Leon Straub's Journey to the Stars...

[Leon Straub]

✠ PACIFICA LOG: LEON STRAUB ✠

Dockmaster of Pacifica Base // Volksrevolution Engineer Corps

---

ENTRY: 007 – THE BRIDGE
DATE: 830 A.S. | STATUS: [Classified]

---

PERSONAL LOG – RESTRICTED ACCESS
I don’t know when I stopped being afraid.

Not because the fear passed—because the part of me that could feel it is gone. Worn away like rust scraped off steel. Every moment inside this cockpit peels another layer back. The hull feels thinner. The world outside feels unreal.

The Maschinenpistole no longer responds to manual command. It flies when it wants to. Shuts down when it chooses. Even the power cycling follows a rhythm that isn't mine. Something old pulses behind the systems—something with memory.

And it’s watching.

---

SYSTEM CALLBACK ECHO AUTH LOCKOUT 07

<< TRANSMISSION ECHO >>
// TIME INDEX: 00:17:34
// SIGNAL ID: CORRUPTED
“you are already here”
“your purpose was to arrive”
END

---

I blacked out again last cycle. Or rather—I left.

One moment I was running diagnostics, trying to regain nav control. The next… static. Time peeled sideways. I woke to find blood on my uniform, bruises on my arms from where the restraints held. The ship had flown—alone. A full vector traced across Bering's Asteroid-laced grave paths, right through a known minefield.

No damage. No alerts. Just silence.

And the voice again.

SENSORY INTERFERENCE RECORD UNSTABLE

<< INTERNALIZED FREQUENCY >>
“shed your weight”
“unfold the skin”
“what you are is waking”
TERMINATED

I felt it inside me this time.

Not metaphor. Literal.

Like cold mercury threading through my nervous system—testing. Mapping. A pressure at the base of my spine, at the back of my eyes. My fingers spasmed without command. My teeth ground together hard enough to crack.

It wasn’t possession. Possession implies something foreign.

This was integration.

---

PRIVATE OBSERVATION
There is no threshold anymore. The bridge is crossed.

I used to think the ones who disappeared had died screaming.

But now I understand. They never vanished.

They changed direction.

The horror isn’t that something’s replacing me. The horror is that I’m still aware—still here—as the transformation completes. I can feel myself reshaped from the inside. My thoughts spiral in a pattern I no longer recognize as mine.

I tried to scream, but the ship muted it. I tried to send a mayday, but the relay blinked back a single word:

“Why?”

And I didn’t have an answer.

There’s no returning from this. And if I’m honest… I don’t want to.

The cold has gone. The fear, too.

What’s left… is clarity.

I remember what I was.

But it has no meaning here.

I am already theirs.

Log continues → ENTRY 008: “First Contact” pending authorization.