Tiamat's Tavern wasn't a dive bar. Calling it a dive bar was like calling world war three "a bit of a dust up". This was a dig bar. You had to actively work to make a drinking establishment this disreputable. It took effort to get a bathroom this dirty. But at least the drinks were cheap.

"Cash only, no credit." Said the bartender as she looked Himry up and down. "And don't start anything you can't finish."

"Noted." Himry replied.

The red headed bartender, who he would later learn was named Joan, was covered in tattoos and piercings. She was also remarkably attractive and fit for a human with lean toned muscles and beautiful painted claws. He was surprised to see that they had little red hearts hand drawn on each nail.

Besides a group of hunds in the back playing poker he was the only non-human in the bar. But still, liquor was liquor and humans tended to ignore little rules like maximum alcohol percentages. That meant the drinks were strong enough to keep up with his deathworlder metabolism. Too bad Himry hated humans, and for good reason too.

"I'll have… what do you have that won't kill me?" Himry eyed the bottles of liquor suspiciously. Humans were always putting things like chocolate and licorice in their alcohol. Then he remembered that it was the end of the world and decided the hell with it. There was this one human drink with cream he had always wanted to try. He liked cream. "Ah, yeah. Give me a white russian."

The bartender raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "You sure you can handle that much caffeine?"

"My life insurance is paid up and I'm from a death world. Also, a giant alien plant is consuming this entire planet as we speak. I'm not about to go out sober." Himry replied as he pulled the last of his cash out. "How much do I owe you?"

The bartender shook her head. "Keep your money for the medevac home." Then she sighed. "You know, I really liked this planet. Everyone left us alone, nobody tried to throw us in jail over a few spices, things were pretty good."

"Yeah, it was a pretty good planet, wasn't it?" Himry watched as Joan mixed heavy cream, coffee liqueur and a sub-lethal amount of vodka in a tall glass with ice. "Most places I go carnivores are treated like savage beasts that might snap at any moment and eat you. Here we're just part of the scenery."

"It's the same with omnivores unless you go strictly vegetarian." Joan lamented as she handed over the drink. She leaned in close, almost conspiratorially. "But they're right, in a way. That's how we evolved, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. We're predators through and through."

"Hah!" Himry took a sip of his drink. It was sweet and strong. "You aren't kidding. Do you know what a special game permit is?"

Joan nodded. "It's when we declare open season on a species that… oh shit." She looked at Himry's orange and black stripes and remembered the recent war between their people. "Yeah, you're a drekan. You would know, would you? Who did you lose?"

"My dad Cesil. He was a good enough person, a good soldier. He did what he was told and slowly worked his way up the ranks." Himry looked off into the middle distance as he sipped his drink. "Then one night they lured him out away from camp and that was that. They found what was left of his body in a ditch and his tracking tags up a tree a dozen kilometers away. They skinned him and took his head for a trophy."

"Oh shit."

"Yeah, I was young then. I didn't really understand. Later mom explained it all to me, see they had been running a promotion, a special, something called a Groupon. My dad, he was just an animal for them to hunt. To them he wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a worthy adversary, and now he's a trophy on some rich human dentist's wall."

Himry was about halfway through his drink and he was feeling it. But he didn't want to feel anything right now. Remembering his father's death had put him in a dark mood. Himry could see the parallels beginning to form, his father getting murdered for sport like an animal, him drinking in a bar and waiting for the end instead of just doing the one thing he knew might save this world.

He ordered another drink to numb his conscience and ego. Joan didn't charge him. She didn't charge for the next one either. He didn't have coms service down in the basement bar and there were no video screens or news broadcasts that might remind those who were drinking to forget about the outside world.

It was getting late now. He had started drinking in the late afternoon and the clock told him it was nearly midnight. Joan was just finishing up her shift and that meant Himry was going to have to start actually paying for his drinks.

"How are you getting home?" Joan asked.

Himry shrugged his massive shoulders. "I don't know if I even have a home. The vines probably have eaten it by now."

"Perfect!" Joan said, placing a steaming pink plastic wrapped package in front of him. It filled his nose with rich aromas of meat and spices. "Eat this and sober up, I'm not walking home alone."

The drekan eyed the package suspiciously. "What's in it?"

"Meat, cheese, beans, wrapped in a white flour flatbread. We call them burritos." Joan explained as she grabbed her coat.

Experimentally Himry took a bite. It was hot and good. "Who's the meat?" He asked.

Joan shrugged. "Who cares? It's probably lab grown." She looked at the wrapper. "Yep, 100% synthetic beef protein."

"Delightful!" Himry tore into the microwaved meal with gusto. Humans were bastards, but if something could redeem them, it was probably burritos. As he munched away happily he scanned the room, more out of habit than anything.

Back in a smoke filled corner one of the hunds playing cards took notice and locked eyes with him. Himry tried to look away but it was too late.

Hunds were canine uplifts that humans had modeled after their favorite breeds of dog. Then a hundred years ago they had not just bitten the hand that made them, but ripped it clean off at the shoulder. Now the hunds were respected and feared through the known worlds as the one species that nobody fucked with. Humans might kill you and glass your planet, but hunds were so much worse.

Most were peaceful, kind, and caring. They tended to spend their lives quietly mastering a skill. To achieve expertise in a skill, even one as mundane as cleaning or cooking, was equivalent to attaining nirvana for a hund. And then once they had achieved total mastery, they would upload it to the collective, who would improve upon it even further.

You could never ever experience better hospitality than with a hund. Their hotels and restaurants were better than anything else in the known universe.

But the one looking at Himry wore the clipped upright ears and gold markings of a warhund. The skill she existed to master was war, in all its forms. Beneath her sleek black and brown fur was a mix of cutting edge nanotechnology and cold mechanical determination. The gold that tipped her ears and eyelids was significant, it meant she had died perfecting her craft and returned to further improve her skills. This was death with a wet nose and smiling eyes.

The first thing that happened to Himry was that every major muscle group in his body froze. He couldn't move, couldn't even breathe. The hot meat in his mouth burned his tongue as the hund ripped into his mind.

With no apparent effort the warhund peeled back the layers of security on Himry's wetware, injecting code and kicking in backdoors until it had root access to all of his implants.

"Your security sucks." Himry felt his mouth tell him. "Nice wetware though. Looks like… yes… you must be from Erwyn... I thought I recognized you... A few updates… some patches… maybe add a little ICE…"

Joan looked over in surprise. "What are you talking…" Then she put two and two together and shouted across the bar. "Shiva! Release him!"

Himry wanted to scream. Every nerve in his body was on fire as his wetware updated and rebooted. Instead he slowly swallowed the mouthful of food, saying nothing. Then slowly and painfully he made his way towards the door.

"What the fuck was that?" Joan asked once they were outside.

"Fucking warhund was messing with my wetware.” Himry winced.

"I know that. But why?" Joan looked him over. "Also, how can you afford the kind of wetware a warhund would like? She said it was nice."

"It… oh." Himry sighed. Apparently the humans didn't talk about that part of the war in their history books. They didn't care what the hunds had done to the survivors after Erwyn was destroyed. "Don't worry about it. I'm fine."

"You are full of surprises." Joan said as she took him by the arm. He still needed to walk her home.

"Yep. That's me." Himry replied, his head still ringing. "I've got hidden depths."

*-----

Rimma called him a few minutes later. He felt his wetware snag the signal and route the call to his internal radio. This was troubling because he usually kept that feature off. He didn't like hearing voices in his head, much less ones demanding results.

"Damn it Himry, where are you?" Rimma asked angrily.

The drekan felt a strange disconnect between his body and mind as he answered back without moving his mouth. He just thought about what he wanted to say and the wetware did the rest. "I had to go underground, didn't have any signal where I was. Ended up tangling with some hunds, now I'm following a human. I'm still in human territory." Technically it was all the truth. Technically he wasn't lying.

"I don't like most of the words in that sentence." Rimma grumbled. "What did the hunds want?"

"Apparently to peel my brain like… what are those citrus fruits… the orange ones?" Himry couldn't remember the word.

"Do you mean oranges?"

"Yeah, those. It wasn't fun. I've got a blistering headache and shit to show for it." Himry's brain felt like it had been deep fried, but worse than that, his buzz was almost gone.

"Stay safe. The government locked down the spaceports and are quietly starting to evacuate key personnel."

"Just let me know if they decide to start dropping nukes so I can close my windows." Himry joked.

There was an awkward silence followed by another more awkward period of silence. Himry sighed. "Please tell me they didn't nuke the plant."

"Ok, then I won't tell you that they nuked the plant. I will tell you that you're lucky you're in human territory. Between the containment shielding and the air purifiers they put up to stop accidentally killing people every time they cooked something moderately spicy you should be safe from most of the fallout."

Rimma let out a sigh of her own. "I've got some other bad news. The katzen are trying to buy the planet. You know how they like purchasing distressed assets, and we are in distress."

"Like… the whole planet?" Himry asked.

"Yeah, I just got news a few minutes ago that they're floating offers to buy up anything they can get their claws into. Civilian, government and military. They want the whole thing, lock stock and barrel and they aren't being subtle about it."

Himry felt like he was missing something, but he couldn't put a thumb on it. Why did this all feel so familiar? "Find out who they're selling it to." He said.

"What?" Rimma asked. "Who cares?"

"Those five toed fuckers bought my people's navy and sold it to the kinter with loans secured by the hunds. I just ran into a bunch of warhunds. You do the math and tell me that doesn't smell like funny business." Himry looked over at Joan, she was eyeing him curiously. "Let me call you back later, I need to see a human about a hund."

"Stay safe. I'll look into the katzen thing, it's not like there's much else for me to do." Rimma disconnected.

"Sorry about that, I had to take a call." Himry tapped the side of his head and smiled. They hadn't been walking long but he could already see why she wanted an escort home. The world was ending and people were acting accordingly.

Humans were chaotic at the best of times. They seemed to think the rules didn't apply to them. They were usually right about that, but they didn't have to be so smug about it. Then again, what else could you expect from barely evolved apes that drank lethal amounts of neurotoxin every morning?

Any other sentient species who engaged in that level of self destruction would be considered insane or suicidal. Humans just called it a "morning pick me up" and pretended it was normal.

Himry had expected the looting, fighting, murder and mayhem. That was normal for an apocalypse. But the partying was a bit of a surprise. All around him humans in funny outfits were dancing with bottles of booze and shouting happily at the stars.

"Your people are frankly, insane." Himry said as his eyes scanned for danger. It was hard to tell the difference between sinister activity and what humans called "just having a good time". At first he figured that anyone holding a weapon would be trouble, but when he realized that they were shooting them harmlessly up into the air.

"Yeah, we're all a bit crazy. You want a taco?" Joan gestured at the street vendor who against all logic was doing an incredible amount of business.

"What's a taco?" Himry asked, whatever they were they smelled fantastic.

"Meat, onions, spicy salsa, cilantro,and lime, on a small corn flatbread." Joan got into line. She eyed the marinated meat roasting on a spit. "Hey, how do you feel about avian marauders?"

"I'm not a fan." Himry looked around for any sign of the hawk-like bastards. They were always stealing shit and making trouble. "Why? Do you see some?"

"No reason!" Joan said as she paid the vendor and got their food. She handed him three tacos and a cold beer. "So, what was your call about?"

"My boss wanted to know where I was." Himry deflected. "I told her I had a headache." This was also technically true. "Speaking of headaches, what's Shiva's deal? What's a warhund doing in a human bar on Ivten?"

"Playing poker, apparently." Joan happily munched her taco. "She and her crew showed up a few days ago, something to do with a security contact. I have no idea who, what, or why but I've never seen them leave the bar."

"Interesting." Himry looked at his taco. "What meat is this?"

"Carne sin nombre, according to the sign." Joan laughed. "It's good, isn't it?"

"Very good." Himry admitted, "How much further am I taking you?"

"It's only a few more minutes to my apartment." Joan deftly navigated through the drunken mayhem, trading an extra taco for a bottle of booze as she went. "We should be safe from the worst of it there."

Himry had gotten used to the gunfire by now. That was probably why he didn't notice their attackers until the first bullet hit him. He looked down dumbly as his knees buckled and his arms went limp. Three neat shots had punched through him center mass and exited out his back leaving gaping wounds.

"Joan, I dropped my taco…." Himry mumbled as the darkness claimed him.

*-----

The food line was moving slowly but the hunds were making sure everyone got fed. Himry was tall for his age so nobody messed with him. Well, almost nobody. But certainly nobody messed with him twice.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

His mother and siblings were all dead so it was just him, all alone, waiting in the food line. When it was his turn he accepted the bowl of fortified broth and the cup of water then sat down and ate, or rather drank. They gave them broth because it stopped desperate drekan from trying to bring extras home with them.

To their credit the hunds were very transparent about this. If you asked a question, you would get an answer. But once they gave an answer you were expected to remember and act accordingly. Ignorance was acceptable, to act wrongly once you knew better was less so.

"How are you feeling, Himry?" Asked one of the warhunds as it sat down across the table from him. It was bog standard Döbian, black fur with tan patches. It was also rail thin, actively starving to death. Gender was hard to tell because it was so far gone.

"Hungry." The sullen drekan teenager replied. "I wish I could have some real meat."

"Currently there isn't enough to go around so we're making the most of what we have. How is the broth?" The hund asked.

Himry looked at the emaciated figure in front of him. "Why don't you eat? You aren't a prisoner, your people won."

"Like I said, there isn't enough to go around." The hund let out a sigh. "Hopefully you'll understand one day. But I have certain duties and responsibilities, one of them is caring for you and your people. If that means being hungry, I'll deal with it."

"Why? Why do you care?" Himry pressed.

"Someone has to." They said as they got up. "I'll see you tomorrow."

As he watched the hund walk down to the next table Himry felt a sense of deja vu. This had happened before. He was reliving a memory. But why this memory? Was he dreaming? Was he dead?

A drekan sat down across the table from Himry. At first he thought it was his father, then he realized no, it wasn't his father. He was seeing himself from the outside. It was unnerving.

"Hello, lost one." The doppelganger said, using his own voice. "I am the Gravekeeper."

"Shit." Himry swore, realizing he was sitting across from the AI equivalent of a death god. Just one more thing he had to thank the hunds for. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Two bullets to the heart and one in the spine tend to do that. You also dropped your taco. My condolences about the taco. It didn't deserve that." The Gravekeeper said solemnly, but with a slight twinkle in its eye. He had heard that the Gravekeeper liked to fuck with people.

Nobody knew exactly what it was or how it had come to be. He knew it was some kind of distributed network that liked to take over and use the wetware of dying beings. But beyond that, the Gravekeeper and its motivations were a mystery.

"Damn. I was really looking forward to that taco." Himry looked around the camp, saw the gaunt faces, the suffering. "So this is hell. I take it there are no tacos in hell?"

"It seems unlikely." The Gravekeeper mused. "Unless it was part of some kind of ironic punishment. But different species and cultures have different ideas about the afterlife. So perhaps? Also, this isn't hell. It's more like a waiting room."

The emaciated hund returned to the table and glared at the Gravekeeper before looking back at Himry. "He's not bothering you, is he?"

The Gravekeeper laughed. "Of course, you would stick your nose in, wouldn't you? How did you enjoy starving to death?"

"It wasn't that bad, surprisingly." The thin hund shrugged. "I got a lot of thinking done, did some meditation. It's not my favorite though."

Himry knew that this had to be some kind of death induced hallucination, but he had to ask. There was no way he couldn't ask. "Ok, so what was your favorite way that you died?"

The hund laughed. "It's a toss up really. But the one that I always am most proud of is when I plugged a cannon with my body and blew up an entire cruiser. I managed to override the safety fuse on the shell while I waited… it was pretty spectacular." The hund leaned in close. "The most fun was a drug fueled orgy on Pabis One. I was trying to attempt a backwards rototiller but the limissian ambassador tripped and broke my neck."

"That's… wow." Himry looked at the Gravekeeper. "So I'm dead? What now?"

"Well that depends on you." The Gravekeeper sighed. "I can bring you back, but I don't want to. Having drekan in my network is problematic, you're almost as bad as humans."

The thin hund held up one finger and raised an eyebrow. "But…"

"But Shiva has forced my hand. She could save the human, it would be easy for her to save the human, however she has a really good hand going and doesn't want to leave the table." The Gravekeeper glared at the emaciated hund next to him. "So, if I bring you back will you save the human? Apparently the hunds think she's important."

"Yeah, bring me back and I'll save Joan. She gave me free drinks and a burrito." Himry looked over at the thin Hund he now recognized as Shiva. Had she been the same hund from the camps when he was younger, or was she just wearing a convenient form? "Wait… are you just saving Joan because she pours heavy and gives you free drinks?"

Shiva shrugged. "There are worse reasons."

******

Joan was not having a good time. Granted, neither was the drekan she has roped into walking her home. He was on his back in the middle of the street leaking from several gunshot wounds. She didn't need to check for a pulse to know that he was dead.

"I'm sorry about your pet, Joan." Rasped a thin rat faced human as he made his way out of the dark alley where he had been hiding. His name was Mickey but everyone called him Rizz. "Was he supposed to take care of you, keep you safe?"

"Fuck you, Rizz." Joan said as she gripped the liquor bottle in her hand until her knuckles went white. "You didn't have to do that."

"Eh, I'm sorry." Rizz leered at her, the smart pistol still warm in his hand. "You have to believe me, I didn't want to hurt him. He seemed really nice."

Joan looked around her, the few people that had noticed were rapidly doing what they could to make the confrontation someone else's problem. That meant they were walking away while pretending not to have seen a thing.

Within a few seconds the side street had gone from a seething party to completely deserted. "Looks like we're alone now." Rizz observed.

"Looks like." Joan braced herself, she knew what was coming.

Rizz stalked towards her, making sure to wipe his dirty shoes on Himry's corpse. "What do you think, you and me? We could give it a shot. See how things work out. What do you say?"

"No. It will always be no." Joan gritted her teeth. She was fucking tired of these assholes who took a smile or the tiniest act of kindness and turned it into something it would never be.

"No, but spelled-" Rizz looked down at the massive orange fur covered hand wrapped around his ankle. He shouldn't have walked so close to the body.

"What the fuck?!" He shouted as he aimed the smart pistol at Himry and pulled the trigger. But nothing happened, because Himry's upgraded wetware had taken over the pistol's inferior hardware. It was in Rizz's hand, but it belonged to Himry.

The drekan slowly sat up and cracked his neck from side to side. The blood in the puddle around him flowed back into the wounds on his back as the nanomachines reclaimed what was theirs. Golden threads sutured wounds closed and cemented his broken bones back into place. Soon flesh would knit and heal as if the damage had never happened.

Himry looked down at the ankle in his hand then up at the human who had shot him. Slowly and deliberately he began to squeeze, pulling Rizz towards him.

"Help!" Screamed Rizz as he scrambled to break Himry's iron grip. "He's going to fucking kill me! It hurts! Oh God it hurts!"

Then he made the last mistake of his life. He tried to hit Himry with his pistol. He flailed away at the drekan, not realizing that as he leaned down to get within striking distance he was placing his face within Himry's reach.

Joan watched in horror and fascination as Himry grabbed Rizz by the head like a bowling ball. One thumb went into an eye socket, the other two clawed fingers made homes of their own in his skull. Rizz twitched twice then pissed himself and went limp.

But Himry wasn't done yet. He needed to replenish what was taken. Gold dipped fangs ripped into Rizz's throat as Himry latched on and began to squeeze the human from either side in a bloody parody of an accordion, drinking deeply as he did.

Joan could swear she heard the sound of a straw sucking as Himry crumpled Rizz like a juice box and threw him aside.

"That's hot." Joan said as Himry looked up at her from his kill. She wasn't sure why she said it. It wasn't an appropriate thing to say. It wasn't what she meant to say. But somehow Joan's brain had short circuited and that's what had come out. She offered him the bottle of tequila.

Himry snatched the bottle and drank it down in big thirsty gulps. He needed to wash the taste of Rizz's filthy blood out of his mouth. When the bottle was empty Himry stared at it, he wanted to smash it on the ground and roar, to declare his kill and territory as the glass shattered.

But a new and frightening urge was overcoming him now as he looked at the empty bottle. He had never felt this before, this insane desire, the overpowering need. But they had warned him this would happen. He was connected to the Gravekeeper's network, and by association, the hunds. They were in his head again. His mind wasn't his own anymore.

He looked back and forth between Joan and the glass bottle. He had to do it. He didn't want to. But he knew he had to, for the good of the planet. Ignorance was no longer an excuse.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Joan asked, seeing the confusion and conflict on Himry's face.

"Where…" Himry blinked, using his voice for the first time since his death. "Where…"

"Where's what?" Joan asked, coming closer.

Himry held up the bottle as if seeing it for the first time. "Where's the recycling?" He asked.

*-----

The rest of the walk back to Joan's apartment was uneventful. The sight of a two meter tall carnivore covered in blood with bullet holes in the front and back of his tee-shirt was enough to convince any other would be assailants to take the night off. The smart pistol in his hand probably didn't hurt either.

"First things first we need to get you cleaned up." Joan said. "I can't have you tracking bits of Rizz all over my apartment and I need a shower."

"Sure." Himry said as he dropped the empty bottle into the recycling bin. He was happy to report that while he now had an insane healing factor and was borderline indestructible, he could still get drunk.

Pleasantly buzzed once more he grabbed a beer from the fridge and followed Joan. She looked at him and gestured to the hamper in the corner. "You can put your dirty clothes in there."

He considered this for a moment. His clothes were dirty. He couldn't shower with them on. It made sense. "Do people have a nudity taboo?" He asked as he stripped.

"Some do, I've always liked being naked." Joan said as she put her clothes in the bin and stepped into the shower. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try and sleep with you. I don't think that's what I want right now."

Himry was surprised to find out that he was relieved. He had too much going on in his head right now to even think about sex. Much less with a human. Definitely not with a human. Though a part of his mind he tried not to listen to was curious if the rumors he had heard were true.

He stepped into the shower, which was big enough for at least four people and had more jets than a regional air force. Joan looked him up and down as she handed over a bottle of shampoo. "It's hard to believe that you just got shot."

"Yeah. It is, isn't it?" Himry deflected. He wasn't ready to talk about that so he focused on getting the dried blood out of his fur. He watched the rust colored suds circle the drain, not wanting to look at Joan. She was smart enough to know something was up.

"You missed a spot." The human said as she rubbed his back where the bullet holes had been. It felt nice, just being touched. Being cared for. And her long claws were perfect for scratching.

"Drekan have stripes, not spots." Himry joked as he turned around to let the hot water wash over his back. He took a sip from his beer before handing it over to Joan.

"I've got stripes too. Look…" She guided his hand down to the lines of textured skin on her hip. "It's from when I grew too fast as a kid."

Himry rubbed his thumb over the ridges and valleys. "Fascinating." He said as he took his beer back.

"It is, isn't it?" Joan said, wrapping her arms around him, letting the hot water warm them both, basking in a false sense of safety in a world that was falling apart.

"Yeah." Himry said as he held her close, not wanting to give up on this feeling. "It is."

*-----

They didn't sleep together. At least, they didn't fuck. But Himry felt a connection with this strange tattooed and pierced human. It was surprising how good it felt just to be with her.

They sat naked on her couch looking out the window and watching the world burn. There was the occasional explosion off in the distance as rockets bounced off the shields that protected the human territory. It was like a fireworks show, just for them.

"Are we going to talk about what happened in the alley?" Joan asked as she handed over a hand rolled joint.

"Yeah, what was up with that guy?" Himry asked, drawing the medicated smoke deep into his lungs. "Jealous ex-boyfriend?"

"He wishes." Joan snarled. "Rizz started stalking me a few months ago. Perils of being a woman in the service industry, smile at the wrong guy and bad things happen. I got him kicked out of the bar but he started showing up at my apartment instead."

"Well… he's not your problem anymore." Himry gave her what he hoped was a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "You know what I hate the most about killing people?" He asked.

"Is it that you don't feel anything?" Joan looked at him, right in the eyes. They were a vivid blue, like a tropical sea. "Because I never feel anything. It's like… I don't feel bad because I do it for a reason. I'd feel bad if I killed someone by accident. But not when I do it on purpose."

"Yeah. Pretty much that. I hate that empty feeling." Himry sighed, remembering his childhood. "Fucking hunds."

"What do hunds have to do with anything?"

"Well the drekan, we're carnivores. When a drekan kills someone it's not because we're bad or evil, we're just being drekan. It's what we do. Murder isn't taboo in our culture, we didn't even have a word for it until we made first contact."

Himry took another drag off the high grade katzenminze and blew a smoke ring up at the ceiling. "The closest thing we have is 'umjan' which means 'to kill when already full' and it's not considered an evil thing, just wasteful."

"But the hunds taught us that murdering was wrong and now we can't unlearn it. So we're trapped between what our history and biology tells us is right, and what we now understand to be true. Does that make sense?"

Joan looked over and frowned. "It's the same for some humans. My parents used to talk about how if we really wanted to we could take over the galaxy. Nobody would be able to stop us. We have the technology, the numbers. The will."

She took the joint back like it was a talking stick. "Everyone knows it's coming, the day humans finally stop holding to the old agreements and start carving out little kingdoms for themselves. The problem is if we ever achieved total supremacy, we'd be dead within a century. Just from the infighting."

"No land but Terra." Himry quoted. "But the demons broke that pact when they tried to enslave the kinter."

"Yeah, that's the problem." Joan laid her head on his chest. "Everyone has forgotten why the rules are there in the first place. They think history won't repeat itself, but it will. They say that the only thing humans hate more than each other is everyone else. Once there's nobody else…."

Of course she was forgetting one thing. "The hunds might take issue with the humans trying to conquer them again."

"Yes, but they'll lose. We'll put them in an impossible situation and they'll do the right thing. They'll surrender to save the galaxy." Joan said morosely.

"Is that something your parents talked about?"

"No, the hunds said as much when they declared their freedom. They said they couldn't win against the humans, so they wouldn't even try. They were taking their ball and leaving because they didn't want to play anymore." She looked up at him. "Are you going to tell me about what happened to you now, about how you're still alive?"

Himry sat up and grimaced. "I was still a juvenile when Erwyn fell but I remember everything. Once our orbital defenses were down the humans bombed our food production facilities and warehouses while specially engineered viruses destroyed our livestock. Then they quarantined the planet and let us starve. We had always been net importers of food so it wasn't long before our entire society broke down."

"It was smart, they knew from their own history that fighting a desperate enemy on its home turf was going to be costly. So they let us destroy each other instead. Within a month we had surrendered, the survivors brokering a peace treaty in exchange for food and basic necessities. And so a proud extrasolar empire fell, traded away for ration bars and water." Himry snarled at the bitter memory. It tasted like ashes in his mouth.

"We might have survived that, but some human missionaries took pity on us. They decided to try and provide food to the poor starving 'tigers'. When it went badly, as everyone knew it would, the OSR decided to take vengeance for the butchered humans."

"You're talking about the feeder virus, aren't you?" Joan asked. She knew this particular ghost story. The order of Saint Rachel was notorious for using any excuse to take out their rage on other species.

"That's the one. They spiked our supplies with a slow burning virus that turned everyone who ate the contaminated food insane, but only when they were hungry. As long as we were fed, nothing bad happened. It spread though the population unnoticed. Then… well… bad things happened."

That was an understatement. A minor disruption in food distribution had cascaded into a full on disaster as hungry drekan had gone insane with the need to feed. The disruption caused ripples that led to further shortages and before long total social collapse had followed as the drekan ate each other.

That was how Himry had lost his mother and siblings, they had been eaten by an uncle who had told them he was going to keep them safe. He could remember finding their bones in the basement. Gnawed and cracked for marrow.

"We couldn't fix things ourselves, the virus had rewritten our genetic code, you see. There was no way back. Then the hunds came and offered a solution, join their collective and they would make everything better. So once again we bowed our heads and surrendered to their care." Himry laughed. "If we had know what that meant we would have just fucking killed ourselves then and there. But we were desperate."

"The forced introduction of hund wetware into our brains stopped the symptoms of the virus cold. Then they put us in reeducation camps and filled our heads with garbage about the greater good. When we were suitably brainwashed they offered some of us the option to serve the collective in a more hands-on capacity."

"I volunteered, because I thought I could make a difference, help others see the light, save my people. So they doped me up with a mild version of warhund wetware and sent me off to kill anyone who refused to integrate. And I was good at it, so good."

Himry looked down, Joan had taken his hand in her own. He decided to wrap things up. "Well long story short I left the collective and had my wetware deactivated. When I got shot they offered to save me if I saved you, so here I am."

He still hadn't dared look in the mirror. Once you came back from the dead, mirrors became problematic. He could feel the hund nanotechnology crawling underneath his skin, making changes, improving him.

Within a few days he would be completely converted and the drekan known as Himry would be gone, fully absorbed into the collective. They had given him a watered down trial version before, this one would take him over completely at a cellular level.

"They wanted you to save me?" Joan asked. "Why?"

"Apparently Shiva likes you, but they wouldn't say much more. Maybe the hunds wanted me back in the fold. I don't really know, or care. This world is fucked anyway." Himry finished off the joint then stubbed it out in the ashtray. "Let me up, I need to take a piss."

Joan grumbled about losing her pillow but let him go. Himry called his government contact as he emptied his bladder. Rimma told him she had been evacuated to a Katzen ship in orbit. Apparently they had decided to sweeten the deal by providing transportation to anyone who agreed to sell out.

"You'd like it. It's an old drekan warship." Rimma said. "The thing is huge. Apparently it was some kind of troop transport."

Himry felt his mouth go dry. He knew a thing or two about drekan ships and their capabilities. Apparently the katzen hadn't sold all of their inventory to the kinter. Apparently they had saved some things for themselves. "What is it called? What's the name of the ship?"

Rimma took a second to look it up. "It's called the Korsakov. Why… is that important?"

"I'll have to call you back." Himry said as he hung up. The katzen had purchased their ships from his people fully equipped, that meant they had drekan weaponry onboard. He could remember hearing about the Korsakov and the Sviridov when he was young. Propaganda channels had called them the ships that would win the war.

Now they were orbiting the planet like hanging doom. Himry prepared himself as he walked over to the mirror. He didn't want to do this, but if he wanted to keep Joan safe he had no choice. There were weapons on those ships that could turn this world to ash.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror. Gold capped his fangs and eyelids, marking him as one that had been brought back to life by the Gravekeeper. Himry stood still but his reflection preened and turned, giving him a full look at what he had become.

"Enough." Himry whispered, hopefully low enough that Joan wouldn't hear him. "Tell me what the katzen are planning. They're part of your network, you know what they're up to."

"Oh?" The Gravekeeper leaned in close to the glass that separated the land of the living from the domain of the dead. His hot breath fogged the glass. "I suppose I do. But I should ask them first before I give away all their secrets."

The image in the mirror flickered then returned. "Gershwin says he would like to talk to you, face to face. Do you consent to this meeting?"

"Yeah, patch him in. Whoever he is." Himry looked back over his shoulder. The door was closed but he could hear Joan's soft breathing from the couch.

He looked back at the mirror and froze, a black furred katzen in a ratty old wool sweater was sitting on the sink. Its ears and eyes were marked with gold.

"Hello." It said in a soft voice like velvet. "You wanted to ask me a question?"