For the second time on that mountain, I opened my eyes and regained consciousness.
This time, though, I was lying face-down with my eyes, nose and mouth molded into the snow.
Planting my hands into the ground, I lifted my chest upward, only to find that not only had the night passed, but the skies had also cleared.
I gazed out into a perfect, blue expanse.
Placing my left foot onto the frozen ground, I stood slowly, shielding my eyes as they adjusted to the sun, which sparkled a bright white on the snow's surface.
As I stood there calmly, someone's arm draped itself over my shoulders.
I sighed deeply.
Turning my head to the left, I found myself face to face with the person from my final memories of the previous day.
She had her head cocked to the side as she casually rested her arm on my shoulders, just as two friends in kindergarten might do.
"Yo," was her response to my eye contact.
"Sup," I replied, looking away to again admire the views.
Over the following minutes, I simply relished in the moment, continuing to recall the finer details of life as I'd known it.
"You enjoy your rest last night?" she asked in a low, tired voice.
"I guess," I replied.
"Yeah, I hope so, 'cause you screwed me over," she continued in the exact same tone.
"How so?"
"I waited for you to wake up instead of going after them," she explained. "Took way longer than I thought."
"Why'd you wait?" I asked.
"It was too foggy," she complained. "And pouring rain. I couldn't see a thing."
"How can I help you?"
"You're with that group, right?"
I hesitated for a moment, but then replied, "Yeah."
"Then you'll be able to help me find them," she said matter-of-factly. "Any idea where they went?"
…good point, I thought. Where'd they go?
"No clue," I answered.
"So they left you up here to die?"
"Maybe."
"Why would they do that?"
"I don't know."
Another moment of silence.
"You feel good?" she asked.
"...Yeah."
"Come on." She took her arm off me and turned down the mountain.
When I made no signs of following, she repeated, "Come on."
"Why should I?"
"Don't you wanna find your buddies?" she asked.
"Don't you wanna kill them?"
She thought about it for a second.
"Not really."
"Then why are you following them?"
"...I guess I might end up killing one or two," she conceded. "But why do you care so much about them, when they clearly don't care about you?"
The faces of Blake, Corvus, Nikki, and Eve briefly flashed in my mind.
Would they desert me? I don't think they would. At least Nikki and Eve wouldn't want me to die.
Her half-hidden pink irises scrutinized me. "You're on this mountain, and they aren't. Isn't that enough to know what they think of you?"
"Speaking of which," she continued, "why the hell'd you come up here? You know how much of a pain this was? Climbing the whole damn mountain only to spend a night at the top, sitting there and doing nothing while it just rained and rained and rained."
"Complaints are a pain," I told her, "so you're better off without me."
"Good friends can share their problems with each other," she retorted, "so let's get along well."
"Even if I felt no connection with the people in that squad, why would I waste my time chasing after them with you?" I asked honestly.
She raised her eyebrows, although her eyelids still hung just as low. "You wouldn't, unless there was a benefit."
"And you're about to tell me the benefit?"
"I shouldn't have to," she declared, her voice dragging along at a steady pace. "Being a pair is better than being alone. I'm giving you the offer of a lifetime, so why're you turning me down?"
The clouds had a nice shape, I thought.
"I could pair up with any other person. What makes you once-in-a-lifetime?"
"Touch me."
"What?"
"Touch me," she repeated. "If you can, I'll leave you alone. If you can't, you come with me."
"Okay," I agreed. "I'll touch you."
She'd asked for it, so I leapt at her with all the speed I could muster, leaving less than a fraction of a second for a response.
All she did, or all she was able to do, was raise her right arm, holding her palm straight out in front of herself.
I fully extended my arm, reaching for her outstretched fingertips, but my hand never found hers. Instead, it seemed to have come into contact with some invisible force.
I lost my balance and skidded to my knees, but my hand was stuck.
Even though momentum had carried me past her, my hand was locked in place behind me, still just a few inches away from her own.
Jerking my head around, I tensed my core and loaded up my legs.
But my eyes found hers, and she enclosed her fingers into mine.
Every one of my muscles was thrashed in a million different directions.
The shock slammed into my skull, rendering my vision ineffective, and as my body locked up, I teetered over like a block of wood, smacking stiffly against the snow.
"Wow, our connection is electric," she taunted. "It's too bad, though. You touched me, so our relationship has to end here."
By the time I'd regained mobility in my muscle fibers, the volume of her footsteps had faded away to nothing. Off in the distance, all I could see was her back.
For some reason, my eyes remained carefully fixed on her figure, which got smaller and smaller as she descended.
Finally, she dropped down a small ledge and vanished from sight.
I stood up. I didn't have to think.
Something about her disappearance annoyed me, like an itch I couldn't scratch.
When I caught up to her, she said nothing, and her expression remained the same.
Her sand-brown hair was middle-parted, with one side going back into a bun and the other hanging loosely, swaying in the breeze, which was far calmer than the previous day.
She was wearing a white t-shirt, whose sleeves were torn to shreds, and tight, black pants that had a dark green strip running down both sides with a matching green belt around her waist.
A pair of simple, black boots was what she wore on her feet.
Earlier, I'd also been able to see the tattoos of large X's that ran down the left side of her neck, beginning just below her ear and ending somewhere beneath her shirt.
I realized that she carried no weapon, and I was suddenly reminded of my own.
"I left my gun up there," I said to her.
"That's fine," she replied. "It seems like you're better suited to fight without one."
Because it ran opposite to common sense, I hadn't really convinced myself of it up until that point, but what she'd said was true. Against the wolves, the gun had only hindered my abilities. My strength was in my body.
"Do you not use one?" I asked.
"No, but I have something else."
She pulled something out of her left side–it looked like it had been tucked beneath her belt.
What she held out was a black handle, which had a thick web of coils wrapped around it.
I looked at the whip carefully. "How is that better than a gun?"
"Because it's always connected to my hand." Her tone suggested that that was the obvious answer.
"...I don't get it."
"What authorities do you have?" she asked suddenly.
It took me a moment to recall them.
"Explosiveness and healing," I finally responded. "And maybe some others."
"Maybe?"
"I took the elements from one of those wolves," I explained.
"When?"
"While they were attacking me."
Her expression hardened, and she looked away.
"I checked them out," she said after the pause. "They all had strength, growth, and healing."
"So I have those powers now?"
"I'd assume so," she replied vaguely. "Anyway, the authorities of explosiveness and healing are easy to use because those are both things your body is used to doing, especially when you're only doing it to affect your internal state."
We proceeded down the crunchy, sunlit snow. Its surface was difficult, but the weather was comfortable.
"Generally," she explained, "authorities are harder to access and less powerful when you use them on something that you aren't in contact with."
In my time spent with the squad, I'd learned that authorities could theoretically be channeled into weapons, although I still couldn't quite grasp how.
But, in that context, I thought about what she'd said.
Why would a gun be at a disadvantage to a whip?
"So if you use a gun," I concluded, "the bullet won't have as much power after it flies through the air?"
"Yeah. Since the bullet moves so quickly, you lose mental control over it as soon as you fire, so the only power that a bullet has once it hits its target is residual."
The slope grew steeper, and we navigated it in careful silence.
But I was just going through the motions. The information she'd given me was far worthier of my attention.
"What if the bullet wasn't moving as fast?" I asked, following her down from the last rock in a long, sharp descent. "Like, if you threw it. Would you have some control over it then?"
"Yeah, but it's kinda hard," she replied.
"Can you do it?"
"Of course."
"Then why'd you have to grab my hand before… whatever you did to me?"
"I didn't have to," she replied. "I just thought it'd be nice to intentionally lose the bet as I paralyzed you."
I gazed at her hair as it flowed in the wind.
We went for at least an hour without conversation, but our lack of speech was made up for in speed, and the tree line grew near. As the familiar pines approached, the sandy gravel came through; there was now just a thin layer of brownish snow running in veins over the surface of the mountain.
Descending in a roughly south-west direction, we simply took whichever path looked easiest. When the slopes finally mellowed, we headed straight to the west, making one last push towards the cover of the forest.
"What authorities do you have?" I asked, completely out of the blue.
"Why would I tell you that?" she countered.
Finally exiting the bare, dreary slopes, dark green pines began to pop up all around us. Low grasses and bushes also came to life in the dirt; the many shades of green were the perfect remedy to the depression of the mountain.
No matter how many elements of healing I'd consumed, I was completely fatigued. Like an old flag, my body felt weathered, as if I'd been exposed to those conditions on the summit for weeks without rest.
My mind, on the other hand, felt raw. Just as raw and fragile as a newborn baby.
It was time to finally take a break.
My partner felt the same way, and we soon found ourselves sitting under the shade of a small grove of pines.
"What's your name?" I asked, realizing that I'd never learned it.
"..." she stared at the ground.
"Come on," I insisted, "at least tell me your name."
"Echo," she finally murmured. "And what's yours?"
"Jelani," I answered, meeting her eyes for the first time in hours.
Like an exploding time bomb, hunger hit me.
I'd drunk from a stream on our way down the mountain, but there was no telling when I'd last eaten.
I hastily opened my mouth and stammered, "Can we go find something to eat?"
She gave a subtle nod of her head.
"Yeah, let's go."