He feels it acutely as soon as he turns the knob and and steps back into Mohinder's apartment, the door sweeping a wide half-arc through the debris on the floor. In one instant, the edge to the ring's power is dulled by the murky static of the bar; in the next, it's like fingers in an electrical socket and clock springs overwound, icy and sharp and a fierce, pounding thrill in his heart. Sylar's breath catches in a gasp that's less shock than the verge of laughter as his hand falls to his pocket.
The door doesn't swing shut entirely when he lets go and steps over the twisted map frame. Sylar's shoes crunch on fragments of glass, splinters of wood, and the circuit board of Mohinder's laptop; he pauses, then glances down, frowning in consideration.
The algorithm's lost now, and with it the revised list that would have held thousands of new possibilities. How easy it would be, though: I wish that I could find all of the others like me.
Or, as he lifts his foot to see the blood slicked across a few pieces of glass, not far from where Peter fell: I wish that I had Peter Petrelli's ability.
Or as he fishes the ring out from his pocket and turns it over in his fingers, hearing the energy seething and shifting like gathering stormclouds, this power, I wish I could fit it to myself, as one would slip another wheel seamlessly into the whole --
The ring tumbles down into his palm as Sylar's hand clutches around it, convulsively. He shivers and takes a deep, deep breath before opening it again, one finger at a time, to study the small circle further.
He's discovered his own ways to power through adaptation, effort, the natural order. What he does, he knows must work. And this -- this magic -- it will work, too, but it continues to move and tick in ways that are utterly foreign on a fundamental level; the rhythm that it keeps pattering out slips and changes whenever he thinks he's beginning to grasp it, even outside of Milliways, where it is so much easier to see than --
In the bar.
Sylar's head snaps toward the sliver of light peeking from between door and doorframe. The murmured voices crescendo, like the dopplered arc of a passing police siren, before they fade back to indistinct noise.
That's always been the problem, hasn't it. The fragmentation of Milliways, the way the people who cannot and should not move do so anyway, the sights he has seen, the power each one of them has...
Carefully, Sylar unbuckles the chain's clasp and lets it slip out of the ring. It drops to the floor with a quiet susurrus and pools around itself.
There are ways to gain power beyond merely asking for it. He tightens his hand again, shuts his eyes, and whispers.
And behind him, through the crack, something shifts.
He hears it instantly, and in the same instant, the cold thrum of energy drains out of the ring. It rolls over his hand like icy oil clinging to his skin. Sylar quickly lets it fall -- it's of no more use to him -- and hears a loud ping as it strikes the floorboards and wobbles away, end over end, before he whirls around to yank open the door fully.
Inside, someone's walking past, and he can hear them
tick, tick, tick
as clearly as if he'd opened the door onto the hallway of Mohinder's apartment complex instead; and while there are still strange shifts (with every third step the person takes, the noise ceases as if she has suddenly died, only to start again two steps later), and the static is not entirely gone (the walls still buzz with it, a stomach-twisting interference as if looking at a thing both living and non-living, because wishing to understand the patrons of Milliways is quite different from wishing to understand Milliways itself)...
It's not perfect.
But it's a start.
Sylar smiles, then shuts the door. When he opens it again, it's on a set of numbered doors lined up along the opposite side of the hall.
Reed Street's only a few blocks from here. Quietly, Sylar closes Mohinder's door behind him and turns down the hallway.
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