v8roadworrier:

She’s out of bullets, her melee weapon lost somewhere between the overturned Rig and here where the fighting has taken her. All Furiosa has at her disposal is the knife she keeps in her boot and a non-functioning metal hand to use as a bludgeon, and the circle of scavs around her is too large for her to like her chances.

Max is busy with his own fight, what’s left of her crew sensibly defending the Rig.

At least they don’t have guns, she thinks, with perfect timing- no sooner has the thought finished forming than does she hear a loud noise, and feel something slam into her shoulder. Furiosa doesn’t feel the pain, but from the force of the impact, she knows it’s bad. The circle of attackers tightens, then rushes in at her all at once.

And then, she supposes, the knock to the head she took earlier in the crash must catch up with her because she hears an inhuman scream, and sees-

She doesn’t know what she sees. Something vaguely human-shaped, but massive and oily black, with twisting strands shooting out like branches. The gun is snatched away, but not before Furiosa feels a second bullet impact with her abdomen, her hand pressing to the wound automatically.

Hot blood gushes out over her fingers, nearly making her lose her grip on her knife. She manages to keep it, somehow, and charges at the nearest scav- but the black thing has gotten there first, and the scav is no more than a headless carcass falling to the sand.

“Furiosa,” the black thing says, its voice deep and resonant, huge blank white eyes staring into her above a mouth that’s full of too many teeth.

Furiosa bares her own teeth and tries to take a swipe at it with her knife, because she knows a monster when she sees one, even if it’s apparently just dispatched her attackers with brutal efficiency. Maybe moreso, having proved itself a capable threat.

She can’t hold her balance, however, the injuries she’d taken piling up on her, twisted ankle shivering with strain. Head ringing with sudden pain- ah, she thinks, there it is- she gasps, and grunts with the effort of trying to stay upright.

“Furiosa!” the thing says again, and catches her with massive clawed hands before she topples over onto the blood-soaked sand.

“Furiosa, hey, no,” Max’s voice says, and she lets out a little breath because Max is there. “Fix her!” he demands, and she frowns. Fix who? Is he talking to her? She can’t see him, can’t see anything more than the black beast hovering over her.

“She might not be compatible,” the thing says. It hasn’t attacked her, yet, has only so far lowered her down to the ground.

Furiosa swipes at it with her knife but the black flesh doesn’t even cut, just oozes out of the way of the blade.

“Do it,” Max says firmly.

“Do what?” she asks, but the words are slurred even to her own ears. If there’s an answer she doesn’t hear it, her head full of ringing and screaming pain, her shoulder and her stomach and twisted ankle and the cuts she’s taken, her skull feeling fit to crack right open.

And then-

Then the black thing is shifting, changing, and she must really be hallucinating now because it’s pulling into itself and leaving Max in its place- had she mistaken him for an attacker? Did she cut him with her knife, the knife falling from her nerveless fingers?

The black thing flows down Max’s arms and onto her, oily and slick and warm, strangely warm, the only warm thing left in the world.

It coils around her neck, pools over her chest, and then it begins to disappear, to sink down into her skin somehow, bringing its warmth with it.

It’s inside of her.

Furiosa screams. She uses what strength is left to her and twists and fights against Max’s gentle grip on her, unsure of what’s real and what’s a hallucination.

Above her Max is babbling nonsense in his familiar voice, but inside of her there’s another voice, this one deeper, slicker.

“It won’t hurt much longer,” the voice promises.

And it doesn’t. The pain flares bright and burning, her world going entirely white with it- and then just as suddenly the pain is gone. All of it.

All that’s left is a slick warm presence at the base of her skull, which she supposes must be where she’s bleeding out from. Then even that is receding, flowing up and away and leaving her feeling strangely bereft.

Black oozes out of her skin and crawls back to Max, who welcomes it eagerly, one hand on her shoulder and one hand cradling the writhing mass as it sinks down into his skin.

“It worked,” he whispers, eyes bright with moisture, voice cracked.

“She’s strong,” the thing’s voice says, pleased. “We’re keeping her, yes?”

“What the fuck,” Furiosa says, cautiously probing at the hole in her clothes where just moments before she’d been gutshot. She feels as if she’s had a week of rest, not that she’s just gone through a grueling battle the way she knows she has. Yet she doesn’t feel dead, unless death is exactly like life, complete with the minor inconveniences of sitting on a rock.

Max licks his lips, no sign of the black thing anywhere in evidence. “Ah,” he says. “I have a parasite?”