Sylar's eyes twitched for a moment. He had escaped one world of horrors, only to find himself facing new ones that might be just as deadly. Yet determination soon ignited behind his gaze as he took the syringe from Benjamin's hand.
Benjamin nodded with approval, a faint smile crossing his face. He could tell that Sylar understood the risks, but his will remained firm.
"You can take your time," Benjamin said, his tone calm, making sure the boy knew there was no rush. "Rest, meditate, do whatever helps you focus. Oh, and one more thing, don't bite your tongue to stay conscious. Someone tried that once… ended up choking on their own blood."
Sylar let out a quiet sigh. The more he learned, the more depressing the entire process sounded. Benjamin almost smiled at the boy's weary expression, but his face soon hardened again. The Shooting Star turned toward the window, eyes fixed on the distant blue sphere below.
"We'll be leaving soon," his voice carried a sense of pressure that made Sylar's eyes sharpen. "And even if you become a Shooting Star, I don't know if you'll ever return."
He turned back toward the door, his voice echoing softly through the metallic chamber.
"You might want to say goodbye. You'll regret it if you don't." He paused, then looked over his shoulder. For a brief moment, his stoic eyes betrayed a flicker of sadness. "I know from experience."
With that, the door slid shut, leaving Sylar alone.
For several moments, he stood in silence, staring out the window once more. A strange heaviness filled his heart. He wasn't just leaving behind a home, or a city, or even a country; he was leaving his world. Everything he had ever known was vanishing behind him.
There were no tears in his eyes. He had cried them all out long ago, after leaving the orphanage, after losing every person he'd ever loved. Even thinking of them now felt like a knife twisting in his chest. But one memory burned brighter than all the others: the face of a little girl with white hair and golden eyes.
He and Joi had been together for as long as he could remember. Her naïve smile, her laughter, the warmth she brought into his cold life—gone. Forever.
The pain that filled him was unbearable. Yet, as it consumed him, something inside shifted. The sorrow was swallowed by a cold, brutal resolve that didn't belong in the eyes of a boy his age.
"All that I loved is gone," he whispered, voice trembling with restrained rage. "But I won't say goodbye. As long as that abomination still lives, I'll return."
His eyes flared faintly with light as his will, mind, and body aligned around a single, burning purpose. "I will have my vengeance."
With those words, Sylar turned away from the window and moved to the center of the room. He lowered himself to the ground, lying flat with his arms and legs extended, eyes closed in meditation.
His mind was ready, but his body was not. The lingering effects of Entropy Debt were still tearing at his organs. He needed to wait until his condition stabilized, until his internal readings returned to the Safe Range.
The challenge of the Omega Compound was not something to take lightly.
Fortunately, he didn't have to wait long. It would take over a day for the residual entropy from the Neural Web Node to completely dissipate, but after six hours, the value had dropped below thirty percent, erasing constant strain and pain in his body.
Once he confirmed his condition, Sylar took the syringe. Without hesitation, he pressed it to his neck and injected the blue liquid.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the pain hit.
It was not pain as humans understood it; it was agony beyond comprehension, a torment that made Sylar feel as though he were being flayed alive from the inside out. His teeth clenched so hard that blood welled between them, and his fists struck the metal floor until crimson smeared across his palms.
His veins began to glow with an eerie sky-blue light as his muscle fibers twisted and unraveled, only to reknit themselves stronger and denser. His bones burned white-hot beneath his skin, stretching past the limits of the human body.
"ARGHHHHHHHH!"
The scream that tore from Sylar's throat echoed through the chamber like the roar of a wounded beast. He had to endure. He had to push the pain away. If screaming was the only thing that kept his mind from shattering, then he would scream until his voice gave out.
In another section of the ship, Benjamin sat in a metallic hall with three other massive super-soldiers. Though Sylar's senses could not reach beyond the reinforced walls of his chamber, the others could hear his cries with ease. None of them mocked him. Not one.
Each of them remembered that same pain, the agony of their own transformation through the Omega Compound. Even now, as weapons of war capable of descending from the sky like angels of death and annihilating entire cities, the memory of that experience sent shivers down their spines.
Benjamin stared at the sealed chamber for a long moment, then pressed his palm against a glowing control panel on the wall beside him.
"Let's go."
At his command, the ship trembled, engines roaring to life. A blinding flash filled the void as it accelerated to impossible speeds, becoming a streak of light that shot across the stars, leaving Arcade far behind.
The Kingdom of Man's great warship vanished into the cosmos. But their departure did not bring peace to the world they left behind.
If anything, the chaos grew worse.
Across Arcade, battles raged without end. The Apostles multiplied, grotesque abominations fused with twisted machines. Their corrupted influence spread through the land like wildfire. At the same time, the spores and tendrils of the Myceliarchy consumed entire cities, infecting everything that breathed.
For the remaining humans, there were no safe havens left. Those not slaughtered by the Apostles were devoured by the creeping roots of the fungal horde, a fate perhaps even worse than death.
Seventy-one hours after Sylar vanished into the stars, on a small island nation surrounded by endless waters, another battle was about to begin.
Hundreds of Apostles faced thousands of Thralls, each side driven by the same bloodlust, the same insatiable hunger to destroy.
They roared and screamed at each other like beasts before lunging forward. The battlefield trembled under their charge, their combined fury turning the ruined city into a storm of dust and madness.
Yet, just as their vanguards were about to collide, the firmament split open.
A beam of flaming light pierced through the clouds, a blinding streak that burned through the atmosphere and stopped mere meters above the ground. The impact never came, but the shockwave that followed was devastating, sending abominations and infected creatures flying in every direction. Dust erupted across the wasteland, blotting out everything in sight.
When the haze finally began to settle, both sides turned toward the source of the disturbance. What they saw froze every living, or half-living, thing in place.
From the golden stream of plasma that danced down from the sky, a man emerged.
He stood suspended in midair, framed by the sun, his entire form cast in shadow, yet his eyes shone with a radiance that cut through the light itself. He said nothing, but his silent presence alone carried the weight of an unspoken command.
Even the Thralls, feral and mindless as they were, hesitated. Their snarls turned into whimpers as primal instinct told them what their limited minds could not, this being was beyond them. The Apostles, twisted abominations of flesh and metal, recoiled as dread sank into their cores. They could sense it too. Whatever this entity was, it was not something they could face.
Unfortunately for them, fear and weapons were a fatal combination.
One of the Apostles broke. With a metallic shriek, it raised its cannon and fired, a massive slug that could have torn a tank apart streaked across the air, heading straight for the man's head.
It struck and bounced off harmlessly—no explosion, no flash, not even a ripple of distortion. The projectile simply deflected as if it had hit a wall of divine steel.
The man slowly turned his gaze toward the attacker, and the world itself seemed to hold its breath. His eyes glowed brighter, burning like miniature suns.
The next instant was agony.
Every Apostle on the field erupted into screams as flames consumed them. Flesh melted, metal warped, and the stench of vaporized corruption filled the air. Their bodies crumbled into molten heaps, the fire too focused and controlled to spread.
When the last Apostle fell silent, the man turned toward the Thralls. He raised his right hand, then clenched it.
A chorus of wet implosions followed. One by one, the infected collapsed inward, crushed by an unseen force. It was as if their bodies had been thrown into the deepest ocean trench, their bones and organs collapsing under impossible pressure. Hundreds died with each heartbeat. Within seconds, the battlefield was still.
Not even ten seconds had passed since the man's arrival. Neither side remained. And he didn't seem the least bit strained.
He hovered in silence, eyes scanning the ruins below as if searching for something, or someone. Then, with a single deep breath, the shattered city began to tremble once more. Buildings groaned and rose into the air, tons of debris floating upward as if gravity itself had been reversed.
From within the ruins, dozens of people —survivors trapped beneath the wreckage —were lifted into the sky. With a gentle motion of his hand, the man guided them toward him, away from the collapsing structures that fell like dying giants back to the ground.
The survivors hung in the air before him, terrified, their eyes wide with disbelief. They had no idea if this being had come to save them, or to end them.
Then the man spoke for the first time, his voice deep and calm, echoing like thunder through the air.
"Do any of you know a boy named Sylar Bright?"