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There's no way to align a bit stream containing exclusively 8 bits per byte. (Whatever code you choose for the alignment mark could also be a valid code since there are no extras.)

You need to add extra bits so you can find the alignment, and once you do that you have the answer to your question.

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While you may be correct, it's interesting to note the existence of Consistent Overhead Byte Stuffing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_Overhead_Byte_Stuffi...) which sort of kind of if you squint manages to add a 257th symbol to the data stream at a constant (worst-case) overhead per byte.

The original paper also discusses how to use the "Eliminate all zero bytes" behavior in order to set up an unambiguous sync pattern to indicate the beginning of transmissions in a bit-level wire protocol.

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