To Be Like the Guardians

Part 1: The Plan, Chapter 4: Leave

Mallory looked up from the papers on his desk at the sound of someone entering his office, a place with light blue walls and a pine desk and chairs in the middle. The someone entering was Whisper, and she had a blue haze surrounding her. Sadness.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I need to take your Power-Inducer. It's too dangerous for you to have it while Matt and Haven are away. You wouldn't want the voices to convince you to do something bad with it while they're on their honeymoon, would you?"

Mallory didn't mention how much she was echoing his fears. "I'm not gonna be giving in to the voices. I know they're bad, so I know not to do what they tell me to."

"Didn't the curse make you try to kill once?"

"That was different. The voices don't make me feel things like the curse did. And what dangerous thing could I do with knowing what people are feeling?"

Whisper looked away from his face and stared at his hand, apparently embarrassed that he knew what emotion she had since her haze turned orange. "Manipulate people. You don't want to do that again, do you?"

"I don't need my Power-Inducer to manipulate people."

"No, but it can aid you."

"You don't know what I know." He knew how to read people, if he really wanted to. Certain body language cues meant certain things, and while he didn't know all of them, he was fairly confident in his abilities.

"And you don't see what I see. Mallory, whatever's inside you is dangerous."

Mallory frowned. He knew Whisper was right, though he didn't want to admit it. "Fine." He pulled back his blue L.E.R. shirt and exposed his Power-Inducer, a coin-like object with tiny IVs sticking into his skin. He grabbed the sides, and the IVs retreated into the object. "Here." He handed it to her. "Keep it safe."

"I will." And with that, she walked out the door.

Mallory was returning his attention to his paperwork when his phone beeped. A warning. He picked it up and checked who was being attacked.

"No..." Adrenaline rushed to his head, and he almost felt like what he saw on the screen was just a hallucination, it was that terrifying. His children hadn't been attacked in six years.

*/*/*/*

Haven looked at the Prophecy Person walking down the hall. The blonde had just been about to get her nails done for tomorrow, but Whisper was carrying something awfully suspicious.

"What do you have?" Haven asked.

Whisper held up the Power-Inducer in her hand. "It's Mallory's. I'm keeping it for the next few days."

"Oh." Haven frowned. She couldn't blame Mallory for letting Whisper take it, but it still kind of surprised Haven to see the Prophecy Person holding it. Whisper walked up to her, past the few people walking to the bathrooms near the front of the hall.

"Trust me, Haven. I need to do this. No one here knows darkness better than I, and I can tell that the darkness in Mallory is rather crafty. It just feels that way. I know Mallory better than you do, anyway. He's told me things that he's never told anyone else, even back when you were a Fearling, things that make him more susceptible to darkness. Bad things in his past."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't have permission to tell you. They're personal things." Haven didn't want to believe Whisper's words, but Whisper hadn't ever been wrong before. "I know I've told you I don't talk to many people, but Mallory is one who I speak with a lot." Whisper paused. "The only human I've talked to more than him is my friend Beatrice when she lived on The."