I pulled a thin jacket on and left, Danny following me. Exiting the dorm into the sunny early afternoon, I frowned at the UV index on the door blinking a six but Danny spoke up as we walked out, derailing that thought.

"You said you want to pack the race." Danny mentioned as we walked between the buildings. "Are you looking to teach every Seeker? Anyone that comes up and asks?"

I sighed, thinking back to Karen and Ash sitting in my dorm trying to figure out dantians and power without having either to begin with. "Yes? No? I don't know."

"As part of your job, I was going to ask you to at least get some people started. If you want to do more, I won't complain there either." Danny responded. "There's a lot of things I'd like to get more concrete information on, and probably a lot of things you can think of as well."

"Yeah." My mind wandered for a moment, back to the news articles from this morning. "It's a lot. I want to know as much as I can about this. But does that mean racing ahead of everyone else to try to get to this Heavenly Realm first? Or would incremental increases that we then teach everyone boost us all there quicker?"

I sighed. "There's no giants to stand on the shoulders of here."

"True, but you do have resources. I'm not looking to just hire you and kick back. It might take a few days for the hospitals to calm down, but we'll get access back to scans. If we need to figure out something else, there's ways."

Danny shoved his hands in his pockets for a moment, before pulling them back out. "Your original research is still technically pending approval. You haven't signed the job offer yet, which I'm not pushing you to right now, so what we've done today isn't technically the Seekers to disseminate without your approval. But once I get a few days to put it all together, I'll be sending anything official I have up."

"Up?"

"Yeah." Danny stopped for a moment. "Oh wait, you haven't read the job offer and probably didn't care who funded the Seekers. We're funded through a grant from DARPA. It was a small grant, but then again I think they've funded a few dozen different groups once people started getting weird abilities. I know-"

I stopped him. "Wait, DARPA? Like the government?" He nodded. "I mean, I get why the government would want to understand this, but shouldn't there be super secret facilities and military bases dedicated to this? Area 51 type stuff?"

"There probably is. But Nicole, that just means once I report you've made a breakthrough in this? You'll get to pack the race. They'll take any research you're willing to write up that's repeatable, and then yes, there will probably be military and Area 51 people diving into this. I half assume you'll only be on the Seeker payroll for months if you keep providing actionable research. DARPA will probably want to hire you directly."

Danny started walking again, motioning for me. I almost stumbled after him, unable to really connect the dots on that.

We walked in silence for the rest of the way to the dining hall, Danny holding the door open for me.

Thankfully there were people there now and a few of the vendors open, but everyone seemed to be watching the TVs intently while they ate. I looked, and the bottom fell out of my stomach.

Federal Crisis! scrolled across the bottom of every screen, from different news sources. Most of the TVs had closed captioning on, but apparently the sound had been turned on for one of the stations.

"-passing of the majority of the Senate and over thirty percent of the House, it's not expected that any congressional activities will take place on the Hill until most the empty seats are appointed by the states again. Three members of the Supreme Court have released video statements with their condolences for the massive loss of life. We've managed to confirm two more Justices, including the Chief Justice, are currently at Walter Reed alive but with no answer as to their condition." The man on the news gave a grim nod to the camera. "We have not had confirmation of the survival of either the president or vice president and with the death of both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, the American people are left to look at the Cabinet for a president to finish the term."

The show went on, pulling up the known survivors of the cabinet and it looked like they were going over them like it was election time. I finally noticed the Live moniker wasn't thrown up on the screen either.

I'd stopped only a few steps into the hall with Danny stopped beside me. "Holy hell." I whispered.

"I'd heard this morning about deaths in congress, but I guess they finally got some sort of total count of deaths in the government." Danny said as he whistled quietly. "I know it's a running joke about a gerontocracy, but damn."

"The hits just keep on coming." I shook my head. More definition to the loss of life. I vaguely wondered if the two justices at the hospital would make it.

I ran through one of the fast food stands, getting a burger and some fries before sitting at one of the tables.

Danny gave me a confused look. "You don't want to run back immediately?"

"No. I probably would have if you hadn't came as well, but since you're here and you were talking about the job offer? What do you actually want me to do?" I motioned to the TVs. "And since you said the Seekers are DARPA funded, is that going to affect it?"

Danny sat down across from me. "Short term, I doubt it. There's still half a year on the grant. Longer term? I still doubt it. Even using the false path information, we'd have something to show. What you've got just so far? It's enough for several years worth of research and money."

"As for what I want you to do?" Danny smiled. "Exactly what you are, but more formalized. Theoretical and applied research. Whatever ideas you have on this power, on the dantian. Hell, on whatever happened to the world yesterday. Throw me, yourself, and your friends into this. I'll try to teach it if you want to research other parts of it. If you want to teach it to everyone and research that, go for it."

I was a little taken aback. "That's... a lot of carte blanche for this."

"You're at least writing the book on this, Nicole." Danny looked serious. "You said there's no giants to stand on the shoulders of. So you're forging the path. I'm going to try my damndest at this as well and hopefully catch up to you. But right now, you're leading the way."

"No pressure." I muttered.

"You don't have to." Danny offered, but I could easily tell his heart wasn't in saying that. "I can pick it up, chase the breakthroughs and all of that."

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

I shook my head. "I'd still play at using it. I might as well get paid to play with it. And teach it too." I finished my burger. "Alright, let's go make sure Karen and Ash are ok."

I looked at the TVs again as we walked out, still on the news loop about the government. Insane.

~~~

"Gulping and hyperventilating isn't going to help, Karen." Melissa was saying as we walked back in.

Well, that was an interesting statement to walk into. My little living room still had both Karen and Ash sitting there, but Karen looked pretty frustrated while Ash was still breathing evenly. "Everyone still OK?"

Ash nodded, breathing out a "Yeah" as he continued. "Still building though."

Karen glared at him, then between me and Melissa. "Every time I think I get something going, it feels like it tickles then falls apart."

We'd been gone a good forty-five minutes or so between eating, paying attention to the news a bit, and discussing the job with Danny. If Ash was still going and Karen hadn't even really got started, I could understand the frustration.

Danny gave me a nod towards Karen.

I nodded back, dropping down to sit in front of Karen myself, noting my tablet was still recording. I was going to have a lot of dead time to parse through. I thought for a moment. "Alright, what do you mean tickle?"

Karen blew her breath out, frustrated. "I get up to twenty or thirty breaths and I start feeling something that I'm trying to squeeze into a tiny ball. It feels kind of like the pit in your stomach on a rollercoaster. Within a couple of breaths of that, the pit seems to invert and turn into butterflies in my stomach, I get a ticklish feeling, and then it all falls apart."

Something sounded off about her description, but I couldn't put my finger on what. I looked over to Ash who was paying attention while doing his own breathing still. "Ash, what about you?"

"Not squeezing." He answered on another breath out.

That definitely sounded wrong as well. "Wait, what? How big does it feel in you then?"

Ash cupped his hands around most of his stomach.

I pulled my tablet down from the table, swapping apps but making sure it was still recording. I pulled up two specific images. Mine and Melissa's dantian.

"I've only got two examples, and they not the external power, but the dantian, at least initially? It's small. Tiny even. Your heart is about the size of your fist, see?" I made a fist and put it next to that image. "The dantian? A single curled up finger."

"Ash, every time you breath in now, quit pulling in more. Make the energy you already have smaller." I cupped my hands around my stomach in the same manner he had, then showed the comparison to my dantian. "If it starts feeling like a pit like Karen described, stop making it smaller and pull in more power."

I think looked to my other friend. "Karen, I think you either had it right and just need to push through, or maybe just needed more power before you squeeze it as hard as you were."

She frowned at projected image of the dantian, thinking. "Maybe?" Then blew her breath out again in frustration. "Alright, trying again then."

"And you weren't sure about teaching." Danny scoffed from where he was watching.

I shrugged and watched.

It took another ten minutes of listening to the two of them breathe while Danny and Melissa watched while I reviewed some notes, but soon I looked up, feeling something strange coming from Ash.

"Flip." Breath in. "Fold." Breath out. "Spin." Breath in. "Squeeze." The air felt like it bent towards him for a moment and for an instant I felt energy rotate in multiple directions at one, inward and outward, clockwise and anti-clockwise. Then it settled.

I turned to look at Karen, who was watching Ash intently even as she continued breathing. And it happened again. Energy folded in on itself, spinning up even as power in the air ethereally flowed into her. Then vanished. Ash had a huge grin on his face watching her.

"Yes!" Karen shouted. "I got it!"

"Woo!" I shouted myself, pumping a fist up. "Alright, what's it like?"

"A pool with a current like you said." Karen nodded to herself. "But not so much an overflow coming from it? More an exchange, but I'm pulling in more than is flowing out."

I reached into my workout box and pulled out the five-pound weight and tossed it to her along with the one-pound one. "Feel any different?" I looked over at Ash. "I'd do the same for you, but you probably don't really notice that much difference on those. Maybe a ten pounder for you, if I had one."

Ash nodded, his attention focused more inwards for some reason anyways.

Karen hefted the two weights in different hands held out. "A little bit? We should have tested this before hand." She did easily flip them both at the same time though.

"Notice anything different with your dantian while you do?"

She tilted her head, hair falling to one side. "The exchange is more even now? I'm pushing out about as much as is flowing in."

"Ash? How's it feel to you?"

"Hmm?" He focused back on us again.

"Don't blond out on us, Ash." Karen called with a grin. "How's it feel?"

He shook his head, grinning back, but still distracted. "Strange. There's something about it that's weird."

"Weird how?" I asked, focusing on him now. Slightly worried because of course we weren't going to have everyone go right. "No current? No overflow or as Karen called it an exchange?"

"No." He held out a hand for a moment, staring at it as he rotated his hand in multiple directions, grasping and making a fist at the same time. "There's just, more to it than that. I can feel the current, generating power and flowing out and into me. I can feel a little trickle of power flowing into the dantian. But there's something else."

"What else?" Melissa questioned.

He paused, looking around. "Damned if I know. But I think everything worked. What kind of tests are we doing with this now?"

"I've been doing minimal weight testing. I guess we should probably try finding general maximums." I turned off the dantian projection and flipped back to the recording software. "Any other observations from anyone else?"

A chorus of "No"s had me turning the recorder off. "Alright Karen, Ash. Let's hold off trying to cycle for more power or time or anything until we get some baselines of you both now."

"I'll see what I can do for CAT scans. Nicole, if you want to sign that paperwork soon please, get it back to me." Danny said. "I'm going to start writing my portion of this up."