----
Max Dillon stared at the message on his phone, eyes wide.
So it wasn't Norman Osborn who remembered his birthday…
It was Superman.
The man who'd appeared on every news channel. The one who'd stopped a jeep with his bare hands. The man the whole world was watching… remembered him.
The recluse is in the corner cubicle.
The ghost of the electrical engineering department.
The forgotten nobody.
Max's heart swelled.
No one else cared. His coworkers couldn't even remember his name but Superman did.
And Superman was the boss.
Max felt like the sun had finally come out for him.
He devoured the cake with reverence like it was a sacred offering. The overly sweet frosting didn't matter. He was seen.
He mattered.
---
BOOM!
A deafening crack of thunder jolted Max from his thoughts. Rain hammered the windows, rattling the glass like machine gun fire.
He turned to his computer monitoring the building's power grid.
So far, so good. No surges. No outages.
He exhaled.
This kind of storm was dangerous. One wrong arc could fry the entire system. Especially here. OsCorp's infrastructure was tied directly to its high-value R&D labs and refrigerated bio-storage units.
If something shorted out, it couldn't wait until morning.
That's why he was always on call.
Lightning crashed again, the sky outside pitch black, like ink spilled across the clouds.
Then it struck.
KRRAKOOOM!
A bolt of lightning slammed into OsCorp's lightning rod. Energy surged through the building's power lines, flooding every circuit like a raging current.
Lights across the office flickered wildly.
Max sat up straight.
Not good.
DING!
A group chat alert from the Electrical Department pinged.
[Supervisor]: Jamie get back here. If the circuits are fried, we need emergency repairs now.
[Jamie]: I just got home. Isn't Max still in the building? Make him do it.
[Supervisor]: It's Max's birthday. He's off-duty.
[Jamie]: Birthday? Since when do we get days off for that? Is that, like, a thing now?
[Supervisor]: Quit whining and move. You want to keep your job?
[Jamie]: …On my way.
Max stared at the screen.
That's not him.
His supervisor, the same one who used to call him in for every late-night repair, was defending him?
That's Superman's influence.
For once, he didn't have to stay late. Someone else was going to feel what it was like.
He packed up his gear, humming as he straightened his desk. The storm could crash the whole system and he wouldn't care.
Let Jamie fix it.
---
BOOM!
Another earth-shaking blast. Max flinched.
The lights went out completely.
DING! Another message.
[Norman Osborn]: Are any electricians still in the building? R&D has lost power. This cannot wait.
[Supervisor]: Jamie's en route.
[Norman Osborn]: Tell him to hurry. Our backup generators won't last long. We're in the middle of a critical experiment. If your department delays us, everyone gets replaced.
Max's eyes narrowed.
R&D?
That meant Superman was running an experiment.
He couldn't let that fail.
[Max]: Sir, I'm still here. I'll go.
[Norman Osborn]: Max? You don't need to. Go home. Rest.
[Max]: I've got the experience. I'll fix it fast.
No hesitation. Max grabbed his toolkit and took off.
He moved like lightning through the stairwells, scanning real-time diagnostics on his phone.
"Lower-level cabling burnout," he muttered. "Of course."
He reached the power core: the nerve center of OsCorp's bio-electric energy system.
OsCorp didn't rely on standard electricity.
They used live power.
Supercharged electric eels.
A bioengineering breakthrough these creatures could generate industrial voltage with minimal upkeep, just high-grade nutrient solutions.
Each eel was housed in a fluidic energy tank. Their discharges were harvested, stored, and redistributed across the facility.
Max opened the service hatch. A wave of scorched plastic and ozone hit him.
"Yep. Fried."
He got to work. Wires stripped. Burnt components tossed. New fuses are locked in.
He didn't notice his phone screen light up behind him:
[Supervisor]: Max—WAIT! Today's eel feeding cycle made them hyper-aggressive. You can't repair anything until they're sedated!
Max smiled to himself, reconnecting the circuits.
Superman would be proud.
KRRAKOOOOM!
Another bolt of lightning struck.
The freshly repaired circuit sizzled with surging power. One live arc jumped the wires straight into Max.
SNAP!
He seized.
And slipped.
His body collapsed over the railing splashing into the eel tank below.
SPLASH!
The water erupted with fury. Dozens of eels flared with blue light, responding to the intrusion with instinctual violence.
Bio-electricity surged.
Thousands of volts tore through Max's flesh like glass shards. Every nerve ignited with raw agony. He screamed horribly, helplessly.
The electricity carved through him shredded him from the inside and rewrote his biology at the molecular level.
And then…
Everything went dark.
----
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