Her gaze roamed over the graphs. “How do you graph something as complex as training?”
“The simplified explanation,” he said, “is we all wear a thin undergarment that’s loaded with sensors and helmets peppered with EEG leads. All muscle movements and the brain functions that correlate to those movements are recorded through the sensors. With that data, I can see what’s happening to them neurologically while they’re performing different tasks by the area of the brain that lights up and to what degree. Then we work to make that stronger so that when they’re in a real firefight, their impulse control is better, their endurance is longer and stronger, and their adaptation to what happens in the field is better. A mass of information is collected, then sent to my software. The software crunches all the numbers and shows me the results in various forms—graphs, specs, measurements, numbers, whatever.”
She was still looking at his graphs. In fact, she’d rounded the corner of the desk to stand beside him and peer down at them. “That’s slick.”
“I love it.” He smiled and rested his hands at his hips. “Never thought I’d find anything that excited me as much as being a soldier. But this…this really does it for me.”
She leaned in, resting her hands on the edge of his desk, much the way he’d been standing before she’d come in. “How do these graphs show you everything you just mentioned?”
“I map brain activity two ways.” He pointed out a few squiggles that matched up. “In relation to the training activity and in relation to the muscles activated at that moment.”
Her hand moved to Tevez’s graphs. “So this is what his brain’s doing when he’s doing this activity?”
“Yep.”
“And this is how his mind correlates to the muscles he’s using?”
“Right.”
A long moment of silence filled the room while Everly’s gaze remained riveted to the images. Then a quiet, almost reverent “Wow” slipped from her lips.
“You really are a nerd,” he said, amused. “No one gets this stuff. No one even wants to get it.”
“This is amazing.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “It’s like a window into both the brain and the body.” When she returned her gaze to the papers, she said, “Show me something specific you can read in these.”
A rich sense of gratification sank into Austin’s gut. He mirrored her stance and pointed to a graph mapping muscle engagement in relation to movement. “Here, I can see Tevez’s left rear deltoid isn’t up to par. He took a bullet in Afghanistan several months back. I can compare it to the same movement in the other guys or to his own movement in previous exercises.”
She turned her head and looked at him. “So they’re like test subjects for you.”
When his gaze cut that direction, Austin realized how close they were for the first time. So close he could see the various rings of blue in her irises, darker on the outside and growing lighter toward the center. His other senses came online in a rush, feasting on the freshly showered, fruity scent of her. The warmth of her body. The words spilling off her lips.
“Does that mean you can evaluate healing?” she asked.
“Yes.” He dragged his gaze away—kicking and screaming—but his other four senses couldn’t be as easily controlled. “To some degree, anyway.”
“What else can you see?” she asked, returning her gaze to the paper.
Something niggled deep in his brain. Something about the way she’d dismissed his comment about Tevez taking a bullet. Like it was no surprise. Like it went without saying his men got shot. Almost like it didn’t register.
He pushed the odd thoughts from his mind and refocused. “This shows me that the increased weight Jovan has been pressing in his power cleans has quickened his time from squat to sprint and lengthened his stride.”
He pointed to another interesting find from the morning. “These EEG signals show that the meditation practice Beau adopted last month is sharpening his focus.”
“Holy crap,” she whispered, straightening and crossing her arms with a shake of her head. “This is fascinating. I could seriously get lost in this all day.”
“You are one of the very few.” He deliberately put a little more space between them. “Everyone falls asleep when I start talking about this, which is fine. Whether they understand it or not, whether it interests them or not, is immaterial. They want what comes out of the research.”
She looked at him, her gaze sharp and intelligent. “And what, exactly, is that?”
“Next-level elite soldiers.”
“Wow,” she said again.
The spark in her eyes seemed genuine. He’d never seen the same enthusiasm for his work anywhere else. At least not until now.
“What about athletes? Wouldn’t this kind of information give pros an edge over the competition?”
“Sure. These techniques are already being used in that field. But I don’t know enough about any one sport to tailor my program to fit elite athletes. All I know a lot about is…” Killing, tactical assault, hostage rescue… “Being a soldier.”