After they'd left, I just looked at Danny in confusion. "I know you told me DARPA funded the Dantian Seekers, but I don't think I expected that."

"I wasn't really either." Danny sighed. He quickly went over what had happened in his meeting yesterday. "I thought this meeting was going to be coordinating getting a few of their people trained. Not showing up here with people to train and everything else." Danny sighed. "He's probably out already looking for a place to put equipment at."

"So what I am supposed to do? Just go with it? I mean, why bring the military guys today and they didn't say anything? Did they want me to just go ahead and try to teach them now?"

"I didn't expect your research to be this groundbreaking, but I did offer to handle it all in your place once and you said no." Danny reminded me. "Before yesterday, I thought the Seekers would get hounded for information pretty regularly, and once we'd gotten a few other people started it would spread out the burden. After my call yesterday," Danny nodded to the office door, "I thought we were getting enough funding to do whatever you wanted to get as many people as possible here learning this."

Danny tapped his desk, pulling a document up on his screen. "And now the scope is even bigger. But you said you wanted to pack the race, right? You can't directly teach everyone."

"You thought about this already, didn't you." It wasn't a question. Danny made a little too much sense.

"Not to the point of DARPA showing up at the door today, no. But when I asked for a line of credit at the hospital for the CAT scans we need, I instead got told they'd buy machines and give me money to hire someone to run them."

"I'm not a businessman, I have no idea how to run a company." Danny said self-deprecatingly. "I told them as much if that's what they wanted to turn the Seekers into. Hiring you with the job title of 'Keep doing what you're doing' is one thing. Managing a whole bunch of people doing different things? No."

He closed the document, sighing. "You know, I originally wrote for that grant not to discover great things, but honestly for something that would be an easy paycheck for a few years. Put a whole bunch of college kids into a room, give them something to play with, maybe have a few stupid insights to feed back. Then you started making waves with really interesting stuff. Then the Gasp."

"Gasp?" I asked.

"It's what they're calling the alien's attack. But yeah. I couldn't in any faith not start pushing for something after that. And when I told them I couldn't run a business, DARPA suggested a think tank. And Brent's probably here to be the one that actually makes this work."

Danny laughed without humor and looked at me. "Think you could use me as an assistant once I'm not even pretending to be running this thing anymore?"

"Sure." I laughed back, then realized he wasn't joking. "Damn it."

I stood and looked at the little office, still somewhat cramped with three extra chairs even if they weren't full. From what I'd seen since I joined the Seekers, Danny was right that he hadn't had to do a lot. But there probably would be a lot more in the future. Now I sort of wanted Brent back to be pushing all that stuff, because the guy I expected to have a handle on it... Well, he had a handle. It just wasn't attached to anything.

"Class is going to be in the hall tomorrow, right?"

"Ours and the next door one. It's a bit different fixing false path than putting others on the right one, so I didn't want to confuse it." Danny agreed.

"I'll be here in the morning then. But I'm going to cut afternoon classes and think. Check in my parents." I gave Danny a half-grin. "They came in town because I was in the hospital. Did you know that one?"

~~~

I dialed, smiling as Mike showed up on screen. "Hey."

"You OK? They already release you?" Mike looked worried, his eyes trying to look me over. "That was a hell of a fight."

"I was actually out that night. Sorry about not calling you yesterday though, the cops showed up looking for more details, then my parents showed up, then I ended up crashing for a while. And only randomly found out Danny's scheduling training for people for their dantians."

Mike whistled. "You're not going to be involved though, right? I mean, you should probably be resting for a few more days."

"By the time I got to the hospital? I wasn't hurt. You saw me lift that weight there in the gym. I kinda had a mental meltdown though."

"Nicole, are you really OK then?"

"Part of the reason I'm calling you. I thought you were off shift, so I was hoping you wouldn't mind taking me down to that lake again." I gave him a bright smile.

"You have a bathing suit this time?" He laughed.

I shook my head. "No, things went even crazier this morning and I got a few things pointed out to me. I figured we don't need a baseline scan of you, so we can kickstart your dantian and see how that works out for you."

"And then you'll tell me what went crazy this morning? I don't want you stressing yourself out on my behalf."

"I will."

"Then I'll be over there shortly." Mike grinned at me before cutting the call.

I puttered around in my dorm for a little bit, feeling out that energy form. [Art of Awakening]. It was like a shortcut on how to light your dantian using the energy in the air. Even a packaged instruction on how to use that energy to deepen your dantian.

It was strange though. Ash and Karen, and now my parents, would have to both hold back their overflow of energy, while simultaneously letting that external exchange only flow into them. Whereas I just had to cycle faster while holding back that overflow.

I wondered what the difference actually was.

But the technique required my own energy to cycle against the other person. Pushing my energy outside the bounds of my body was expensive in terms of cycle requirements, so skin to skin felt like the easiest option.

But the alien's term [Art of Awakening] had a feeling of more behind it, like I was just skimming the first page of a book.

My tablet dinged, and I looked at it, seeing a message from Mike. I grabbed the all-in-one, shoved it into my bag, and was out the door.

"Hey." I gave him a kiss as I got in, smiling. "Thanks."

"Nah, no problem. You sure you don't want to hang out with your parents though, while they're here?" Mike offered.

"I talked to Mom for a bit before I called you. They're going to come to the lesson thing tomorrow, but right now Dad's running about a billion tests on himself." I remarked fondly. "You're welcome to come as well. It'll be about nine."

"Sure."

We listened to the radio for the short time it took to get to the lake, Mike backing up to the edge. We got out and he dropped the tail gate and we sat down.

I leaned up against him for a moment, looking out over the peaceful lake. I purposely breathed in, drawing the energy with the air and cycling it into me, mimicking how Ash and Karen pulled in the extra energy. Water, metal, and even pollution were weird notes to taste, and there were dozens more in tiny amounts. My dantian wouldn't actually take it as energy unlike theirs did, but it still burbled through me, riding on top of my own energy before flowing out of my breakthroughs. Heart, sternum, and spine. Specifically, after looking it up, at the C6 vertebrae.

Mike didn't say anything, just wrapped an arm around me, letting me get myself straight. He did help himself to my braid though, pulling the ends out a bit as he played with it.

After a few minutes of just breathing in the air, I finally sat up fully and took the length of hair back, rebraiding the last six inches. I turned to face him. "So, do you want to do this the long way, or the 'Let Nicole test something mostly untried on me that should work instantly' way?"

"If you need a guinea pig and it's not going to make me choke, you're welcome to test something. If you think I'm going to choke like the other day, I'd rather do the long way." Mike answered, looking down at me.

"You're sweet, throwing yourself into the unknown." I smiled, leaned up, and kissed him.

I mentally took stock of my own dantian. I'd been pushing the depth of my dantian as far as I could in the last two days. Half out of fear of being attacked again and half because I'd found the extra energy just felt right rather than letting it get as shallow as it sat at normally.

Taking his hands into my own, I focused. Technically, I didn't have to say words with this. All it required was the correct shape of will and cycled energy through my breakthrough, overflow it into my hands and then Mike. But words had meaning. "Art of Awakening: [Dantian]"

I immediately and mentally flipped off the alien's presence even as his interest peaked along with the energy flowing out of me, taking a small portion of my dantian's strength with it.

"Holy shit." Mike's eyes were wide as I felt the energy flush from me to him. The energy didn't settle near his heart, where my dantian sat. It didn't settle near his stomach, where the others created their own dantian. It just seemed to diffuse against him in a weird vibration before settling and vanishing.

"You get that?" I asked him, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.

Mike looked at our held hands in odd wonder, before shaking himself. "Yeah. Do it now?" I nodded.

Again, I could feel the dantian's creation. Mike took a full breath, and every bit of power used from it. The energy swirled in Mike's stomach area, spun and folded into itself in a way I couldn't explain, but was completely natural except it wasn't supposed to be. There wasn't a specific type of energy feel to it this time before it faded.

"Neat." I mentally filed away that sensation again as Mike gave me a look. "Sorry, just the way it feels from this side when you did that."

"Yeah, you give off a weird feeling too." Mike nudged me.

I nodded. "Melissa does too, but only after she made her first breakthrough."

Mike laid back in the truckbed, looking up. "When do you get breakthroughs, anyways? Or how, I guess."

I shook my head, leaning against Mike's legs. "Not today. The rule we're running on is you have to fill and deepen your dantian until you can't anymore before you try. And we haven't had anyone try with their dantian lit like yours is, so I'd rather not have an issue where I need to try to drive your truck." I dug an elbow into his thigh, eliciting a yelp.

"Ow, I get it. No need to get violent. No trying a breakthrough."

I pulled my arm back, eyes wide. "Shit, I didn't actually hurt you, did I?" I couldn't tell through his heavy jeans.

"Not really." Mike sat back up, pretending a hurt face and rubbing his leg. "You've got some bony elbows though."

"I'm not kissing it to make it better, ass." I grinned at him but did give him a kiss anyways.

We just sat there for a few more minutes.

"So what was the crazy this morning?" Mike finally asked. I sighed and Mike immediately continued on. "You don't actually have to tell me."

"No, it's nothing actually bad, I think." I thought for a moment. "The Dantian Seekers are funded by DARPA and someone from there showed up this morning with a couple of Air Force guys. The Air Force guys are here to get training and go back, but the DARPA guy is here to stay. Danny thinks he's here to make the Seekers a company or something."

I jumped off the tailgate, kicking at the ground. "It's like, slow down half a second. I'm in college. I'm a college freshman. How the heck am I supposed to wrap my head around this?"

"You don't want to?" Mike asked.

"No, I do. This is interesting. Had this been two weeks ago, I would have jumped in immediately. Now I see there's going to be a whole lot more pressure. But I still want to. Just, I would have liked it to be a little less 'deep end and see if you can swim' you know?"

"Is anyone else doing better than you then?" Mike asked. I gave him a quizzical look. "Seriously. You just randomly gave. me. power. You more or less walked away from something I would have put money on another person being permanently crippled. So, is anyone else doing better than you, or something else just as good?"

I sighed. "No. Not that I know of."

"Then you're writing the book on it. Don't worry, you'll be fine."