wasn’t sure. He poked the folded card with a finger. “It was a coincidence. I walked into his… territory. That’s what the lecture was about. Territories.”
Kai snorted. “His territory is a university? Come on. He sought you out in that hall. That was a power play. A really, really weird one.” He leaned in, his voice dropping. “You should report him.”
“Report what? He gave a lecture. He handed me a card. He didn’t do anything.”
“He threatened you at a club!”
“And who’s going to believe that?” Dexing’s voice tightened. “The scary biker from the bad part of town is actually Dr. Bjornson with a PhD and a blazer. I sound paranoid.”
Kai sat back, defeated. “So what? You just carry his card around like a trophy?”
Dexing didn’t answer. He looked out the window at the quad, where students lounged on the grass in the weak afternoon sun. Their lives seemed composed of simple, digestible problems. Too much reading. A disappointing grade. A confusing text message. Not this. Not a man who existed in two separate realities, who used one to explain the other.
The card was a bridge between those worlds. A deliberate, physical token left in his hand.
“He wants me to come to his office,” Dexing said.
“Obviously.”
“To talk about ‘the material.’ To see if it has ‘personal resonance.’”
“Yeah, to resonate his fist off your face,” Kai muttered, then sighed. “Look, you’re not actually considering it, are you?”
Dexing thought of the back room at The Iron Collar. Maya’s unreadable offer. The curtain, and the yellow light beneath it. He had walked away from that choice. It had felt like a failure. This new choice, this ivory card, felt like the same door swinging open again, but from a different, more dangerous angle.
“I don’t know what I’m considering,” Dexing said truthfully.
He left Kai at the union and walked back to his dorm. The silence of his room was a relief. He dropped his backpack on the floor and stood in the center of the neat space. His economics textbook lay open on his desk, next to a pot of green tea that had gone cold. The ordered, predictable future he was building looked back at him from those pages.
He took the business card from his pocket. He unfolded it, smoothing the heavy paper on his desk next to the textbook. The two items jarred against each other. One promised a path. The other was a door to a room he couldn’t imagine.
His phone buzzed. A text from his mother, a time-zone away: Hope exam went well. Call when you can. We miss you. The sweetness of it was a physical ache. They missed the son they thought he was, the one on this path.
He picked up the card again. He ran his thumb over the embossed letters. Dr. Magnus Bjornson. The title was a shield, a legitimization. This wasn’t some back-alley threat. This was an invitation from a professional. An academic discussion. That’s what his prefrontal cortex, bargaining desperately, tried to sell him.
But his amygdala remembered. It remembered the vice-grip, the sour breath, the words you belong to me vibrating through his bones. That memory was somatic, just as the lecture had described. It was in the twinge in his shoulder, the quickening of his pulse now.
The fear was cold, metallic. But beneath it, underneath the layers of obedience and good sense, another feeling stirred. It was hot, and sharp, and it hated the fear. It hated the way the man had looked at him in the lecture hall, like a specimen. It hated the neatly folded A+ that felt meaningless next to this. It hated the invisible claim that had been placed on him without his consent.
He didn’t want to be studied. He didn’t want to be a proof of concept in some predatory academic’s theory of control.
The decision, nameless before, found its shape. It was simple. It was absolute.
He walked to the small, shared kitchenette down the hall. It was empty. He turned on one of the electric stove’s burners. A calm settled over him, quieter and more definite than any fear.
He held the corner of the ivory card to the glowing red coil.
The paper resisted for a second, then browned, curled, and caught. A tiny, determined flame bloomed at its edge. It ate through the letters of the name first, then the title, then the room number. The fire was quiet. It smelled of burning paper and something faintly chemical.
He held it until the heat kissed his fingertips. He dropped the last flaming fragment into the stainless steel sink. It blackened, twisted, and went out, leaving a frail skeleton of ash that fell apart when he turned on the tap.
The water washed it all away. He turned off the stove. The kitchen was silent again, smelling of ozone and nothing.
He walked back to his room. The space felt different. The phantom scent of leather was gone, replaced by the clean, acrid ghost of smoke. He looked at his textbook. He looked at his bed. He looked at his own hands, steady now.
He had taken the offered bridge and burned it. There was no office hours appointment. There was no discussion. The debt, real or imagined, would not be reconciled on those terms.
He sat on the edge of his bed, the adrenaline ebbing, leaving a strange, hollowed-out calm. He had made a choice. It was a negative choice, a rejection, but it was his. For the first time since stepping into that alley, he felt the geometry of the situation shift. Bear—Dr. Bjornson—had moved a piece on the board. Dexing had just removed the board.
He picked up his phone and texted Kai: I’m not going.
The reply was almost immediate: Thank god. What changed?
Dexing stared at the clean metal sink in his mind’s eye, at the water swirling the last of the ash down the drain.
I defaulted on the loan, he typed, and put the phone down.
The burnt-chemical smell still hung in the air of the kitchenette when a brisk knock rattled his dorm room door. Dexing didn’t answer. He just stared at the closed textbook, its pages a blur of graphs and theory.
The door swung open anyway.
Kai stood there, breathing a little hard like he’d taken the stairs two at a time. He surveyed the room—the neat desk, the folded A+ on the bedside table, Dexing sitting stiffly on the bed. His eyes narrowed. “You burned it. I can smell it down the hall. What are you, a secret agent?”
“It felt like the right thing to do,” Dexing said, his voice flat.
“Right. Dramatic. I get it.” Kai stepped in and closed the door softly behind him. He wasn’t smiling. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So you torched his card. You think that’s the end of it? A guy like that, he doesn’t leave a business card. He leaves a hook.”
Dexing looked up, finally meeting Kai’s gaze. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to not sit here alone thinking about neuroscience and debt.” Kai pushed off the wall. “Look, you defaulted. Fine. But you can’t just ghost a creditor like that. He’ll come to collect. You need to be somewhere else. Somewhere public.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“It’s not hiding. It’s living.” Kai’s expression softened. “Come out with me. Right now. Not to the Collar. Never there again. There’s a place a few blocks from campus, just a student pub. Weird pretzels, terrible indie covers. My treat.”
The offer was so normal it felt alien. A pub. Pretzels. Bad music. It was the opposite of everything that had happened. Dexing’s shoulders, tight as coiled wire, ached. He felt the phantom pressure on the left one, where Bear’s—Bjornson’s—hand had been.
“One beer,” Kai said, his tone easy. “One single, normal beer where nobody lectures you or claims ownership. If you stare into space the whole time, I’ll drive you back myself.”
A laugh, brittle and unexpected, escaped Dexing’s throat. It sounded strange in the quiet room. “Just one?”
“Scout’s honor. I was a Cub Scout for, like, three months. It counts.”
Dexing looked at his hands, at the faint red mark on his palm from hitting the brick wall. It was already fading. He stood up. “Okay.”
The pub was called The Hollow Lantern. It was all scuffed wood, chalkboard menus, and the warm, yeasty smell of spilled lager. The cover band was butchering a pop song with too much enthusiasm. It was perfect.
They found a small, sticky table near the back. Kai returned with two frothing pints and a basket of suspiciously shiny pretzels. “See?” he said, sliding a glass toward Dexing. “Civilization.”
Dexing took a sip. It was bland and cold. It was wonderful. For twenty minutes, they talked about nothing. Kai’s disastrous pottery class. A new noodle shop near Dexing’s dorm. The banal, beautiful scaffolding of ordinary life. Dexing felt his jaw slowly unclench.
Then the pub’s front door opened, letting in a wedge of cool evening air and a burst of street noise.
Two men walked in. They were older than the student crowd, their movements carrying a worn-in confidence. One had a shaved head and a familiar silver ring in his nostril. The other was taller, with a leather jacket worn soft at the elbows. They scanned the room, their gaze sliding over the clusters of students.
Their eyes landed on Kai. A flicker of recognition passed between them.
Kai’s easy smile didn’t change, but his posture shifted, subtly tensing. He took a slow drink from his pint.
The shaved-headed man gave a small, almost imperceptible nod toward Kai, then his eyes flickered to Dexing. They held for a beat too long—a clinical, assessing look—before both men turned and shouldered their way to the bar.
Dexing’s mouth went dry. The cold lager turned acidic in his stomach. “Friends of yours?”
“Acquaintances,” Kai said, his voice low. “From the scene. The shorter one’s called Rik. He’s okay. The other one, I don’t know.”
“They’re not here for the terrible music.”
“Probably not.” Kai’s gaze was fixed on the bar where the two men now leaned, ordering drinks. He seemed to be calculating something. “They saw you with me at the Collar. They saw… what happened.”
The memory replayed: the crushing grip, the jeering crowd, Bear’s declaration. These men had been part of that audience. Dexing’s pulse began a dull, insistent throb at his temples. “So they report back?”
“It’s not a spy movie,” Kai sighed, but his usual lightness was absent. “It’s a small world. People talk.” He set his glass down with a definitive click. “Wait here.”
Before Dexing could protest, Kai was weaving through the tables toward the bar. Dexing watched, his heart hammering against his ribs. Kai leaned casually between the two men, speaking in a low tone Dexing couldn’t hear over the wailing guitar solo.
The taller man in the leather jacket listened, his face impassive. Rik, the one with the nose ring, glanced over at Dexing, then back to Kai. He said something, his lips barely moving. Kai nodded, replying with a few short words.
Then Kai clapped Rik on the shoulder—a gesture that looked friendly but carried a firm finality—and walked back to the table. The two men did not look toward them again.
“What did you do?” Dexing whispered as Kai sat down.
“I intervened,” Kai said simply, picking up his pint. He took a long swallow. “Told them you’re my friend. That you’re new, you were overwhelmed, and what happened was a misunderstanding that’s been settled.”
“Settled? It’s not—”
“It is now.” Kai’s eyes were serious. “In their world, that’s how it works. A claim was made publicly. A counter-claim can be made publicly. I just made one. To them, you’re under my… let’s call it diplomatic protection. It’s a fiction, but it’s a useful one.”
Dexing stared at him. “Why would you do that? He’s a professor. He has a PhD. This isn’t some… gangland thing.”
Kai leaned forward, his voice dropping even lower. “It’s all the same thing. Power is power. He flexed at the club. He flexed again in the lecture hall with his mind games. You burned his card. That’s you flexing back, but privately. I just made it social. Public. In the world he supposedly owns, I just stood up and said ‘nope.’ Now, those guys will talk. Word gets around.”
The band launched into another song. The noise was a buffer, a wall of sound around their small table. Dexing felt adrift, unmoored from the reality of textbooks and lecture halls. He was in a negotiation he didn’t understand, using a currency he’d never held.
“You’ve just made yourself a target,” Dexing said, the weight of it sinking in.
“Nah,” Kai said, but the denial wasn't convincing. He forced a grin. “I’m a connector, remember? I’m useful. This just… clarifies the connection.” He finished his beer. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
They pushed out into the cool night. The streetlights painted the pavement in soft orange pools. The normal sounds of the city felt newly precious.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Dexing said as they walked.
“You didn’t have to.” Kai stuffed his hands in his pockets. “He messed with my friend. In my city. I don’t like that.”
They walked in silence for a block. The enormity of Kai’s simple act settled over Dexing—a shield had been placed around him, a story written where he was no longer a lone organism. He was part of a social fabric now, however strange its threads.
“Thank you,” Dexing said, the words feeling inadequate.
“Don’t mention it,” Kai said, his tone light again. “Just buy the next pretzel. And maybe don’t go to any more surprise guest lectures.”
They reached the corner where their paths diverged. Dexing stopped, looking down the quiet street toward his dorm. The hollow calm from burning the card was gone, replaced by a new, buzzing awareness. He was not free of the debt. The terms had just changed. The balance of power had shifted, infinitesimally, because a friend had stepped into the space between him and a predator.
“See you tomorrow?” Kai asked.
Dexing nodded. “Yeah.”
He watched Kai walk away, a small, defiant figure swallowed by the city’s shadows. He turned toward his dorm, the brick building looming like a silent monolith of his old life. The problem hadn’t disappeared. It had simply transformed, becoming more complex, more woven into the hidden layers of the world around him. He walked on, the taste of lager and pretzel salt still on his tongue, feeling the faint, new weight of Kai’s intervention settle on his shoulders. It wasn’t a burden. It was an anchor. He carried it home.