Prologue – Customer 28798
Every day I see him. That man comes to the library, borrows few books
and smiles gently. His dark eyes are completely inexpressive, hair
messy and the words he uses are totally formal, fitting perfectly to
the situation.
He borrows books, which I won't ever expect to be borrowed by a young
man. Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy… Those classics of the world
literature, those dry and woody. Even though I know that he borrows
them just because of me.
I can't understand why. He feels so bored every time he takes one of
those books, and repulsion runs through him. He has read them before,
and he hates the waste of time which he has to go through for his own
goals, whatever they are.
Even though the same play keeps going. He chooses the books I have
recommended and acts (even quite well!) he is eager about The Idiot or
Anna Karenina. And I shiver when he steps away from the door and
disappears in a crowd, in the middle off New York. The coarse softness
of his voice scratches my mind and makes me tremble. I can't decide
whether I should believe clemency of his voice or that feeling inside
me which tells me to run.
Why he crimps me? An ordinary, grayish library worker with glasses and
eyes like rain drops? I'm something only when I can recommend books
for somebody or start one on my own, after waiting a couple of weeks
that it would come out from the press.
And why he always borrows those books I've recommended? Why the customer
28798 is just a big question mark for me? And, most importantly, why
he wants to murder me?
Sylar ended the last page of Anna Karenina and hampered his lust to
throw it against the wall. Instead of that he just put the book on a
chair and closed his eyes, listening the slow ticking of the clock. It
was perfectly on time, as always.
"Eight hours, 16 minutes and 17 seconds", he thought. "And then I
don't have to read any of those books anymore."
Then his face darkened a little, when the man came back to think his
plan and Olivia. Before he had been able to think her as a
chess-problem, but now it wasn't enough. He must give up for himself
for a while.
Instead of Sylar he would have to be Gabriel Gray, an ordinary young
man. Sylar's hands pressed to the fists and he grinned.
"When I have her power, I'll be stronger", he said to himself. Even
that didn't make him to calm down, and he grabbed a water glass with
his mind and flinged it against the wall.
It was snowing quietly behind the dusty windows of apartment house.