'I wonder if I'm still dreaming.' said Vil as he gazed at the feline. Her fur was a not too dark brown, her wild, black curly hair down to her shoulders with two round brown ears sticking out, and her golden-yellow eyes paid close attention to him. 'You surely don't look like you're from Earth.'
'Erth.' she said and nodded.
Vil shook his head and rubbed his face. 'Wait up. You're not talking about the planet we're on right?' he said and drew a circle in the air. 'This can't be Earth.'
She nodded again and drew a circle as well and mimicked an orbit. 'Erth. Sul.'
He stared at her for a moment, then pinched the bridge of his nose. 'This can't be. I'm human and Earth is our planet. I haven't kept up with nature documentaries lately but if there was a species like you I would have heard about it.' He sat down on the floor. 'Let's try this again.' He drew a circle on the floor. 'Earth.' Next he drew an outline of Western Europe and looked up at her. 'Europe.'
She tilted her head slightly. 'Orope.'
'No way.' he said and drew the outline of Africa. 'Africa.'
'Afcara.'
He leaned back against the slab. 'It can't be.'
She came down from her slab and drew an outline left of where he drew Europe and Africa. 'Amicara.'
Vil stared at the imaginary map on the floor while his mind searched every corner of itself for a reasonable explanation. And the most reasonable thing he could come up with was that he finally had gone insane. He looked up at the feline. 'I joined the cuckoo's nest in the end then. No heroic death, just the death of my sanity. You're not really here and this is my new home at the asylum.' He chuckled. 'Welcome home.'
The feline cocked her head again.
He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. 'I never realised how real delusions could be for the insane.'
A click at the door caught both his and hers attention and it swung open. One of two Ants pointed its gun at him and gestured for him to come outside. He glanced at the feline to see her baring her fangs with her ears flat on her head. “These Ants must be fearsome enough if they make a predator like her nervous.” he thought. He figured it was best to comply for now and see what they wanted with him.
The Ants guided him up several floors and through bare corridors where others moved around constantly with various unmarked bundles and boxes. At a double door they let him inside a large room with a couple of Ants in uniform and a few in long black coats.
He was pushed in front of them and the Ants chirped excitedly. Screens behind them flipped images between animal species that seemed familiar to him, unknown ones, and bipedal ones like the feline. “Are there more different species like her!?” he thought. “How?” A map of the planet appeared on one screen and he couldn't doubt it anymore. He was on Earth, but not his Earth.
The Ants moved around him and examined him for a while longer and chirped amongst themselves when one of the guard Ants pushed him towards the door again. On the way back he kept thinking about what he saw on the screens.
'What's the deal here?' he said more to himself than to the feline. 'This Earth seems under the control of the Ants and there are other evolved species like you. But these Ants aren't the same as the ones I know, their weapons are older technology, like from the time we still used gunpowder. The flag's the same though, black, with the red circle with red triangles pointing at the corners inside a white circle, and the uniforms look familiar. I feel like I'm in one of those movies where the hero ends up in another dimension.' He chuckled. 'But that isn't real because it would need an enormous amount of concentrated energy, like a bomb in a tiny space-'
The memories hit him hard and he lost his balance enough to fall from the slab. 'It's real.' he breathed while he gazed into a distant nothing. 'It happened and we lost and I was all that's left and I brought the warheads on board and pushed the buttons.'
The feline looked worried at him and he gazed back at her. 'I failed. They must have contained the explosion and I have no idea how, but I must have crashed through the dimensional barrier and ended up here. I am still the last human alive. And I didn't even gave them a proper farewell.'
Vil crawled up on the slab, his thoughts scrambled by the memories of the war resurfacing, and sank into unconsciousness.

***

When he woke up the feline was eating green gruel out of a bowl. She gestured with a nod to the bowl on the floor next to his slab. He sat upright fighting his stiff body, picked up the bowl and sniffed the bitter-sweet scent coming from the lumpy contents. His stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten in a while, and his training that it was important to eat whenever possible in battle. He wasn't in a battle now but that could still change and he tasted the gruel. The taste matched the smell and he ate thinking he'd had worse meals before.
After finishing the meal he put the bowl aside and gestured at himself. 'Vil.' he said and held out his open hand towards the feline.
She looked away for a second as if pondering the risk, then held her paw with more slender and longer digits than an Earth feline against her chest. 'Simmini.'
He smiled gently at her. 'Nice to meet you despite the circumstances, Simmini.' he said. 'Now I need to learn your language because I have a lot of questions.'