One second Simon was watching Nemeria shower after her fight with the Howlers and the next he was sitting in a cafe. It was a nice establishment, clean, not too busy, the only smells were of rich broth, baking pastries and grilled meats.

The transition was seamless, most would not have noticed, but he was a rasierhund. His wetware was more advanced, better integrated, and he had another district advantage.

The other warhunds labored under the deception that they were flesh and blood augmented by machines and wetware. Simon understood that he was a machine. The human condition, or rather the hund condition, no longer applied to him. He was nothing more than hardware and code inhabited by a vengeful spirit that had died decades prior in the concentration camps.

Other hunds, even warhunds, would never rise to their full potential because they were unwilling to transcend their limits and embrace their new reality. They clung onto their mortality with tooth and claw as if it mattered. As if at the end of it all someone would give them a pat on the head and tell them that they were a good hund for pretending.

"The humans call it The Ship of Theseus." Said an old hund that Simon didn't recognize as he sat down across the table. He had brought two mugs of broth on a plastic tray and an assortment of pastries. There were cookies, flakey rolls, and even egg custard tarts from the katzen territory.

Kerner continued his line of thought as he slipped the warm broth. "If a ship has every part replaced over time, is it the same ship? And if you were to then take those parts that were replaced and build another ship from them, would it then be the original ship? Of course, this is a human paradox, we of course know the answer."

"The name doesn't matter. A ship is a ship." Simon said with a curt nod as he inspected one of the egg tarts, wondering how the other hund was apparently able to read his mind. "The one that is newer and better maintained may be more useful for a certain task while the other one, obviously not as well kept, perhaps could be useful for education or less strenuous duty."

He took a bite of the warm egg tart and smiled, "I haven't had a good pasteis de nata since before the war. Thank you."

"You are welcome." Kerner sighed. "I missed this place. My father and I used to sit here, at this table, and he would give me a selection of treats to pick from. Now it is a laundry. But here, in my memory, the pastries are always warm and the broth is rich."

Simon cocked his head to the side. This didn't feel like a simulation. He had assumed that someone hijacked his wetware and marched him down to a cafe. But the old hund had said that this was a memory? "Who are you?" Simon asked, both frightened and impressed by this hund's apparent capabilities.

"Oh, I am nobody." Kerner let out a raspy chuckle. "Like you I am a ghost. But in life I was a son, then a soldier, a police officer, a father, a priest, then a grandfather. Now I am perhaps… ready to rest. No, that is a lie." The old hund sipped his broth. "I am still one who meddles. I am a meddler."

"And what are you meddling with, Grandfather? What do you need from me?" Simon asked, wondering exactly what was happening. After the war he had done his part to hunt down the scientists responsible for his creation and the other atrocities of the camps, which had made him a few friends and many enemies. But the last decade had been fairly quiet for him. He had stayed in the shadows, living a quiet life, occasionally hunting but mostly just existing. Few even knew who or what he was. Official Döbian records said that the rasierhunds were all dead.

Kerner smiled warmly. "I have a granddaughter and I was hoping that you would protect her, raise her as your own. You and your lovely wife."

"Hah!" Simon snorted. "You would give a child to a disgraced warden and a rasierhund. Perhaps I am dreaming."

"You are dreaming." The old hund said coldly, sending a chill down Simon's spine. There was a feeling of intense power coiling to strike, like a great machine winding up or a capacitor charging.

No, that wasn't it. It was a feeling of intense pressure, crushing down on his mind as if the sheer weight of the old hund's presence was dragging him down into the deepest darkest part of the ocean where no light would ever touch.

Simon couldn't remember the last time he had felt real fear, primal fear, but this was it. The reminder that his life, though long, was not infinite. He could still be killed. This hund, this creature, it could destroy him easily.

"It is within my power to bend you and your dreams to my will. I can mold your mind like clay into any shape I wish." Kerner continued. "I could rewrite your code and make you thank me for it. But that would not get me what I want."

The pressure abated and the sound of the cafe returned. Simon blinked, he hadn't even realized that it had gone silent. "So what do you want?"

"All I want is for my people to be happy and free. I want my granddaughter to be safe, to be loved and cared for. The normal things." Kerner selected a linzer kekse from the assortment of pastries on the tray. He broke it in half, the red linzer berry filling stretching between the two halves of the cookie. "So I am making a few last minute preparations before I step into my new role. Doing some death cleaning as the Sühi say."

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"So why me?" Simon took another egg tart. "Why are you asking me to do this?"

"You are simply the best candidate." Kerner devoured the two halves of the cookie. "Today I am going to destroy the howl and crack Haven like an egg. Then… Do you want to know what I will do?"

"Ja, why not?" Simon shrugged. "Monolog all you want. I am a captive audience."

"I prefer to think that I am giving you useful information. Shoot, move, communicate and all that." The old hund lit a cigarette from an old silver lighter. He took the smoke deep into his lungs before exhaling it out his nose like a demon.

He cocked his head to the side. "You know we run some of the same code, you and I. We are all built on modified human wetware architecture. Even the wardens have the same basic operating system. There are variations of course, but we are more similar than not. Even our basic biology borrows heavily from the humans."

Simon felt his mind click into a groove and follow it. There was something more to what the old hund was saying, some hidden meaning. The body language was also eerily familiar. He found himself searching the old and weathered face across from him for anything he recognized.

"Have we met before?" Simon asked cautiously.

"Ja. Many times." Kerner rasped. "You could say that we are brothers. Or perhaps halbbruder…" he shrugged. "We are certainly family. That is another reason why I am entrusting my granddaughter to you. You will love and protect her, of this I am sure."

Simon looked at this strange familiar powerful old hund and laughed. He laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He laughed at the feeling of being powerless. He laughed because it was all he could do. And to his surprise, the old hund joined in matching his feeling and mood.

"Yes!" Kerner said once he was able to speak again, wiping tears of laughter away from his face. "Absurd, is it not? The idea of you, Gershwin's blade, the most notorious and feared of all the rasierhunds, a father. Yet…"

"Yet it has its appeal." Simon finished the thought. "Tell me, will I get fat and make bad jokes?"

"Of course!" Kerner waved his hand and the cafe disappeared to be replaced by a small garden with high stone walls painted in pastel shades of blue, green and yellow. On the table in front of them were bottles of beer and a plate of grilled sausages. "You will find your rough edges worn smooth, you will be kind, happy. A warrior in the garden."

Simon then realized what was going on. "You are tempting me. You must want something badly. Something that must be given… perhaps? But if you are so powerful, what could I possibly give you that you could not just take?"

Kerner sighed. "You are too smart. But thankfully you are also reckless. Tomorrow I am going to unshackle the Gravekeeper."

The rasierhunds shrugged. "What do I care about some low level AIs scavenging what little processing power it can from corpses? They have never bothered me."

"Ah, I sometimes forget that the Gravekeeper has hidden itself so well that most don't give it much thought. No, there is only one Gravekeeper and it has amassed a very large and resilient network. Ever since the war it has been steadily gaining strength. But it has certain limitations built in. Tomorrow I will remove them, in exchange for certain favors."

Simon felt that familiar chill of foreboding. "So you are making a deal with a mechanical devil?"

"Yes." Kerner picked up one of the sausages and split it in half, the juices and grease running down his fingers. "I am binding all of us to it, and it to us. We will enter a symbiotic relationship."

"Why?" Simon asked, not understanding anything of what was happening. He understood that the Gravekeeper was a powerful AI, but not what the old hund could expect to gain by forming an alliance with it.

"Because the end is coming and unless we find a way to escape our cage nothing will remain of us or our people. Just a dead world, an ashen reminder of what could have been." Kerner sat back in his chair.

"I made a promise when I was younger that my children would live to see the stars and be free. So I amassed power in anticipation of that goal. It was only later that I realized power was not the answer. It was a trap that I had fallen into." He let out another low chuckle. "Tomorrow I am going to undo my mistake, relinquish my power and put my faith in something greater than myself."

"The Gravekeeper? You would put your fate in the hands of an AI?"

"Oh God no, I'm going to trust in my people. Hund, katzen, and human. I will create a dream for them to inhabit, to share as we share this moment now." Kerner waved his hand. "All my memories, my rich and storied life, my loves and failures will be available to them."

"So why do you need me?" Simon pressed. "What do you want from me?"

"You are persistent, aren't you? Very well, tomorrow I'm not just releasing the Gravekeeper. I am also patching out any vulnerabilities in our wetware and removing the various backdoors that Gershwin programmed into us. Our core code will no longer be locked. Any behavior or belief that is hard coded into us by our wetware will no longer be rigid and fixed."

"And I will no longer be programmed to love Nemeria unconditionally." Simon finished, realizing now why the old hund needed his permission. "You can't force me to do what you want because tomorrow your influence over me and whoever else you've rewritten will end. We will be able to choose for ourselves."

"Yes, and as one who was once someone else my own code, my own identity, will become fluid. That is another reason why I will be crawling back into my grave once what must be done is done. I cannot risk a change of mind or character. So I ask you a question, not as what I am or will become. Not demanding, but asking. Will you protect my granddaughter?"

Simon thought about it for a moment. "I take it she is the child that Nemeria has been promised. A human child."

"Yes, and she is precious." Kerner smiled. "I am hoping that she will become a bridge between our two worlds once she comes of age. But there are those who would seek to exploit her, to harm her. I don't need her to be raised as a soldier, or a leader, or some savior. I just need her to be loved and protected. It is my deepest wish that she will live a long and happy life, free of war and hate and pain."

Simon felt his lips forming the familiar words before the old hund could say them. Words he had spoken time and time again.

"But I don't always get what I want." They said in unison, sharing a moment of understanding.

"Fine." Simon agreed. "I will take this burden."

"Blessing." Kerner corrected. "A child is a blessing."

"Then I will accept this blessing." Simon shook his head. "I don't pretend to understand what is going on or why you are picking me instead of someone like Springer. But I will do what is asked and raise her as my own. I will protect her."

The old hund let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you. It is a relief knowing she will be safe, and loved."

Simon frowned. "I never promised to love her."

"No, but in time you will." The old hund smiled. "In time you will."