"Baby Come Back" is the fourteenth mission of Season 6.
At Amelia's request you escort a contact through a fungus infested tunnel.
Cast[]
Plot[]
Across The Border To Anstis[]
Amelia bursts into the comms shack while Sam and Jamie are discussing Abel allied settlements. She needs you and Jamie to head to a European Rescue Force equipment cache and rescue a Laundry contact. Now.
The Coast Is Clear[]
Inside a garage, behind a market stall, you meet up with Dr Lobatse, who in turn takes you to Selma, your contact. Selma needs to escape because she's immune, and Sigrid is using immune women to farm immune babies.
To Abel - The Hard Way[]
You make it to the 'Perfume Factory' ERF cache, and pick up some heat-vision visors for the mission. You also grab some injectable GPS tags that Amelia can sell on the black market.
Time To Stomp Some Mushrooms[]
The way out takes you through a secret tunnel. It's filled with bio-engineered fungus, that will infect you with spores, turning you into a human mushroom farm, if you turn on a light.
Zombies With Fungus On Them![]
Down in the dark Selma explains how she knew the tunnels existed: Sigrid would give people torches, saying they could just walk to freedom, then wait to hear their grisly ends.
It Never Ends[]
Selma confides in you the story of what happened when Sigrid found out her friend, Maria, was immune. Amelia tells her life will be better at Abel, but only Sam, who nearly lost his daughter, can truly understand.
A Personal Guarantee[]
At the end of the tunnel Selma makes a decision: she'll allow Sigrid to find out she's immune. By injecting her with a GPS tracker, you can find out where the baby serum factory is. Amelia repeats her promise to make Selma's life better in future.
S06E14 // Rofflenet[]
Discussion regarding this mission can be found on Rofflenet
Transcript[]
JAMIE SKEET: Do you think we convinced them?
SAM YAO: [?]? I mean, they are keen on royalty, so maybe they’ll stay with the Abel alliance for a few more weeks.
JAMIE SKEET: How long until Sigrid’s promised them their doses of vaccine?
SAM YAO: A few weeks.
[comms shack door opens]
AMELIA SPENS: Sam, I have to talk to you now. It’s urgent.
SAM YAO: Urgent as in urgent, or urgent as in you’ve run out of rouge noir nail polish?
AMELIA SPENS: Both of those would be urgent, actually, but the first one. We’ve got a lead on the baby factory. A member of the Laundry wants to come over to us if we can guarantee her safety.
SAM YAO: Big if. Look what happened to Sweetpea.
AMELIA SPENS: This woman is important! She’s our best lead in months. Runner Five, we know Sigrid’s working on some way to exploit our weakness in the form of Moonchild in your head. Well, we’re working on a way to exploit her weakness, aren’t we? If we take those babies away from her, no more immunity serum, no more colonies going over to her.
JAMIE SKEET: Yeah, and we would be rescuing babies.
AMELIA SPENS: Oh, yes. I forget that other people care about this, too. How funny. We all care about something. Anyway, this woman, Selma, is hiding just over the border in Anstis Territory, but they’re rabid Wakened Land loyalists, so I’m going to give you a one time only route into their territory. It has to be Jamie and Five because… Jamie, you used to be a member of the European Rescue Force?
SAM YAO: What? The people who [?] oil wells and stuff? You never said!
JAMIE SKEET: I was, yeah.
AMELIA SPENS: Good. Selma’s hiding near an ERF equipment store, Jamie. The one you called the perfume factory.
JAMIE SKEET: Oh yeah, because it stunk of manure.
AMELIA SPENS: Yes. You’ll go across the border by using a single favor I have with the border official. So you’ll be getting in the easy way, and the ERF equipment will help you get out the hard way.
JAMIE SKEET: Sounds just like the good old days.
AMELIA SPENS: Right then, that’s decided. But you have to be quick. All key Ministry staff have to clock in regularly, and they’ll soon know she’s gone. Jamie, Five, head west, then south, across the border to Anstis. Now!
JAMIE SKEET: Ah, there it is, past the market square. The perfume factory. Haven’t seen that place in years!
AMELIA SPENS: Dr. Lobatse is waiting by that fruit stand. She’s been sheltering your contact.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: Five, King James, it is good to see you both.
JAMIE SKEET: I just go by Jamie, to be honest.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: Quickly, come this way. Selma is hiding in that garage. She has been waiting for more than one hour now.
SAM YAO: One hour? People wait for weeks to cross borders! What is this woman? Why does she get the one-time pass and the European Rescue Force equipment?
[garage door rolls up]
KEFILWE LOBATSE: Five, Jamie, this is Selma.
SELMA: Hello.
KEFILWE LOBASTE: Do you want to tell them why you need to leave, Selma? You do not have to say if you don’t want to.
SELMA: No, it’s okay. You deserve to know if you’re going to help me. I’m immune, and Sigrid wants to send me to her baby farm to make little immune babies to make little vials of immunity serum from.
SAM YAO: Yeah, okay. I’ve heard enough. Five, Jamie, give this woman every possible assistance. Bots, give her a headset. [headset beeps] Selma, we’re getting you out of there. Amelia, you could have said. I thought we agreed no keeping leads to yourself anymore.
AMELIA SPENS: Old habits.
SAM YAO: You’re heading for the perfume factory, aka the thing that looks like a ruined old shed. The coast is clear. Go now. Run!
[door slams shut]
KEFILWE LOBATSE: My goodness, that smell is really quite strong.
SELMA: It does pong. Still, that’ll have made it less attractive to looters, especially in Anstis, where there are so many strictures against unclean places. Your equipment might still be intact, Jamie.
JAMIE SKEET: [rummages] Oh my word, you’re right! It’s all still here.
SAM YAO: Selma, you sound… knowledgeable about the new world order.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: Selma has been a member of the Ministry for many years.
SELMA: And before that, a civil servant. Department of Work and Pensions, originally. I’ve been organizing rationing and work deployments since the apocalypse. It’s my job to know what’s going on everywhere. That’s how I knew to ask Dr. Lobatse for help finding non-immune blood. Sigrid’s been doing blood tests, looking for immune people for months now.
SAM YAO: How did you know you’re immune? I never knew I was, not for years.
SELMA: I got bitten by the postman on the second day of the major outbreak. As I understand it, that’s not the kind of thing one typically just shrugs off. And before you ask, no, I don’t know where they take immune women. But I do know what happens to them. That’s what convinced me to work with the Laundry.
AMELIA SPENS: And you’ve done sterling work, Selma! And now you get out before Sigrid catches up with you. Jamie, much as I’m enjoying watching your rippling shoulder muscles as you rifle through that locker, have you found anything useful?
JAMIE SKEET: Exo-skels, drones. They need a lot of battery power, but it’s good to know they’re here. I’ve got the heat sensitive visors. Got some long range GPS tag injections here for keeping track of personnel in a hurricane. No need for that.
AMELIA SPENS: No, no! Uh, take it. I can sell it on the black market.
JAMIE SKEET: Oh, you’re delightful, you are. Five, Lobatse, Selma, visors for you. We’re getting you to Abel the very hard way.
SAM YAO: Oh my God, what is that? Looks like a tunnel full of mushrooms.
JAMIE SKEET: Yeah. These ones on the outside ain’t the ones you need to worry about.
AMELIA SPENS: Further down, there’s a bioengineered fungus coating the walls. It’s sensitive to light. If you turn a light on in there, even for a second, the fungus will release its spores, so you’ll need your visors to get through.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: I do not understand. Are the spores deadly to breathe in?
SELMA: It was engineered as a weapon. The spores burrow under your skin, and you become a human mushroom farm.
SAM YAO: Yeesh. Ugh. You know, [laughs] some days I feel like the zombie apocalypse came just in time to stop us destroying ourselves a dozen different ways.
SELMA: I know what you mean. I wasn’t much of a believer in the milk of human kindness before the apocalypse. I think people have got nicer since, more generous and compassionate. Look at you all, trying to rescue me. You’re all very kind.
AMELIA SPENS: I’m not.
SAM YAO: She’s really not, actually.
AMELIA SPENS: I want to be clear about this: I am a terrible person. I’m helping you because I hope you’ll give me valuable information about the Minister, and I have no idea why you continued to work for the Laundry for so long when you could have been selling secrets to the highest bidder.
SELMA: Right. Okay. But the rest of you -
KEFILWE LOBATSE: We believe in doing what’s right.
JAMIE SKEET: I’ve got this inherited duty, but yeah, I’d do it anyway.
SAM YAO: I just like people.
SELMA: Well, that’s what I mean.
JAMIE SKEET: Let’s get going down this tunnel. Time to stomp some mushrooms.
SAM YAO: Yeah, I wouldn’t go with that as a catchphrase. Five, you take point. Run!
JAMIE SKEET: You’re doing well there, Five. You’re a natural with the visor.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: These tunnels twist and turn. If we could not see, we would be lost.
SELMA: And if we tried to make a light… look at the body of this person. There’s a flashlight in her hand, and a six-foot-tall fungus growing out through her head.
JAMIE SKEET: I thought zombification was bad, but that might be worse!
SELMA: Do you know how I knew this tunnel was here?
SAM YAO: Oh, please tell me it’s because you love mushrooms and think they’re “fungis” to be with.
SELMA: Sigrid used to send people here.
SAM YAO: [sighs] See? I didn’t want to know that. ...Carry on.
SELMA: She’d tell them there was a way out. She’d send them down here equipped with boots and torches. Told them they could have their freedom if they just walked through the tunnels. And then she’d wait at this end to hear the screams. I keep thinking I’ll see a corpse I recognize. There were so many.
She’s a monster. The more power she has, the more monstrous she’s become. I haven’t done enough to fight her, not by a long chalk, but I’ve done what I can. With what she’d do to me if she knew I could give her an immune baby -
KEFILWE LOBATSE: You will never have to go back there, Selma.
[zombie moans]
AMELIA SPENS: With all this grimness, it’s almost a relief to tell you, team, not everyone down there became a fungus-infected corpse! Some of them apparently became zombies. Oh, with fungus on them. So, you know, do keep running.
JAMIE SKEET: Nothing like being in the pitch dark with a pack of zombies following you and walls coated in deadly fungus around you, eh, Five?
AMELIA SPENS: Yes, that’s technically true. Although I think a lot of things you Abel people get up to are a bit like being in the pitch dark, hunted by zombies and fungus. Selma, did you know that Dr. Lobatse could leave Ministry territory at any time, but she has willingly decided to stay and treat patients because she thinks it’s the right thing to do?
SELMA: Has she?
KEFILWE LOBATSE: Well, it is the right thing to do.
AMELIA SPENS: You see what I mean? Meanwhile, you, Selma - goodness knows what secrets you have for me about Sigrid – you are going to have a simply marvelous time with me at New Canton. My personal masseur can’t wait to get his fingers into you. I’ve got roast quail waiting for your supper. Do you think you’d enjoy a jacuzzi?
SELMA: I haven’t had a bath in six months. Sigrid took my friend, Maria.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: We heard about that. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.
SELMA: She was immune. The Laundry helped her hide. That’s how I got to know her. They found her because she kept switching jobs just before the mandatory blood tests. She tried to run and they caught her.
Before all of this, she was a marine biologist. She just really liked fish, and squid, and plankton, and whales, the ocean. She never wanted children. She always said that only people who really, really want them should have them. If she hadn’t been immune, Sigrid would have just sent her down here, I expect. Sometimes I think about what might be happening to her now. There’s no way to find her. We tried a dozen different ways.
SAM YAO: So have we. They tried to take my daughter.
SELMA: I know. That’s why I came to you. ...God, it’s dark in here!
SAM YAO: So, so dark. And it never ends.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: A psychoanalyst might call this observation overdetermined, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
SELMA: [laughs] That’s safety. Over there.
JAMIE SKEET: A 30-foot climb up a sheer rock face, and then safety? Yeah.
SELMA: And the massages, and quail, and jacuzzis…
AMELIA SPENS: I also have a very finely stocked wine cellar. But then, that’s the kind of person I am. As I understand it, most people think I’m terrible.
SELMA: I wish I were more like you! [sighs] I can’t go. If I weren’t immune, if I had worse credentials, if I were just a tiny bit more terrible… she’d kill you, Sam. She’d never trust you enough to use you.
SAM YAO: I know. We’ve thought of it, believe me. If I could find the babies by giving myself up…
SELMA: They don’t keep the men with the babies, anyway. And there are a series of tests, holding areas...fertility treatment zones. Amelia, I know what you’ve been trying to do.
AMELIA SPENS: Me? Manipulation? I don’t know what you mean.
SELMA: It worked, anyway. I wish I were like you, but I’m not.
AMELIA SPENS: I know.
SELMA: That stuff you told Jamie to take, the GPS tag injection, that’ll mean you can track me?
JAMIE SKEET: Yeah, for months.
SELMA: I won’t need months. I’ll run as soon as I have enough to help you find them. And you’ll come and get me?
AMELIA SPENS: I will. Or die trying, and I’m not going to die trying, that’s just not who I am. So this is as close to a cast iron guarantee as you are ever going to get this side of the apocalypse.
KEFILWE LOBATSE: We will come for you. You are – you are a very brave woman.
SELMA: We’ve all had to be braver than we thought. Come on, then. Inject me. We’ve just got time to run back through these horrific dark tunnels before I’m missed.
AMELIA SPENS: And there will be roast quail, and masseurs, and so on when you’re finished, Selma. I personally guarantee it.
Codex[]
Letter[]
Hey Five,
We’re having some of Phil’s cider in the rec room later, if you want to join us. Something to keep our minds off thinking about what Selma might be going through, and that dark tunnel. It gave me the right creeps…
On a less murder-by-mushrooms note, I’ve gotten a bit jealous of Jody’s Janine impression. I thought I’d try my hand - what’d you think?
"Runner Five, I must thank you for your exemplary work the past few weeks. You have behaved with the utmost integrity, and unlike Mr. Yao, you don’t jeopardise the mission when you notice something more interesting, like a jar of Marmite.
Despite this, he is of course a most impressive radio operator, whom I would trust with my life. Thank goodness he's immune, because we would certainly be hopelessly lost without his skill. It would be splendid to have a Sam Yao Appreciation Day, where we can truly express the gratitude we feel for him. In fact, once I get back to Abel, I think I ought to organise just that!"
Alright, so I may be a little rusty, but I'll get the hang of it again soon...
- Sam
Supplies[]
The following supplies can be found in this mission.
(List may be incomplete.)
9mm Ammo
Axe
Bandages
Batteries
Book
Bottled Water
Candles
Cricket bat
Mobile Phone
Pain Meds
Playing cards
Power Cable
Shorts
Teddy bear
Tinned Food
Trousers
Underwear
USB Key
Whisky
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