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The collective : IV

With another hard inhale there were in the city, in front of a building with a big sign reading "London Journal." Knowing that he was about to fall again, she steadied him. Once he was back to his senses and realized where he was, he turned to her with a mixed look of confusion and slight optimism that she found adorable.

She handed him the papers and shooed him away, "Go on, shoot your shot since you such a threat." He knew she was fucking with him, but yet he ran, stumbling and picking himself, as fast as he could from her, away from it.

The guards seemed to not care about him when ran past. He tried to not look at them and give it all to fate smiling at him. He reached the receptionist, out of breath and tears starting to well up in his eyes. Between his breaths, he said, "Please...this thing...something is terribly wrong...CALL SOMEONE!" Bile and whiskey rose up to his throat when she turned around and saw that it was his wife's face. She smiled and said, "Who should I call? The police? MI6?" She looked around then whispered,

"The ghostbusters?"

His screams were guttural as he ran out into the streets, her laughter echoing in his head. The city wasn't bustling anymore. The people were there, but all of them stood still and just followed him with their eyes. As soon as it came out of the building, they slowly started homing towards him. The further he ran from their hive-mind, the more people he found, and soon enough, he was backed to the ground and surrounded by all the people.

He heard its voice in his head, less clear now, reverberated through everyone, yet he still could hear the laced sarcasm. "Oh, honey, what's wrong? Is your pitiful reality crashing on you?" he instinctively crawled back as the voice got closer.

"You know what I don't get? All the great people that joined the mind. The cream of the crop that this cycle shat out and here you are...." It sat at eye level with him and continued, the reverb at its strongest, ".... getting the VIP treatment by the high mind. A messily nobody, chosen for what? His humanity." She chuckled. "If it was up to us, I think most of us would've broken you." He laughed at his situation. He was royally fucked, too deep to climb back out so, what does he have to lose? "Break me then," he said. It smiled and spoke,

"I thought you'd never ask."

He waited for something to happen, but everything went silent. It felt like nothing existed.

Then he heard a big crack from above.

He felt his blood run cold as he felt it. His heart raced, and his breaths became rapid and shallow. The screams of the people were all he could hear, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air entirely. He felt fear beyond anything he thought was possible. He tried to resist, but it took him by the chin and made him look up.

It was a bright light first, calming and soft. It was when the light was peeled off that George's mind went blank. His fear replaced with curiosity as to what it is. It seemed to have noticed this and shared a bit of what it was with him. The curiosity was now replaced with pain, utter pain, of his mind, trying to grasp with the iota of information he was given.

It was nothing and everything, no given form but every form imaginable. It was pure knowledge and, in that iota, he saw the answers to all the questions he had asked and those he didn't know the questions to. His body went limp and he passed out with a blissful expression on his face.

When he woke up on the same pavement, everything was back to normal, the drones buzzing around to their assigned tasks, and even though there was no crack anymore, he could feel the collective's presence beyond it all.

"So, how was it?" he turned to see her sitting next to him, "Eye-opening," he replied, "Bet you wanna join the club now huh?" she said smiling at him and he smiled back.

A:N : and done! Hope you liked it. Inspirations are mostly, an episode from Love, Death & Robots called Beyond the Acquila rift, would recommend. The episode is inspired by a book of the same name, so you can check that out it you aren't into episodes.