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It doesn't take long for Luke's mom to report her car as stolen and Sylar isn't surprised when a dozen black-and-whites, with sirens blazing, come careening up behind them. Luke's terrified. He's trying not to show it but Sylar can taste his fear and the air in the car seems heavy with the salty tang of panicked sweat.
Sylar slams on the brakes and the car swerves. Behind them the cruisers scatter at the sudden stop, tyres burning as they skid across the asphalt. Shots ring out and the car lurches with the steady impact of two full clips emptied into the shattering glass of the rear window. Under the sounds of screeching metal and pounding boots, the snap of guns reloading and the brash voices of naïve men who think, "You're surrounded!" means anything to Sylar, Sylar can hear Luke's ragged breath from where he's curled himself against the seat, sunk low with both arms wrapped protectively around his head.
He touches Luke's shoulder, smirking to see him jump. "Come on," he says. "Showtime."
Sylar glides gracefully from the car while Luke stumbles. It's his nervous faltering that saves him because as he trips, crouching low to catch himself, bullets fly. Seven sights are aimed at Sylar and five shots find their mark. Sylar comes back to life with Luke's fingers curled desperately around his bicep and the fetid smell of boiled blood around him. Scared to trembling though he may be, Luke's gotten in a couple of lucky shots.
With bullets and casings still oozing from his torso, and his body healing as he moves, Sylar stalks towards the impromptu barricade of cars. Luke scrabbles after him, exhaling a heady sigh of relief and he thinks, for the second time that day, that Luke might be the only person alive, certainly the only person on this street, pleased when Sylar refuses to die.
Sylar smiles to himself as microwaves ripple past him, tingeing the air red and making the atmosphere waver around them. Car alarms wail and metal sparks, but only a few men fall. Luke's confidence might be improving, but they'll need to work on aim.
"Hands up!" someone yells. Someone not in charge, Sylar notes, because the man with the bullhorn and the detective's badge is a half-cooked corpse two yards ahead of them. They've already been beaten, Sylar thinks, and he's barely started to play at all.
"Police! Hands up!" Beneath the words, Sylar can hear the sob that threatens to escape. With a gracious smile he pauses, inclining his head as politely as he can while contempt courses through him.
"If you insist," he says, and raises his hands above his shoulders. Behind him Luke hisses in his ear about what the fuck he thinks he's doing and it's all Sylar can do to stop himself from turning back and clouting him. Sylar isn't sure what angers him more, Luke's insolence or his lack of faith.
With a grunt of annoyance, Sylar shakes off the hand at the small of his back and twists his wrist. The shriek of tortured metal rips through the air as he lifts the nearest cruiser with his mind and hurls it down the line of cars, bouncing and reeling through the barricade as the policemen scream in pain and panic. Maybe Sylar employs a touch more force and a little less finesse than usual, because as much fun as this might be, they've places to go and the quicker they get there, the happier he will be. But still, the haphazard carnage renders Luke speechless.
Then, in a breathy, awestruck rush, he gasps, "Fuck. That was awesome."
Sylar turns to him, takes in his mouth, agape in wonder, and his eyes dark and round and shining with a bloodlust that Sylar knows so well, and when their gazes meet, they laugh together in exhilaration until Sylar's sure witnesses will label them insane.
"Watch this." Sylar concentrates on a car that's mostly still intact and as he closes his fist, his forearm trembling, it crumples, with a sickening snap of metal and glass.
"Cool," Luke breathes, and when Sylar flicks his fingers, and the jagged ball of scrap hurtles into the surviving men, leaving them crushed and broken and pleading for mercy, Sylar thinks that Luke might clap.
Sylar knows he's showing off, and wasting time, but Luke follows eagerly at his heels, and Sylar's never been one to disappoint his audience. He slits throats and crushes chests, letting Luke curdle the blood of the ones who spit at them, swearing up at them in impotent defiance. Then, Sylar hears fresh sirens on the horizon as back up nears. Too little, too late.
Time for one more trick, he thinks, and then they really need to go.
"Stand back," Sylar orders, pushing Luke aside. His outstretched hand glows orange and, glancing over his shoulder to watch Luke grin, Sylar nukes the site: scorched earth.
They jack a car from the scene---a parked one, undamaged---and speed away, weaving and doubling back on themselves until Sylar is certain they haven't been followed. It's a pain in the ass to travel like this, but Sylar doesn't want anything to interrupt his 'family reunion'. Though they're hours, now, from where they want to be, he'd rather that than the FBI breathing down their necks. Really, Sylar thinks that he should regret the mess they've made. The bloodbath has landed them as headline, breaking news on every radio station they tune into, but Luke smiles and glances at him shyly with every new report they hear and Sylar thinks that maybe, just this once, the annoyance has been worth it.
Luke's grown quiet and Sylar watches him warily out of the corner of his eye. If the kid's having a belated crisis of conscience, Sylar's not sure he's in the mood to deal with it. Luke yawns and pulls his knees up, tucking his chin to his chest as he lets his head loll against the window. His eyes seem heavy and, when Sylar looks again a few minutes later, they're closed and he's softly snoring, snuffling into the crook of his elbow. The adrenaline rush has finally worn off and Luke's endorphin high has crashed, hard. Sylar lets him rest. After all, it's not everyday he'll commit his first murder. Sylar wonders when the nightmares will start and when they do, he wonders if Luke will come as close to breaking as Gabriel had.
It's past midnight when they finally stop. Sylar pulls into an empty driveway and kills the engine. He spent too many nights in Mexico trying to fold himself comfortable in the backseat of a car to consider roughing it as they sleep, but they're stuck in the middle of suburban hell and there won't be a motel for miles around. At the sudden stillness and the missing hum of the car's engine, Luke wakes.
"What---?" he mumbles, looking bleary-eyed at the dark, unfamiliar house in front of them.
"Keep your voice down and don't slam the car door." Sylar doesn't need to look back to know that Luke is scrambling to follow on sleep-heavy legs.
It's nothing at all to pop the lock with telekinetic fingers, but Luke lets slip an appreciative grunt and Sylar smiles, smug at the knowledge that Luke's as impressed with this as with the grandstanding of before. He holds a finger to his lips. "Shhh", he whispers as they creep inside the house.
They might as well not have bothered, because although the curtains are drawn and the house dark, there's a couple on the sofa, locked in an embrace. The TV, turned down low, flickers in the background.
"What the fuck!?" the man gets out before Sylar has them slammed against the nearest wall. Invisible pressure on their windpipes stops them from screaming out in terror.
"Is anyone else here?" Sylar demands. The woman, weeping silently, shakes her head as best she can.
"Good," he whispers as he snaps their necks.
Sylar steps between the bodies to take the remote from the dead man's still warm hand and shuts the TV off.
"Come on," he says to Luke, tilting his head towards the kitchen. "I'm hungry."
Sylar stands to the side, to let Luke pass, watching him as he stills for a moment facing the bodies.
"Problem?" he asks. It comes out gruffly, but Sylar's not sure he really means it as a challenge. Luke's in shock, he has to be, and while Sylar enjoys pushing him, he doesn't want to make Luke snap too soon. It would be a shame to waste such potential.
But Luke turns back to him with bright, shining eyes and an impassive face.
"Wrong place. Wrong time," he shrugs, repeating back Sylar's words from earlier as he steps neatly around the pooling blood. And then, it's Sylar's turn to pause. It's not often he's surprised, but Luke's indifference to the deaths that are mounting in their wake leaves him both unsettled and a little, begrudgingly, awed. Envy whispers through him that Luke should be inbred with the type of callousness it had taken Gabriel months to accept.
"I mean," Luke stammers, turning back to look up at him. "That's what you said, right? It's fate?"
Slowly, a wide, wicked grin spreads across Sylar's face because there it is: the crack in Luke's façade. He is nothing without Sylar to justify his wanton cruelty; nothing without Sylar to guide him what to think and do and be.
"Fate," he agrees. He settles his hand on Luke's shoulder and feels the way that Luke relaxes at his touch as he nudges him to sit at the kitchen table.
The cupboards are well stocked and soon there are cookies and soda strewn between them. Sylar's rooting through the fridge, pulling out steaks, and potatoes for baking, wondering if Luke knows how to fire a grill when he notices Luke staring.
"What?" he snaps because Luke stares a lot.
It's not that the doesn't enjoy the attention and the way Luke's gaze seems to drift to where ever Sylar happens to be, no matter what else might be around to catch his attention. But it's late and he's tired and when Luke's quiet, Sylar can't help but keep a closer eye on him. They're too much alike, and Sylar knows that closed off, introspective look. Something is brewing.
"They shot you," Luke says quietly. He nods at the front of Sylar's blood soaked shirt, now dry and stiff against his skin.
No shit, Sylar thinks, but the kid's working up to something so he nods and lets Luke stand. When he runs a curious hand over the stained cotton, scratching his fingers against the weave of the fabric to watch red flecks collect beneath his nails, Sylar doesn't stop him.
"They shot you," Luke repeats. "You died."
Sylar shrugs. "I don't die."
"Never?"
"Never," he says, because it won't do to give away all his secrets yet.
And really, Sylar should have seen it coming. Against his chest, Luke's palm pulses. Red waves surge into him. There are too many seconds of blinding, excruciating pain and a hoarse shout, that, in some distant way, Sylar knows must be his own cry of shock.
It's an all-body burn from the inside out. Nothing like the acid battery spark of Elle's blue electricity, this is more organic, like the splattering of fat as bacon fries or the sizzle of beef as it chars. From head to toe, his body goes slick with sweat, and deep, deep inside, Sylar feels the jarring cold of impending death within his blistering innards. Of all the ways that Sylar has died, he counts this as among the most unpleasant.
Then, there is nothing.
Like the snap of elastic stretched too far, Sylar goes from dead to not in one gasping, body shuddering breath. Endorphins race through him, making him tremble as organs and cells regrow themselves. He opens his eyes to see Luke's face, too close, intently staring and for once, Sylar doesn't reach for telekinesis.
He backhands Luke across the face, laughing mirthlessly as his lip splits and his blood splatters across Sylar's shirt, a damp and vivid crimson slash against his congealed and blackened own.
"You shouldn't have done that, Luke," he grinds out between gritted teeth.
"You can't die." Obstinate. Defiant. Insolent.
"No, Luke," Sylar says, rising gracefully to his feet, kicking Luke in the ribs as he tries to follow. "But you can."
Electricity crackles between his fingers and he sees Luke flinch, holding his arm before his face but with his eyes wide open, trained, unblinking, on the power he hasn't yet seen. And maybe it's that fascination in the face of death; that rapture above all else, as Luke cringes on the marbled floor, too awestruck to defend himself, that makes Sylar adjust his aim.
The bolt crackles up Luke's arm. He screams as his skin scorches and the fine hairs on his forearm melt. He's panting for breath as Sylar drags him up, making him stand on his own two wavering feet.
"Don't piss me off," Sylar warns, cupping Luke's cheek gently as he shivers, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows.
The kitchen reeks of burnt flesh and singed hair, and their clothes are steeped the stench of blood. With a telekinetic hand, Sylar dumps the steaks in the trash. For once, he's lost his appetite.
"We're going to sleep," he orders, grinning at Luke's quick and startled nod.
Sylar gestures at the bodies still crumpled in the kitchen doorway. "We need to be gone before they start to stink."
He shoves the cookie jar into Luke's quivering hands and pushes him towards the stairs.
"Don't tell your mom I let you have cookies for dinner."