- For the Abel's Buccaneers mission, see The Devil and the Deep.
"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is the first mission of Season 8.
In pursuit of Jones, the Edda, and the technology to save Janine’s life, you travel to the Far Hebrides, arriving first at the dreaded Devil’s Breath Cave on Mor Island.
Cast[]
Plot[]
Bow Hatch[]
Janine, Jody, Tom and other Abel citizens are with you on a submarine, tracking Jones’ boat to the Far Hebrides. Between the debris caused by the storm and the Far Hebrides’ staunch independence from the mainland, you’re having trouble finding it. Finally, the Captain spots the yacht on Mor Island, but the shore on this side of the island is too shallow for the sub to dock.
Across the Beach[]
You emerge on the south side of Mor Island, with Jones’ yacht on the north side. To keep the element of surprise, you’ll have to cross the beach and use the network of the caves to get to the other side of the island. Because of Jones’ upbringing, there’s no telling what allies he has in the Far Hebrides.
No More[]
You and your friends arrive at the mouth of Devil’s Breath cave. The tide is coming in, and you all notice that there are zombies covered in coral starting to make their way up the sandbar. You’ll need to move fast through these caves if you have any hope of escaping!
Honeycomb of Tunnels[]
The caves have two paths you can follow: one leads to certain death; the other to safety. Ellie knows to listen out for the sound of birds, and Jody hears them in the left tunnel. The birds roost in the tunnels leading to the dead end, so you all take the right tunnel.
Take Point[]
While pondering why Jones ever left these islands, Paula steps into a geyser, which triggers a large boulder to start rolling towards you all. If you stay here, you’ll all get crushed, but you’ll be caught by the zombies if you turn back. You must take shelter in the small ritual alcoves in the cave if you want to survive.
Stalactites[]
The boulder narrowly misses Sam, but you’re all safe for now. Janine’s leg gives out on her, thanks to the nanites in her blood. You must get the control box back soon lest her condition worsen. Ellie thinks she can use the traps to your advantage, by turning them against the zombies.
Seconds Before[]
You discover that the cave is behind a waterfall. Ellie spots false stalactites that were planted in the ancient times to cause the entire ceiling to fall in on visitors. Ellie wants you to throw a rock at one of them, and then you need to run so you won’t get crushed.
Unpredictable[]
The zombies were hurt by the falling stalactites, but many of them are still moving forward, albeit slowly. You’re nearing the end of the cave, but you must move fast if you hope to catch Jones.
She Can’t Be[]
You emerge unscathed from the caves. But before you can reach Jones’ boat, someone starts shooting at you, and Janine thinks it must be Jones himself. Ellie gets shot in the chest, and Paula insists you must leave her. She’s been shot in the heart, and there’s no surviving that. You help Paula carry Sam away.
S08E01 // Rofflenet[]
Discussion regarding this mission can be found on Rofflenet
Transcript[]
JANINE DE LUCA: Do you see him, Captain? Any sign of Jones’ boat?
CAPTAIN: Last night’s storm has thrown a huge amount of debris into the ocean, Colonel De Luca. Even with our digital periscope, a large vessel can be hard to spot.
JODY MARSH: We have to find him. Jones has the only thing that can save Janine’s life. It’s been five days since he left the oil rig, and this is the first time we’ve got close to the tracker in his boat.
JANINE DE LUCA: He also has something far more valuable than the nanite control box, Miss Marsh. He has the missing piece of the Edda that will help us to defeat the V-type zombies on the mainland.
CAPTAIN: The tracker says he’s close to Mor Island, the largest island in the Far Hebrides archipelago. We’ll find him.
SAM YAO: Yeah. Do you know any more about why they’re not replying to any comms pings? I must have tried to contact them 50 times in the past day.
ELLIE MAXTED: The Far Hebrides are notoriously… independent. It’s a tradition that goes back centuries. They were never conquered by England like the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
SAM YAO: But they were part of the UK.
TOM DE LUCA: But they never really believed it, even before the apocalypse. They had their own ways of doing things.
PAULA COHEN: We tried to send them cases of the cure, but they refused. They said they hadn’t had a zombie get onto the island since the start of the outbreak, so they had no need of it.
SAM YAO: What? They’ve never had zombies? Well, why don’t we all move there?
JANINE DE LUCA: Mr. Yao, we are here for our mission, nothing more. The Undaunted cannot be spared from the mainland, but we are enough. Each of us is here for a reason. Myself and Miss Marsh, for operations. Tom for tactical. Dr. Cohen is our medic. Miss Maxted is our expert in the ancient and modern people of the Far Hebrides and will be a vital passport onto the islands. Five is the mission runner.
SAM YAO: And I’m here because you lot couldn’t stop me coming.
LOOKOUT: I see it!
CAPTAIN: That’s it. The old rig’s yacht. The name’s on the side. Seaside Base. Hmm. That side of the island is too shallow for the sub. We’ll take you as close as we can. All of you to the bow hatch, now!
CAPTAIN: All hands, Undaunted has reached Mor Island. Suspect vessel stolen by the fugitive Jones sighted on far side of island. Passengers, prepare to disembark submarine via bow hatch. Good luck, Abel runners.
[hatch creaks and clatters open, rain pours]
JANINE DE LUCA: Welcome to the Far Hebrides.
SAM YAO: It’s dark, it smells of cow dung, and it’s raining so hard, I can’t see the shore. And we’re on the shore!
JANINE DE LUCA: A run will warm you up, Mr. Yao. We’re on the south of Mor Island. Jones’ boat is on the north side. So as not to alert him to our presence, we’ll cross the beach and then use the network of caves to head west and then north.
TOM DE LUCA: Where we find Jones on the shore, take the control box from him, and reverse whatever those nanites are doing to you, Jane.
JANINE DE LUCA: I’m fine.
PAULA COHEN: That’s not what your bloodwork says! You might not be feeling it yet, but the nanites in your bloodstream are already switching off cell reproduction.
JANINE DE LUCA: All the more reason to deal with this swiftly. Our intelligence suggests that Jones was born and raised somewhere in the Hebrides. We have no idea what allies he might have been able to muster locally.
SAM YAO: Yeah, so uh, maybe let’s not stay? Just one dark windswept run through storms and caves, then - then we grab Jones, get the control box and the Edda, and be back in our warm comfy radio room eating celebratory Curly Wurlies by tomorrow night.
JODY MARSH: Time to get moving. Everyone, jump from the submarine and then run across the beach to the caves. Go!
ELLIE MAXTED: Oh, wow! This is Devil’s Breath Cave. I’ve seen photos, but it’s incredible in real life! Look at the stalactites hanging down like razor sharp teeth, Five! Ancient Far Hebrideans believed this was the mouth of a stone demon, and demons bred inside these caves.
SAM YAO: Okay, and we’re sure that’s not true, right? I mean, it’s not demons that keep the zombies off the islands?
TOM DE LUCA: I’m more worried about seawater. The tide’s coming in. The front of the cave will soon be underwater.
JODY MARSH: That’s not all! Look in the sea behind us. The Undaunted stirred something up.
SAM YAO: Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely a zom hand over there, dragging its soggy body onto the sandbar.
PAULA COHEN: What’s that all over its face? Some sort of decay from the sea water.
JODY MARSH: Oh, bits of coral and seaweed stuck in its skin, I think! Like someone made a bad school art project out of a zombie.
SAM YAO: Look, there’s another one coming out behind it. And another one there.
TOM DE LUCA: We have vials of the cure with us, but we can’t waste it. There’ll be no more when it’s gone. We should get away from the zoms. Head into the caves. Run!
JODY MARSH: Everyone, keep your headlamps at full brightness as we go deeper.
JANINE DE LUCA: First, we need to pick a path. The cave’s split into two tunnels ahead.
[zombies groan]
ELLIE MAXTED: Okay. I’ve researched this. The myth around this cave says that there is one true path. One path leads to life, another to suffering and the spawn of demons.
TOM DE LUCA: A dead end means either the zoms or the tide will catch us.
SAM YAO: Or both. It’s always both.
ELLIE MAXTED: I read about it. There is a way through. It’s… can you hear bird calls through either tunnel?
[birds squawk]
JODY MARSH: There! I hear them to the left.
SAM YAO: So that’s the way out, where the birds are!
ELLIE MAXTED: No! That’s the way to certain death. The birds nest in a honeycomb of tunnels we’d never find our way through. The other path is correct. Follow me. Run!
JANINE DE LUCA: You were correct, Miss Maxted. This is the right path. We won’t get trapped here, but we must stay ahead of the zombies.
SAM YAO: Is it me, or do these islands already feel a bit… dangerous?
TOM DE LUCA: That might be why Jones came here. To be protected. He must know we’ll come after him. He may hope to trap us here.
JODY MARSH: What he did on the oil rig was so chaotic, though! Just injecting Janine with whatever he had to hand. Would he plan it all out?
PAULA COHEN: If he feels safe here, he might come here without a plan, like a wild animal going to ground.
ELLIE MAXTED: I’ve been thinking about him a lot. It makes sense that someone who comes from a tight-knit community like a Hebridean Island would have ended up with Sage. It was that same feeling. Everyone knew everyone and we all worked together. But if he liked that here, why did he ever -
[water gushes]
PAULA COHEN: [shout] What was that? A fountain of water just almost knocked me over!
SAM YAO: A geyser, like in Iceland!
ELLIE MAXTED: Devil’s breath! The name comes from the sprays of water that erupt when the tide comes in. I know this. The people of the Far Hebrides were experts at rerouting geysers to act as defenses against intruders. They left boulders perfectly balanced on rock ledges, and the regular spout of the geyser stopped them rolling down. So if someone stepped into the geyser…
PAULA COHEN: Like I just did.
ELLIE MAXTED: Like you just did, yes. It would slightly unbalance the rock and -
SAM YAO: And that boulder on the ledge above us would start to roll down!
JODY MARSH: It’s following the ledge! If we stay here, it’ll crush us, but if we go back, the zombies will get us!
ELLIE MAXTED: It’s okay! There should be small ritual alcoves in the tunnel on the – on the west side, facing the sunrise.
JANINE DE LUCA: I see them up ahead. We must get there before the boulder reaches us. Five, take point. Run!
[boulder rumbles]
SAM YAO: Wow! That boulder was huge! It would have smashed us all flat. Did you see how close it came to the tip of my nose as it rolled by this alcove?
TOM DE LUCA: At least it took out some of the zombies behind us, though there are still plenty left. [JANINE SHOUTS] Jane! What’s wrong?
JANINE DE LUCA: Blasted leg. Knee stopped working. Sudden stabbing pain. Seems to be easing off now.
SAM YAO: Is that – is that going to keep happening?
PAULA COHEN: That, or worse. This is the start. We have to get the control box back before the nanites do damage your body can’t recover from.
JANINE DE LUCA: So we must keep moving. Will we run into more ancient traps, Miss Maxted?
ELLIE MAXTED: Maybe we can use the traps to take out the zoms, like the boulder did. Kill two birds with one stone.
SAM YAO: How? Is there a switch or something? Are you secretly Indiana Jones?
ELLIE MAXTED: Don’t get me started on the blatant inaccuracies of those movies!
JANINE DE LUCA: Tell us what we need to do.
ELLIE MAXTED: Right. There’ll be three types of trap in Devil’s Breath Caves. Boulders, we’ve seen. There’ll also be holes in the ground with spikes in them, and falling stalactites.
JANINE DE LUCA: We can avoid the first two if we stay close to the wall and keep our eyes on the ground.
ELLIE MAXTED: And I think I can use the stalactites to help us, but we have to get to the next cavern before the zoms do. Run!
JODY MARSH: Wow! I didn’t think the cave would open up so much.
SAM YAO: Or be behind a waterfall. It’d be picturesque if it weren’t dark and full of zombies.
ELLIE MAXTED: There are stalactites overhead. We’re looking for… there, Five. See the discolored stalactite? Sort of bluish. The ancient people of the Far Hebrides would put an artificial stalactite here that’ll cause a domino effect when it cracks off. Throw a rock at it. And then we need to run. We’ll have seconds before the ceiling falls. [rocks clatter] Now! Run!
[rocks clatter and collapse]
ELLIE MAXTED: Got ‘em!
SAM YAO: Wow, that was nice! It triggered in slow motion, like one stalactite after another, rippling off the ceiling. [laughs] Did you see the rock go right through the heads of those zoms like a giant stone dagger?
JANINE DE LUCA: There are still several moving forward that have been slowed considerably by the rock protruding from their bodies.
ELLIE MAXTED: We’re almost at the exit.
TOM DE LUCA: And not a moment too soon. Jones is unpredictable. There’s no guarantee he’ll stay put here. We have to move quickly. Run!
SAM YAO: Ah man, this is nice. Fresh air, no zoms. I was beginning to think we’d be in that dark cave forever.
ELLIE MAXTED: There’s a coastal path that’ll take us to the beach where Jones’ boat is moored. With any luck, we’ll be there before he’s left the boat. Five, I cannot wait to get my hands on the Edda! Did you know it’s supposed to have been written on these islands?
I’ve been revising all my Anglo-Saxon, and my Norse, and my Icelandic. Old sources say there are illustrations in it! Could be pictograms, or a map, and another part of the Edda has a drawing of the mountain -
[gunshots]
JANINE DE LUCA: Someone’s shooting. Get down.
TOM DE LUCA: Gunfire, coming from that hill.
JANINE DE LUCA: Must be Jones. Everybody run for cover, towards the -
[JODY MARSH, TOM DE LUCA, and JANINE DE LUCA frantically speak over each other]
ELLIE MAXTED: What? Where are they – [gasps] Five?
SAM YAO: Janine, Paula! They hit Ellie in the chest! Ellie, Ellie, it’s okay. Five’s here, I’m here. Just – just open your eyes, okay? I need help here! I need help, please!
PAULA COHEN: Sam, she’s shot in the heart. We can’t help her. We have to go.
SAM YAO: No, we can’t leave Ellie. She – she doesn’t even have her eyes open. Five, help me carry her!
JODY MARSH: Ellie’s gone, Sam. Look at her. She’s gone.
SAM YAO: No. No, she can’t be. Paula, you must be able to do something. Paula!
PAULA COHEN: Sam, please. Ellie is dead. She’s dead! Whoever those people are, they’re trying to kill all of us. We have to go. Five, help me bring Sam. Run!
Codex[]
Artefact[]
Map of the Far Hebrides archipelago
An old, hand-drawn map of the Far Hebrides archipelago. Hopefully it’ll provide some guidance navigating the treacherous caves and cliff-sides of these isolated islands
Letter[]
Hey Five,
I just wanted to say- I’m sorry I lost it for a while back there. I know you and Paula were just trying to get us to safety, and I know we had the mission to think of, it’s just… it’s not fair. It’s not fair. We have a cure for the zombie virus now, we’ve stopped Van Ark and the Last Riders and Moonchild and Sigrid, we’ve given up so much to rebuild and to make things better, so why do we keep losing people?
Ellie was a good person, and a good friend, and she was so smart, and it just… it’s hard to understand why this keeps happening to the best people. Ellie deserved to see this through to the end. She didn’t deserve to die on some random stony, cold beach, a million miles from home. If we lose Janine, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I’m- I’m really sorry for putting all of this on you. If you have a free moment later, I think I could really use some company.
Sam
Supplies[]
The following supplies can be found in this mission.
(List may be incomplete.)
Bandages
Book
Boots
Fuel Can
Hairbrush
Overcoat
Radio
Shorts
Trousers
Base Unlocks[]
The following objects unlock for your Base upon completing this mission.
Arcade
- Description: The first couple of times a group of survivors turned up at Abel with an old arcade cabinet in tow, Sam was surprised and delighted and gave them a hero's welcome. Once it became clear that "saving our digital heritage" was a more common impulse than you might think, the excitement wore off, but the size of Abel's arcade grew. Just don't unplug the Frogger machine.
- Cost: 50 supplies, 4 materials
- Effect: Increases morale.
High School
- Description: The teenagers of Abel Township were starting to get a little tired of trying to squeeze behind desks built for primary schoolers, so Janine has agreed to set up a dedicated high school for Abel's older students. It might not be Degrassi High, or even the Breakfast club, but the drama, dedication, and teen fashion on display at Abel High is a wonderful reminder of the resilience of our young people.
- Cost: 60 supplies, 2 materials (level 1); 150 supplies, 3 materials (level 2); 300 supplies, 4 materials (level 3)
- Effect: Increases population by 10 (level 1); increases morale and population by 5 (level 2); increases morale and population by 5 (level 3).
Physiotherapy Building
- Description: With the increase in access to medical supplies, and a couple of new additions to the township's medical team, the residents of Abel are glad to have a dedicated physiotherapy centre to help those in recovery.
- Cost: 60 supplies, 2 materials (level 1); 150 supplies, 3 materials (level 2); 300 supplies, 4 materials (level 3)
- Effect: Increases morale (level 1); increases morale and population by 15 (level 2); increases morale and population by 5 (level 3).
Tailor
- Description: Since it's no longer as easy to procure clothes, the residents of Abel Township have taken to mending and upcycling their own clothes rather than simply discarding them. Having a trained tailor in town who actually knows their way around a sewing machine has been a boon to the township.
- Cost: 25 supplies, 3 materials
- Effect: Increases max. population by 15.
| Missions | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Previous: The End | Next: Aftershock | ||