March 20th

Yesterday had gone well in pretty much all instances. Thirty-one people had lit their dantian, Danny had warned everyone about the holes to be filled like what Melissa had found. Most of them were even willing to wait a day or two before filling in any holes if we could get scans done soon. The late lunch with Mom, Dad, and Mike had even gone off without a hitch and they tentatively approved of Mike. I grinned again at that thought.

Mom and Dad were now on their way back home and Dad had a copy of the Seeker app he was going to load anything he figured out into. I had a feeling he'd be pushing the guys at his office on it as well.

Now I sat in Danny's office with him and Brent, trying to figure out how we were going to move forward.

"The lieutenant colonel and sergeant left yesterday, so you don't have to worry about them. They'll be the focus of any number of medical procedures and tests, and the results will make it back here. They are also going to start teaching your method of dantian creation, once they get a full understanding of the basics they've been taught." Brent noted.

"That still leaves twenty-nine people that we've asked to hold off to see if we can get CAT scans of, or do we just let them do their thing as well? And I know the others need scans, and me too I guess" I asked, flicking through the list of people from yesterday.

Brent smiled. "Phelps suddenly had additional funding to support overtime and bonuses for two of their techs. So there are eight slots this evening and tomorrow evening. And likely any evening they can have enough lead time to ensure scheduling. So that gives you sixteen slots. And if anyone would like to go to Fort Leonard, we can-"

"Leonard Wood." Danny cut in. "Sorry, but Leonard Wood. Or Fort Leonard Wood."

"Fort Leonard Wood then. But we can utilize their facility as that base is the garrison for the Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School. I can get the Seekers priority access to equipment there, as it will take a week or so to source equipment to bring in directly for you all." Brent paused, looking at Danny. "Speaking of which, do you have any idea where you would like to anchor the Dantian Seekers at? If you're absorbing all of yesterday's students in a more direct manner, a single lecture hall isn't going to be enough."

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I actually have been thinking about it. We're likely to get medical equipment, training gear, and other stuff, right? And other things as we come up with the need?" Brent nodded. "Most of the office space around here isn't really big enough then. Rolla isn't a big city, after all."

Danny turned the monitor on his desk and pulled up a street view. "How about the old Menard's on Westside then? If I remember right, they had second floor offices we could use and then plenty of open space to put stuff in." Danny looked a little nervous at the offering.

"Thinking large. Appropriate." Brent nodded. "I was worried I might have to guide you away from a strip mall rental." Danny's nervousness vanished and he smiled. "I would recommend the Seekers continue their academic club here however. It will serve as a more general contact point for the students."

Danny nodded and I shrugged.

"Now, I do have something a bit more interesting for both of you this morning. Both the lieutenant colonel and sergeant were recording yesterday's training and provided me with those recordings before they left yesterday. Between that and all the research the Seekers have provided, I had several people at DARPA last night putting this together. It's not a finished product without some additional dantian visuals and confirmation of a breakthrough from someone in your portion of the training from yesterday, Nicole."

Brent nodded to Danny. "If you'll pull up the most recent upload into the Administration portion of the Seeker app, Danny?"

With a slightly confused look, Danny navigated his system there, pulling up a cryptically named document on the monitor.

I choked on air as I read the title. The Firen method of cultivating power in a personal dantian. The subheading wasn't any better. Derived from initial harmful paths of power and the alien Lei Zhaohui's actions on the world's dantian.

I was listed as the primary source and author. Holy shit.

"What's this?" Danny's eyes were wide as he asked my own question.

Brent had a laugh in his eyes at our reactions but was serious as he answered. "All the research you did, the teaching yesterday? DARPA would like to publish it. Even if not a single additional person on the false path follows this there are still billions of people without power that this will make a difference to. If you don't want it named after you, it can be changed to the Seeker method."

I was wide-eyed as I stole the mouse from Danny, scrolling the document and looking at the contents. "I didn't actually write this though?"

"Ghostwritten for you, and at least ninety-five percent of this is drawn directly from your own research notes and yesterday."

I hmm'd an answer as I started actually reading it. It wasn't long really, only a few pages with inserts waiting for additional imagery and notes. "Cultivating though?"

"When the alien originally blasted everyone, he talked about cultivating the world's soul. We also have transcripts available from what the delegates at the UN heard when he wasn't blasting the world at once and he mentioned cultivating personal strength as well. I can get you that if you want." Brent replied.

"So we're just taking the alien's terms for this then?" Danny asked, reading alongside me. "Cultivators, cultivation?"

"The two of you are the experts right now, other than the alien. If you want to call it something else, name it." Brent offered. "New words and terms always sound weird until they've been referred to enough. Unless you're German. Then you shove together descriptions until you get a new word." He laughed a little.

Danny laughed as well and I smiled, still looking through the document. Embedded videos of the teaching we'd done yesterday, including Danny's original speech and me lifting the vending machine. I pulled that up. It was kind of interesting to see me do that.

"Didn't Dr. Wissen talk about NDAs and commercialization of this and whatnot though?" Danny asked as I finished up skipping through the other students failing to pick up the vending machine like I had.

"It will honestly be up to you all if you commercialize anything, as just what you are doing now is causing a pretty big debate in DC. But everyone needs to know what they are capable of. Sell additional training in more comprehensive basics once you figure it out. Or give them away and keep the best things to yourself. DARPA just has to be kept in the loop on everything. But what you do with it otherwise will be your choice." Brent explained.

"I'd rather lots of people have access to as much as they can. Unless we figure out something like how he's making everyone not want to get on a plane." I said distractedly, getting to the end of the document finally. "Brent, are we going to include the black goop in this?"

"Black goop?" He looked curious.

"Didn't I put that in my notes somewhere?" I paused, thinking back. "I could swear... Well." I sighed. "When you go through that first block, you basically sweat out some weird black crap. We collected the stuff Melissa sweated out and Karen was going to try to use the lab here she has access to, to try figure out what it is." I paused, thinking back. "And by sweat it out, I mean you end up nearly covered in it. At least it didn't happen to me on the second and third breakthroughs."

"I think we definitely want to include that then." Brent looked slightly perturbed. "I can imagine the panic that will cause if it happens without a warning."

"It's definitely pretty disgusting looking." Danny added.

"If we get Karen or Ash their initial CAT scan today, I think both of them were ready to try their first breakthrough anyways. We can ask if either of them mind being recorded so we can include it?" I offered.

"Good then. So you're good with the research being released then?" Brent turned the conversation back to his original question.

"Never expected to get something named after me." I smiled. "Sure, I guess."

"Good to hear. Now, how do you want to handle the CAT scans for tonight? I would prefer the two of you and Ms. Belle get scanned tonight so we can have good examples of getting off the false path and breakthroughs, but how would you like to handle the other available slots?"

~~~

That evening we piled into several vehicles and headed over to Phelps for the CAT scans. It turned out the tech from last time, Brandon, was the one on duty again.

"You know, I don't think I've ever been offered overtime for a non-medical emergency before." Brandon asked leadingly as Danny got situated on the bed as the first person of the evening. "Much less a basically ongoing offer for you guys."

"We're trying to not interrupt the normal operations of the hospital." Danny answered, finally getting comfortable on the scan bed. "I can probably give you a better answer in a few days."

"Meh." Brandon harrumphed. "Whatever then. I was told you guys wanted as detailed scans as you could though? If I crank the slices up on this to maximum, we're not going to be able to do full body scans on all six of you. Should we set up to just focus on whatever the hell that weird thing was last time? What'd you call it?"

"The dantian." I answered. "And yeah. It'll be a little different for each of us though, but no full body scans this time."

"Fun. Alright. First up then, where we shooting you at tonight?"

"Heart area for Danny." I answered, pulling out a sheet I'd written earlier.

Danny Sidre: Heart

Ash Carson: Stomach

Karen Dubin: Stomach

Mike Clay: Stomach

Nicole Firen: Heart, chest, upper spine

Melissa Belle: Heart

Ash Carson: Stomach, Heart

Danny Sidre: Heart

Brandon read over the list. "I mean, y'all are the bosses, but why go twice? We'll save some time if I just do Ash's stomach and heart areas at the same time."

"Would you believe we expect it to be different?" I asked.

"Sure, whatever. Ain't ever seen that weird thing in any medical texts before, so not like I've got any answers." He waved me off. "Alright, there's too many of you to cram into my little office for hours, so go sit in the hall."

"Danny and I need to see the results on everyone." I warned him.

He waved again. "Yeah, but I'm not spending the next four hours having you stare over my shoulder. You can come look when they're ran."

We all exited the room as he started on Danny's scan.

"So what do we do for the next thirty?" Mike asked. "Or hell, probably next hour and a half before it my turn?"

"Brent apparently threw a lot of weight around, as we've got one of the empty hospital rooms with attached showers available to us upstairs. Ash, Karen, that's where we're going to set up recording for the two of you to attempt a breakthrough after your initial scans."

"I don't get a second scan then?" Karen asked.

"If it goes fast enough after Danny's second, sure. But Danny's going to attempt to fix any pits he's got instead of try a breakthrough, so we want to see the differences." I told her. "We're getting others scanned tomorrow and might even see if that offer for Leonard Wood is real, if you want to get a second scan tomorrow."

"Wait, on the Army base?" Mike asked.

"Yeah." I nodded. "Oh, I should probably run this through Danny and Brent first, but Brent brought it up already. So, anyone want a part time job with the Dantian Seekers? It does pay, but I don't know any of the specifics yet really."

"Really?" Melissa looked curious. "What's the job?"

"Basically figuring this out. If you're being paid to get poked and prodded at and do all the stuff, I'll feel better at least, instead of just trying to drag you all out and you guys don't get anything out of it."

"Superstrength isn't a bad pay either." Ash answered. "But I'm pretty ok with it."

Mike just nudged me. "I can't take another job that interferes with the station."

"Part time, I promise." I told him back. "Alright, now let's see if we can find that room upstairs."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

About twenty five minutes later we had talked to an unimpressed nurse, found the room held for us, and made it back down to the scan lab to find Danny waiting on his, looking concerned at the image on a tablet.

He looked up as we came into the hall. "You know, if this is only one bad breakthrough, I honestly fear what some of those at three or four will look like." He turned the tablet so we could all see, and I at least flinched.

The first ring around Danny's dantian didn't just have the single weird hook like Melissa's did. Instead, it had multiple pieces pulled from it basically in all three dimensions, a few of them actually touching that center area and others reaching outwards. A few spots were completely black like there was nothing there, and one piece looked almost like it was touching that second ring.

I silently wondered if that piece had touched, if Danny would have made a second false path breakthrough.

Danny gave me a look. "So? Thoughts?"

"You can't fix it without trying." I said slowly. "But god, that's horrible."

"Yeah." He sighed. "Push to fix one, figure out from there then?" He asked.

"Let's get Ash getting scanned first." I looked over to Ash and waved him forward. "Times a wasting. Come on."

Brandon got Ash started and I sat back down across from Danny. "Alright, you're definitely not going for a breakthrough tonight. At all." I pointed to the tablet again. "Fix one and stop. If you feel like it takes more than even ten percent, cycle again until you're full up. We're not finding out what happens if you empty everything into that and still need more."

Danny nodded, looking down at the image on the tablet with a bit of a shudder. He closed his eyes.

And then we all flinched and shuddered when we felt Danny's cycling start and almost immediately hit whatever that problem was, his energy flickering oddly and vanishing into nothing. I don't think we all meant to just stare at him, but it was like a train wreck.

After a good fifteen minutes of feeling weird spikes and disappearances in Danny's energy the flow evened out before his cycling slowed and then slid underneath the general energy in the air again.

Danny gagged as he opened his eyes. "Oh god." He started taking deep gulps of air as we all looked around for something for him to throw up in before he seemed to get his stomach under control. "One. One pit, and it felt like it'd never get full."

That was worrying. "How much did it take?"

"Almost a quarter of everything I'd built up." He replied. "If they're all like that, this may take weeks to fix. I don't even know if that was a big issue or not." Danny then sighed. "Build and spend. Feels like my paycheck." He laughed ruefully.

"You set your paycheck, Danny." I reminded him.

Ash came out a few minutes later and we found out there was a definite limitation on how far that sense of Danny fixing himself stretched, as he hadn't felt it while in the scan.

The look on his face was pretty amusing to the rest of us as Danny switched from refilling his energy to filling a hole again and Ash flinched pretty hard himself.

Ash silently handed over the drive with his scan on it while he stared at Danny and I sent Karen in next. Loading up the image I smiled. "Looks like mine, no weirdness. Just the fact that it's lower than ours. At least we're having some luck."

"Yeah, but what is it?" Ash asked. "I mean, I know it's a dantian, but it's basically intersecting other organs."

"Huh." He was right. The computer had parsed out the other parts of his body, but if you loaded them back in, it was actually sitting partially inside the diaphragm. "That is strange. I don't know how it's doing that."

I sighed. "Nevermind about the no weirdness thing, I guess. Are you still good to try a breakthrough?"

He nodded. "Might as well. Then I'm on the list to get that scanned, right?"

"Alright. Be right back guys. Keep an eye on Danny for me?" I asked and got several headnods.

Upstairs past the disapproving nurse and in the room, Ash hopped up on one of the two beds. "You did bring an extra set of clothes, right?"

Ash nodded to the duffel he'd brought.

"Just checking. Alright, tablet and we'll get you recording." Ash gave me his tablet and I pulled up the same lecture recording software, this time toggling it to video recording before putting it on a stand with the camera pointed at him.

I started the recording. "Ash Carson. External energy dantian. Zero breakthroughs. Ash is attempting his first breakthrough. Expected time is less than an hour. Ready Ash?"

He looked slightly uncomfortable being recorded while he basically did nothing visible, but nodded.

"Alright, go ahead then. Cycle past the pain point until you feel a pool. As we discussed, fill that pool with your energy, overflow whatever's in it with your own energy. You have to finish or from what we discovered with Melissa, it'll just be harder next time. I'll be back with Karen in about half an hour."

Ash closed his eyes and I left the room.

Downstairs I found everyone just sitting around and Danny sitting there with a bottle of water. "It's like running a marathon." He explained. "I hope I'm filling in the big issues first, because it takes more than just the dantian energy doing this."

"You want to stop and wait for your second scan to find out then?" I asked him.

"I may end up doing that whether I like it or not. I don't know if I've got the stamina to fill more than one or two up."

I grabbed a snack from one of the vending machines while we waited for Karen, who eventually came out.

"Mine looks the same as Ash's does. Let's go!" She basically drug me upstairs after I sent Mike into the room for his scan, where we found Ash finishing getting dressed after a shower, the bed he'd been using nearly ruined in black tarry goop.

"You're not wrong, that's absolutely disgusting. Karen, did you ever figure out what that is?" Ash asked her.

"Kinda? Like ninety percent of it is cellular detritus. Like decades worth of dead skin cells, hair, and general other body junk if you could collect it all and make a compost out of it. There's a small bit of it that I don't know though, and I have no real way of figuring it out. I'm still messing with it though."

"Wonder what that part is." I said. "Wonder if we can get someone else to test it too?"

"I've got like half a gallon of Melissa's left, so you're welcome to some if you know anyone else who wants to play with it." Karen laughed. "Now, outta the way. I wanna do this breakthrough."

"First, any issues with your breakthrough Ash?"

He gave a solid no, so we set up Karen's tablet similarly but I didn't start it as Ash started speaking.

"You want company?" Ash asked her. Karen gave him a raised eyebrow before looking at me. I raised my hands. "I'll wait downstairs."

Downstairs, Melissa gave me a look as I came back alone. "Ash decided to keep Karen company while she did her breakthough."

Melissa just laughed. Danny just shook his head, having some actual dinner in front of him, probably having gone to the hospital cafeteria.

Mike finished up shortly thereafter, coming out with a thumb drive and handing it over. "Dude says it looks like Ash and Karen's, so no issues I guess?" I gave him a kiss in exchange. "You ok if I run? My shift starts in a couple of hours."

I pretended a pout at him, which earned me a kiss before I smiled. "Go on. I hope for a quiet shift."

"Maybe I can spend a bit of time working on this build up thing, right?" He waved to Melissa and Danny. "Later."

As it was my turn, I went into the scan room myself again. "Ready to keep going?"

"You know, we don't normally do dozens of scans in a day, but we've only got so many techs that actually know how to run this and other stuff." Brandon yawned. "If you people weren't weird with this dantian thing, it wouldn't even be worth the overtime to do this. So you're wanting an upper chest and neck set then?"

"If that gets heart, sternum, and my upper spine in my neck, yes."

"Yeah, that'll cover it. You expecting something interesting like that first guy? Or just getting another picture of yours? What's normal for this?" Brandon asked.

I shrugged. "We're still figuring that out. Danny's is definitely not."

"Alright. Well, let's get you started then."

I laid down as Brandon walked back into his office and the machine started scanning. As much as I'd been running around the almost two hours previously, the thirty minutes I had to just lay there as the CAT scan machine spun around me building a 3-D xray of my body was boring. I was purposely not cycling or anything as I didn't want anything extra in the scan this time.

As I finally was slide out of the scanner, Brandon came back out. "Alright, you're weird as hell. What the hell?"

I got up and looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Come on." He waved me in and I followed. Pulled up on the screen was the 3-D build out of my dantian, but the inner three rings were missing.

"I'd ask where are those inner rings, but you know, don't you?" He asked me.

"Top part of the heart." He shifted the image, and partially peeking out of what I thought was the left atrium was a thicker ring than if it had been on my dantian. If it was a physical object I'd be internally bleeding to death.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

"Sternum and C6 vertebrae." I said instead of answering him. My sternum had another ring encircling the thinnest portion of that bone and the final ring was nestled either between or actually in the nerves of that part of my neck.

"Why aren't you dead?"

It was a good question. While the dantian and all those rings were total the size of a single joint and could be waived off as a weird internal growth, this couldn't. The first breakthrough was in a piece of my heart, the second was wrapped around my sternum, and the third should probably have severed nerves to get where it was at.

"Melissa should only have the one at her heart at least?" I offered him. "We should be releasing something more official soon, so maybe we can have answers then. Or at least better reasoning."

Brandon exported the findings out onto another drive, handing it over. "Yeah. Because now I have legitimate questions."

So did I, honestly. I walked out and sent Melissa in without giving her any extra details. Ash and Karen had made it back down, and Karen was quite bouncy. And in different clothes. "Manage it?"

"Heck yeah!" She was beaming. "But now the power I'm drawing in feels a lot thinner."

I passed my scan over to Danny while pulling up my tablet and a document. "Oh? What do you mean?"

"The energy I'm pulling in is actually not as heavy as the energy I'm putting out now. I'm not actually losing more energy than I'm making, but it's strange." Karen frowned.

"I actually tried cycling to deepen my dantian like before." Ash added. "It's harder to do so with the thinner energy."

This definitely sounded not as great. "Like how?"

Ash thought for a moment. "If I was washing loose sand out of my dantian before, it's more like packed dirt now? And the pressure I'm washing it out with hasn't changed. I can still do it, it just takes more time and concentrated effort."

"Well that's a pain. Everyone's coming up weird tonight."

We talked it over for a little bit and I showed them my scan from Danny's system and we marveled over the fact I wasn't dead. Which was a little morbid.

Then Melissa's scan came up as expected finally, even if her only breakthrough was in her heart as well and she was appropriately freaked out.

When we sent Ash and Danny back for their final scans it was getting late and we were getting tired. Twenty minutes after Ash was done finding out he had the same ring through his heart, Danny came back out with a ranting Brandon behind him. "You cannot just change things in the three hours you were sitting there. What the actual hell, all of you?"

Danny just pulled a card out of his wallet. "Would you like a job doing this more full time?"

"Go away. I'm getting someone else to cover this shit tomorrow, I'm done." Brandon stormed off.

"Danny looked at us. "Two of the center touch points are gone and several little tears are filled back in."