April 4th

Fort Leonard Wood was like small town of its own, apparently built to solely support the activities of itself. I hadn't come with the original group of people Brent had set up to get CT scans, so this was my first time dealing with getting onto a base.

Watching out the rain slick window from the visitor's center, I could see a lot of armed gate guards watching over everything. Though there weren't many vehicles driving up, each time one did someone looked into every window and the trunk and then get waved through after having some sort of ID checked.

At the counter, Brent had been quietly talking with a military guy for almost ten minutes while Ash, Danny, and myself were all sitting around waiting. There didn't seem to be anyone else willing to visit, as the room was empty other than us. The parking lot had been pretty empty other than the truck and cars we'd driven here today.

Danny and Ash were already not paying much attention, messing with their own devices. I wish I'd thought of bringing mine in as well and debated the trek back through the rain again to grab it. I looked at Brent and realized the quiet conversation looked like it had moved closer to a quiet argument.

"Danny, can I get the keys? I left my tablet in your car thinking it'd be quick in here."

Danny looked up from his own phone and nodded, digging in a pocket. "Go for it." He tossed me the keys and I headed out, grabbing the umbrella on the way.

Outside, the rain was coming down in a steady beat, making the chilly air even more yuck. Rainwater puddled everywhere already on the road and parking lot. Thankfully the area wasn't heavily built up, I was already worried what would happen in Rolla once the ground hit maximum saturation and rain kept coming.

Before going back inside, I took a deep breath of the air, cycling the power and feeling the weight of the different pieces of it. Fire and Earth still seemed passively heavier than everything else. Did that mean the lava was still flowing up?

There was a lighter feeling of water and the woods, obviously the rain and the forest that surrounded the base. I could only barely tease out anything else with the water washing everything else away.

Ash and Melissa had both been able to start feeling the differences in the power as well, something we were now tentatively labelling as doable at the second breakthrough. Blowing out my breath, I let the energy flow out of me as well as it suffused back into the greater whole.

Back inside, Brent was now arguing with someone on the phone while Danny watched with interest. Ash was ignoring the whole thing.

"What changed?" I asked quietly, returning to my seat and handing the keys back over.

"Dunno. The desk guy apparently finally got fed up and told Brent he didn't have orders for any visitors allowed and Brent just got on the phone and started calling someone." Danny answered. "Last time we were here, Brent was just able to sign like twenty people on with his own ID, so not sure what's different this time."

"Look, I'm not saying call up the general. But this was supposed to have been cleared with the Command Sergeant Major last night and the right paperwork at least sent in. We're not even going to be on base for more than an hour or two." Brent was directing into the phone.

He paused, listening.

"Yes. Yes. Yeah, we have three vehicles. A couple of cars and a truck. Yeah, I'll hold."

Brent tapped his foot, sighing at the ceiling.

I flipped my tablet on, seeing there was a decent signal at the moment and started browsing the web. While some of the sites I'd previously used for research were much quieter, there were still posts coming in from around the world. Mostly people that were trying to find others as well, and underlying all of it a note of panic as I saw a lot of questions of what to do.

I wished I knew.

The sites that only a month ago that were full of people trying to figure out the dantian were a lot quieter too. There was a spike in topics from when my paper originally was posted, then within a couple of days the sites nearly went silent as time hit when the lava began. Posts went down to nearly nothing and again reflected people trying to survive more than anything. But there were also people praising the extra strength they'd gained, that extra time each day they could push through and weren't as tired as easily.

"Yes, I realize how petty this sounds for whose signature is on that paperwork." Brent's voice interrupted again and I looked up. "So yes, I realize you're trying to confirm it. I can conference the director in, I have his direct line." Another quiet moment as Brent listened. "Huh, I wasn't expecting them to be tracking it that closely. Do we need to wait for orders to come down the chain here?" Brent had a smile on his face.

"Alright, twenty to thirty minutes for an escort, got it." Brent put the phone back into a pocket before looking at the man at the front desk. "We'll wait a bit if you don't mind."

"Your call." The guy looked back at the computer he was working on.

Brent came back over and sat down with a grump. We all looked at him expectantly. "Apparently due to the general muster, they've decided to deny any and all visitors that aren't already cleared access to the base. Which means I can't just sign you all in." He ran his hand across his face. "What a pain, and what a waste of a phone call."

"What do you mean?" Ash asked. "Who'd you call?"

"My boss back in DC, who conferenced in the people he worked with here to get us authority to pick things up today. Apparently, they thought I was just bringing other military in to get our things, so they didn't bother to bring this up to the right people to bypass this." He waved a hand towards the front desk.

"I offered to bring in my director to the conversation to assist validating us when apparently someone decided to get involved on the base's side and suddenly everything got a lot smoother and we're getting an escort here shortly."

"I thought the government ran on red tape. This feels like we're getting to cut through a lot of it." Danny remarked.

"It does. I cut a lot of it last night, but I'm not surprised there were still snags."

"So we just wait for the escort?" I asked and got a headnod from Brent. "Hope you're right then."

I turned back to the particular forum I'd been on, as there were a few people that had reported getting through their first block and had posted questions about feeling the power in the air and what it was like.

I wrote up my own post, describing what the sensations were able to be split into at the second breakthrough and tagged the handful of people that were making the other posts. I waited a few minutes and a few refreshes, but the viewed count didn't even go up. I hoped someone might see it eventually.

I continued checking for a few minutes on some pretty eerily empty forums and boards I'd found via the Seeker app searching, before the door into the visitor center opened and several men in army fatigues walked in.

The guy at the front desk looked up and I saw him jump up and stand straight. "Attention!" He yelled, catching the few other guys working in the office who all turned, saw the group coming in, and all stood as well. I looked at the others to see if we should stand, but Danny and Ash just shrugged. Brent shook his head at us as he stood, his eyes on the leader.

The lead of the new group was an older man with salt and pepper hair and a won't take crap look on his face. He had a small bird embroidered on his chest and Williams on his nametag. "At ease." He called back and the guys behind the counter relaxed.

"Colonel Williams." Brent said mildly. "I didn't expect to get a senior officer as an escort."

"You're getting an escort while I get some questions answered for medical. Which of you is the most familiar with this dantian shit?" His tone of voice matched the look on his face.

Brent didn't flinch, but Danny and Ash both looked at me which caused the colonel to look at me as well. I saw Brent just take a deep breath at that.

"Ms. Firen is our expert, but I don't know if we can actually answer any medical related questions you might have."

"I'll take what I can get." He looked at the front desk guy. "Get them passes, now."

The colonel then looked at me again. "Ms. Firen? As in the Firen method, the thing causing us to have to rewrite every medical procedure remoting dealing with soldier health? Perfect. I'd hope you have some answers for your own research."

I stood myself. "What do you mean?"

"We'll discuss it at the warehouse, I'm not having a conversation standing here." He looked over at the rapidly typing guy. "They clear yet?"

Stolen novel; please report.

"Just a moment and yes sir."

Shortly thereafter we found ourselves being passed through the front gate with ease and directed to a bunch of warehouses on the east side of the base. The military guys there directed us to pull into the warehouse directly instead of parking outside in the rain.

Once in, Colonel Williams looked at the half pallet of boxed MREs and a few other things waiting to be loaded over to us, looked at the two cars and a truck, and just shook his head. "You somehow got the Secretary of the Army's signature for supply release, solely to get a few months' worth of MREs and toilet paper? Christ on a crapper. No wonder there were questions all the way up to the General last night over this."

"Based on the President's declaration yesterday and the attendant Executive Order? Either this will be enough to tide over the Dantian Seeker's group until sufficient supply chain controls are established, or much harsher methods will be required that nothing I could requisition today would make much of a difference." Brent explained.

"You're not as wrong as I wish you were." Colonel Williams said non-committedly. "Alright, let's go to a conference room."

Another military guy lead the way to a nearby conference room where we all sat down, the Colonel at the head of the table. A thin tablet was offered to him, which he took and clicked through a few things before looking back up.

"As I have doubts any of you besides possibly Mr. Russell knows who I am, I am Colonel Joseph Williams, Commander for the US Army Medical Department Activity. I'm responsible for all health on base here and most of the central portion of the US. So imagine my surprise when we get a thin little document provided to us by the Commander in Chief a few days ago that says 'go forth and do this' with about as much background and medical understanding as I have in underwater basket weaving."

He looked me over grimly. "It takes about three hours to read through your research paper and about a half a day more to light this dantian. I've done it myself, without any of your listed extra breakthroughs, it's still a noticeable health improvement. However, these block breakthroughs, I have no listed recommendations on time or anything, so we cannot build a recommended training regime for this." He tapped something on his tablet, reading for a moment. "Additionally, I already have six reported cases across my command of soldiers who have reported a collapse in this dantian and inability to rebuild it. Two soldiers in comas."

He looked at me. "That's eight total injuries in less than forty eight hours, two major ones which have caused possible permanent loss. The other six I don't even know how to classify minor or major. I can order a medical halt in my command, pass this up the chain and recommend the Army Surgeon General do the same, but considering this is public knowledge and the CIC wants this done, I'd rather craft guidelines to stop injuries from happening."

He turned the tablet to me, some program pulled up with names across the top in tabs. Even from a quick glance I could see a lot of medical stuff listed on the first tab's person. "What can you tell me?"

"Should I even be looking at this?" I asked, not taking the tablet.

"I'm listed as their resident doctor and you're my only expert. As long as you're not talking to anyone else about anything you see in these files, HIPPA is covered. What is the problem with my soldiers?"

I gingerly took the tablet, looking at the text heavy screen about a Private First Class Snuffy. There was a whole lot of medical jargon I didn't really recognize but there was also a freeform box that someone had written a lot of notes in as well. That mostly went over my head anyways, but I did at least recognize some dantian stuff in it.

"I'm not certain really what you think I'll know just from reading this? I mean, it lists a medical issue of 'lost dantian' and a whole bunch of medical tests. I'm not a doctor." I looked back at the Colonel. "I mean, did they describe anything about their dantian or what they were doing previously with the power, or anything?"

"I know someone did correlations on them already, at least for these six." He took the tablet back, flicking through something for a few minutes then stopped. "Here. Looks like all six of the lost dantian had power beforehand. One of my coma soldiers listed the same, but I don't have anything on the last one as he didn't actually fill out any of the minimal paperwork we threw together before soldiers were supposed to try this."

This time, most of the fields were gone that I didn't recognize, with just a few notation boxes.

Previous access to power before Firen Method attempt. Y/N

If Y, please list number of blocks/meridians/breakthroughs/etc. that were passed.

Please list activities being attempted.

They all listed at least one breakthrough, and one guy listed six. I double checked his and he was flagged as the guy in the coma. I winced. It wasn't possible they didn't already think that was the case that large numbers of previous blocks were a problem. I know my paper had showed Danny's unfixed dantian.

The notes for all the other guys indicated they were going to be attempting dantian and a breakthough. One guy listed trying for two.

"Didn't the paper say you should have as much energy built up as possible before trying a breakthrough?" I asked to myself.

"It did. But what is as much? I need some hard numbers Ms. Firen. I've already come to a few conclusions, but I'd like to hear your thoughts myself."

"Danny's dantian is the scan we provided that looked tore up as hell. It took him days worth of energy build up to repair it and he always cycled back up to full strength each time before he went to the next one. Danny's just recently make his first breakthrough because of it."

"I'm guessing you think losing your dantian is the result of not having enough to fix the problems before breakthroughs?" Brent interrupted with a question.

Williams nodded his agreement. "That's my assumption, yes. If that's the opinion of my expert, I need some hard numbers. What is being full on this power? How can I measure it. How long can the soldiers expect to take between each of these breakthroughs?"

"Slow them down, because everyone we're working with I tell them to not try until they can't cycle any more power into themselves." I answered him with frustration. "We've only had a decent number of people to check this with for a couple of weeks. And by decent, I mean less than a hundred. The best I can tell you is that. And your guy in a coma? The highest anyone we had that created a dantian on the false path had four breakthroughs previously."

Danny spoke up. "He told me it felt like he was gutting himself to build it that day in training. He thought it was supposed to feel that way, as using the power had started to feel like that. He gave us his CT scan, and his dantian looked half shattered. Anyone worse off than that, I don't know."

"Damn it." Colonel Williams sighed and took back the tablet. "So, slowing them down. We have to require milestones and goals. How long does it take to cycle to full power? A day, a week? I've been busy enough in the last few days that I've only had a few hours total to try to build this up. And it wears itself down too."

"It requires more time after each breakthrough to fully build up. I probably took fifteen or twenty hours total after my first breakthrough. I was stupid on my first one myself, so I couldn't give you a number there." I paused. "And it's more used up than wore down. That extra just gets used if you're not holding onto it."

"Alright, that at least gives me something to work with, though I wish you had better figures." Colonel Williams noted. "Now I just have to keep a bunch of soldiers from throwing themselves off a new cliff that they're being told to climb with minimal guidance."

He looked at me, then at one of his men in the room as well. "So, did you notice anything off about the Sergeant here?"

I looked at him and shrugged.

"He's one of my men who collapsed their dantian." Williams finished.

I winced and took another look at him, but still didn't see anything. "You can't cycle or anything?"

"No ma'am." He seemed a little worried to be singled out.

"Yeah, no. I can only feel someone's power when they're cycling or if they're at a higher breakthrough than the world is at. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault, ma'am."

Colonel Williams sighed. "Well, we at least have some answers, even if they're not all I wanted. You all are free to go, Sergeant go ahead and escort them out if their stuff is finished being loaded."