Telepath.

Nathan felt dizzy. To think that there was someone out there who could actually do that, control people's minds, bend them to their will, was terrifying enough on its own. To learn that they needed that person's help, was the cherry on the icing.

"Are you kidding me? Telepathy? That's an actual thing?" Finch burst out, "Like, this dude can just, control whoever he wants to?"

Roy nodded grimly. "This child possesses the ability to enter minds, to resonate with them. He can read someone's thoughts, and control them too, which is most cases would peg him as a threat. But right now, we need him."

"Of course!" Fletcher's face lit up, apparently completely having forgotten her warnings, "We need to be able to defend ourselves from this thing mentally, right? So when the darkness gets in our heads, and makes us think horrible things, this guy can..." her voice trailed off, searching for the right word, "Counter-control our brains, if that makes sense to have us think happy thoughts. Or at least not I'm-going-to-be-turned-into-evil-manchow thoughts."

Nathan peered at her. Did she even hear herself? Rai was the first one to protest.

"Excuse me? We're talking about our minds here, right, not a frickin' object?" Her question was more or less rhetorical. "I don't want this guy and some evil entity playing tug-of-war with my mind."

Now that Rai had pointed it out, Fletcher seemed to realize what she'd actually said. She looked a little queasy as she leaned back in her chair, her eyes fixated on the table. Roy sighed.

"We know. We know what this is asking of you, but there is, quite frankly, no other way. We need to shield you from the effect of the darkness."

"But how do we know this guy won't have some other effect on us? Like, him controlling our minds won't make us go insane, or something?" Rai inquired, folding her arms across her chest.

"We don't know that."

That sealed the deal.

"You don't know that? And you expect all of us to simply go along with this ridiculous plan of yours? Its bad enough that we're stuck in this situation being forced to face this fog of horrors, and now you want us to gamble with our minds with some dude we never met, and don't know that powers of?" Rai snapped at them, standing up. All three of the others scooted back.

Roy wasn't about to back down. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm asking you to do, because don't you get it? There's no other way. He was made for a reason, you were all made for a reason. Craig knew that the only way anyone stood a chance against the Darkness would be if it could be fought physically as well as mentally. You're the physical bit, but we need the telepath."

Rai seemed like she wanted to argue, but didn't say anything. None of them had anything left to say. Roy was right and they knew it. They couldn't beat the Darkness and the effect of it was already growing. This telepath kid seemed like their only choice, no matter how much they hated it.

"So who is this guy?" he asked. Roy shot him a grateful look, which he didn't return. The older man turned to the projector again and the slide morphed to show a young boy, about eight years old. He had long drawn out almond shaped eyes and messy hair. His face was pulled into a toothy grin, and he had two missing teeth. Nathan doubted he looked that carefree now.

"His name is Seung-Hee Eun. A former resident of this town, he and his parents moved away not too long after the kidnapping. They currently live in Massachusetts. After a lot of research, we've been able to identify his location. He lives in a regular apartment, but that isn't the issue. The issue is reaching him."

Finch huffed. "Of course. The dude's a telepath. And if he moved away to another frickin' city after he discovered he'd gotten powers, he's probably trying to hide them. You can't get close to this guy, he'd just... y'know, telepathically send you away."

Something about Roy's expression told Nathan he already knew this.

"We've learnt that from experience, unfortunately. I believe Seung-Hee thinks we're there for him, to take him hostage or something, because he's done something wrong, or maybe he's just terrified of people in uniforms after being taken once. His parents are currently out of town, and we've sent a search party, every man in which had the exact same experience," Dahle put in.

"All the men were left in a fugue state, miles away from the intended location, having absolutely no idea why they were there," Roy finished, "Coming up with a logical excuse for that took ages, but we finally managed to tell them that somehow the kid had managed to slip them a drug."

"People believed that?" Fletcher cried out.

Roy shrugged, "People have seen stranger things."

Nathan knew Roy must've pulled some amount of his cache in order to get people to believe that, but he didn't press further. But he did sense where this conversation was headed, and he didn't like it one bit.

"So now I'm assuming you're going to tell us why you want us, four teenagers, to try and retrieve this kid, when a group of armed men couldn't do it, and why you cant just sent in a larger group to bring him in, or call him, or his parents, or literally anything else more logical," he leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. Roy chuckled.

"Believe me, kid, we've tried. We can't send in more armed men, because we don't know the fell extent of his power, and if he could control a search party of five, he could probably control many others. We can't reach his cell phone or call his parents without making a huge fuss, which is the last thing we want to do now."

Nathan sat back in his chair. The atmosphere in the room had become unbearably dense. Rai gave him a look of hopelessness, and even the twins seemed dejected, who usually held an air of cheer. Despite all of this, something nagged away at Nathan's mind. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, however.

"But how do we know he won't do the same thing to us? I mean, he needs to be able to control our minds for the ultimate goal to be satisfied, but that doesn't mean he won't do the same thing then," Finch asked.

"We're hoping that once he realizes that the four of you are like him, he won't fight back," Roy supplied, sounding unsure himself of the plan he had formulated. Fletcher let out a sarcastic laugh.

Nathan had begun zoning out already. The gears in his mind were turning at inhuman speeds, as an idea came to him, finally having been pieced together.

"Last night," he burst out. Everyone turned to look at him. He ignored the unease he felt as all five pairs of eyes watched him. If he was right, this might have been their only solid shot against Seung-Hee.

"When we were fighting the Darkness," he added, "Rai had gotten attacked by these... living root of sorts. They'd looked like snakes to her, but they really were roots." He looked at the girl, who masked her surprise fairly well.

"I'm assuming you're going somewhere with this?" Fletcher egged him on.

"When I saw that, I tried to control them, tried to move them off of her because she was struggling so much. But I couldn't," nobody seemed too surprised by this, so he continued, "which is strange, because this hasn't ever happened before. Usually if I concentrate hard enough, I can control almost anything, and if I can't, its due to a lack of focus. But this time, I felt something oppose me, almost as though something was shielding the roots from being controlled by me, like they were fighting back."

Fletcher's eyes lit up. "Of course! The roots were being manipulated by the darkness, so you couldn't do anything with them. So basically," her face fell again, " we need our minds controlled by someone else when we go to him, so he can't harm us."

"Well, that's fantastic news, but if anyone has another telepath in their neighbourhood, now would be an excellent time to speak up," Rai scowled. The room lapsed into silence yet again, only to be broken by Fletcher slapping her hand on the table, a huge grin on her face.

Nathan could swear the girl had the attention span of a hyperactive chipmunk who'd had one too many espressos.

"But telepaths aren't the only people who can enter others' minds," she exclaimed, looking pleased with herself. When everyone else in the room gave her a quizzical look, she realized the need to explain.

"There's a way of entering other people's minds that doesn't require superpowers. Well, its more like having the person retreat into their own mind, in a different state of consciousness, rather than that, but that's the closest we'll get, am I right?"

The true nature of what she was saying dawned on Nathan and his skin started to crawl.

"We're going to have to be hypnotized."

~.~.~.~.~.

A/N: HEY GUYS! I know, super short chapter, but I'm workin' on it hehe. The action's gonna start in a chapter or so, and the next chapter will definitely have some.

So we finally get the brief into of Seung-Hee! I know, Korean names are said last name first, but I felt like since Roy was saying it, he would say it the American way, instead of the Korean.

I would love to hear your thoughts, it would really mean a lot to me, and I could learn how to improve.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Until next time then,

Wizard