electric // mike wheeler

THEY LEFT YOU

"Twelve, do you know what altruistic suicide is?"

Twelve shook her head from where she walked next to the scary man-creature-thing. They were walking through the desolate town slowly - the lightning and random cries still scared her, but she felt better knowing that this 'number one' was by her side, and ready to help if need be.

"It's the sacrifice of a life to save or benefit others, for the good of the group. It's always intentional," He explained to her. Making her nod as she walked, "Do you know what makes altruistic suicide so helpful?"

"What?" She asks quietly.

"It proves something humans are very good at," He responds, "Selfishness."

Tee stayed silent.

"Your friends, your family, they let you die in order to save themselves," He continued, "They decided their lives were more important than yours. They put themselves in the position of a god. Do you understand the problem with that?"

She shook her head.

"They disrupt the great chain of being. I am here, and you are here, to help realign it all," He says to her, "do you like spiders?"

"I don't mind them," Twelve shakes her head, still walking down the road with him at her side.

"They're my favourite," He tells her, a wicked smile on their face, "They are the most important of all predators. They immobilise and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. The human world disrupts this harmony. They're a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure.  Everyone is just waiting for it all to be over, all while performing in a silly terrible play day after day. We cannot allow that. And I realised, I don't have to. I can restore balance to a broken world, a predator, but for good. Together, twelve, we can show people who they really are. We can hold up a mirror."

"H-how do you know?" She stops him, turning to face him as she pauses her walking. Looking up at him timidly, "I-I don't understand how y-you know all this. I-if you know so much about the people who left me for dead... you mu-must have been there. Why didn't you s-stop it?"

"I can reach into the mind and the memory," He responds simply. Walking ahead. She doesn't follow, watching after him as he walks down the road, "follow, Twelve, I am here to show you what you have forgotten."

-

"Do you know where we are?"

Tee shook her head, looking ahead to see a field with scrap metal sheets around, an old car, and what appeared to be an old school bus. The place was, like everywhere in this place, covered in vines, the whole place looking riddled with death.

"This is the first place your friends hurt you," He tells her, making her eyebrows furrow as she steps forward, trying her hardest to remember anything - but she couldn't even think of a name, or a face, for any of the so-called 'friends' she had, if she should even call them that.

"You were called a traitor," He continues, walking to stand next to her again, her head hurting from how hard she was trying to remember these people, "would you like me to jog your memory?"