"Under Pressure" is the twenty-third mission of Season 6.
Sneaking onto an old Ministry ship gives you more answers about Moonchild than expected.
Cast[]
Crew[]
- Writer: Naomi Alderman
- Director: Matt Wieteska
- Sound Designer: Mark Pittam
- Series Created By: Naomi Alderman
Plot[]
Up The Gangway[]
You're leading Veronica and Maxine through a shipyard today, where you'll sneak around some guards onto a ship, to find clues about how Sigrid triggered Moonchild in you.
Seen Everything Anyway[]
Inside a ship Sigrid planned to use for experiments on you, Veronica presses some 'trigger' buttons and Moonchild is in your ear for a moment. Unfortunately you've also attracted some zoms.
On This Ship Before[]
Veronica uses your thumbprint to open a locked door, much to Sam and Maxine's surprise. In the corridor Maxine spots an old backpack of yours - it seems you've been on this ship before...
Need To Get Out Of Here[]
Sam and Maxine are worried by how much Veronica seems to know about the workings of this ship. She finds some equipment to monitor Moonchild, but Moonchild thinks you're in danger and should run!
Something Happened Here[]
As Maxine and Veronica try to catch up to you they see Moonchild's thoughts being printed on old printers. Suddenly Moonchild remembers something, and directs you to the lower deck.
Open That Door[]
Moonchild takes over while she searches for something - a memory of when the two of you were here, separate, in the past. She snaps you out of your reverie in time to evade some guards.
Risen Again[]
After avoiding the guards you meet back up with Veronica and Maxine. Veronica gets upset with Maxine about information not being shared with her, because she thinks she can help you.
S06E23 // Rofflenet[]
Discussion regarding this mission can be found on Rofflenet
Transcript[]
SAM YAO: Okay, okay. Runner Five, you’re leading the team into that – mm, now how can I describe it? Um, rusting hulk of an ocean-going science vessel in dry dock with a bunch of other rusting hulks. Uh, it’s covered in barnacles and weird bits of sea moss?
VERONICA MCSHELL: What is it you’re supposed to say when you see a ship, Dr. Myers? Is it, “Thar she blows”?
MAXINE MYERS: I think that’s when you see a whale or Moby Dick.
VERONICA MCSHELL: Oh. I know Moby Dick. You can’t catch him. You’ll die trying.
SAM YAO: All right, all right. But no one’s dying today, okay? All right? There will be no portentous revelations. No one is going to say that they’re Ahab and the cure is the whale.
MAXINE MYERS: Roger. Veronica, if you identify with Captain Ahab, you are grounded.
VERONICA MCSHELL: [sighs] How much longer until we can get onto the ship, Sam?
SAM YAO: Well, the guards are doing their final sweep for this hour. Your window to get on board is in a minute.
VERONICA MCSHELL: The Minister used that ship to research Moonchild Syndrome. Maybe we’ll find some clues about how she triggered Moonchild in you, Runner Five. Her research was more advanced than we thought.
MAXINE MYERS: As in so many areas, the Minister was always one step ahead of us.
SAM YAO: What? The cure is real, then? Not like "one weird trick to cure your zombie infection"?
MAXINE MYERS: Oh, it’s real. I mean, Paula really wanted to do this mission because she’s gotten nostalgic for… we are certain the Minister knows how to cure the zombie plague.
VERONICA MCSHELL: You can say it. She knows how to cure the zombie plague, and I don’t.
SAM YAO: No one expected you to be able to do that, Veronica.
VERONICA MCSHELL: Everyone expected me to do that.
SAM YAO: Right. Okay. Your window’s coming up. Be ready to run in seven, six, five -
VERONICA MCSHELL: I think you might be Captain Ahab, Runner Five.
SAM YAO: - four, three, two, one. Time to go! Up the gangway onto that ship, before the guards spot you.
SAM YAO: Uh, wow, yeah. Uh, yeah, I’ve got a couple of cams in there. That place is covered in barnacles inside and out. Rusted open doors encrusted with limpets. The floor’s half eaten away with rust.
[ship creaks]
VERONICA MCSHELL: The Minister dredged the ocean floor for this ship. She told me she thought it was important.
MAXINE MYERS: There’s new equipment here among the rusted stuff, Sam. Look at this! A brand new audio mixing desk.
SAM YAO: [laughs] Intel from the Laundry is that people are still being brought to that boat occasionally. We’ve picked up a little bit of chatter via that transmitter Jody built. And Ellie’s been helping us. In all the confusion, the Minister didn’t guess a thing about her helping us escape.
Anyway, yeah. We think this boat is one of the places she’s done experiments on people with Moonchild Syndrome. I suppose she would have done experiments on you here, Five, if she’d managed to find you, her Alpha. Kytan said she was looking for you among all the Moonchild Syndrome sufferers. She must have been trying to work out how to do what she did to get Moonchild to take you over.
MAXINE MYERS: Five, if Sigrid has a back door into you, we are going to slam it shut. Hey Veronica, look at these labeled switches. “Stable trigger 1,” “unstable trigger.” I feel pretty “unstable” myself. Whoa, this floor is slippy! [laughs]
VERONICA MCSHELL: Runner Five, I’m going to press a button. It will only last a second.
MAXINE MYERS: Veronica, wait! You don’t know what this will do to Runner Five.
VERONICA MCSHELL: And we won’t find out until I try. I’ve been too timid in my research, Dr. Myers. That’s been the whole problem. Runner Five, we will help you if it becomes unmanageable.
[button clicks, low buzzing tone emits]
MOONCHILD: Well, this is awkward. [laughs] Here I am. No fanfare. No exciting adventures. What do you want?
VERONICA MCSHELL: [muffled] Is she there?
MOONCHILD: Are you letting this teenage witch experiment on your brain, Five?
VERONICA MCSHELL: [muffled] Good. I’m turning it off. [presses button]
SAM YAO: Um, guys. I’m picking up something on cams. Something attracted by the noise.
MAXINE MYERS: We see them. Six zoms, decayed. One of them has barnacles on its skull.
VERONICA MCSHELL: It’s okay. We’ve seen everything we need to here anyway. Follow me.
[zombies groan]
[zombies groan]
VERONICA MCSHELL: This way. Left down this passage.
MAXINE MYERS: Those zoms are right behind us, Veronica. The barnacles are giving their feet extra grip on the floor.
VERONICA MCSHELL: It’s all right! We’re here.
[doorknob rattles]
MAXINE MYERS: We’re at a dead end! That door is locked. Five, grab that piece of pipe. I think we can kill them if we have to.
VERONICA MCSHELL: You always think so little of me, Dr. Myers! Five, give me your hand. Put your thumb on that pad.
[security system beeps]
COMPUTER: Access granted. Doors opening.
[doors clatter open]
SAM YAO: Oh. Whoa. Five’s thumb print just opened the door. How did you know?
VERONICA MCSHELL: Even after all the time you’ve known me, you still think of me as a little girl. I have to be protected. You need to hide the truth from me. You can’t trust me. Didn’t you think to ask yourselves why the Minister dredged this ship up from the ocean floor?
SAM YAO: Yeah, I mean, she does do a lot of crazy things for no apparent reason. She just fired one of her aides for looking at her weird.
MAXINE MYERS: This was Moonchild’s ship, right?
VERONICA MCSHELL: It was. One of her fleet. [sighs] We don’t have much time to investigate, and this door can only be locked from the outside, so we have to hurry. Come on!
MAXINE MYERS: [whispers] Sam, Five, do you see that backpack hanging up on the corridor there?
SAM YAO: Nah. Uh, lights are too dim. All I get on my cams is just like, well, there are metal corridors, and maybe the air is made of soup?
MAXINE MYERS: It’s your backpack, Runner Five. The one you ran off with when Moonchild was mind-controlling you? It never made it back to Abel. I think you’ve been on this ship before.
VERONICA MCSHELL: Look in here. Dr. Myers, do you see it?
MAXINE MYERS: I can see a glass paneled room with three corpses, Veronica. There’s graffiti on the wall. It says, “She talks with me. I will do her bidding, child of the moon.”
VERONICA MCSHELL: I wonder how they died? They look like quite fresh corpses, don’t they? Maybe not more than five or six weeks old? In your medical opinion.
MAXINE MYERS: Yes. What are you doing here, Veronica? I thought you were here to find out what experiments Sigrid had done to learn how to trigger Moonchild in Runner Five’s mind so that we can stop her?
VERONICA MCSHELL: That is what we’re here for.
SAM YAO: Uh, look. I think what Maxie is saying, Veronica, is that… is that you seem to know a lot more about what might have happened on this ship than you’ve let on. And...we’re a bit concerned about that.
VERONICA MCSHELL: I was working with the Minister last year. She told some of the things she was working on. I didn’t think this sounded very interesting, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. I wanted to find the cure. That would have been important. But I didn’t find the cure, so all that time and effort was wasted.
MAXINE MYERS: You shouldn’t blame yourself for not finding the cure, Veronica. It’s not your fault. It was a huge amount to ask.
VERONICA MCSHELL: I don’t blame myself. I blame you. You destroyed Professor Van Ark’s notes. They are clearly what she used to find the cure so quickly. He must have been on to something that I hadn’t thought of.
[sighs] It’s too late to worry about that now, though. I want to get ahead where I can. I don’t think the Minister realized she told me enough to details to work out where this place was and what she was doing here. She mentioned individual details in eight different conversations, but I put it together.
Hmm. I’ll just use that crowbar to get the door open. [door cracks open, glass shatters] There. It’s open. It’s there! She’s left one here!
SAM YAO: Uh, Veronica, would you like to share your working with the rest of the class?
VERONICA MCSHELL: Look, I have one of those headsets Mr. Kytan used to monitor Moonchild’s activity in your brain, Five. And look, Dr. Myers. The Minister’s left one of the boosters that she used to experiment on people with Moonchild Syndrome. If I connect them up like this and then put it on your head, Five – [cloth rustles]
MAXINE MYERS: Oh, I see! You should be able to monitor exactly what Sigrid was doing in this chamber. Yeah! That’s smart! Grisly, but smart. Just put this headset on again, Five. We’ve got a battery pack for it.
VERONICA MCSHELL: If I just turn on the booster…
[button clicks, low buzzing tone emits]
MOONCHILD: I’ll tell you one thing, Five, this child really will get you killed one day. Didn’t she think to check whether any of the equipment in this room was still live? That sound you hear is a transmitter broadcasting to sufferers of Moonchild Syndrome. It’s telling me to paralyze you, Runner Five… to stop the signals flashing in your synapses!
I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know why I seem to have a choice about doing it or not. I do know one thing: we need to get out of here right now. Run!
[SAM YAO speaks indistinctly in background]
MOONCHILD: Here we are again, Five. You and the voice in your head.
SAM YAO: Are you okay? You just ran off. [sighs] Veronica and Maxine are following, but they got cut off by those zoms. They’ll be with you soon. You’re safe. Nothing bad’s going to happen.
MOONCHILD: But so many bad things already have. We’re not in danger right now, Runner Five. That signal’s stopped telling me to paralyze you. I wonder if I could. I wonder if we’re different, you and me. Are we the same as all the other Moonchild Syndrome patients? Am I just a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction? Am I just a cog in a machine?
[printer whirs]
MAXINE MYERS: Sam, can you hear that? There are Telex printers printing.
VERONICA MCSHELL: Five of them along this corridor, all printing the same thing.
SAM YAO: What are they printing?
MAXINE MYERS: It says, “Am I just a reproduction of a reproduction? Am I just a cog in a machine?”
MOONCHILD: Well, that’s interesting!
VERONICA MCSHELL: Now it says, “Well, that’s interesting.”
MOONCHILD: I think I remember something, Five! Something that happened here between you and me! [SAM YAO speaks indistinctly in background] You need to head to the lower deck now!
MOONCHILD: Five, I’m in charge now. Just for a minute, I promise. Put your thumb on that pad.
[security system beeps]
COMPUTER: Access granted. Doors opening.
[door clatters open]
MOONCHILD: We’re very close to finding out what I am, Five. What we are. I don’t remember, but I remember that I left something there for myself.
[door swings shut]
SAM YAO: Five… you’ve gone into a place where I’ve got no cams, and the door swung shut behind you. Please, tell us if you need help!
MOONCHILD: We’ve got to do this alone, Five. Alone, together.
MAXINE MYERS: The Telex has stopped. The last thing it said was, “I left something there for myself.”
MOONCHILD: Do you see that chair on the left? The green leather one with the arms? I think you used to sit in it when we were here together. Sit in it again, Five. Just for a minute.
[flashback scene]
MOONCHILD: Can I try it with you, Five? I wouldn’t want to try it with anyone else. Roll up your sleeve. [cloth rustles] Good. It’s just a transdermal patch. You’ll need to wear it while you’re with me. For a few days, 8 or 10 or 12, I don’t really know. I think it should make you more susceptible. Permanently susceptible.
I’m already inside your mind, Five, but what if I were there always? We’d never be alone. [paper packaging rips] There are a few other little things we’ll need to do. Certain sounds. But mostly it’s just conversation. Long conversations late into the night. Just like we do, Five. I want you to be special and carry me with you wherever you go.
[present time]
SAM YAO: We can’t just leave Five!
MAXINE MYERS: The guards are coming, Sam. If they find us here, they’ll search the whole ship and find Five anyway. We can come back with a rescue party. You know this is what Sigrid wants! She wants us to never feel we can trust Runner Five.
MOONCHILD: Sounds like it’s time for us to get out of here, Five. We’ve found what we needed. Open that door.
[door clatters open]
SAM YAO: Ah! No, it’s okay. Five, you’ve got to get out of there. Run.
SAM YAO: Five, Maxine and Veronica are on the other side of that wall. Duck down now, before the guard sees you.
GUARD: Orders from the Minister: we’re to torch this ship at the end of the week. Outlived its usefulness now Marine Bay Colony have come to us.
SAM YAO: Oh God! They got Marine Bay Colony? A year ago, they all got Abel Forever tattoos. Five, if you keep low, you’ll be fine. Head down the walkway.
MAXINE MYERS: Five, are you okay? Did you find what you were looking for? You look kind of weird.
SAM YAO: No, no, no, no. You don’t have to talk yet, Five. Not if you don’t want to.
VERONICA MCSHELL: But you should tell me what happened, Runner Five. Whatever it was, it’ll help us to protect you from the Minister.
MAXINE MYERS: Veronica, don’t push Runner Five. There is no need to hurry.
VERONICA MCSHELL: But there is a need! Whatever Runner Five learned is the only thing that can help. You can’t just be gentle with people all the time, Dr. Myers! That’s not what the Minister does. She keeps pushing until she gets results. That’s what we have to do, too!
SAM YAO: Look, we’ve all been under a lot of pressure, Veronica.
VERONICA MCSHELL: Do you think I don’t know that you had a vial of the cure, and you gave it to Dr. Cohen?
MAXINE MYERS: I, um… what? What? That…
VERONICA MCSHELL: See? Gentleness. You mean lying. You mean not telling the truth. I know! I’ve known for days! You tried to keep it from me to stop my feelings from being hurt because Janine doesn’t trust me anymore to find the cure, does she?
SAM YAO: She, um… well, she decided it’d be better for Paula to monitor the way the cure works on her, yeah.
VERONICA MCSHELL: That’s what I mean. You have to tell me the truth, or I won’t be able to work anything out! Runner Five, please. Tell me what happened to you in that ship. I think I can help you get better.
MOONCHILD: Well, will you tell her, or will I? We’re not like the other Moonchild Syndrome sufferers, Runner Five. I put myself in you on purpose. I’m what’s left of that other Moonchild, the living one. Like a zombie. [laughs] I’ve risen again! [laughs]
Codex[]
Supplies[]
The following supplies can be found in this mission.
(List may be incomplete.)
Anti-depressants
Axe
Bandages
Batteries
Board game
Bottled Water
Hearing Aid
Makeup
Pain Meds
Shorts
Sleeping bag
Solar Charger
Tinned Food
Tool Box
Trainers
Umbrella
Underwear
Whisky
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