by J. E. Swift
It did, for now. Caitlyn knew she would need to keep an open mind and she knew she was going to have a lot more questions that Garrett would need to answer.
“Are you ready to learn or would you like to know more?”
She jumped off the bumper of the truck. “At this point, I think I need to see for myself. Answers can wait. Show me what I can do.”
Chapter 4
Garrett watched Caitlyn walk down the rocky path to the shore, the full moon looming over the both of them. He followed behind his new student slowly, paying close attention to any concerning reactions she might have. He had discovered over the past several weeks that Caitlyn’s face was difficult to read at times, and this was one of them.
Caitlyn plopped down on the beach, staring out at the waves crashing angrily on the rocks. He sat down next to her, letting silence sit between them. The past couple of hours had been overwhelming to say the least on Caitlyn, and she deserved as much time as she needed to absorb everything that she was told. In a matter of one day, her life had been flipped upside down.
She did not have the luxury of what he and some of the other's had. They knew what they were years before they went through the Awakening. Garrett was always grateful for that. Most however, had to endure the shock that she did, because their families did not go back multiple generations.
After a half an hour of continued silence, she glanced over at him briefly, her blonde hair falling in her face as she turned back towards the water. Garrett thought Caitlyn was a bit more beautiful than he should have. When he had first encountered Caitlyn in the bar, he was struck by her strong features, her athletic build, but most of all, her intelligence. When they were here at the beach the last time, his intent had been to get in her good graces, and earn her trust. He felt that was an important aspect of the mentor/student relationship the Trust set up. However, as the day had progressed, he discovered that Caitlyn had an uncanny ability to make you relax and let down your guard.
He found himself confiding to her, something that Garrett did not usually do. On the outside, he was a very outgoing person, making people feel welcome and at ease. But in actuality, he was a very closed off person by nature, and kept his feelings close to his chest. There were only a handful of people whom he genuinely considered a friend, and it took a long time for them to be part of that exclusive circle. It was unsettling to know that after just a few weeks with Caitlyn, he had disclosed so much about himself. Before her change, Garrett had decided it was dangerous to consider continuing the friendship at that intensity.
The previous week, he knew he was going to be able to distance himself from her, where she wanted to travel. He would only talk to her enough to check on her and let her know he was there if she needed him.
Unfortunately, her Awakening had happened quicker than he anticipated. He had known the day would come when she would Awaken, but he figured by that point, he would have been strong enough to maintain the mentor/student relationship. He could not have Caitlyn fall into the category of a quick affair, something to pass the time. Garrett did have a tendency to fall into shallow relationships with women; a fact he was rather well known for. But looking at Caitlyn now, he was not sure if he would be able to resist.
He realized that his student had turned her face back towards him, catching him as he mulled in his own thoughts. Embarrassed at where his personal thoughts were leading, he made himself focus solely on thoughts of her training. He was not sure which way was the best way to proceed. It's not as if training had come with a manual. Overall, the mentor relationship was an extremely close one and a bond inevitably develops between the two. Garrett had been very close with his mentor, Patrick. Patrick not only taught him what he was capable of, but made Garrett realize what kind of person he really was, what kind of person he wanted to be.
Finally, Caitlyn spoke quietly. “I am not sure how to digest all of this information.”
“It's a lot for one day. We can take the first few days easy. The mentorship is not only about learning your abilities; it is also about rediscovering yourself, who you truly are, what you are meant to be. The Awakening makes one take stock of their entire life.”
“I guess I am just having a hard time believing it all.”
“We can start by just having me show you some things. You know what they say, seeing is believing. It’s the middle of the night, so I doubt anyone is going to be by here, so it would be a good opportunity.”
She rubbed at her temples. It was evident a headache was coming on from the stress of it all. “What can you show me?”
Garrett thought for a moment on what to start off with. He had thought about this so many times since he was given his assignment, and now that the moment was here to actually teach, he felt as if all the planning was for naught. He knew he could not start off with something like a large levitation; they were in too public a place for that, even in the middle of the night. He wanted her first experience with him to be wondrous and floating a seashell would not do the trick. Patrick and his mother had both given him that gift, and he wanted to give that to her. Smiling, he knew what to do.
“Well, you have already experienced telepathy in its most basic form. There are other forms as well.”
She sat up a little straighter, obviously intrigued by what Garrett was saying. “Other forms?”
“There are different talents within the realm of telepathy. Our minds are vastly complex; so it is only natural that some will be able to do more than others, or differently than others. What I am going to show you is a branch of telepathy that is known as projection telepathy. Very few can do this, but it is a much desired talent. Would you like to see?”
Caitlyn nodded her head in agreement, albeit a bit uncertainly.
“Alright.” He replied. Garrett positioned himself so he was sitting straight across from Caitlyn. He couldn’t help but stare into the darkness of her brown eyes as he did so. He felt himself being pulled in. Garrett mentally chastised himself. He needed her to believe in him for this work, not have him hit on her.
“Okay, now before we begin, I need to let you know that you need to trust me, okay? Just listen to everything I say.”
“I trust you, Garrett.”
He pursed his lips. He did not know what he had done to earn her trust so easily. She stared back into his eyes with the same equal intensity that he had hers. This would not do. “Okay, first thing I need you to do is to close your eyes.” She closed her eyes slowly.
With a soothing voice, he continued. “Now take a deep breath. Breathe in, Breathe out. You want to be relaxed, open up your mind. Breathe in, breathe out.” He listened to her intakes of air intently, after a few moments, he could see her visibly relax, the breathing becoming more consistent and calm. “Good, good. Now I am going to place my hands on your shoulders.”
Garrett pressed his palms to her shoulders lightly, his fingers touching the base of her neck. Garrett took a moment to take a deep breath of his own before shutting his eyes. He found himself in a familiar place and Caitlyn was next to him, standing, eyes still shut.
“Open your eyes, Caitlyn.”
She fluttered them open. He noticed her eyes getting wide as she took in the environment surrounding her. She did a three hundred and sixty degree turn, looking at everything around her. She gasped. “Where are we? It’s daylight!”
Garrett chuckled. “Well, technically, we are still sitting on the beach sand, face to face. However, I’ve invited you to a place I come to often while meditating. This is called Harold’s Pond, on my mother’s property in Colorado.”
Caitlyn walked around, taking in everything in amazement. She crouched down for a moment, caressing the wildflowers gently with her fingers. “You said that we are still on the beach? How is that possible? This is so real!”
“It seems very real. Our minds have amazing capacity for recollection. Notice how you can feel the wind against your skin, the grass under your feet. You can smell the wildflowers and even catch t
he individual scents of each flower if you wanted to. If you touch the water, it feels wet. All this stems from my memories growing up here, but they are very real to me and anyone else I choose to let see this.”
Caitlyn seemed accepting of the explanation. “You grew up here?”
“From when I was six to sixteen.”
Relaxation visibly took over her then as she enjoyed where she was for the moment. It was the affect he was hoping to have, taking her here. She took his hand gently. “It’s beautiful. No wonder why you want to visit here. It’s so serene. How do you do this?”
Garrett couldn’t help but smirk. “Eager, aren’t we? It’s a little too advanced of a concept at the moment. But I promise, if you show certain traits, we will try to see if you are able to do this later, down the line. But that is for a much later time.”
He wasn’t surprised when Caitlyn was not pleased with the response. Garrett knew she was the kind of person who did not take to defeat easily. It was one of the things that he found he liked most about her. She did not frown for long, however.
“I can see why this is a desirable talent. Most people would love to have an instant getaway for meditation and to think.”
Garrett shook his head. “True. But this-” he said, giving a grand sweep with his hand of the environment surrounding them, “Is not why the talent is desirable. This-” He performed another grand sweep, “is.”
In an instant, they were in a stark bare room with the exception of a long metal table and two chairs next to it. Blackness surrounded both of them. An unknown light source shone down, illuminating the table. Caitlyn stroked the cool stainless steel with her fingers. “Where are we now?”
Garrett paced around the table. It was time for a lesson. “As I mentioned before, projection telepathy is capable from my memories, my thoughts, desires, and even my imagination. People who have this talent all have one thing in common, when they Awaken, they have perfect recall. Meaning-”
“They can remember something perfectly after only seeing it once or reading it once.”
“Right. Anything I see, anything I read, I can bring up.” In an instant, Garrett brought up what looked like ten large screens hanging in a circular pattern mid-air, playing various memories of his from when he met Caitlyn prior to her change. He noticed her look all around and then take a few moments as she examined each image, her brow sometimes rising as she tried to puzzle something out in her mind.
“These are all from your point of view.”
“You catch on quick. What I am showing you are my memories. I am not doing exactly what I did earlier, creating a scene, instead I am just playing an imprint, a moment in time. If I wanted to, I could create the environment from a memory if need be.”
With that, he changed the room into the bar that Caitlyn and Garrett first met to hammer home the point. He indicated for her to sit down on the stool she had sat in that night. Once she did, Garrett took her lead and did the same. He knew Caitlyn to have good deducting skills, so he asked a question. “Now why do you think all this would be important?”
She came up with the answer in an instant. “Well, if it were me, I would use you for espionage.”
He curtly nodded. She seemed like she would fit perfectly into the Trusts mold. Garrett was not sure how he felt about that. He never felt as if he fit in completely, but he knew he never would. Too many factors would prevent that. “Exactly. Someone who has this capability can show the Council or Tribunal anything they have seen and it is a guarantee that they remember it perfectly. It’s an invaluable resource.”
“So, were you a spy? You know, before you left to mentor me?”
“No, not really.” He left the answer hanging for a minute before continuing. “I had always wanted to mentor, so I asked the Council for time to pursue that prior to any further discussions as to my career. I had chosen a different career path.”
“I see.” The unspoken question stood between them.
“There are other reasons that the Council longs for those that are like me.” He figured he should tell her all of it.
She raised her eyebrows. “Like what?”
Even though he had been the one to broach this particular subject, he still found himself hesitating briefly to talk about it. He personally found aspects of it vile and despicable, albeit important, but she should know the unpleasant parts to being an Actual.
“There are those that are called Inquisitors.” He paused as if that explained everything, when in actuality, it explained nothing. “Inquisitors are not regularly talked about within the Trust. We pretend as if they don’t exist, but we and especially the Cine Tofa, depend on them tremendously. When you allow me to let you into my thoughts, my memories, my creations, you relinquish control of your mind. I can essentially take it over, not letting go till I choose to. That is why it is so important for you to trust me. Most of our kind would never take advantage of this ability and the moment someone wanted to disconnect, we would let them. However, there are a few whose jobs are to do the opposite. They will take over your mind by force, essentially imprisoning the person in their own mind.”
“But I thought that you needed me to have an open mind and allow you to come in.”
“That is the preferred method. In truth, it makes it much easier and it is not traumatic on the person. However, with a simple touch, I could take you over without your consent. It would be harsh and it would be painful, because your will would be fighting mine, but I would eventually win.”
“That’s awful.”
“It can be. Especially in times of war between the Cine Tofa and the Trust, the Cine Tofa will take prisoners of war essentially and subject them to the Inquisitors. Those that we have set free after being captured by the Cine Tofa tell horror stories. The Inquisitors there are especially talented at finding your worst fear and making you live it over and over and over again, either to try to get you to release information or just for the pleasure of making the person suffer. The prisoners are almost never the same again.”
“And the Trust condones this as well?” she sounded disgusted.
He nodded his head. “On very rare occasions, yes. And even then, they do not use all the torture techniques that the Cine Tofa does. You have to think of the Trust using it more like a jail cell or using the technique to retrieve needed information. The Cine Tofa always has an active set of Inquisitors amongst them at any time that they parade around as an intimidation technique even amongst their followers. The Trust’s inquisitors are much more… discreet.”
“Are the Trust’s Inquisitors hidden?”
“No, an Inquisitor’s job is just like any other. But people do tend to be aware of who is one, unlike most jobs. They are not feared like in the Cine Tofa.”
“Do you agree with using Inquisitors?”
Garrett looked her straight in the eye, there was no use lying. She would find out soon enough. “It was my job before I left to mentor you.”
Caitlyn paused, absorbing this information. Like many of their kind, she appeared to have mixed feelings about this line of work. “Why did you ask to mentor me?”
“Honestly, the life of an Inquisitor can be taxing. You are responsible for finding out secrets you never necessarily wanted to know in the first place. I needed a break and I’ve always been interested in training. Is this scaring you?”
Caitlyn bit her lip, her forehead wrinkled in thought. “No, but I think I would like to go back to the beach now anyways, if that is all right.”
Garrett understood completely. The idea of being under ones control fully was rather unnerving. With just a quick thought, they were back on the beach in the same position as before.
Caitlyn sighed with relief at being back. “How long were we there?” She glanced around to see if anyone had seen them.
Garrett shrugged, knowing no one would have known what they were doing even if they did see it. “Maybe thirty seconds?”
Caitlyn’s jaw dropped. “That felt like at least an hour
.”
Garrett smiled. “I know. Cool, right?” It was his turn to take in the calming waves on the ocean. “There are so many amazing things that come with being an Actual. It may be unnerving at first, but you are going to find that you have found that piece to the puzzle you have been missing all your life without realizing it. I am not going to lie to you; the next year is going to be intense. There will be periods where you feel like you are on top of the world and others that are so frustrating, you feel like banging your head against a wall. But the important thing is-you are now with your family. You are home.”
Chapter 5
Caitlyn watched row after row of quintessential New England houses pass her by as she stared out the window, contemplating the changes in her life over the past forty-eight hours. Garrett and she had sat on the beach, discussing what her best course was for proceeding with her training for what felt like hours. Garrett strongly believed that she would be best served by going to a Trust training facility and immersing herself in her people. Her people. He felt that by her being among Actuals, she would finally get that sense of belonging she had desired for years.
Caitlyn was unsure about this move. She had been searching for an adventure and this certainly constituted as that. While this was an unexpected path that her life was going to go down, she could not help but question if this was the right move, if her faith was unfounded in the man in front of her. Despite her misgivings, she agreed to go. She couldn’t help but have confidence in him and believe that he was leading her on the path she needed to be on. At least she hoped that he was, the faith was blind surely.