The five wives of Immortan Joe were growing restless, caged by the constant motion and cramped space inside Furiosa’s rig.

It wasn’t that they longed for freedom to scatter—they never strayed far from each other’s sides—but they needed air, space to stretch their limbs, to breathe without the hum of the engine rattling their bones. They begged Furiosa for a break, even just one night not spent lulled into uneasy sleep by the mechanical groan beneath them. Angharad, heavy with child and plagued by both motion and morning sickness, looked especially pale.

But they were in the Wasteland. There was no comfort in its cracked horizon. No safety in the dunes. Finding shelter was rare—finding cover even rarer—and Furiosa had smuggled five of the most prized possessions of the Citadel into this hellscape. She knew what they were running from. She knew what hunted them.

Still… they deserved peace. Even a moment of it.

So Furiosa relented. Supplies were running thin anyway, and by some miracle, they came upon the remains of a sunken town—barely a dot on the scorched earth. Half-buried buildings peeked out from beneath drifts of sand: a skeletal general store, a few collapsed houses, all twisted by the wind and time. The structures had once been rebuilt—Wastelander-style—but signs of a recent attack were obvious. Charred wood. Fresh rubble. Blood stains. This place hadn’t died of age. It had been killed.

Furiosa kept her hand on the rig’s door as the wives spilled out, her voice sharp: “Stay close. Don’t leave my line of sight.”

The women murmured promises, walking only a few paces ahead, their eyes drinking in the warped remnants of a world that once was.

“Must of been a recent attack here.” Angharad murmured lowly, hand resting over her stomach as she looked away from the corpse of what she hoped and assumed was human. “There’s both Immortan Joe’s war boys and… others.”

She couldn’t tell from the damage done.

“Could have been a raid.” Toast stated, turning on her heel and running her fingertips over a collapsed wall.

Dag was the first to break the invisible thread of closeness—Cheedo’s fingers still clinging tightly to her arm until Dag gently peeled away, curiosity pulling her forward. Her eyes landed on what looked like a half-buried pipe—maybe a remnant of a water line.

She leaned in. There was a faint echo when she called down into it, her voice bouncing back with a hollow hum.

Then it changed.

The hum turned to a strangled noise as something lunged from the shadows. Dag was slammed back onto the sand, a figure collapsing onto her with brutal force. Dust exploded in the air.

Furiosa’s head snapped over in an instant.

Cheedo let out a sharp gasp, stumbling back as Angharad yanked her close with protective force. Toast and Capable bolted forward instinctively, the instinct to shield and protect overriding fear.

They weren’t sure what it was yet.

But someone had been hiding.