EXT. CARNEGIE MOUNTAIN — NIGHT
The city below is a circuit board. An entire grid of light and
wire stretching in every direction
until the dark swallows it at the edges. Not beautiful the way
people say beautiful. Beautiful the
way a thing is when it has no idea you're watching it.
At the edge of a rocky overlook, a BLACK YAMAHA XV535 sits with
its engine off. Its rider —RAIDEN (early 20s, lean, dark hoodie
pulled up, the kind of face that has watched too much
and spoken too little) — straddles the seat with the settled
ease of someone who has been here a hundred times. This is not a
discovery. This is a ritual.
He reaches into his pocket. Takes out a joint. Lights it. The
ember catches his face for one second — hollow cheeks, a jaw
that has been clenched for years — and then the dark takes him
back. He exhales. Doesn't rush it. The smoke drifts toward the
city and softens the grid into a haze.
He isn't thinking. He is tracking. His gaze moves from one
quadrant of the city to the next — slow, deliberate, reading the
streetlights the way someone reads code they wrote themselves.
His lips move faintly, like a man memorizing something he cannot
afford to forget.
The streetlights below ripple through a shift — BLOOD RED to
NEON GREEN — block by block, moving outward from the center in a
slow, city-sized pulse.
Raiden watches it travel. Lets his eye follow it all the way to
the edge of the visible world, where the light just stops.
In the middle distance: a single ground-floor window still lit.
Two figures on a couch inside - their faces blue with screen
light, their shoulders almost touching. Not speaking. Not
looking at each other. Together in the way that people are when
they've stopped noticing they're together. Raiden clocks it.
Looks away. Takes another pull.
His hands aren't trembling. This mountain is the one place in
the city that doesn't ask anything
of him.
A pair of HEADLIGHTS swings around the rocky bend behind him.
Raiden pulls his hood forward
and glances back. A BLUE HONDA CIVIC creeps around the corner,
turns left, merges onto the highway below.
Raiden watches it go.
RAIDEN
(aloud, to no one)
Whenever someone finds peace, someone else comes to disturb it.
He takes a last hit. Looks at the city one more time. Then he
reads the roach off the cliff in a short orange arc and watches
it vanish.
He swings his leg over the bike. Turns the key. The motor
punches on. He pops the clutch, pulls the throttle back and
launches into the dark.
CUT TO:
Genres:
Ratings
Scene
2 -
Borrowing Her Light
EXT. CITY STREETS — NIGHT
The Yamaha moves through a city that has changed shifts. The
daytime people are behind their
deadbolts now. The ones out here move differently — against
walls, fast, with no particular
destination.
Raiden passes a WOMAN at a bus stop. Her shoes are off and set
beside her on the bench, placed neatly not drunk, not
distressed, just done for the day in a way that goes all the way
down. He passes a FIGURE in a doorway cradling a paper bag with
both hands the way you’d protect something worth keeping. A DOG
with no collar runs alongside the Yamaha for half a block, gets
close enough that Raiden can see it isn't afraid, then falls
behind when the road opens.
Raiden doesn't look back.
He takes 49TH STREET slow. He doesn't have to — the road is
empty. His hand eases off the
throttle without deciding to.
A COFFEE SHOP ahead on the right, still lit, almost empty. Warm
light. Steam on the inside of
the window. And across the street from it, an EMPTY LOT. The way
Raiden's turn signal goes on deliberate, patient tells us this
is not the first time.
He pulls into the lot. Parks the bike. Kicks the stand. Takes
off his helmet.
And looks.
Through the coffee shop window, amber light falls across the
late-night stragglers. Raiden’s eyes move past them, scanning.
There.
GRACE (20s, unhurried in the way that comes from being genuinely
present rather than performing it) is at the end of the counter
tending to a CUSTOMER IN A WHEELCHAIR. She bends at the waist to
speak to them at eye level. Whatever she says, the customer's
face changes - something tightening in it loosens, something
leaving that wasn't good to carry. When the customer leaves they
are measurably better than when they arrived. Raiden watches
from across the street. He doesn't reach for his phone. He
doesn't do anything.
He sits on his bike and lights a fresh joint and watches her
through the glass. A specific stillness settles in him here —
the kind the rest of his life doesn't allow.
His eye finds her NAMETAG as she turns in profile. He reads it
from across the street. GRACE.
He reads it twice. As Usual
He smokes. He watches her help the next customer, and the one
after that. He watches what her face does between customers no
mask-dropping when the attention shifts, no relief at the break.
Same thing.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
Borrowing her light to brighten my dark.
He finishes the joint. Stays on the bike. A YOUNG WOMAN exits
the shop looking lighter than she went in, whatever Grace said
making the difference. He watches the exchange from across the
street and can't hear a word of it.
He snuffs the roach on the tank. Sits another thirty seconds
with his hands in his lap. Then he kicks the stand up. Goes.
END OF TEASER
ACT ONE
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Scene
3 -
The Feeding Alarm
EXT. TOWNHOUSE COMPLEX — LATER THAT NIGHT
Quiet residential block. SUVs in driveways. Manicured lawns, all
of them agreeing to be manicured. Sharp contrast to Raidens
home. The Yamaha rolls in and slows.
Through the KITCHEN WINDOW of a corner townhouse stuck in the
70’s - a warm light burning. A faint shadow moves behind the
white curtain. Raiden stops the bike in the driveway and sits
for a moment before pressing the garage remote.
He watches the shadow shift. Mentally prepares to enter.
The door rolls up. He parks in the dark. Kills the engine. Sits
another beat in the last quiet he'll get for a while.
INT. TOWNHOUSE — KITCHEN — CONTINUOUS
MARIA (mid-50s, small, Colombian, warm with the durability of
someone who chose warmth
after learning what the alternative costs) works at the counter.
She crushes pills with the back
of a spoon, the white powder collecting onto waxed paper. Her
movements are practiced, unhurried ten years of this specific
counter, this specific spoon.
Raidens phone screen reads: Missed Calls: Maria (4).
Raiden enters from the garage. Maria pops her head around the
kitchen corner.
MARIA
Raiden! I have been trying to call you all day. Where have you
been?
RAIDEN
(scanning the counter)
Phone died at work. Sorry. Everything okay?
MARIA
The feeding alarm went off.
(setting the syringe down)
We are out of his liquid food. I needed you to pick some up.
RAIDEN
Fuck.
(closing his eyes for one beat)
My mistake. Is he alright?
MARIA
I blended some vegetables. He is about to go to sleep. But his
PEG tube will need to be replaced soon.
RAIDEN
I'll set up the appointment. Get the food first thing.
Is there anything else? This can't be easy on you
Maria turns and looks at him — really looks. The way you look at
someone when you to know you see them.
MARIA
No, no. Trust me to take care of him, Raiden. You
worry too much for a boy your age.
RAIDEN
Trust has never been one of my strong suits.
(A half-smile — worn, not bitter)
But I know you're good to him. Good night, Maria.
He turns for the stairs.
MARIA
(quietly, almost to herself)
Trust is the rare flame in the wind.
Raiden pauses at the base of the stairway. He doesn't have any
words left. He goes up.
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Scene
4 -
INT. FATHER'S ROOM — NIGHT
The hallway at the top of the stairs. Raiden stops at an open
door.
A bedroom that became a hospital room. MACHINES stand sentinel
around the bed — green-lit monitors, a VENTILATOR breathing on a
patient's behalf with its rhythmic, pressurized hiss. Tubes and
lines run like tributaries from the machines to a single still
figure. Raiden's FATHER (60s, once broad-shouldered, now
interior — as if what made him substantial has been slowly drawn
out by time and necessity) stares at the far corner of the room.
Not the ceiling. Not the window.
The far corner, where a small wooden cabinet glows with steady
amber light. The YAKUSHI SHRINE - carved figure inside, ceramic
bowls of ash, spent incense down to their last centimeter. His
mother installed it years before she died.
His father's expression is hard to read through a face that
can't move much. The eyes are doing most of it. Whatever he's
feeling about the shrine, he's been feeling it for a long time.
The VENTILATOR hisses. Pauses. Hisses.
Raiden watches from the doorway. He has a whole grammar of not-
going-in — the specific angle of his lean, the time he allows
himself before moving on. He's been visiting from doorways for
years.
He moves on.
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5 -
INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — NIGHT
Small. A PC setup on a desk — two monitors, an external drive
bolted to the tower with a zip tie, cables run clean behind the
baseboards. The wall above the desk is covered in SYSTEM
DIAGRAMS and NETWORK MAPS and handwritten notes, all of them
dense, all of them organized. More notebooks on the shelves than
you'd expect. More order than the rest of the townhouse would
suggest. Raiden crosses the room in four steps and drops onto
the bed.
THUMP.
He stares at the ceiling. The PC hums. The city is somewhere
outside.
And under everything, through the drywall - The RHYTHMIC WHEEZE
of the ventilator.
It fills the room. It always fills the room. For one moment,
tonight, it almost sounds peaceable.
Raiden closes his eyes.
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6 -
FADE TO: INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — MORNING
Different light. Cold and without mercy.
Raiden sits bolt upright — the specific panic of someone who
forgot, for one merciful fragment of sleep, everything - and
then remembered it all at once.
He moves to his desk. Logs in. His INBOX assembles. New emails.
He knows what they are before he reads the subject lines. He
moves past them and opens his BANKING APP.He looks at the
number.
$362.74
He stares at it long enough that it stops looking like a number.
He closes the app. Sits with his hands in his lap, looking at
the wall. The system diagrams above the desk look back at him.
He built all of those. Mapped every node, every vulnerability,
every route. He did it alone and he did it well and none of it
pays a PEG tube bill. He gets up. Gets dressed.
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7 -
INT. FATHER'S ROOM — MORNING
Raiden enters slowly, stepping around the machine cords. He
carries a box of incense sticks.
He kneels before the Yakushi Shrine and removes the spent sticks
— ash-soft, fragile, falling
apart as he handles them — and replaces them with fresh ones.
Lavender. His father's favourite.
He lights them one at a time. The amber glow catches the rising
smoke.
He stays kneeling a beat longer than the task requires. He looks
at the carved figure in the cabinet. His mother chose this. Set
it here. He tries to reconstruct her hands doing it — the
specific way she would have stood back to check the level of it,
adjusted it a centimeter, stepped back again. He was nine years
old. He can't hold the image clearly enough.
RAIDEN
(to the shrine, voice low)
Hey. Got the incense changed. Really nice out today — I'll open
the window for some air.
(standing)
Maria's coming in half an hour. I'm going to make your breakfast
and head out to work.
He stays another beat. His eye moves over the machines, the
tubes, the monitors. The man
behind all of it. Harvard Medical graduate. Chief of staff. A
career of experimental treatments and his grandfather's lottery
winnings, all of it funneled through this room now, all of it
keeping a single man breathing in the back room.
RAIDEN
Love you, Dad.
(He said like he almost means it.)
He turns to leave. What he doesn't see - His father's EYES
drifting open. Tracking Raiden across the room toward the door.
Watching. Something in the expression that is not passive.
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8 -
INT. KITCHEN — CONTINUOUS
Raiden at the stove. Something simple in a pot. The house quiet
except for the ventilator above him.
Then — SLAM.
The front door SWINGS OPEN and RICOCHETS off the wall.
MARIA
(rushing in, hand to her mouth)
Oh my goodness — I am so sorry, Raiden!!
RAIDEN
(ctching the pot)
Don't worry. I left the window upstairs open.
Maria clocks the stove. A genuine reaction — that she didn't
expect this.
MARIA
Hey! You've prepared his breakfast!
RAIDEN
Just wanted to get a jump start for you. Mornings can be rough
with him.
(untying the apron)
I'm heading out now. Have a good day.
He takes his jacket from the hook. His helmet from the shelf.
MARIA
(calling after him)
Have a great day at work, Raiden! Let me know if you need
anything around here it breaks my heart to see a young boy carry
all of this himself!
The front door closes. Maria's voice cuts off mid-sentence.
She stands alone in the kitchen. She listens to the ventilator
upstairs. She looks at the pot on the stove. She deals with it.
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Scene
9 -
EXT. TOWNHOUSE — GARAGE — CONTINUOUS
Raiden sits on the idling Yamaha. The garage door is rising — a
slow horizontal reveal of the outside world:concrete first, then
the gutter, then the street, then the flat morning sky. He waits
for all of it. He doesn't pull out until the door is fully open,
until the complete picture has presented itself. It's a small
thing. He doesn't notice he does it.
He breathes. His hands find the grips. The engine vibrates
through the frame and into his palms. For a moment he is simply
a person on a motorcycle at the start of a day.
The door stops.
The world is wide open.
He goes.
EXT. HIGHWAY — DAY
The Yamaha joins the flow of morning traffic.
A MINIVAN two car-lengths ahead — STICK FIGURE FAMILY decal on
the rear window: two parents, three kids, a dog. The rear
passenger window has a child's handprint in permanent marker
that somebody gave up trying to remove. The passenger seat in
front is turned toward the window, rigid.
A TRUCK with a fishing rod mount, a faded parking violation
pinned under the wiper blade, a single SUPPORT THE TROOPS magnet
holding on by one corner.
A SPORTS CAR cuts across two lanes without signaling. Gone.
Raiden takes inventory from behind his visor. Each vehicle, each
story half-visible through the glass. He doesn't speed up or
slow down. He moves with the traffic and reads it the way he
reads everything - quietly, completely, without anyone knowing
he's doing it.
END OF ACT ONE
ACT TWO
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Scene
10 -
INT. NORTH SIDE MALL — UNDERGROUND PARKING — DAY
The Yamaha descends the ramp into the cool underground. Amber
light, low ceiling, the smell of concrete and exhaust. Raiden
cuts the engine. Removes his helmet.
He doesn't go straight for the elevator.
He walks the perimeter of the parking level first — one full
circuit, hands in his jacket pockets, pace easy. He checks the
sightlines. Notes the cameras and where their arcs end.
Registers which pillars break the line to the stairwell. He has
mapped this floor before. He is confirming it hasn't changed.
His face through all of this: nothing. The calculation happens
somewhere it doesn't show. He reaches into his jacket and
removes a small RFID SCANNER —no larger than a thick pen. He
checks the indicator light.
Green.
He pockets it. Heads for the elevator.
Genres:
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11 -
INT. NORTH SIDE MALL — ATRIUM — DAY
Mid-morning busy. Raiden moves through the crowd like background
— unhurried, anonymous, earbuds in with nothing playing. He
could be anyone waiting for anyone.
He reads the floor ahead.
Near the escalator, a GROUP OF FIVE MEN IN SUITS clusters
together, laughing too loud about something that wasn't funny.
Their phones and wallets bulge from outer suit pockets the
carelessness of men who have never had to think about either.
Raiden adjusts his trajectory. A tourist who took a wrong turn.
He walks into the group and through it — brushing each man in
sequence, close enough that his jacket pocket passes within
centimeters of theirs. The RFID scanner pulses, once per target.
Silent.
MAN IN SUIT
(not even looking)
Watch it. You fucking loser.
Raiden keeps walking. Eyes forward. His pace doesn't change —
not one fraction faster, not one fraction slower. He rounds the
corner past the escalator bank and finds a STRUCTURAL COLUMN.
Steps behind it with the natural purpose of someone merely
cutting through.
He leans his shoulder against it. Pulls out his phone. Opens the
companion app. His face reads:nothing.
He is already mentally somewhere else.
The data loads.
He turns down a side corridor and passes a SHOE STORE —
Genres:
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12 -
INT. SHOE STORE — CONTINUOUS
Through the open entrance: a BOY (7, patient only up to a point)
on a fitting bench while a STORE EMPLOYEE measures his foot. His
FATHER crouches beside him.
BOY
Dad. I don't wanna do this anymore. Can we go get ice cream? You
promised.
FATHER
(laughing, low)
Of course, son. We just need to finish this up. If we don't get
the right shoe size,
Mom won't let either of us have dessert.
The boy processes this logic with deep seriousness.
Raiden has stopped in the corridor outside.
The father doesn't check his watch. The father isn't thinking
about the car or the errand after this or what time it is. He's
crouched on the floor of a shoe store with his son and he is
completely, uncomplicatedly there. Raiden holds the scene for
one beat too long. Then he shakes it off and keeps walking.
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Scene
13 -
INT. NORTH SIDE MALL — UNDERGROUND PARKING — DAY
Raiden back on the bike. Phone in his hand. The scanner app has
finished populating. Two clean credit card profiles. He reads
the names.
TERRY WASHINGTON.
JERRY FAULKNER.
He pockets the phone. Checks the time. Looks at the exit ramp,
then at the entrance to the mall behind him. He sits with it for
a moment - the day technically still has hours in it, and the
drive home is only thirty minutes, and there's no reason to be
on 49th Street right now.
He kicks the engine on and goes toward 49th Street.
EXT. COFFEE SHOP — 49TH STREET — AFTERNOON
The empty lot. Raiden pulls in without signaling. Parks.
He sits on the bike and doesn't get off immediately. His hands
rest on the tank. He looks at the window across the street.
He breathes once, slow. Checks his visor — his face in the small
reflection — adjusts something about his expression, not
consciously but visibly. He keeps the helmet on longer than
necessary. Then takes it off. Runs his hand through his hair.
Rolls his shoulders back.
Another beat.
Then he crosses the street.
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14 -
INT. COFFEE SHOP — CONTINUOUS
The BELL.
BARISTAS
Welcome.
RAIDEN
Hey.
He looks left. Right. Scans the whole shop. She isn't behind the
counter. Not in the back. Not
visible anywhere.
She isn't here.
He goes to the counter anyway.
RAIDEN
Coffee black.
BARISTA
Name?
RAIDEN
Daniel.
He pays. Moves to the pickup counter. The store is quiet today —
a TABLE OF TWO WOMEN with laptops, an OLDER GENTLEMAN with a
newspaper. The steamwand shrieks and goes still.
BARISTA
For Daniel!
He takes the cup. Turns for the door.
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15 -
EXT. COFFEE SHOP — CONTINUOUS
Raiden pushes out into the street. Starts across toward the lot.
VOICE (O.S.)
Daniel. Coffee black?
He stops.
Something in the voice — the specificity of it, the fact that
it's aimed at him. He turns.
At the small patio table just to the right of the entrance,
almost out of his sightline — GRACE.
Textbook open on the metal table. A coffee of her own going cold
beside it. She's looking directly at him with an expression that
sits between amusement and relief.
GRACE
I didn't think I'd ever catch you on the way out. You're gone
before we finish saying your name for pick up.
(She laughs - a specific laugh, low in the throat and high at
the end, no performance in it.)
Please, come sit.
Raiden looks at the empty chair.
He looks at her.
His body has already begun a calculation: distance to the lot,
steps to the bike.
He knows this calculation. He runs it in every social situation.
He sits down.
The calculation failed. He couldn't tell you why.
Close enough now to catch it — a FLORAL PERFUME, botanical and
warm, specific enough to remember. He notices the BEAUTY MARKS
scattered across her cheekbones and jaw drawing a constellation.
When she looks up from the textbook and directly at him, her
face does what it does. Brightens, without trying to, without
knowing it's happening.
RAIDEN
(eyes dropping to her nametag — performing seeing it for the
first time)
Are you on your break, Grace?
GRACE
Studying before the second half.
(closing the textbook)
What do you do for work, Daniel?
The question cuts through him. She looks at him with the kind of
full attention he hasn’t received in years genuine, unguarded,
no agenda in it. She just wants to know. And he can’t answer
honestly. Not fully. Not today.
But something tired in him — some piece that has been waiting in
the dark for this exact open door. But no strength to find it
RAIDEN
I work in software. And — actually, my name isn't Daniel. It's
Raiden. The order used to be under my boss's name when I was
picking up for him. I just went with it. Hope that's not too
weird.
A beat. Grace takes it in.
Then she laughs — the same laugh, nothing manufactured about it.
GRACE
That is completely fine. You
wouldn't believe some of the names we hear. Last week someone
came in and said Large Mocha for F. Scott Fitzgerald. She does a
small voice. Raiden watches her lip curl when she laughs —
something he hasn't
been close enough to see before. Something in his chest shifts
like a gear finding a tooth.
GRACE
How far is your office?
RAIDEN
Fifteen minutes. I could walk it, but I love the bike.
Grace glances across the street at the Yamaha in the lot.
Something passing across her face. She begins gathering her
textbook.
GRACE
(standing, casual but not quite)
Well. I wouldn't mind seeing more of you. I work days — if
you're ever around during lunch hours, maybe we could get
something to eat.
The warmth that moves through Raiden's body is physical. A wave
that starts at his feet and builds all the way to the back of
his eyes. He holds himself completely still and waits for it to
pass.
It doesn't pass.
RAIDEN
I'd really like that. Can I come Monday around two?
GRACE
(A small smile)
It's a date.
The word — DATE — sits between them in the afternoon air. Fear
and excitement in perfect, terrible balance. She heads back
inside. The bell sounds. The door closes. Raiden sits alone at
the metal table. Coffee going cold in his hand.
He stays there until an OLDER COUPLE takes the table beside him
and the moment breaks.
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16 -
INT. COFFEE SHOP — BACK COUNTER — CONTINUOUS
Grace re-ties her apron. DEV, 20s, dry, wipes the espresso
machine.
DEV
Motorcycle guy again.
GRACE
Raiden.
DEV
Took him four visits to say it.
GRACE
Everybody's got a version they lead with. Mine's "I have my life
together." Ask the registrar
how that's going.
DEV
The registrar doesn't know your tuition money went to your mom's
hospital copay in March.
GRACE
I'll tell them when I've got a number, not a feeling.
She checks the clock, ties her hair back — someone budgeting a
day with more owed in it
than paid.
GRACE (CONT'D)
Second half. Six minutes.
She's moving before Dev can push further. We stay on Dev,
watching her go — worried about
the math Grace never says out loud, not about anything bigger
than that. Her life is just her
life. Nobody's watching it but Dev.
CUT TO:
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Scene
17 -
INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — AFTERNOON
The RFID cloning kit plugged into the laptop. The script runs.
Two profiles populate in clean courier text.
TERRY WASHINGTON.
Raiden opens Facebook. Searches. The profile loads.
Photos. He scrolls through them slowly. A WOMAN and TWO KIDS at
the beach the kind of photo where everybody is mid-laugh, nobody
posed it. A FOURTH
BIRTHDAY PARTY: paper hats, balloons, a cake that looks
homemade. A backyard barbecue, summer, and in the corner of one
photo a small BOY in an oversized batting helmet, first tee ball
game, grin so wide it bends his whole face.
Raiden stares at the batting helmet photo for a while.
He opens the drive management tool.
Selects Terry Washington's entry.
Wipes it.
JERRY FAULKNER.
Reddit. Faulkner uses his real name — apparently without
considering the implications. Raiden finds the account in under
a minute. He scrolls the comment history. There: a post about
international students struggling with tuition. Faulkner's reply
ON SCREEN:
"Don't like it, then get out of my country”
Six thousand upvotes.
Raiden stares at it. Then he opens Amazon. Two $500 gift cards.
Added to cart. Burner email entered - already dead, already set
up for forwarding to the dark web reseller who'll pay out half.
Five hundred real dollars. He never takes more than two weeks'
worth. Greed gets you caught.
He goes to checkout.
The PLACE YOUR ORDER button centers on the screen.
He moves the cursor to it. His fingers are sweating on the
mouse. He reads one more Faulkner comment — the worst one he can
find — and he clicks.
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18 -
:INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — CONTINUOUS
The page begins to load.
The white thank-you screen starts assembling - and freezes.
Stops.
Goes BLANK.
A grey loading wheel appears on the cursor. Spinning.
Three seconds.
Ten.
The room is all it ever is. The ventilator in the wall. The PC
fan. Raiden's breathing.
Thirty seconds.
The screen wipes to white — not the thank-you language of a
system talking to
itself: page. Raw text. Black on white. Courier. The TRANSACTION
TERMINATED - ERROR 403 — SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY DETECTED
A security flag has been triggered for unauthorized use of
corporate credentials.
Originating proxy server [91.211.89.12] has been blacklisted.
Session ID: #8892-X. This terminal session is now closed.
Raiden reads it.
Reads it again.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
(very quiet)
That's my server.
He doesn't move for ten seconds. He stares at the text like he
is waiting for it to do something
else.
Then he reaches down and grabs the heavy power cord at the base
of the tower and pulls it from the wall. The screen goes dark.
He is staring at his own face in the black mirror. The
expression looking back at him is not panic. It is recognition -
the expression of a man who always knew exactly how this
particular door opened, and who walked through it anyway. He
stands. The chair rockets back and hits the baseboard. He
doesn't pick it up.
He paces. Fast. Faster than his thoughts. His feet hit the floor
in a rhythm his chest doesn’t share. Sweat at his temples. The
walls of the room pressing inward with the specific intimacy of
a space that has watched you make all your mistakes.
His foot finds a spiral notebook on the floor — dislodged when
the chair went back — and he stares at it. He doesn't pick it up
either.
His fist raises. Hovers over the desk.
Doesn't land.
He breathes. His breathing is high in his chest, shallow,
working on the problem.
He looks at the door.
END OF ACT TWO
ACT THREE
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Scene
19 -
INT. TOWNHOUSE — KITCHEN — NIGHT
Down the stairs. Through the quiet house. The machines run
overhead.
A handwritten NOTE on the kitchen counter. Raiden picks it up.
MARIA’S NOTE (V.O.)
"Heard you working in your room. I got everything prepped for
you for the weekend. I left some food in the fridge. Have a
wonderful weekend, Raiden — see you Monday.”
He folds it along its original crease. Sets it back down exactly
where it was.
He peeks into his father's room on the way past. The shrine
glows amber. His father looks asleep. The incense is almost out
for the day. He looks peaceful this evening, in the specific way
that machines maintain. Raiden grabs his jacket. His helmet. He
catches the door before it hits the wall.
He's out.
EXT. CITY STREETS — NIGHT
Friday. The city at full pitch — couples moving shoulder to
shoulder downtown, groups cramming into rideshares, men in lines
outside clubs, the whole city dressed up and aimed at something.
Every person with somewhere to be.
Raiden takes the INDUSTRIAL EXIT off the highway. He passes the
downtown ramp without signaling, without slowing. He doesn't
look in his mirror at the receding lights. He rides further out.
The buildings thin. The storefronts close. The roads go long and
straight and empty.
He opens the throttle.
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20 -
EXT. WAREHOUSE DISTRICT — NIGHT
Six kilometers of dead-straight road. Industrial buildings on
both sides — loading docks, chain-link fences, shuttered roll-up
doors. No other vehicles. No pedestrians. Sodium lights on tall
poles in a long orange corridor stretching into the dark.
This is his place.
Raiden lights a joint at the entrance to the corridor and smokes
as he rides. The warmth hits across his cold face and some of
the day's weight shifts, slightly, without going away. He rides
slow at first. He thinks about the error message. The black
screen.
His face looking back at him.
He rides through it.
He thinks about Grace.
It's a date.
He drops a gear. Opens the throttle wide.
The Yamaha surges. 60 km/h. 80. He leans into it. The wind is
building.
100 km/h. The warehouse walls smear into a continuous grey blur
on both sides. The overhead lights streak into a single orange
line. The wind is not weather. It is force. It demands his whole
body.
120 km/h.
He closes his eyes.
One second. Two. Three —
A JOLT of pure, animal fear fires through him. His eyes snap
open.
He is drifting.
He cuts the wheel overcorrects the back tire bites and slides
the bike yaws sideways he wrestles it with everything he has,
all instinct and no plan, but the angle is already wrong and the
speed is already wrong and - The rear end clips the base of a
BILLBOARD at the roadside. Raiden goes over the side. Rolls.
Hits the dirt.
SILENCE.
Dust settling. The smell of burned rubber. The engine ticking
hot into the night.
Raiden lies on his back in the dirt, looking up.
He is breathing. He takes stock - his leg registering something,
his hands scraped, helmet intact. He looks left and right down
the long empty corridor.
Alone.
He tries to get up. Makes it to one knee.
Then something drops through him — a wave that has been building
for longer than today, longer than this week, longer than he can
put a date to. It moves through him from some depth where he
doesn't let himself go, and it does not ask permission.
His shoulders go down. His hands press flat into the wet dirt.
He can feel the cold of it, the grit of it, the weight of it
under his palms.
He cries. Not loudly. The kind that lives mostly in the chest,
the kind with no audience and no intention.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
I knew this would happen. I knew I could ruin my entire life —
that which it is.
He stays there.
Then he lifts his face.
There above him, lit from below
by a single pole lamp
A BILLBOARD. Clean. Corporate. Enormous.
Hiring Now!
Data Analyst / Security Specialist / Pharmaceutical Analyst
SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES
Fix your future, today!
Raiden reads it.
Reads it again.
Sits in the dirt underneath it for a long time.
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21 -
INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — LATE NIGHT
Raiden is at the desk before his jacket is even off. His knee is
swelling. He doesn't register it.
Personal laptop. Browser. He finds Slaught Industries —
worldwide pharmaceutical conglomerate, significant share of
global medicine production, medical data platform, formulary
management, compound classification across seventeen countries.
It is not exciting. That is the point. This is exactly what
stability looks like. He opens a blank document and starts to
type.
The resume builds line by line. Not fabricated — sculpted. The
best possible construction of who he actually is:
Familiarity with medical datasets — real. He has managed his
father's for years.
Clinical terminology — real. He knows what a PEG tube is. He
knows what a ventilator alarm sounds like at 3 in the morning.
Data systems, categorization, pattern recognition, anomaly
identification — real. From other sources. He doesn't name those
sources.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
The last time I put my real name somewhere I meant it — I can't
remember. There was a version of this life that was supposed to
go somewhere else. I can feel the shape of it sometimes. Like a
room I was briefly in before somebody moved me out. An hour
passes. The resume comes together.
He opens the Slaught Industries careers portal. He fills in his
real name. His real email. His real phone number. He sits with
each field for a beat before entering it the specific weight of
true things.
He uploads the resume.
Mouse hovering over SUBMIT.
His leg throbs through the denim. He uses the pain to push the
button.
The confirmation screen loads.
He leans back in his chair. Looks up at the popcorn ceiling. The
ventilator breathes through the walls — not intruding, just
present. Background noise he has been fighting for years, and
right now it almost sounds like company.
He rolls over into bed.
Satisfied.
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22 -
INT. SLAUGHT NEUROSCIENCE — RESEARCH SECURITY FLOOR — NIGHT
A large cold room drenched in blue light. DUNCAN VOSS, 50s,
unhurried, watches an
application populate: NAME MATCH FLAGGED.
Beneath Raiden's name, a case file opens automatically — not a
lawsuit record. A CLINICAL
CASE FILE. SUBJECT: VANCE, THEODORE. PROTOCOL: SL-119 ("DURATION
STUDY"). YEARS
ACTIVE: 11. A column of monthly entries scrolls — respiratory
function, muscle atrophy rate,
survival projection, revised upward twice.
Voss doesn't look surprised. He looks like a man checking a
number he already knew, the way
you check a bank balance you're proud of.
VOSS
(into a phone, unhurried)
It's the son. Applied under his own name, didn't even try to
bury it.
(listening)
No. Don't kill it. Green-light the interview.
(a small, private smile)
Eleven years and he still doesn't know what his father's been
keeping alive for. Be a shame to
lose access to that now, this close to the end of the study.
He closes the file — not like a spreadsheet. Like a ledger he's
kept a long time and enjoys the
weight of.
FADE TO:
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23 -
INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — MORNING
Raiden swings his legs off the bed. His foot hits the floor and
the pain arrives immediately — specific, deep, bringing his full
attention down to his knee.
He looks at it. It is the size of a grapefruit.
He opens the nightstand: Tiger Balm, tensor bandage. He wraps
the knee with the practiced economy of someone who has hurt
himself before and handled it without telling anyone.
He takes the stairs one at a time.
INT. FATHER'S ROOM — MORNING
Raiden swaps the feeding bags quietly, working around the
monitor stands, stepping over the cord for the infusion pump. He
replaces the incense in the shrine - fresh lavender sticks, lit
one at a time - and stays in front of it longer than the task
requires.
He tries to see his mother's hands placing the shrine the first
time. The careful way she would have done it. He's trying to
reconstruct something from before the lab accident, before the
ventilator, before the townhouse.
The image won't hold.
He goes.
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24 -
INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — LATER
Raiden on his back. Ceiling above him. The CONFIRMATION EMAIL
from Slaught Industries is still open on the laptop screen
across the room, the screen still lit.
He stares at the ceiling. The morning light moves in a slow
stripe across the wall above him the narrow gap in the curtains
advancing with the sun's decision. He doesn't move to greet it.
His hand lies flat on the mattress, palm up, doing nothing. He
blinks. He turns onto his side and looks at the laptop screen.
His name on the application. His real name.
The ventilator counts out the seconds for him.
RING.
His eyes open wider.
RING.
He stares at the phone on the nightstand. He never changed it to
vibrate. He never gets calls.
He picks up.
RAIDEN
Hello?
SHAR
ON (O.S.)
(professional, warm, moving fast)
Hello! My name is Sharon Wooly — I'm calling about the
application you submitted a few days ago. Is this Raiden?
RAIDEN
(sitting up)
Yes. Yes it is. Thanks for calling — I'm surprised to hear back
this quickly.
SHARON (O.S.)
Your resume stood out on review. We'd like to invite you in for
an interview as soon as possible.Would Monday morning at ten
work for you?
Raiden's hand tightens on the phone.
RAIDEN
(measured, barely)
Yes. It does.
SHARON (O.S.)
Perfect. I'll send you the details by email. Thanks for your
time, Raiden. Have a great day!
The line goes dead.
Raiden holds the phone in both hands and reads the screen:
SHARON WOOLY - 3:47. He puts it face-down on the mattress.
Thirty seconds.
He picks it back up. Reads the screen again - like it might say
something different, like one more confirmation might actually
complete the transaction.
He puts it face-down again.
The laugh arrives before he can stop it. One short, involuntary
sound - low, surprised, from somewhere in him that hasn't had
anything to laugh about in longer than he can trace. He covers
his mouth with the back of his hand. Looks at the ceiling.
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INT. RAIDEN'S BEDROOM — THE WEEKEND (MONTAGE)
Hours of preparation across the full span of daylight:
Raiden reading everything he can find on Slaught Industries.
Corporate structure. Their medical data platform. Formulary
classification. Compound naming conventions. He reads with the
specific intensity of someone making up for years of wasted time
in a single weekend. A CASE STUDY arrives attached to the
interview confirmation. Standard data allocation problem
disorganized records, inconsistent formatting, duplicated
entries. He prints it. Spreads the pages across the desk, stacks
them into groups, stacks those groups into categories. The
disorganized mess becomes a clear, annotated structure in under
forty-five minutes. He writes the solution out on index cards
with a felt-tip pen.
He rehearses against the dead monitor — the black screen his
only audience. He tries it once, adjusts. Twice. A third time
into the window glass where he can see his own expression.
Lessrigid. Better.
He irons his best shirt. Hangs it on the closet door. Looks at
it. Looks at himself. One and then the other.
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26 -
INT. TOWNHOUSE — VARIOUS — THE WEEKEND
Raiden changing his father's feeding bags in the early morning.
Standing in the doorway afterward, the way he always stands in
doorways here — present, not quite committed to entering. Maria
arriving Saturday, front door slamming
“Sorry! Sorry! “ — her eyes going straight to the Yamaha lying
on its side in the driveway.
MARIA
Looks like you took a tumble.
RAIDEN
Spun out in a parking lot. Like an idiot. Won't be doing it
again.
A pause. Maria doesn't move to make the pause comfortable.
MARIA
Raiden. You are all your father has. I know he can't tell you
that. And I know it doesn't mean as much coming from me.
(stopping) It does get easier.
Something shifts in Raiden's face — a loosening in the jaw,
around the eyes. He steps forward and puts his arms around her.
They stay there for a moment in the hospital-lit room that
smells of lavender and antiseptic — the woman who showed up a
decade ago and never left, and the boy who never quite learned
how to ask for help from someone willing to give it. Over
Maria's shoulder, Raiden looks at his father. His father is
looking back at him.
Raiden smiles. Not for Maria. Just for his father.
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EXT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — MONDAY MORNING
The corporate tower stands forty stories of clean glass and
purpose. The kind of building that was designed to tell you,
before you've even reached the door, exactly what kind of person
goes through it.
Raiden parks a full block away. He walks.
Half a block from the entrance, he stops. He watches the
revolving door from a distance tracking the professionals moving
through it. The speed of their stride. The way their badges are
already out, anticipating the scanner. Nobody slows down. Nobody
double-checks the address. This building is not a destination
for them. It is simply where they go.
He adjusts his collar. Once.
Then again.
He checks his reflection in the dark glass of a closed
storefront. Pale skin. Sweat building at his hairline. The knee
making itself known through his best slacks.
He reaches the revolving door and waits for a group of THREE
PROFESSIONALS heading in before he steps forward — slotting
himself in with them, arriving as part of a group instead of
alone. Small thing. He does it without thinking.
The revolving door rotates.
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INT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — LOBBY — CONTINUOUS
The cold air of the lobby hits his face like a hand. His
shoulders drop a fraction, involuntarily.
Better.
The lobby is enormous — white stone floors, suspended steel-rod
installation overhead, the ambient hum of conditioned air and
institutional confidence.
EMPLOYEES move through, the rhythm of people who have decided
where they belong.
Raiden walks toward the reception desk at the far end and walks
directly into a WOMAN (30s, sharp posture, arms full of a dense
stack of documents and folders) crossing his path from the left
without looking up. His shoulder catches
her elbow.
The documents scatter across the lobby floor.
WOMAN
(instantaneous)
Great. Thank you so much for that.
RAIDEN
I'm sorry — I wasn't watching —
He goes to his knees immediately. Gathering papers, squaring
pages, pushing them back into order without reading them. She
crouches too, reaching around him, collecting what's hers. He
hands her the consolidated stack. She takes it. Gives him one
sharp, appraising look - fast, flat, not unkind, just efficient
- and moves on without a word.
Raiden stands.
His hand is in his jacket pocket. He registers this a beat after
it's happened — the hand already there, already feeling for the
familiar shape.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
Old habit.
He pulls his hand out. Empty.
He continues to reception.
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29 -
INT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — RECEPTION — CONTINUOUS
RECEPTIONIST (looking up)
Good morning!
RAIDEN
Good morning. I have a ten o'clock interview with Sharon Wooly.
My name is
Raiden.
She types. Scrolls. Types. Something takes longer than it
should.
RECEPTIONIST
Just give me one second... I don't see an appointment… The lobby
continues behind him. His weight shifts. He doesn't know whether
to maintain eye
contact or look away and he doesn't know how long to wait before
asking a clarifying question, and both options feel wrong in
equal measure. The sweat arrives at his elbow. First sign. His
eyes move on their own — door, elevator bank, the desk, back to
the door. The scan is muscle memory.
RECEPTIONIST
Ah — here it is! Thank you so much for your patience. Please
head up to Floor 26, and someone will meet you at the elevator.
RAIDEN
(composed)
Thank you
Have a wonderful day.
He walks to the elevators.
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INT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — ELEVATOR — CONTINUOUS
The doors close. Raiden alone.
He finds his reflection in the polished metal. Checks himself.
Adjusts his collar. Breathes.
He thinks of Grace.
The patio table. The afternoon light. It's a date. Monday at
two. Forty-five minutes from now.
He's going to see her after this. He's going to tell her about
the job —
The thought hits a wall and stops.
He can't.
He would have to explain why he used Daniel at the counter for
months. He would have to explain what he was doing in that empty
lot every night. He would have to explain what he was doing
anywhere.
Just Raiden, who works in software. Who really does love the
bike. That part, at least, is true.
DING.
FLOOR 26.
INT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — FLOOR 26 — CONTINUOUS
The elevator doors open.
SHARON WOOLY (50s, professionally warm in the organized rather
than natural sense) stands directly in front of him.
SHARON
Hello, Raiden! So great to finally meet you!
RAIDEN
You as well. Thank you for having me in.
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31 -
INT. SHARON'S OFFICE — CONTINUOUS
The office is almost without habitation — clinical, spare, the
temperature of a place organized rather than lived in. A few
FAMILY PHOTOS on the desk that look placed rather than
accumulated. A window behind it: the whole grid of the city,
thirty floors down.
Raiden thinks of Carnegie Mountain. The same view. Different
altitude. Different kind of looking.
SHARON
Have a seat!
He sits. Sharon opens his application folder and begins reading
the job responsibilities aloud the cadence of something she
recites often. Raiden listens.
And something assembles in his chest. Not rehearsed. Not from
the index cards. The real thing the part of him that has been
sorting broken data for years because nobody handed him anything
else to do with what he was.
He interrupts.
RAIDEN
Sharon — can I stop you for a second?
Sharon's eyes come up. A flicker.
RAIDEN (CONT'D)
I hear exactly what you need for this role. And I can deliver it
with minimal ramp-up time. I know medical data because I've
lived inside it — not from a classroom, from a sickroom. I know
what it costs when the classification is wrong. I know
disorganized data better than I know clean data, and that means
I know exactly what it's worth when someone finally fixes it.
(a beat)
I will work nights. I'll push as hard as this role requires. I
want to be here.
(quietly)
I'm your man.
He braces himself for the redirect, the quiet correction, the
thanks-for-your-time.
Sharon's face has been still.
Now —
A smile tears across it.
She closes the folder. Sets it on the desk.
SHARON
I really like your spunk, Raiden. We can absolutely bring you
onto the team.
(standing, hand extended)
Welcome to the family. Head down to reception — they'll have
your badge ready. You can start tomorrow.
RAIDEN
You won't regret it.
He shakes her hand. Turns for the door.
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32 -
INT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — ELEVATOR — CONTINUOUS
Doors closed. Going down.
The excitement builds from the gut upward. He presses it down.
Lobby coming. Hold it. It doesn't listen. It hasn't had anywhere
to go in a long time.
RAIDEN
YES!
DING.
Lobby.
He walks through reception. A SMILING RECEPTIONIST holds out a
laminated badge and a lanyard.
RECEPTIONIST
Welcome to the family.
He takes it. Keeps walking. Straight through the revolving door,
out into the open air.
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33 -
EXT. SLAUGHT INDUSTRIES — CONTINUOUS
Sun on his face. Street noise.
He stops on the sidewalk.
He looks at the badge in his hands. His name. His photograph.
His face looking back at him from something legal.
He walks to the bike. Gets his helmet on. Sits. Turns the key.
Grace fills his mind completely and without warning — the patio
table, the afternoon light, the way she looked across the street
at the Yamaha and then back at him.
It’s a date.
Monday at two. He has forty minutes. He is going to —
The thought stops.
He cannot.
He looks at the badge clipped to his jacket.
He unclips it. Leans to the side. Opens the saddlebag. Places it
inside. Closes the bag.
Sits up straight. Smooths his jacket. Runs a hand through his
hair.
RAIDEN (V.O.)
Two identities on a Monday.
He takes one breath.
He kicks the engine on.
The Yamaha pulls into traffic. The city receives him — the whole
grid of it, the same circuit board he looked at from the
mountain last night, beautiful and groundbreaking from a
distance.Down in it you can smell what it's made of. He's always
been down in it. Behind him the tower catches the afternoon sun
and throws it down the street. Ahead of him, somewhere on 49th,
a woman is waiting at a patio table with a textbook and a
question she hasn't asked yet.
He rides.
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34 -
INT. SLAUGHT NEUROSCIENCE — RESEARCH SECURITY FLOOR — CONTINUOUS
(INTERCUT, FINAL)
Voss, alone at his monitor, pulls up the SL-119 file again.
Scrolls past eleven years of clinical
entries to a second tab most people in this building don't know
exists: FAMILY OBSERVATION
LOG. Thumbnails — a boy at eleven, at fourteen, at nineteen,
each one time-stamped,
harvested from a decade of feeds nobody at the mall ever thought
to ask questions about.
Annotations in a clinical hand: "subject's son shows high
technical aptitude — recommend
continued passive monitoring." "Subject's son appears to have
assumed full caregiving role
— note for psychosocial appendix." Nothing crueler than that.
Nothing needs to be crueler
than that.
Voss adds one more line, unhurried, and closes the file the way
a man closes a book he plans
to keep reading.
SMASH TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD:
LOST ENCODE
FADE OUT.
END OF PILOT — "MASK"