Medical collapse inside the final perimeter

Despite the improved food supply, the narrator is sick with fever, a severe sore throat, and the cold of nights inside the tank. In the citadel, wounded men lie unattended on cramped bunks while doctors operate continuously but cannot keep pace with incoming casualties. Painkillers and bandages run out, and the corridors fill with the sounds of men waiting for care. Unable to obtain treatment, he searches nearby houses and finds a medicine cabinet in a mansion. The episode makes medical exhaustion and improvised scavenging part of the citadel's final defence rather than treating casualties as a separate background problem.