Day 10

I’m still breathing.

The days had blended into a haze of pain and confusion, each session with the Pah'kreth more excruciating than the last. By now, the routine was ingrained in me: the cold, clinical machinery, the invasive probes, the relentless search for something I could not comprehend. Each session left me more fragmented, my memories and sense of self dissolving into an incoherent blur.

On this day, the Pah'kreth took me to a different room. This one was larger, filled with even more advanced equipment, pulsating with an eerie, organic light. They restrained me, but this time, the procedure felt different. There was a sense of finality, an air of anticipation among my captors.

The pain surged through me, more intense than ever, and I felt something break inside me. It was as if a dam burst, and a flood of memories, alien and terrifying, poured into my consciousness. My human life, my time on the space station, my friends, my family—all of it shattered, replaced by something else, something profoundly different.

The realization hit me with a force that left me gasping for breath. I had never been human. I was a Pah'kreth plant, a sleeper agent meticulously crafted to look and act human, inserted among them to gather information, to observe, and to wait. My human memories were mere fabrications, memory implantations, a complex cover story to mask my true nature.

The experiments the Pah'kreth had been performing on me were not tortures but preparations, designed to awaken my mind and transport my consciousness to my new, real body. The agony I had endured was the price of my transformation.

As the final procedure ended, the world around me dissolved into blackness. 

Just keep breathing.

I’m in a new body, sleek and powerful, with the unmistakable features of the Pah'Kreth. My limbs are strong, my senses heightened, and my mind clear in a way it had never been before.The clarity brought with it a horror I could not bear.

My past human existence could not be reconciled with my true self. The memories of my human life, though false, felt real, and the emotions tied to them were genuine. I remember the warmth of human relationships, the simple joys and sorrows, the sense of identity that defined me. My wife, my crew-mates, my friends - all of it rendered meaningless, a cruel joke played by my own kind.

I staggered through the corridors of thePah'kreth vessel, my new body feeling weak despite its obvious strength. Desperation clawed at my mind as I tried to make sense of my existence, find a way to replace the human I thought I was with the Pah'Kreth I had become. It was impossible. The two identities were irreconcilable, locked in a battle that tore at the fabric of my sanity.

In a daze, I realize I’m in an airlock. The cold, sterile ship humming around me, indifferent to my plight. My mind is a whirlwind of fragmented memories and unbearable truths. There is no escape from what I am, no way to return to the person I had once believed myself to be.

Desperation.

I open the airlock. The black void of space yawning before me, a vast, indifferent expanse. As I step forward, the last remnants of my human memories flash before my eyes: the faces of my crew mates, the collapsing space station, the blinding light, the smiling face of my wife. 

And then, nothing. 

Just the cold embrace of the vacuum, a final release from the torment of my divided existence. I had been a sleeper agent, a tool in a war I barely understood. 

In the end, it was my human memories, false as they were, that had defined me. 

It was in those memories that I found my last moment of truth.

No more breath.