The makeup team had finished Annie's eyes and moved to her cheeks. She submitted to it with practiced patience, staring at the blank wall as the powder settled on her skin.
Ashley's voice came from somewhere behind them. "You're both doing wonderfully, by the way."
Annie glanced at Clark. He met her gaze briefly, his expression gentle, communicating a shared thought: we haven't done anything yet.
"That's precisely why," Ashley said. "You've been standing here and not saying things, which has already put you eight percent ahead with eighteen-to-forty-nine-year-old Midwesterners and conservative Christians. Humility is a very wise quality."
"I wasn't performing humility," Clark said quietly. "I was just—"
"Yes. That's why we like you."
Ashley said it with total sincerity. Clark focused on her steady pulse. She meant what she said, but her meaning was narrow. We like you because your humility is commercially useful. The gap between that and actual respect was substantial.
He offered a small, polite smile to the makeup artists who had been circling him with a mix of anxiety and uncertainty. He gently indicated they could stand down. There was nothing for them to work with. They stepped back, their relief obvious.
"Are you ready," Ashley asked, "to change your life?"
Annie drew a slow breath.
Clark spoke quietly. "It's just a stage."
She looked at him. He stood relaxed, his posture easy, his focus present. He treated the moment like an ordinary conversation, not a career-defining event. The knot in her chest loosened.
He does that without trying, she thought. Just makes the room feel more manageable.
From the stage beyond the curtain, a voice boomed over the speakers.
"—two extraordinary people I am genuinely looking forward to working alongside. Please welcome the newest members of our Heroes Eight—"
Heroes Eight. The phrase made her head spin.
"—Starlight. Superman."
The crowd's roar hit the curtain like a physical wave. She had known it was coming, but the sheer volume still rattled her teeth.
They walked out into the lights.
The Deep stood near the center of the stage.
Annie had known his face for years from posters and news segments. He was taller in person, his green costume textured to suggest scales. He stood with the relaxed posture of a man accustomed to the noise, his smile easy and practiced.
She was standing next to a childhood hero on a Vought International stage, the audience roaring louder than anything she had ever heard. The dizziness returned.
Across the stage, Clark let his vision shift, his eyes tracking The Deep. The anatomy beneath the green suit was irregular. The organ placement deviated from human norms, the tissue density altered. Adaptation, or the source of the ability? He filed the observation away.
Jude watched the broadcast from his hotel room. He leaned forward slightly, his eyes tracking the news ticker at the bottom of the screen.
The shareholders' meeting had been exactly what it appeared to be: a revenue showcase dressed as a mission statement. Net income, box office numbers, theme parks. Madeline Stillwell delivered the presentation smoothly, and the shareholders applauded on cue. Jude gained nothing actionable from it. No names, no operations, nothing useful.
A vice president and a talent manager, Jude thought. That's all we've got from the Vought side.
He switched the channel to a news network. The footage of Clark stopping the armored truck played again. The view counter sat north of twenty million.
Superman is Superman in any universe, Jude thought. He watched the clip loop. That kind of public goodwill is actual leverage inside a company that runs on public goodwill. Clark should have room to move.
He was right.
In the Hall of Heroes on one of the Vought Building's upper floors, Clark stood between Starlight and The Deep.
"Put yourself together," Clark said. His voice was low, carrying the even patience of a man explaining something that should not require explanation. "And from this point forward, treat Starlight with the basic courtesy you'd extend to a colleague." He kept his tone flat. "We're superheroes. That word means something."
The Deep's jaw tightened. "You've been here about forty minutes."
"That's enough to have an opinion on this."
Behind Clark, Annie stood rigid. Her hands were pressed tightly together, her knuckles white. Her eyes shone bright, tears welling up before she blinked them back furiously.
Her dream had lasted five minutes past the red carpet.
Five minutes earlier.
The Hall of Heroes was expansive. She had read about it and pictured it a thousand times, but the reality held a different weight. The massive screens, the round table, the seven seats, the painted dome above displaying oil-rendered heroes. The architecture was designed to enforce awe.
She let herself feel it.
"The Earth Observation Four satellites," The Deep said. He stood at the control panel, his hands moving over the keys with easy familiarity. "Are in orbit at roughly six hundred kilometers altitude. They can resolve a car license plate from space." He brought up an image on the main screen. "Live feed."
Annie stared at the monitor. Where she had come from, she had worked off municipal frequencies and secondhand radios. This was another world entirely.
"I used to work off a police scanner I got on eBay," The Deep added, glancing back with a grin.
She laughed.
He was funny. She hadn't expected that. The poster on her wall hadn't prepared her for the casual charm. He seemed warmer than his public image.
He looked over at Clark. "There should've been eight chairs in here. They set it up before the announcement, so I think someone just missed it. Would you mind checking with Ashley? Even tomorrow works, just don't let it get lost."
Clark looked at the table, noting the empty space, and nodded. "I'll go now. It won't take long."
The heavy door clicked shut behind him.
The Deep turned off the screen and faced Annie. "You want to sit at the table? Get a feel for it." He gestured toward the seats. "Nobody's going to know."
She looked at the chairs, her eyes landing on the one that clearly belonged to Homelander. "Is that... should I be sitting in—"
"Fan of his?" The Deep tilted his head. "I figured. Everyone our age had a poster on the wall."
"Actually," she said, her cheeks warming slightly. "I had a poster of you. Not Homelander. I looked up to you a lot."
His expression shifted. The casual warmth vanished, replaced by something flat and expectant.
"Is that right," he said.
The sound that followed was deliberate, unmistakable, and entirely out of place.
Annie turned her head.
What she saw her childhood idol doing, pants down in the Hall of Heroes, without an ounce of shame, shattered the room around her. Shock gave way to disbelief, then fear, and finally, a cold, sharp anger.
The disillusionment took five minutes.
She turned and walked toward the door.
"Starlight." His voice was casual, completely unbothered. "You still want to be in The Seven, don't you?"
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