Awakening Book One of the Trust Series(50)

“But not the war.”

Out of nowhere, the fog returned heavier than ever, pressing forward unrelenting. As much as she tried, she found that she could not focus and could not bring back up the shield that Caitlyn had established. It felt like her brain was being wiped of everything. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was, what she was doing here, or even who she really was. Everything was vague. Then as quickly as it overtook her, it was gone.

Caitlyn was positive her mouth was hanging wide open.

Declan took the seat next to hers again and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t stop the shakiness in her voice. She was physically fine, but it was hard to absorb that someone could take away the essence of what she was, so completely and so quickly. “What was that?”

“That was a kind of telepathy called subjective telepathy. Subjective telepathy takes away ones focus. While it is not attacking your thoughts directly, it is attacking other parts of your brain. Since your focus disappears, you cannot concentrate, hence lowering your block and allowing the person to sweep your mind. You feel in a daze and you are not sure what is happening to you. It only takes a moment and then everything is taken that the person wants, like a particular memory, a security password, a location. It is a powerful tool in the fight against the Cine Tofa and a powerful tool against us. When it is your immediate thoughts that are being invaded, the attacker can only obtain the here and now, and the mind reader cannot go beyond that. This however, this raids you of your most important secrets if the attacker is looking for them. Unless, of course, you are like my father.”

“You mean, because he can compartmentalize his brain, they can only attack one section at a time. The rest of his brain keeps its defenses up.”

“Exactly. I wish we could duplicate that and teach others how to do it.”

“So how do I block it?”

“You started off right initially. Your general block is very strong; the average Actual would have a hard time breaking through it. However, in order to stop an invasion like this, we will need to have you create a multi-layer block. I won’t lie to you, it is difficult and will take some time to learn. Possibly months. But knowing your reputation, you will probably learn in an hour and prove me wrong.”

Caitlyn laughed. As it turns out, she did not learn the multi-block in an hour. It took her only three days to learn. Declan was shocked by her abilities. For the next two weeks, Declan brought her to this desolate room, where he put her through hours upon hours of mental attacks. They would arrive before sun up and leave well after sun down. He never taught her how to do the attacks, he stated that would come later, but he was setting a foundation for her to protect herself when the time came. Finally, at the end of the second week, Caitlyn stood from her chair covered in a sheen of sweat.

“Declan. I have not asked this once in all of my training, with the exception of the first day with Garrett, but I think I am ready for a break.”

She sat down with her legs crossed. Declan followed suit, sitting close to her. He produced two oranges and two bottles of water from his backpack and tossed one of each over to her. After taking a sip of the water, he cocked his head. Caitlyn noticed that he had sweat dripping from him as well. “Your focus is incredible. The fact that we have been going at this for well over twelve hours a day, with barely any stopping or breaks and now is the first time you voluntarily request a break? You have managed to learn defenses against multiple telepathy techniques. Those defensive blocks that I just taught you, took me a couple of months to learn. You are really special, Caitlyn.”

Caitlyn made quick work of the orange peel. “Thanks. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like this is all second nature to me, I just need to be reminded how to do it. That sounds odd, doesn’t it?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. There are some things that come more naturally to me than others. Matter manipulation for example. That trick I showed you at dinner two weeks ago? I was able to do that within the first week of my mentorship. I thought Lionel was going to faint. I did not think I was doing anything incredible, but everyone kept telling me otherwise. Telepathy however, that takes a lot of concentration on my part and it does not come as naturally to me as it does to you. But the focus that you are displaying took me years to achieve.”

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“It’s true. But, I think two weeks in the dungeon is quite enough. If you want to take the weekend off, we can, and then resume on Monday.”