"Nicole?" Melissa jumped from where she was sitting across from me and immediately was leaning down almost in my face, worry and uncertainty in her voice.

"She's awake?" Another voice spoke up from behind me in my room, and I startled. How many people were in the house all of a sudden?

"Yes?" I asked in confusion. I looked over my shoulder and readjusted my shirt which was somehow askew. Across the bed I could see a paramedic coming across the room. Just at the first breakthrough too.

"How are you feeling? Can you move?" He asked, pulling out a penlight. "Do you mind if I take a look at your pupils?"

I nodded, a little bewildered at the commotion, and then he beamed the little light into my eyes.

He frowned. "No real reaction, you may have concussed yourself with whatever you did." He looked at the tablet still sitting on my desk and then put two fingers to my throat. "Your heart rate is at least back to acceptable, so how do you feel? Anything fuzzy? Do you feel dizzy?"

"Not really?" I looked around and didn't get any spinning. "I heard the alarm, but how bad was it?"

"Your alarm was going off for several minutes by the time I got up here." Melissa answered. "Twenty minutes or more by the time we got a paramedic here."

"Your heart rate had climbed to almost two-fifty beats per minute shortly before I got here and stayed there," the paramedic explained. "I defibbed you twice and you didn't even notice." He put two fingers to my throat again then watched the health monitor on my tablet for a moment.

"If it wasn't for the fact that everything else about your health looked right, though with your pupillary reaction..." He looked at Melissa. "Can I check yours as well?"

Melissa shrugged.

He took a moment to check her eyes as well. "No reaction there either. Was the light bright at all to either of you?" Melissa shook her head and I did so as well. "Well, there goes several baselines for medical records." He sighed before putting the penlight away. "Do you believe you need to go to the hospital? I realize we're not going to be able to offer much other than someone to watch you if there's a problem at your high level. Not if your heart doesn't care about going that high and we can't do anything to help with that."

"I'm going to be getting looked over later for my breakthrough." I answered him with a shake of my head. "I'm feeling fine right now otherwise."

Melissa gave me a look but didn't say anything as the paramedic sighed and nodded himself. "I'm going to have someone come by for a wellness check in four hours. Call 911 again if necessary please."

~~~

After he'd packed up his medical gear and we saw him out, Melissa spun on me. "What the hell did you do to yourself?"

"Pushed through my eighth breakthrough?" I half asked. "You knew I was going to be trying today."

"Not that!" Melissa almost yelled before grabbing my arm and pulling me into the bathroom. "This!"

Two people in the mirror's reflection stared back, Melissa and myself. But as I raised a hand to touch my face in surprise, I traced a surprise. The sharp cut of my chin had softened slightly, and the touch of a square jaw I'd inherited from my dad had a little more definition. Somehow my hair had brightened a few shades and there was even a hint of natural blush under the freckles on my skin.

Nothing truly major for any single thing, but all taken together, it was something that stood out nicely. And it wasn't anything I hated, but nothing I'd spend hours of time trying to do with makeup or anything either. I scrubbed my face with my hands, but nothing changed, then grabbed a towel and tried again to the same non-effect.

"What the hell?" I asked my reflection. No answer was forthcoming.

"Did the breakthrough do this?" Melissa stared at me. "Damn, if it did that's impressive."

"Yeah." I trailed off, checking myself over once more. "It did some weird things with my energy as well." I left the bathroom and sat down at the table.

Melissa followed. "Like what?" She asked with curiosity. "I can tell your energy is stronger, but it doesn't feel like it doubled or anything crazy?"

"Definitely not doubled, more like an extra quarter." I agreed. "But when I broke through, I had to push the energy in a different direction." I paused, assessing myself. The two flows still mixed together into my eighth breakthrough then overflowed into my body and also backflowed to my dantian. I could almost see the direction it moved backwards, but not quite. "Not in or out, or anything like that."

"Huh." Melissa looked me over again. "So a whole lot different with this one. You worried me though, when you weren't even responding to the paramedic's defibrillator. I probably need to call Ash though, he and the others were driving back in from Rolla. I need to let them know you didn't cause yourself a heart attack."

"Heh," I chuckled. "No heart attack, though I definitely felt my blood pressure going nuts." I drummed my fingers on the table and looked at the time. "Go ahead and call, then let's head over to the hospital. I want to get the x-ray of this one done and they can do whatever checks they can on me."

~~~

A couple of hours later I was sitting in a small office, Melissa and the others waiting outside. "You're starting to become a black box, Ms. Firen." The tech stated, pulling up images. "You can see from your previous CT scan that we had better fidelity on your bone structure and other areas. Now they're starting to get washed out."

The images of my newest scan were definitely not as crisp as they'd been when I was scanned at my last breakthrough. Though there was still enough detail to see that my dantian no longer had any of the additional rings around it. And in my lower spine was that last ring that had originally been around my dantian, now bright against the blurred bone.

"I wonder why the breakthrough is so clear?" I asked idly.

"This is the best of multiple scans." The tech answered to my surprise. "You pointed out where this one was and I made sure to rescan it a few times. This is a composite image, so I can pick and choose slices. Is there anything else you need ma'am?" He pulled the USB drive from the system and offered it. "This is your copy, we've got your records updated."

I took the drive with a nod and stood. "No, but thanks."

"Alright. I think one of the nurses wanted to speak with you before you left." He gave me a nod back.

Exiting the examination office, I smiled to myself as I felt the flux of energy in the area. There was at least a dozen people at their second or third breakthroughs and the various cycling energies were interesting to sense now, I could almost feel a difference in them spilling in and out of each person. I walked over to the nurse's station. "Did you guys need something else from me?"

One of the nurses looked up. "Ah, Ms. Firen, yes?" I nodded. "Due to the 911 call on you earlier, I need to get your vitals again along with a blood draw if it's possible."

I raised an eyebrow at her last statement. "I don't think a blood draw is physically possible? But vitals are fine."

She pointed to a nearby chair. "Sit there please, and I'd like to try anyways."

Shrugging, I did as requested. Blood pressure and heart rate, temperature and other general points were done without issue. Then the nurse pulled out a slim needle and tourniquet.

"I'd like you to relax as best you can, but still hold still. If I get the needle in and you jerk, you're liable to bend or break it." She tied the tourniquet around my arm and set the needle edge against my skin. "Ready?"

I took a deep breath and then relaxed and the nurse tugged on the binding a little more to tighten it again. "Go for it."

Her cycling deepened, three breakthroughs spilling all their energy out of her and focusing on the needle. She pressed the needle to the visible vein in my forearm. For a moment nothing happened as she slowly pressured the needle before the overflow coming off her narrowed even further on the needle. I nearly jumped anyways as it pierced through the skin and blood started coming out into the line.

She blew out her breath. "Don't move a muscle in your arm, and I mean that literally." She grabbed a few vials and started filling them.

"How'd you pull that off?" I asked with honest curiosity, keeping my breathing light and trying to stay both relaxed and frozen at the same time.

"Ivers' Overflow. I wasn't sure it'd be strong enough for your skin, but I've gotten I-5s. Part of it seems to be you being aware and relaxed so you're not fighting it." She replied, paying closer attention to the blood vials she was filling.

"I wouldn't have thought of it for needles. And you're only at three breakthroughs, that's really impressive." I grinned at her.

"Thanks, I put pretty much everything I had into it just in case." She finished with the third and final vial. "Alright, all done."

She pulled the needle and I flinched as I felt the needle sliding out, the muscle in my forearm tightening and I felt a pinch. The needle finished coming out, badly bent. She tapped it and the bent portion fell off. "Thank you for not doing that earlier," she said drolly. "Let me add a band-aid and then you're good to go."

As I walked back into the waiting room, I was a little surprised to see Danny waiting with everyone else. "Huh, who'd you leave back in charge in Rolla?" I asked, catching their attention.

"They can run without me for a while, but Tasha. And you have more of an effect on day to day things there anyways." Danny answered simply, then did a doubletake at me. "What the heck happened to you?"

Ash and Karen were both staring a little as well.

"The breakthrough, we're thinking." Melissa answered on my behalf. "And I told you she looked a little different."

"I approve." Ash grinned before getting smacked by Karen. "Ow, sorry."

I held up the drive. "I'll go over what I know back at the house."

~~~

"So, energy assisted makeover, a good chunk of extra energy, and some new weird direction?" Karen asked after I'd gone over the earlier part of the day.

"Honestly, that directional thing sounds familiar." Ash spoke up, snapping his fingers. "Damn, what was it?" He pulled out his phone and started tapping at it.

I looked at him and shrugged. "If anything of this is something we know, I'll be happy. But yeah. I think the biggest thing we're going to have to make note of is being able to push the flows in that direction. Otherwise it just doesn't seem like it's going to work."

"What I'm worried about is the amount of energy you got." Danny chimed in. "It's a little more with each breakthrough, but nothing like the first few. It basically doubled each time up to the fourth breakthrough, but after that the fifth one didn't get nearly that, and you said the eighth one was only a quarter or so more? Are we doing something wrong that it's not doubling every time?"

I offered Danny the same shrug. "Try something different then. You're just as welcome to do so as anyone else. I know I'm trailblazing like mad, but nothing says what I'm doing is perfect."

"Just that following the path you're making means we're less likely to hit the potholes you are." Karen interrupted from her seat. "Instead we're trying to help catch you when you hit them instead, Miss two-fifty beats per minute."

"Watch it." I laughed.

"So, what's next then?" Melissa asked me and the room in general.

"Other than what Ash might figure out from his searching?" I motioned to the man still searching for something on his phone. "Keep moving forward. We've gotten almost a dozen little techniques and such reported for bounty in the past week and a half. We're running out of our people to put on trying to learn these techniques from description and scratch. I think we're going to need to recruit more people to be actual Dantian Seekers, rather than join the Dantian Seeker gym."

Danny laughed, and I knew it was because I was parroting his own words from a month ago.

I gave him a half-hearted glare. "Yuk it up. We're going to need more people we can tell to do things, rather than pulling volunteers from the classes we're running. Can we do that Danny?"

"Depends. We're currently running a minimal 'gym' fee so we can have a cashflow, but most of the Seeker funds come from the DARPA grant. Do you want to dig deeper in on that with Brent, or start charging extra?" Danny offered his opinion. "And before you ask, right now it's about two or three thousand a month we're getting from those fees from about five hundred people, which wouldn't be enough to pay for anything if we dropped DARPA completely."

"DARPA then." I replied after a moment. "I don't want to put barriers to us on people, we'll have to try to pull off self-sufficiency later, I guess."

"Hah, here we go." Ash interrupted. "In my damn math class book, just as the shit hit the fan with the Gasp. Dimensional analysis with orientation and frame of reference."

"Come again?" I asked.

"I was just getting into this before we pulled out of the classes for all this. But from what I recall it was all about direction being based on your frame of reference and orientation. If I'm facing you and point left, it's pointing right to you. That type of thing."

"And that tells you what that direction is somehow?" Karen asked quizzically.

"Not exactly, but I think it means you don't have the right frame of reference for that direction." Ash frowned. "I don't know exactly."

"Go find someone that can answer it better then, Ash." I sighed. "Before we lean further on Brent for that too."

I looked back at Danny. "We are going to have to start structuring it more though. We get a few more people to research, a few more to teach. Split all the classes we're doing by experience or breakthrough number maybe. You good for hiring?"

"Yep." Danny nodded. "I've noticed a fair number of people are barely employed in Rolla now, so we should be able to hire easily enough. Just need to find people that are willing to do weird things with their energy all day."