(THE “S” STANDS FOR HOPE) CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE: MAX

With each passing second, with every glance that found nothing—no lights from distant skylines, no shadows stretching from passers-by, and no squeal of tires or horns from vehicles—the scope of Max’s fuck-up was laid bare to him.

He kept his face still. Or tried to. His pulse wouldn’t cooperate. It kicked too hard, too fast, like it wanted out of him. His breathing followed, shallow in a way he couldn’t quite fix no matter how slowly he pulled air in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. He’d trained for this. Years of it, in boardrooms during hostile takeovers. He knew how to sit across from someone who could ruin him and make it look like he held all the cards.

That didn’t translate here. Because here, the alien across from him invalidated every card.

Max didn’t have to look to know he was being watched in ways that went beyond sight. The attention crawled over his skin, every shift of muscle, every stutter in his heartbeat, and every microsecond of hesitation. The only privacy left sat somewhere behind his eyes, and even that felt… optimistic.

For all he knew, the alien could hear thoughts too.

He almost laughed at the idea, but it died before it made it out of his throat.

Bluffing crossed his mind. It came up automatically, the same way it always did when he felt a situation slipping. Inflate, posture, and pretend he had leverage where none existed. People responded to that. They always had.

People.

He let the thought go.

The imbalance sat between them, obvious and absolute, and pretending otherwise would just make him look stupid.

That was new. There was always a move, always a plan forming under the surface even when things looked stable. Max Anders had built his life on that, on staying two steps ahead of everyone else in the room.

Now there wasn’t even a first step to take.

He let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold and just… stopped trying.

The ground was rough when he dropped onto it, enough that he felt it through the fabric of his suit immediately. Dust smeared along the crease of his trousers, and something small and sharp pressed into his palm when he leaned back on it, a stone or broken bit of something that didn’t belong to anything in particular.

He didn’t brush it away, didn’t even bother checking how bad it looked. There was no one here to see him like this, and even that acknowledgement felt wrong. He hadn’t realized how much of himself depended on other people seeing him.

Max inclined his head back slightly, squinting up at the open sky before letting his gaze drift forward again.

The alien stood a short distance away, exactly where he’d been placed, like he hadn’t moved at all since they arrived. The wind moved around him without touching him, making the whole thing look staged, like some kind of painting.

Max had thought he understood what he was dealing with.

He’d built strategies and contingencies that accounted for strength, speed, and public perception. All the things that could be measured, anticipated, and made into something manageable.

This wasn’t manageable.

This was someone who could pick him up and remove him from all he knew in less time than it took to blink. Someone who could decide, on a whim, that Max Anders no longer existed and make it true.

And worse, he didn’t need to kill him.

Death was simple. Clean, in a way, and final too. It came with a kind of closure, even if it was one Max hoped not to experience anytime soon.

This…

This was worse.

A thought slipped in, uninvited and impossible to shake. A stretch of empty land somewhere no one cared about, far from anything that could be called infrastructure.

He could be left here.

Max had always assumed, somewhere deep down, that there were lines even people like this wouldn’t cross. Limits that came from something internal, or a code that made them predictable.

Looking at him now, Max wasn’t so sure.

Or maybe that was the point.

Maybe the code was there, and Max had just spent the last hour trying to drag him across it.

He rubbed at his face, fingers pressing briefly into his eyes before dropping back to his side.

There wasn’t a move to make. Only him, sitting in the dirt, with the sun beating down on his head.

Max looked up at him properly then, not as a problem to solve or a force to maneuver around. He looked at him as he was, an alien. One he had thought he could use.

Foolish.

He’d overestimated his abilities from the start.

“There,” Superman said quietly.