Awakening Book One of the Trust Series(24)

Caitlyn surged forward when she felt it, visualizing the ball high in the air. She felt it leaving her hands gently, and she opened her eyes. The ball was floating directly in front of her. Caitlyn gasped in surprise that it worked, losing her concentration, and she heard the soft clang as the ball hit the floor.

Garrett’s eyes were wide. It appeared that he was talking to himself. “Remarkable.”

Caitlyn grinned. “Nothing to it!”

“No, Caitlyn. Actuals don’t…” he squeezed his eyes shut. “Actuals don’t just levitate on the first day of training. It just doesn’t happen.”

Her elation deflated. “Is there something wrong with it?”

He forced himself to smile at her. “No, of course not! It’s just… very unexpected. Sorry, it sounded like I wasn’t excited by it. I really am! It’s an amazing feat. Really!”

“Can we try again?”

“Not tonight. But I promise, first thing in the morning we will begin right where we left off.”

As they left the building, Caitlyn felt as if she was the one floating only a few minutes before. That night, she went to bed truly believing that all of this was real; that it was not just a dream or something she made up in her head. Caitlyn was beginning to feel that for the first time in her life, she truly was where she belonged.





Chapter 7



The weeks flowed by and Garrett and Caitlyn fell into an easy pattern. They met in the mornings to train, working all day, and several evenings a week they would get together to have dinner or watch a movie. Caitlyn enjoyed the time she spent with Garrett; not only was he a good mentor, but she liked him genuinely as a person.

There were times that she felt the lines of friendship blur. It was obvious to note that while Garrett was a flirt by nature, he never actively pursued any woman he rained his attentions on. As far as Caitlyn knew, she was the only person that he spent any quality time with.

When they were in the training facility, he was overall professional. But outside of it, Caitlyn saw the Garrett that she met back in North Carolina return. He was relaxed and fun. The evenings they would have dinner, there were often seemingly innocent touches or hugs, as she would leave. Lately, she had been finding herself trying to make those hugs linger or finding ways of accidently brushing by him.

It was a strange kind of dance she was performing, and she was not quite sure why she was doing so. She was attracted to Garrett’s looks and had been from that first night she saw him. But he was her mentor, and she did not want anything getting in the way of that most crucial relationship.

Caitlyn’s success on the first day of training continued. She could tell that Garrett was bewildered by the fact that she could so readily pick up on the things he was teaching her.

First, it was levitation. After that first day, Garrett spent that primary week, honing her ability to lift the ball. He was right about rewiring her brain. The more she practiced, the more levitation became second nature. By the end of the second week, she could lift the ball without closing her eyes and concentrating. She simply thought that she wanted to raise the ball, and the ball lifted to her will.

Garrett then moved her to objects with a higher density. Again, he warned her that this would be a more difficult task than the cork ball. And at first, it was. The block was more difficult to break through. But once she had a fundamental understanding that the she needed to think about the object more abstractly, it was extremely easy for her. She thought of the objects that Garrett gave her as a group of atoms, nothing more. Once she did that, she was able to lift anything that he threw at her-Styrofoam, Steel, and Gold.

One afternoon, as she lifted all three of those objects as if they were as easy as the cork ball, he had sat down with her. He placed his arm around hers.

“Caitlyn, you know that you’re special, right?”

“Well, I’m an Actual, so obviously I’m different.”

Garrett looked to the ceiling quickly before glancing back down at her. “I’m serious. What you have accomplished in a month with levitating, it’s astonishing. I’ve met with Councilmen Riley on several occasions about your progress. I’ve shown him what you are able to accomplish and he is, needless to say, very, very impressed. The Trust is extremely lucky to have acquired you. If the training continues progressing the way it has, I already know that they are going to immediately try to immerse you into their culture, working for them.”

“Really?” Caitlyn could not help but be pleased.