Chapter 5 : The Blood Bag Ward
The blood bag ward smelled like copper and despair.
I found it in the Citadel's lower caverns—not as deep as the sealed door, but deep enough that the Wretched couldn't reach it and the War Boys could pretend it didn't exist. A natural chamber expanded by picks and explosives, lined with iron racks that held thirty human beings chained to transfusion equipment.
Living batteries. Blood sources for the half-life War Boys whose irradiated bodies couldn't produce enough of their own.
I crouched in a maintenance alcove twenty meters from the nearest rack, watching through a gap in the rock while War Boy guards made their rounds. Two of them, armed with clubs and the casual arrogance of men who had never faced real resistance. They checked restraints, adjusted IV lines, and ignored the moans of their captives with practiced indifference.
One of the blood bags caught my attention immediately.
He hung from a rack near the chamber's center, muzzled like a rabid dog, his entire body tense against restraints that had clearly held him for days. Wild eyes scanned the chamber constantly—calculating, measuring, waiting. A fighter, even in chains.
Max Rockatansky.
I'd watched him a hundred times on a screen, but seeing him in person was different. The coiled potential was obvious now, the survival instinct radiating off him like heat. This was a man who had outlived everyone he'd ever loved and was too stubborn to stop breathing.
My first instinct was to help. To wait for the guards to pass, slip over to his rack, and cut him loose. Together we could—
No.
I killed the thought before it could fully form. Freeing Max now would trigger a lockdown. Every War Boy in the Citadel would descend on the tunnels within minutes. Furiosa's escape would be compromised before it began—her hidden wives discovered, her War Rig impounded, her throat cut by Joe's own blade.
One man's freedom versus thousands of lives.
The math was simple. The execution was harder.
I watched Max struggle against his restraints for another minute, then forced myself to look away. He would survive this. The movie had shown him surviving, escaping during the chase, joining Furiosa's convoy. I had to trust the timeline.
Or die trying to change it, my engineering brain added. Interference now creates ripples you can't predict.
The guards completed their circuit and retreated to a watching post near the chamber's entrance. I slipped from my alcove and moved along the wall, staying in shadows, heading toward the racks at the chamber's far end where the dying were kept.
The Citadel didn't waste resources on blood bags who couldn't produce. When a captive's veins ran dry, they were moved to the back racks and left to expire. Most of them were unconscious or too weak to notice my approach.
One wasn't.
"Your skin," he whispered. His voice was a croak, vocal cords wrecked by dehydration and despair. "It's eating the railing."
I looked down. The Armor had extended involuntarily, a tendril of gray-silver film reaching toward the iron rack beside me. I pulled it back and tucked my hand against my chest.
"You're not from here." The blood bag's eyes were fever-bright but focused. "Not Wretched. Not War Boy. What are you?"
"Passing through."
He laughed—a wet, bubbling sound that turned into a cough. Blood flecked his lips. "Passing through. That's good. That's very good." Another cough, longer this time. When it passed, his breathing was shallower. "I was passing through too. Six months ago. Thought I'd trade some salvage, buy some water, keep moving." He gestured weakly at the chains holding him. "Passage got interrupted."
The Armor pulsed against my ribs. It could feel what I was feeling—the pull of the man's fading life, the Breath starting to dissipate from his dying body. An opportunity.
Not yet, I told it. Let him talk.
"What happens," the blood bag asked, "when the armor gets hungry and you're out of fuel?"
I stared at him. The question landed like a punch to the chest.
"You feed it metal, yeah? Scraps, rust, whatever you can find." His eyes were locked on my forearms. "But what happens when there's no metal? When you're in the deep desert with nothing but sand? Does it eat you instead?"
The Armor constricted around my wrists. Not a threat—a reaction. Fear, maybe. Recognition.
"I don't know," I admitted.
"Better figure it out." He coughed again, weaker now. "Things like that—things that eat—they always eat something. If you don't feed them, they feed themselves." His head drooped. "Learned that... growing up. Dogs. People. Same thing."
His breathing stuttered. Slowed.
I stayed with him through the end. It took ten minutes—ten minutes of rattling lungs and fading heartbeat and the gradual loosening of muscles that had held on longer than they should have. When the final breath left his body, the warmth rose from him like steam.
I inhaled.
The Breath entered my chest in a wave of something—not quite energy, not quite memory, but a weight that settled behind my ribs and added to what was already there. My counter ticked upward.
Seven, it read. Breath: 7.
I moved through the dying racks for the next hour, staying low, timing my movements to the guards' circuits. Three more blood bags expired while I watched. Two were too far away to harvest safely. One was close enough.
Eight. Breath: 8.
The guilt should have been crushing. Instead, I felt hollow—a vessel filling with resources I didn't understand for purposes I couldn't see. The blood bag's question echoed in my skull.
What happens when you're out of fuel?
Does it eat you instead?
I left the ward through a ventilation shaft and climbed back toward the surface. The Armor had fed well on the iron chains and stolen bolts I'd palmed during my circuit—reserves climbing toward their highest point since my arrival.
The War Rig was still being loaded when I emerged. War Boys shouted orders. Engines revved in testing cycles. The whole Citadel hummed with preparation energy.
Tomorrow. Furiosa would drive tomorrow, and I needed to be on that road.
I mapped patrol schedules in my head while moving through the camp. Identified a cluster of pursuit vehicles near the departure ramp—older models, probably rear-guard units that would follow the main convoy but not lead it. Fast enough to join the chase. Slow enough that a stowaway might go unnoticed.
By nightfall, I had positioned myself in the Wretched camp's outer ring, close enough to the departure route to sprint for the vehicles when chaos began.
The Citadel's fires burned above me, and somewhere in those caves, a woman named Furiosa was loading five stolen brides into a hidden compartment.
I closed my eyes and didn't dream at all.
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