At first that response startles Elliot (how could she possibly know—) before he realizes she means an external collective rather than an internal one.

"What," Elliot scoffs, softly, deeply skeptical. "America? Humanity?" What binds him to other people, to the collective sum of experience? That's a question he's been struggling to answer sufficiently just about as long as he's been alive. Even his own mental state is a disparate, fractured thing.

The symbiote is the first time he's felt like a real part of something, that much is true. But that only makes him warier of it.