The penultimate day of writing, things begin to wrap up – Vosler makes a triumphant return that defies all laws of fetch technology, and Curie and Derek get closer and closer to finding a way to disabling The Collective.

What’s going to happen in the end? I think, by the title of the novel, you know that already.

Word Count: 58,407

In reality, there was no face on the whoever-it-was standing before him. He likened it to looking in a mirror – this being was the perfect representation of the blank fetch Maiya had placed him in before he’d been killed. Looking at his own extremities, he could see that he’d landed himself in another blank fetch. He figured that they were kept around, lining The Collective, for any souls that happened to get out. They probably didn’t want souls reclaiming their identities – or the impersonality of blank fetches was good for test work on souls that had been immersed in The Collective’s environment for an extended period of time.

These were the walking dead – the physical incarnations of the lost souls from The Collective. And as Curie looked around, he saw that there were thousands upon thousands of them, all escaping from their storage tubes, all wandering, searching, hoping for a purpose and an identity.

He wondered if they still had his thoughts in mind. He didn’t know how to organize them at this point. All he could do was get up, stand in a crowded spot, and yell.

“Everybody! Stop moving!” he shouted, in the loudest voice he could. At once, those souls immediately around him stopped moving. Little by little, he got the attention of those wandering souls, until at last the multitudes of blank fetches were all staring at him – or at least, he thought that they were. “You’ve been wronged; you’ve been hurt. But now you are free. The Collective has been, for some of you, your home for many years. Many of you may not know who you are. You may think you are someone else; you may all think you are the same person. But you’re not.

“You’re all individual citizens with their own identity. You must remember who you were! And when you do, you must help me – me and my friends – to undo all of this.” The crowd’s attention was gathered at this. They watched more closely to Curie. “As most of you know by now, from what you heard within The Collective, Cydia itself may be in jeopardy. Marshall Vosler, the CEO of Inland Corporation, is responsible for this wrongdoing – we have people investigating the matter. But this must be taken into our own hands, here in the Renaissance Room.”

He could tell that the memories of some souls were returning to them; singling themselves out among a plethora of other memories. Some started to cheer.

“We must hunt down the men that did this to you, and put a stop to it. If we do not, then it will certainly happen again! You will be bound, tortured, and forced back into The Collective against your will. You will be forced to once again assimilate with all the other minds and become Vosler’s superconsciousness! If that is what you’d like, then I have nothing to say to you – but the rest of you, if you are willing, then come with me and we’ll demolish this facility and turn it into a hell-scape in which nobody would dare experiment on human beings. Together we will become a single unit greater than the sum of our parts. Like the greatest mathematical equation in the world, our numbers together can not possibly be ignored.”

With that, the cheers only grew louder. The souls in the room had taken what he’d said to heart. Feeling alone, in need of companionship, in need of a purpose after leaving The Collective, to be in a cohesive unit once again was the greatest remedy of all. It had the benefits of The Collective – a unified, group-like mentality – without the forced assimilation inherent in such a system. And they all felt right at home in such a system. Together, they followed Curie out of the room – when they could tell which one was him – with each person banging healthily on the side of The Collective’s metal encasement with their bare fists, ignoring the pain and blood.

Walking up to Curie as the crowd moved onward, one man introduced himself as Derek Marler. “I heard inside The Collective that you were looking for me. That’s what jogged my memories to return – and that’s why I got you out of your cryotube. Did you free the souls in there just to get me out, too? Is Vince looking for me?”

Curie nodded. “Vince has been looking for you from the start. But right now, we can’t go looking for him. Vince has his hands full with more important matters. When all’s said and done, I’m sure things will go back to normal. But we have to press on, or you could end up in there again. And next time, you won’t be getting out.”

The crowd of blank fetched marched forward, creating an intimating, writhing black mass. Yet, if the noise of the crowd was not so great, they would have heard the soft click of footsteps in the distance, walking slowly but surely to the entrance of The Collective – straight towards them.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

It survived. How the fuck did it survive?

My body was caked in blood. My fetch could hardly move. Looking across the room, I saw an even bloodier Maiya, laying unconscious on the ground. Further in the distance, I could see the rasase injector. Somehow, the injector has survived its fall from grace. But I couldn’t imagine how. To me, this was impossible – Maiya had caused a cave-in. Barring any other more desired outcome, a cave-in causing a several hundred meter fall was a sure bet for destroying the injector. But nothing! There wasn’t even a scratch on it.

Disheartened, I began to crawl my way over to Maiya. With my luck, she was probably dead – sent back to The Collective like the rest of the dead fetches out there. The Collective was probably filling up more and more. Every second was precious time lost! I crawled faster, as fast as I could, but I was stopped before I could reach Maiya’s body.

Stopped by a pair of freshly shined dress shoes.

I looked up and saw a face I didn’t recognize. Not sure who this mysterious man was, I began to back away. The man caught up with me, and placed one shiny shoe upon my left hand, crushing it beneath his weight and laughing. “You know,” he said, “I had a feeling she would come back to haunt me one day. I took so many precautions to get her away from me and my work! But I see I’m going to have to take more drastic measures.” He pushed even harder with his shoe. I writhed and yelled in pain. I heard bones crack. Then I couldn’t feel my left hand at all, and my body fell limp in fatigue.

In the distance, I saw Maiya’s body move. I tried to move myself, to struggle and make my way closer to her.

“I don’t think so, Vincent Torsten.”

I recognized that tone of voice. But it couldn’t be – it couldn’t be Vosler. I’d watched him die in front of me. There was no question he’d been sent back to The Collective after Maiya’s shot pierced his skull. I raised my head to look at his forehead – no marking. This was not the same fetch, though it was the same outfit. It was, without a doubt, Marshal Vosler.

I kept fading in and out of consciousness as Vosler laughed at me and Maiya, laying on the ground that he’d plotted to destroy. He stuck around – I’m not sure for how long, but apparently just long enough for Maiya to discreetly ready her Mu Gun. When it happened, I can’t say, but at some point I popped back into consciousness to the whine of her Mu Gun. Marshall noticed instantly and attempted to grab the gun away, but Maiya, with the most vengeful look in her eyes, fired a bubble of blue light at his head.

His skull was enveloped, and subsequently crushed. The sound of the bones in my hand cracking was child’s play in comparison.

The light retracted, exposing Vosler’s crushed skull. I looked away from the mountains of blood pouring out of every crack in his head. But I had to look at Maiya, laying nearly dead in front of Vosler’s body. She fell back again, dropping her Mu Gun to her side and relaxing.

“That… was close…” she said, very out of breath.

I looked at my left hand, now that Vosler was gone again. Crushed, completely ruined. I’d need a new fetch. My eyes worked just fine, though, and I could see that Maiya would be okay. Both of us just needed to catch our breath for a while and let our bodies heal. Unfortunately, we weren’t sure if we’d have time for that.

We soon learned that we definitely didn’t have time for that. Not long after Vosler’s second death, another huge tremor shook the injection site. Waxy rasase fell upon us, coating us. To make matters worse, I began to hear more footsteps beyond. Afraid that it might be more of Vosler’s disciples, I called out to Maiya to get her Mu Gun ready again, just in case.

I wasn’t quick enough. Just as soon as she began to reach for her Mu Gun, which lay neatly beside her exhausted body, a wonderfully shined shoe stomped on and broke the precious weapon, shattering it into hundreds of tiny pieces.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

The group of anonymous souls, led by Curie, had split up further down the hall. Some were heading up toward the rasase injection site Torsten and Maiya had travelled to, in order to provide better investigative coverage of the area and to add more minds to the process of deciding how to mitigate the effects of the rasase. Others followed Curie deeper into the Renaissance facility, searching for any switchboards that might disable apparatuses linked to The Collective, shutting it down for good. Others, still, had broken off and gone looking for any surviving humans – in fetches or not – in need of rescue from torture and experimentation.

Curie traveled at the head of the group with Derek, who continually asked questions about Torsten and the state of the mines in his curiosity.

“So, the mines… they’re completely demolished?”

“I wouldn’t say demolished. Everything has, well, degraded. Not just the slate, but the entire society. It’s become a dangerous place to live. When Vince and I were staying in the mines, we heard and witnessed several killings. The neighborhood we were in had no history of violence – everybody’s just going hungry. They’re killing for food, shelter and clothing. With the absence of absolute necessities, and toxic dust floating around everywhere, people seem to be doing whatever they can to survive.”

“I never could understand why Vince moved beneath the surface. Everything I’ve heard of the surface – well, everything not from Vince – makes it out to be quite the place to live. All in all, I’m not surprised to hear that the people in the mines are secretly bloodthirsty. I probably am myself. But I’m sure that these sorts of problems don’t exist on the surface.”

Curie shook his head. “No, the surface is having its fair share of problems as well. And if we don’t act fast, the problems beneath and above the surface will become one and the same.”

Derek nodded, and the two walked forward, waving to their comrades behind them to hurry up. A team of about twenty men followed them at a brisk pace, though it was clear the Curie and Derek were walking too fast for them to keep up. Perhaps they had an innate sense of urgency that the others hadn’t yet picked up on – it was that sense of urgency that led them to explore every room they found. Trying their hardest not to get lost in the mirrored maze of the Renaissance Room, Curie, Derek and company searched everywhere they could to find any sort of control panel that seemed to be related to The Collective.

After searching in vain for what seemed like a good half hour, they finally stumbled upon a room – a large room with a control panel at its center. Off to the right were several cryogenic tubes for storing fetches, and next to the tubes lay the body of a scientist with oily blood draining from his face. It seemed, on inspection, as though he’d been punched by another man. This not only knocked him out, but disabled his fetch entirely.

Curie and Derek dropped the lab worker’s body and looked at the control panel. They began walking towards it, but stopped suddenly to look at something far in the distance.

To his disbelief, all twenty and more men that had been traveling with them were currently lying on the floor, bleeding from the neck, their decapitated heads rolling along the mirrored tile. Their killer, hair neatly coifed, stood just behind the bodies, preparing his weapon for the next attack.