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  On the first day of the third week, he would finally be given the key to unlocking his strength, and like everything else, it centered around blood flow.

  When he walked into the room on that third Sunday, Richfield was standing in the room talking to the doctor in a hushed tone. Judging by their mannerisms, the conversation seemed casual.

  After finishing what he was saying to Horchoff, Richfield turned to greet Daniel.

  “Daniel my boy,” he said uncharacteristically. “How are ya?”

  “Good,” Daniel said for lack of anything else to say.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Daniel realized he had barely seen Richfield the last two weeks. Mr. Blank would occasionally join him for lunch in the cafeteria, but it was rare that Richfield was seen out of his office.

  “The doc here tells me that things have been going very well with your training. That’s excellent,” Richfield said. “We’re all very excited about it.”

  By “we’re all” Daniel supposed he meant Blank, Horchoff, and Richfield himself. None of the other agents seemed to pay him any special attention.

  “I’m pretty excited myself,” Daniel replied.

  Richfield looked the same as he always did. His thick black hair, streaked with grey was slicked back over his scalp. He wore faded khaki pants and a plaid button up shirt, and he always seemed to maintain a look as if he had forgotten to shave that morning – always having some stubble, but he never had more than a shadow.

  “Well today things are going to get really exciting. Doc?” He said, turning it over to the doctor.

  Taking Richfield’s cue, Horchoff walked around the front of his table.

  “Daniel, today we are going to work on physical strength,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him.

  Daniel had to do all that he could to keep himself from jumping out of his seat and shouting with glee. This is what he had been waiting for.

  Horchoff paused for a moment, as if contemplating what to say next. He lifted his eyebrows as if he could not think of anything significant.

  “Well I guess we might as well just get to it,” he finally spoke. “Why don’t you come around up here?”

  Daniel stood up from his cloud chair and made his way over to where Horchoff was standing. As he rounded the table he saw a barbell sitting in the middle of the floor – three large weight plates on each end. Richfield’s presence in the room had somehow prevented him from noticing it when he walked in.

  Daniel took his place on the other side of the barbell, across from Horchoff. Richfield sat in a chair in the corner, legs crossed and his hand on his chin, silently looking on.

  “Now as we’ve talked about before,” Horchoff began, “there are many documented cases of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary feats of strength when face with a crises – For example, lifting a car in order to save a loved one.

  “Now we understand the reaction in the brain and the body that allows this to happen, but while many have tried to recreate this in a controlled environment, all have failed. The reason is that it seems impossible to create that kind of biological response without actually experiencing some sort of desperation. This is an example of where we have seen the conscious mind effect neurological signals to the body, but for some reason humans have yet to be able to establish a sustained connection – until you.”

  Horchoff stood and stared silently into Daniel’s eyes for a few moments, a very serious expression on his face, as if Daniel were missing the undertone of what he was saying.

  “Daniel,” he spoke again, “this was the inspiration for my work.”

  He pointed down at the barbell in front of them. Richfield remained silent in the corner, adding to the tension in the room. Daniel, feeling a bit awkward, didn’t know what to say.

  Instead it was Horchoff who once again broke the silence.

  “What we have here is a barbell with 300 pounds attached to it – three fifty-pound weights on each end.”

  Daniel began rubbing his hands together, anxious to lift the incredible weight.

  “I want you to curl it,” Horchoff stated.

  Daniel glanced up at him, smirking at the challenge that the doctor had presented him with. A deadlift would have been one thing, but curling that amount of weight was a horse of a different color.

  Without hesitation, Daniel squatted down and wrapped his hands under the bar, preparing to lift.

  “The world record is one-hundred and seventy-five pounds,” Horchoff added with a smirk of his own.

  This caused Daniel to let go and readjust himself. This was going to take a lot more psyching up.

  “I believe the record here at the complex is something like one-sixty,” Richfield chimed in.

  Horchoff glanced at him questioningly.

  “Big Mike,” he said, answering Horchoff’s unspoken question.

  Horchoff nodded in agreement, then turned back to Daniel.

  “Why not start there?” Daniel asked them.

  Richfield chimed in before the doctor could speak. “The doctor originally wanted to, but I decided there was no need. I want to see what you can do now. Building up to it would contradict the whole point of this experiment if you ask me.”

  Horchoff gave Daniel a barely noticeable shrug in response to Richfield’s answer.

  “Are you ready?” Horchoff asked.

  Daniel let out an audible sigh. “Let’s make history,” he said.

  He once again bent down and wrapped his hands under the bar.

  “Okay, now take a deep breath and absorb as much oxygen into your blood as possible,” Horchoff coached.

  Daniel obeyed, expanding his lungs and taking in a large breath of air.

  “Now increase your heart rate and move the blood into the muscles in your arms, legs, and back,” Horchoff added.

  Daniel closed his eyes and synced his conscious mind with the other areas of his brain. He made his heart beat harder and faster, increasing the necessary blood vessels and directing the oxygenated blood to the proper areas of his body.

  “Open up your adrenal glands in your hypothalamus, and let the adrenaline and testosterone flow to your muscles.”

  Daniel sent the signals from his brain to his glands, sending the chemicals soaring to his muscles, and nodded his head to let the doctor know that it had been done.

  “Now lift!” Horchoff half shouted, suddenly transforming from a medical doctor into a personal trainer.

  Daniel thrust up with his legs, keeping his hands on the bar, feeling the enormous amount of resistance from the force of gravity pulling down on the weights as he tried to lift them up from the floor. The small grooves on the metal bar began to dig into his hands as he pulled his body upward.

  But the bar would not budge.

  He let go, stood up, and let breathed deeply.

  His first reaction was to glance over at Richfield. His expression remained surprisingly constant.

  “That’s okay,” Horchoff assured Daniel. “This time I want you to lift up slowly. As you start to feel the tension in each of your muscles, I want you to focus on sending the blood, adrenaline, and testosterone to those muscles, and give the command to contract to their full potential. Don’t hold back.”

  Daniel nodded, his hands making their way back down to the cold metal bar for a third time.

  He again closed his eyes, took a deep breath, expanding his lungs even further, pumped up his heart rate, sent adrenaline flowing, and slowly began to lift up on the bar.

  He felt it first in his thighs and in his shoulders. He felt into the back of his brain, and told it to expand the blood vessels in those areas and send all of the oxygenated blood it could to those muscles as fast as it possibly could, the adrenaline in tow.

  Then, he identified the part of his brain that was commanding his quads to contract, and when the command wasn’t strong enough, he pushed harder into his mind. The problem he had faced before was that the signal that needed to be sent for his muscles to contrac
t past their normal function was one that had never been used before, but it did not take long for him to figure it out. It was the same feeling only more intense – like when the answer to a question is on the tip of your tongue, so you think harder to try and find it in the back of your mind.

  Suddenly, he felt his leg, shoulder, and back muscles contract further, and before he realized what was happening he was lifting the bar up off the ground.

  He exhaled fiercely as he brought himself to stand upright, his hands gripping the bar that now hung down from his shoulders. Most of the strain had now moved from his legs to his arms and lower back.

  “Very good,” Horchoff said with encouragement in his voice. “Now curl it.”

  Daniel took another deep breath. Lifting it off the ground was the easy part. Using his biceps to curl the bar up to his chest would prove to be far more difficult.

  He redirected the flow of blood and adrenaline to his forearms and biceps, as he began his attempt to curl the 150-pounds that rested on each end of the thin metal shaft. It was then that he realized that he was actually dealing with more than 300 pounds. Horchoff had failed to mention how much the bar weighed. It was clear that the doctor was no weight lifter.

  Daniel closed his eyes, and like he had done with his quads seconds ago, he forced his biceps to contract beyond their normal capabilities, increasing his heart rate even further to allow more oxygen to reach his contracting biceps.

  His adrenal glands were now wide open as adrenaline and testosterone poured into his blood stream like a dam releasing the waters of the raging river behind it.

  He exhaled as he moved the bar up just a couple inches. He felt a strong burning sensation shoot through his forearms as he did so. He opened his blood vessels in his forearms to make room for more blood, simultaneously opening his lungs to take in more oxygen and forcing his heart to beat even faster.

  He lifted the weight another inch or two as the burning sensation spread up his arms to his biceps. His elbows were now at a forty-five degree angle. He tried to contract even further but could not. There just wasn’t enough blood and adrenaline in his body to accomplish such a feat. His muscles could not possibly contract any further.

  He felt one of the veins in his neck about to burst.

  “Let it go Daniel,” Horchoff finally said, fully aware of what was happening.

  After one last push with no luck, Daniel gave up and let the bar crash to the floor with a huge thunk, hearing the concrete floor crack beneath the carpeting.

  Daniel put his hands on his hips and turned away, breathing heavily, trying to recover some of the oxygen he had just used up. He could also feel his adrenaline level running low.

  “You need to slow your heart rate,” Horchoff said. “Bring everything back down to normal. The body wasn’t built to handle that much stress. You did very well.”

  The doctor sounded encouraging, but Daniel knew him well enough by now to be able to sense the disappointment within him. This was the final test – the spark that had ignited the fire that was his obsession with this project. If Daniel couldn’t accomplish this task, Horchoff would never feel the operation was a success.

  “Maybe next time remember to direct more of the energy you’ve absorbed through your diet to your muscles – use up more of the proteins and carbohydrates you’ve ingested,” Horchoff suggested.

  Daniel, turned to look at the bar, contemplating the doctor’s suggestion. There were just so many things he needed to concentrate on at once. But the doctor’s words made him think about lying in bed, working his muscles and burning energy before he slept.

  That was it.

  Daniel looked over at Richfield who had not moved throughout the entire ordeal, and smiled. A smile crept over Richfield’s face as well, as he began to understand Daniel’s intentions.

  Daniel concentrated and inhaled, continuing to do so until he was absolutely positive that his lungs had fully expanded and had reached full capacity. He absorbed every last bit of oxygen into his blood, and began cranking up his heart rate to a pace he had never before pushed it.

  Once he was certain he had absorbed every last bit of oxygen out of the air, he exhaled, and began taking repetitive, deep breaths to try and compensate for the high levels of O-two he was now providing his muscles. He opened up his adrenal glands and very quickly reached down for the bar.

  He contracted his quads and lower back muscles just like before, and before Horchoff could realize what was happening, lifted the 300-pound bar. The task was much easier than the previous attempt. This could have been due to the fact that he already knew what he needed to do, or because he had done a better job of preparing his body this time around.

  Daniel took several more deep breaths, then directed his attention to his forearms and biceps, giving the signal to contract.

  It only took a second or two before he was right back to where his muscle contractions had plateaued on his last attempt, and again he found himself unable to go any further.

  This time however, he knew what to do.

  Horchoff had made him realize that his conscious mind had been the thing that had been preventing him from achieving his body’s full-potential. When he lied awake in bed telling his body to burn more calories, he had little use for conscious thought, so he would often drift away from it, focusing solely on the signals being sent from the back of his brain.

  He had even found himself being asleep while not being asleep, if that made any sense. When the conscious mind shuts down to rest, the brain still functions on a basic level – telling the body to continue breathing and the like – while the conscious mind sleeps and dreams.

  Only in Daniel’s case instead of dreaming, his consciousness hung out in the back of his brain controlling the functions normally left up to the rest of the brain during sleep. When Daniel would decide he was done and push his conscious mind back to where it belonged, it would feel as though he had just woken up from a nap. It was a bizarre sensation to say the least.

  And he knew that when those people in the stories had rescued their loved ones who were in danger, conscious though was put aside while their primal instincts took over, allowing them to achieve unnatural strength.

  Daniel planned to put that concept to use right now. He would not so much put himself to sleep, but abandon conscious thought for a moment in order to concentrate harder on controlling his biological functions.

  He closed his eyes and let go of conscious thought, letting his mind wander from his frontal lobe, through the manmade neural pathways in his brain back to where neural impulses were being sent to his lungs, heart, adrenal glands, blood vessels, and muscles.

  In the distance he could hear sounds – someone yelling at him – but he was unable to recognize the sounds at the moment, as his mind was not occupying his cerebral cortex.

  Once he was satisfied that he had directed every last bit of energy to his arms, he turned his attention to the area in his brain instructing his muscles to contract, and pushed as hard as he possibly could.

  Without having to give attention to his cerebrum, he was able to put more effort into sending stronger, more intensified signals from his brain to his muscles, telling them to contract even further.

  As he pushed his muscles harder, he felt his hypothalamus release even more adrenaline, unsure if he had told it to do so or if it had done it on its own in response to his muscles’ need for more support in order to accomplish what he demanded of them.

  Suddenly he felt a wave of emotion come over him, generated from that area of the brain. It felt like…desperation.

  Then he felt a signal from somewhere else, as though it had been sent to the brain rather than from it. It took him a moment before finally identifying it as the feeling barbell touching his chest. He was so concentrated on the signals he was sending to his muscles he hadn’t even had the awareness to keep track of how far he had lifted the bar.

  Slowly, he released his muscles and lowered the bar back down, maintaining t
he flow of oxygen and chemicals to his arms as he did so.

  As the bar lowered he gradually returned consciousness to its rightful place in the brain so that he could track the location of the bar as he lowered it to the floor.

  When the bar hit the floor, he could hear Horchoff cheering in the background, along with what he thought was clapping coming from where Richfield sat in the back corner.

  “I knew we could do it!” Horchoff yelled.

  We? Daniel thought, trying to catch his breath.

  “Way to go Daniel. Very impressive,” Richfield chimed in.

  Suddenly, as Daniel became himself again, he felt pain all over.

  “Aaaaggghhh!” he screamed out in agony, falling onto his back as he did so.

  The searing pain surged through his arms and chest. They were two very intense, yet very separate pains.

  He tried to clutch his chest, but his arms were so worn out that he could not move them.

  Horchoff quickly rushed to his side.

  “You need to slow your heart rate,” he said softly, as not to induce panic. “Like I tried to tell you, your heart wasn’t built for this. Too much stress on it like that could cause it to fail, or worse, explode.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened at the idea of his heart exploding, as he quickly gathered himself and told his heart to slow down.

  “What about my arms?” Daniel asked, his chest starting to feel a little better as he calmed his heart.

  “They need to come down gradually,” Horchoff responded. “You can’t get them so pumped up and then just shut them down. You need to gradually decrease the amount of oxygen they’re receiving.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and once again expanded the blood vessels in his arms, increasing the amount of blood able to access them. He kept his heart rate constant, but compensated by bringing more oxygen in through lungs.

  His arms would need time to fully recover, but the pain gradually faded.

  Richfield was now standing over the two of them – Daniel flat on his back with the doctor kneeling over him.

  “Congratulations. Daniel – Doctor – You’ve done it,” he said with a grin.