February 25th

"So, you all want CAT scans?" Danny looked between Melissa and me. Karen stood nearby with Ash, a light longsleeve shirt pulled over her arms. "Not that I'm going to say no as long as you're not trying to bypass an actual medical need, Karen, but care to share the reason?"

As we'd discussed, I answered. "Testing a theory. I think we've figured something out about the dantian, but we need to see the similarities between me and Melissa, and the differences between us and them."

Danny nodded. "So this is your experiment then?" I nodded. "Alright, the Dantian Seekers will cover it then, as long as you share the scan results. Costs are all going under your name, or are you splitting it out? I don't believe your friend" Danny motioned to Ash, "is a Seeker, so if you're splitting it, who is picking up his?"

Wait, what? "Costs under my name?"

"You did sign that any costs the Seekers cover will be paid back if you ever leave. As this is your request, the cost of four CAT scans will be logged to you unless you all decide otherwise." He tapped a few keys. "Looks like the school system has a charge for repair of school property on your name too, with the flag that it's for a power related reason which is why I can see it. I can cover that too, if you'd like."

I looked back to the others who looked about as unsure as I felt. "Mine then, I guess? And okay on the repair?" It wasn't like the Seekers was a bad group to belong to. Though now that I thought about the costs...

Again Danny nodded. "Alright. I'll get you guys scheduled at the hospital. Give me a few days."

"That's it?" I asked, surprised.

"It's not like this is going to be an actual medical procedure, so I don't need a doctor's referral on you guys, or insurance, or anything else like that." He explained. "Since there's four of you, they might have to split you over a couple of days though. No issues with that?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't think that will make a difference. Thanks for getting this set up."

We left, heading back to the dorm area. Once we got there, I looked at the others chagrined. "Sorry, I didn't think about having to coordinate this."

"Or the cost." Ash added.

"Or that." I ruefully agreed as we sat down at one of gathering couches.

"Why'd you want to be so vague, anyways?" Melissa asked.

I looked around, not seeing anyone nearby. "A couple of reasons. The first being people like Tony. Ten grand is expensive for me, but it'd be cheap enough for a lot of people to get freebie info. And I realize now the Seekers paying for other stuff is to keep you tied to them if you figure out anything good. But if you could get all the work we've done or will do for ten thousand?" I nodded to Karen and Ash. "Especially if we figure out how to get on the 'true path' for anyone. I eat a lot of debt for others to get it cheaper."

Ash nodded. "That makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you figure it out and teach anyone it's teachable past that point. Get exclusivity, right?"

"I mean, I'm not against people learning it. I just want it to mean something for me too, you know?" I replied.

"What's the other reason then?" Karen asked.

"The amount to teach." I answered with embarrassment. "I mean, it took Melissa less than an hour to figure it out. I want there to actually be something of substance to learn. At least figure out some more about the dantian and getting to the first block, maybe through it."

Karen started laughing, trying to not jostle her bruises. "Really? Doesn't your second reason answer your first? Get people on your path easily, then you can rake them over the coals to learn the more advanced stuff."

"I'd whack you with a pillow if it wouldn't hurt you."

"Before you start a pillow fight, are we doing anything else? I know we cleared the morning somehow expecting immediate results." Melissa asked.

"Figure out how to increase stamina?" I shrugged. "If I push the spin to max, I only get a few minutes before I'm basically dry."

~~~

March 3rd

It had only taken a day for Danny to get it arranged, but it was almost a week before we were scheduled in for the CAT scan. Both Melissa and I had taken the last few days to try to push our abilities to last longer, but just flooding ourselves with it required a stopwatch to validate any results after four days. The pool of power in me was just slightly deeper, giving me all of an extra eight seconds after dozens of times draining myself dry.

Melissa was further behind me, and had actually only gotten three seconds added to her initial record. I could still actually feel that weird branch coming out of her when she spun her power. The channel towards the first block she'd broken through.

I knew there had to be something missing, I just couldn't figure out what.

Thankfully though, the four of us had managed to get scheduled all for the same day, a two-hour block of time at Phelps hospital.

"You know, we've done some of these before for the school, but it's normally running med students through training." The technician, Brandon by the name on his badge, noted. "But hey, whatever. We've got enough time for all four of you, plus some time for me to go over what your results look like. Who's first?"

"Me first, Karen, Melissa, then Nicole last." Ash immediately spoke up.

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The tech nodded. "Alright, hop up on the bed and lay down then. I'm running normal thickness scanning, so you'll get a pretty good 3-D image of your body." He then shooed us towards a side room. "No need to multi-dose everyone, you can watch the scans from the office."

Ash laid down and then Brandon joined us in the office, where he pulled up a program that spread across several monitors. "Left monitor will show the building image, wait, hold on." He stuck his head back out of the room. "Hey Ash, censor or no censor on your nether region?"

"Whatever. I ain't got nothing to hide." He laughed.

Dropping back into his seat, he nodded. "Sorry about that. I don't normally have others in here unless they're doctors or others who I don't have to censor for. Anyways, like I was saying. Left monitor will show the building image. Center monitor shows the current slice being taken."

We could see the right monitor was the program itself.

"Hope you guys brought something to read. It's a good twenty minutes per person." Brandon noted.

I pulled out my tablet and started reading through some homework as the minutes went by, but did watch as the imaging went through Ash's chest. Once he was done, Brandon called out to him as the machine spun down. "Alright, you're good. Next up, and do you want censors?"

Karen nodded. "Lower half please."

As Karen was getting situated, Brandon pulled a small drive from his computer and offered it to Ash as he walked in. "Here's yours. It'll load on any good 3-D modelling program."

Karen's went the same, and then it was Melissa's turn. I turned off my table to watch this one, very interested to see what was different. "No extra, Melissa." She nodded to me.

Once the machine got down to her heart, Brandon looked at the imaging as the machine seemed to slow down. "What the heck is that? It's taking forever to image." A small spiral thing seemed embedded in her, weird tight loops going around it. "A nodule or tumor?"

It took almost five minutes for the CAT scanner to finish on that portion of Melissa's body, and then finished up with Brandon monitoring it the entire time, staring at the full body picture and the strange thing that seemed to pulse even in the image.

"That was strange." Melissa said, getting out of it. "It like stopped on me, and it almost seemed like I could feel the scanning."

Brandon turned the monitor. "You've got something weird there. You might want to actually get that looked at."

"If we're right, you'll find that in me too." I told him, moving out to the scanner room. "Let's go."

He pulled another drive out, handing it over to Melissa and reprepped the scanner again. "You want to just focus there then?" He asked me.

"Nope. Need to get a full scan of me too." As I laid down, I started spinning my power just a little faster. At max, I'd exhaust myself within a minutes, but I wanted to know if it was any different when active.

As I lay there the bed slowly inserted itself into the scanner, the imager flipping around me. I held the amount of energy I was pushing out steady as it started spinning around my chest.

"What the actual..." I heard come from the office. It still took another fifteen minutes of lying there still until it was done, before I slid out of the machine and could get up.

Walking into the office, Brandon was manipulating the program to pull up the spot there under my heart. Or not a spot, as the program seemed to spin around it from multiple viewpoints for a moment as the various spirals seemed to circle an actual glowing central point. "OK, this is creepy. What is it?"

[https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rfrankel/fourd/aliaspics/raintorus.jpg]

"Drive please." I held out my hand. He handed it over. "As far as we can tell? My dantian." I gave him his answer. "Thank you. Alright guys, let's go see if we can mess with this."

"Your dantian? Oh come on. What the hell." Brandon followed us out of the office. "Give me more than that."

"Would if I could, but that's why we got the scans done." I answered him.

~~~

We sat in my dorm, a borrowed 3-D projector throwing the image of two different supposed dantians up. We'd stripped the scans of most of the body parts to get a better look at the one thing.

"If you were to collapse mine a little, it'd look a lot like Melissa's." I pointed out. "I was pushing my power a little, so maybe that makes it expand?"

"So what are the spiral loops around it?" Karen poked a finger into the things. "Just part of it, or something else?"

"This looks really familiar for some reason." Ash looked it over, actually reaching out and causing mine to spin. I blinked, my stomach twisting watching it. "I just don't remember from where, or what."

Karen's hand shot up to her mouth and another to the wildly spinning image, stopping it. "I'm gonna puke if it keeps doing that."

"It's like it's spinning on multiple axes at once though." He didn't spin it again though. "What do you think your Seeker people are going to think about it?"

"We do have to give them the info, don't we." I asked, staring at it. "I don't have to explain it though. Which is good, because I really don't even know what I'd explain right now."