INT. CONCRETE CENTRAL TERMINAL - NIGHT
The abandoned art deco station looms skeletal against Buffalo’s winter sky. Snow drifts through shattered windows. Moonlight cuts geometric patterns across frozen concrete.
Three men kneel in the main hall, hands zip-tied behind them. Their breath clouds in the darkness. The temperature inside is barely warmer than out.
VADIM ZELENKO, 45, circles them slowly. Expensive coat. Good shoes. The kind of man who looks like he belongs in a boardroom, not a ruin.
He speaks Ukrainian, his voice calm as ordering coffee.
VADIM
Where is it?
Silence. Wind howls through the terminal’s gutted interior.
The first man trembles violently. Not from cold.
The second man’s lips move—prayer, maybe. The Hail Mary works in any language.
The third man—TARAS BOYKO, 34, worn canvas jacket, wedding ring—stares straight ahead. His face holds the resignation of someone who’s already made his choice.
Vadim stops pacing. Checks his watch. A Rolex, but an old one. Practical.
VADIM (CONT’D)
(still Ukrainian)
Last chance. The drive. Where?
Taras’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t look at Vadim. Doesn’t look at anything.
TARAS
(Ukrainian, quiet)
Go fuck yourself.
Vadim sighs. Not angry. Just disappointed, like a teacher with a failing student.
He pulls a suppressed pistol from inside his coat. Checks the chamber with the casual competence of a man who’s done this before.
The trembling man starts to sob.
Vadim raises the weapon.
Three shots. Professional. No hesitation. The sound is barely louder than the wind through broken windows.
The bodies slump forward onto the concrete.
Vadim holsters the weapon, pulls out his phone. The screen illuminates his face—no emotion, just focus.
On the phone: a photograph of a small external hard drive. Black. Generic. The kind you can buy at Best Buy.
He types a message in Russian. Sends it.
Pockets the phone. Turns toward the exit.
His footsteps echo through the terminal, then fade.
The bodies remain. The wind continues. The building remembers nothing.
The bodies slump forward onto frozen concrete. Blood pools, then stops. The cold works fast.
Vadim stands motionless. Listening.
Just wind. Just the building settling. Just the sound of three men no longer breathing.
He kneels beside Taras. Pats down the canvas jacket—pockets empty. Checks the waistband. Nothing. Runs his hands along the seams.
Nothing.
He moves to the second man. Same ritual. Wallet, keys, cigarettes. No drive.
The third man’s pockets yield a phone, some cash, a receipt from Tim Hortons.
Vadim stands. Pulls out his own phone. The screen glows in the darkness.
On it: a photograph. A small external hard drive, black, generic. Samsung logo. The kind you can buy anywhere. The kind that contains names, routes, account numbers. The kind worth dying for.
He stares at Taras’s body.
The wedding ring catches moonlight.
VADIM
(Ukrainian, to the corpse)
You already moved it.
He types a message in Russian. Three words.
It’s still out there.
Sends it.
The phone disappears back into his coat. He turns toward the exit, footsteps echoing through the terminal’s hollow geometry.
Vadim moves through the bodies with surgical efficiency.
Taras first. Canvas jacket—pockets inside and out. Waistband, ankle holster position. Nothing.
The second man. Wallet. Keys. Cigarettes. A lighter shaped like a naked woman.
No drive.
Third body. Phone, cash, Tim Hortons receipt from this morning. 8:47 AM. Two coffees, one double-double.
Vadim straightens. Pulls his own phone from his coat.
The screen illuminates his face in the darkness—flat, calculating. He swipes to a photo: a small external hard drive. Black. Samsung logo. Generic. The kind you buy anywhere.
The kind that contains names. Routes. Account numbers.
The kind worth three bullets.
He stares down at Taras’s body. The wedding ring catches what little moonlight filters through broken skylights.
VADIM
(Ukrainian, quiet)
You already moved it.
He types in Russian. Three words. Sends.
The phone goes dark.
Vadim’s phone rings. He answers without looking.
VADIM
(Russian, clipped)
It’s not here. He passed it before we found him.
Silence on the other end. Worse than shouting.
VADIM (cont’d)
I’m already tracking his movements.
A voice responds—we don’t hear it. Vadim’s jaw tightens. The only crack in the mask.
VADIM (cont’d)
Yes. I understand what happens if I don’t.
He ends the call. Exhales once.
Opens Taras’s cloud data. Location history blooms across the screen—a trail of dots through Buffalo’s grid.
One address repeats. Allentown. An apartment building.
Vadim zooms in. The pin hovers over a four-story walkup.
Eight units.
EXT. CONCRETE CENTRAL TERMINAL - CONTINUOUS
Vadim photographs the bodies. Three angles. Clinical. He pockets the phone.
The grand entrance yawns open—WPA murals of American progress beneath layers of graffiti. BUFFALO CENTRAL STATION. GATEWAY TO OPPORTUNITY. Someone’s tagged over it: DEAD CITY.
EXT. PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
His rental idles alone in the cracked asphalt. He slides in.
The GPS screen glows blue in the morning dark.
847 ELMWOOD AVENUE
ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 14 MINUTES
Vadim pulls out. Headlights sweep across the terminal’s hollow face.
The city waits ahead. Daryna’s building. The collision neither of them sees coming.
INT. USCIS FIELD OFFICE - WAITING ROOM - MORNING
The room hums with fluorescent dread. Thirty plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Twenty-eight are occupied.
Daryna sits in the third row, center. Ankles crossed at the angle her mother taught her. Hands folded over the manila envelope in her lap. She doesn’t check her phone. Doesn’t shift her weight. Doesn’t do anything that might register as nervous.
A SALVADORAN WOMAN across from her tears a tissue into smaller and smaller pieces.
An AFGHAN MAN rehearses answers under his breath, lips barely moving.
A CHINESE COUPLE shares a single bottle of water, passing it back and forth without drinking.
Daryna watches the intake window. The clerk calls numbers in a voice designed to carry no hope.
On the wall: a portrait of the president. Beside it, a poster—REPORT IMMIGRATION FRAUD. The hotline number is partially scratched off.
She’s wearing the blazer she bought at Goodwill for nine dollars. Navy. Professional. The kind of thing American women wear to seem trustworthy. She’s practiced her smile in the mirror. Not too warm—desperate. Not too reserved—hostile. Just grateful enough.
The envelope contains: I-485 application. I-693 medical exam. I-864 affidavit of support from her ex-fiancé, who she had to beg for three months to sign. Tax returns from three jobs that barely add up to poverty line. Proof of address. Proof of employment. Proof of existence.
Everything translated. Everything notarized. Everything perfect.
She knows the questions they’ll ask. She’s memorized the answers in the mirror, in the shower, walking to the bus stop. She’s performed this role a hundred times in her head.
The clerk’s voice cuts through: “Number forty-seven.”
Daryna stands. The envelope doesn’t shake in her hands.
She’s an actress. This is the audition that matters.
INT. CLARENCE WILLIAMS’ OFFICE - CONTINUOUS
The office is smaller than the waiting room deserved. One window, bars on the outside, view of a parking lot.
Behind the desk: framed certificates from online law courses never completed. A small American flag, fabric pilling at the edges. A poster—MOORISH SCIENCE TEMPLE OF AMERICA, Est. 1913—showing a man in a fez and robes.
Clarence wears a burgundy fez. It’s Friday.
He flips through Daryna’s file. Doesn’t look up. His finger traces lines of text with the confidence of a man who’s done this two thousand times.
CLARENCE
You know this country was founded by Moors. The original people. 1492
wasn’t discovery, it was invasion of Moorish territory.
He stamps something. Still hasn’t looked at her.
CLARENCE (CONT’D)
Current government’s illegitimate. Corporation masquerading as a
republic. But I still process applications. Someone’s gotta help you
people navigate the fraud.
He slides a form across the desk.
CLARENCE (CONT’D)
Sign here. And here. Initial the fraud warning.
His pen hovers. Finally, he looks up.
CLARENCE (CONT’D)
You understand what I’m telling you?
DARYNA
Yes sir.
She nods. The timing is perfect—not eager, not mechanical. A woman who understands authority without needing to understand its logic.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Thank you sir.
Her English carries the ghost of Odesa in its vowels, but the deference is universal. She learned this performance before she learned the language.
Clarence watches her. She holds his gaze just long enough. Not challenging. Not submissive. The exact calibration of someone who’s passed harder tests than this.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I appreciate your help with this.
The smile doesn’t reach her eyes, but it doesn’t need to. He’s not looking for authenticity. He’s looking for compliance.
She signs where he pointed. Her hand doesn’t shake.
This is not her first audition for survival.
CLARENCE
The fiancé. Kyle, was it?
He says it like he’s testing her. Like the name might be a lie.
DARYNA
Yes. Kyle.
She looks down. Not away—down. The difference matters.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He tried. We both tried.
Her voice catches just enough. A hairline fracture in the performance.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Sometimes people want different things.
The truth wearing the costume of a cliché. Safe that way. Forgettable.
She meets his eyes again. Lets him see something that might be heartbreak, might be shame, is actually neither.
EXT. USCIS PARKING LOT - DAY
Clarence stamps the form. Slides it across the desk like a dealer paying out.
CLARENCE
Interview scheduled for next month. Proof of residence, employment,
community ties.
Daryna takes the paper with both hands. A communion wafer. A pardon.
EXT. USCIS PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
She sits in her 2004 Honda Civic. Hands on the wheel at ten and two.
The shaking starts in her fingers. Spreads to her wrists, her shoulders.
Five minutes. Maybe more.
The engine stays cold.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - CONTINUOUS
The door closes behind her with a hollow click. Cheap hardware, cheaper wood.
She stands in the center of the room. Doesn’t move. The kind of stillness that comes after holding your breath for three years.
The apartment holds its breath with her.
Ikea couch, 2019. The year she thought she’d be married. The year she thought American would fit like a coat you grow into.
A poster of Lviv on the wall—golden light, cobblestones, a city she’s never walked through. Aspirational Ukraine. Tourist Ukraine.
On the shelf, face-down: a photograph of Odesa.
She doesn’t turn it over.
The radiator clanks. Once. Twice. Like knuckles on a door you’re not going to answer.
She crosses to the kitchenette. Two steps. That’s the apartment.
Opens the refrigerator. Hummus past its date. Half a rotisserie chicken. A bottle of Nemiroff vodka she keeps for guests who never come.
She pulls out her phone. Scrolls through her contacts. Stops at names that don’t have faces anymore. Keeps scrolling.
Sets it down.
The silence is a third roommate. The one who never pays rent.
She opens Spotify. Finds Okean Elzy. “Vesna.”
The first notes fill the space like water filling a hull.
She closes her eyes.
Starts to move.
Not dancing. Not yet. Just swaying. Hips first, then shoulders. Her body remembering something her mind won’t let her keep.
The chorus hits.
She spins. Once. Twice. Arms out. Head back.
For thirty seconds, she is not the girl at the visa interview. Not the girl who says “yes sir” and “thank you sir” and performs gratitude like a second language.
She is just a body. Just music. Just motion.
The song plays on.
She dances alone in her kitchen.
She drops her purse on the counter. Keys clatter. Phone face-down.
The stamped paper from Clarence. She holds it for a moment, studying the embossed seal like it might be counterfeit.
Crosses to the refrigerator.
Places it under a magnet shaped like the Statue of Liberty—green foam, Made in China, bought at a gas station on the Thruway.
Irony or sincerity?
She stares at it. The paper. The magnet. The whole performance.
Doesn’t know anymore.
Her hand stays on the refrigerator door. Cold metal. Real. The only thing in the room that doesn’t require translation.
She opens Spotify. Scrolls past the algorithm’s suggestions—Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, the soundtrack of assimilation.
Finds Okean Elzy.
Not “Vesna.” Not tonight.
“Обійми.”
She turns it up. All the way. Until the phone speaker distorts on the bass.
The neighbor below—Gary, she thinks his name is—thumps the ceiling with what sounds like a broom handle.
Three angry knocks.
She doesn’t turn it down.
The first verse fills the room like smoke.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
The phone sits on the counter, speaker crackling. Okean Elzy fills every corner.
Daryna stands in the center of the kitchen. Eyes closed.
Her body begins to move.
Not the careful choreography of the car show floor. Not the calculated sway that earns tips at the catering gig.
This is older. Unpolished.
Her arms rise. Her hips shift with the melody’s pull.
The linoleum is cold under her bare feet. She doesn’t notice.
Three more thumps from below. Harder this time.
She opens her eyes. Looks down at the floor.
Turns the volume up.
Her shoulders drop. Her spine curves. She spins once, twice, colliding gently with the refrigerator.
The Statue of Liberty magnet falls. Clatters to the floor.
She keeps dancing.
Her body finds the rhythm before her mind does.
The melody pulls her sideways. Her hand trails along the counter, fingertips brushing the chipped laminate.
She turns. Once. Slow.
Her other arm lifts—not reaching for anything, just rising because the song asks it to.
Her feet know this. Muscle memory from a place that doesn’t exist anymore.
The refrigerator hums. The music swells.
She spins again, faster now, and her hair catches across her face.
The song shifts—something faster, tinny through her phone speaker.
Her eyes open.
The kitchen resolves around her: water stain on the ceiling, neighbor’s garlic smell through the wall, the fluorescent bulb that flickers.
Buffalo. Still Buffalo.
She stops mid-turn. Her arm drops.
She stands there, breathing, until the song ends.
INT. APARTMENT HALLWAY - NIGHT
The hallway is narrow, institutional green, lit by a fluorescent panel that makes everyone look sick.
GARY KOWALCZYK, 32, rounds the corner from the stairwell. Hefty Cinch-Sak in one hand, phone in the other. He’s wearing basketball shorts in February and a Bills hoodie with a bleach stain.
The bag drips. He doesn’t notice.
DARYNA emerges from 3B, keys between her teeth, two overstuffed plastic bags cutting red lines into her wrists. Hair still damp from something—shower, maybe. She’s in black leggings and an oversized coat that’s seen better winters.
They see each other at the same moment.
Gary stops. The garbage bag swings, drips.
Daryna shifts the bags, trying to redistribute weight that won’t redistribute.
GARY
(opens his mouth)
Nothing.
His face does something. Not quite a smile. Not quite a stroke. Somewhere between apology and panic.
Daryna waits. She’s good at waiting.
GARY (CONT’D)
I—
Still nothing. The fluorescent hums. Somewhere a toilet runs.
He gestures at her bags. The gesture means nothing. His hand just moves through air like it might find words there.
DARYNA
(accented, precise)
Is okay.
She says it like she’s said it a thousand times. To customs agents. To landlords. To men.
GARY
No, I just—your bags look—
He points. At her bags. Which she is already holding. Which she can see.
DARYNA
Yes.
A smile. Small, professional. The kind that costs nothing and ends things.
She moves past him. Close enough he can smell her shampoo. Something with coconut. Grocery store brand.
Gary turns to watch her go. The garbage bag drips onto his Timberland. He doesn’t notice that either.
She reaches the stairwell. Doesn’t look back.
The door closes behind her.
Gary stands there, alone with his garbage, face the color of a stop sign.
GARY (CONT’D)
(finally)
Hey.
One syllable. Took him eight seconds.
DARYNA
Hello.
She adjusts her grip. The plastic bags crinkle, redistribute their weight. Nothing changes.
Gary’s mouth opens again. Shapes form—maybe “Can I” or “Do you need”—but they die somewhere between his brain and his tongue.
The garbage bag shifts in his hand. A dark drop hits the floor between them. Then another.
He looks down at it. Looks back up at her. His face does something complicated—embarrassment and apology having a fistfight.
GARY
I’m—sorry, I just—
He gestures with the garbage bag. At what, unclear. Her bags. The hallway. The fundamental inadequacy of his existence.
The fluorescent panel flickers once. Holds.
Daryna’s expression doesn’t change. She’s already calculated this interaction. Already knows how it ends.
DARYNA
Is fine.
Two words. Delivered with the efficiency of someone who’s learned English is a tool, not a language.
She takes a step. He doesn’t move. She takes another, angling past him in the narrow space.
Gary shifts his weight. The garbage bag swings slightly, pendulum-slow.
She looks at him—really looks, for the first time—and something in her face softens. Not much. Just enough to be dangerous.
DARYNA
You live here long?
The question lands like a gift he doesn’t know how to open.
GARY
Uh. Yeah. Since—
He’s counting. She can see him counting.
GARY (CONT’D)
Four years? Almost five.
She nods. The grocery bags cut red lines into her palms. She doesn’t adjust them.
DARYNA
Is good building.
It isn’t. They both know it isn’t. The radiators clang, the hot water comes and goes, someone downstairs plays the same Celine Dion song at 2 AM.
But Gary nods like she’s told him something true.
GARY
Yeah. Yeah, it’s—
The garbage bag drips again.
GARY
It’s—yeah. No problem.
He steps back, flattening himself against the wall. Makes himself small.
She moves past him. The space between them is nothing—six inches, maybe less. He can smell her shampoo. Something floral. Drugstore brand.
He holds his breath like she might hear it.
Her shoulder brushes his. Barely. The grocery bags swing between them.
DARYNA
Thank you.
She doesn’t look back.
Her door closes. The lock clicks—two sounds, deadbolt then chain.
Gary stands there. Garbage bag in his hand, arm going numb. He’s staring at the brass numbers on 3B like they’re a word he’s trying to remember.
Sixty seconds. Maybe more.
The bag drips something onto his shoe.
He doesn’t notice.
He’s already gone.
INT. PRECISION AUTO BODY SHOP - DAY
East Side, Buffalo. The kind of neighborhood where you don’t ask questions.
The shop’s sign hangs crooked. Paint peeling like sunburned skin. Razor wire catches the gray light. Three cars in the lot—a Camry on blocks, a Civic with no wheels, a Lexus that’s been there since October.
None of them are getting fixed.
Inside, past the bay doors, past the smell of old oil and newer fear, there’s an office with a metal desk and no windows.
VADIM ZELENKO, 45, stands perfectly still. Phone to his ear. Then—
He ERUPTS. Ukrainian pouring out so fast the consonants collide, words becoming pure sound, pure fury. His free hand doesn’t gesture—it cuts the air like he’s trying to physically hurt the space between him and whoever’s listening.
A MECHANIC in the bay freezes mid-wrench.
Vadim paces three steps. Stops. The linoleum under his shoes is worn to the concrete in a path—he’s walked this loop before.
“The shipment was intercepted.”
His voice drops. Colder now. Worse.
“The driver is missing.”
He listens. His jaw works like he’s chewing glass.
“The drive has everything. Names. Routes. Accounts. All of it.”
Silence on his end. Someone talking. Explaining. Excusing.
Vadim’s knuckles go white on the phone.
“I don’t care if he’s dead.”
Beat.
“I care where he died.”
He ends the call. Doesn’t throw the phone. Doesn’t need to.
Sets it down on the desk with the care of a man placing a loaded gun.
Behind him, through the grimy office window, the mechanic has gone back to work. Louder than necessary. Making sure he’s heard not listening.
Vadim pulls a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. Lights one. The flame steady despite everything.
Outside, Buffalo keeps snowing.
The words come out clipped. Surgical. Each one a diagnosis.
“Shipment intercepted. Driver missing.”
He’s not addressing the person on the phone anymore. He’s cataloging failure. His failure. The kind that gets you disappeared.
“The drive has everything.”
Beat. His free hand finds the desk edge. Grips it.
“Names. Routes. The accounts.”
Whoever’s talking on the other end—making excuses, offering theories—Vadim’s face doesn’t change. A muscle jumps in his jaw. That’s all.
“All of it,” he finishes.
The voice on the phone gets louder. Vadim pulls the phone away slightly. Looks at it like it’s something that bit him.
Brings it back.
“I don’t care if he’s dead.”
Three seconds. The mechanic in the bay has stopped pretending to work.
“I care where he died.”
The silence after is worse than the yelling. Vadim’s breathing is controlled. Deliberate. The kind of calm that precedes violence or chess moves.
In his world, they’re the same thing.
He’s already thinking three moves ahead. The driver’s route. His contacts. Who he might’ve run to.
The phone is still at his ear but he’s not listening anymore.
Vadim ends the call.
Doesn’t slam the phone. Just sets it down. Precise. Like defusing something.
The office is cold. Functional. A space designed for problems, not people.
On the desk: laptop, burner phone, half a pierogi from some gas station. The kind of meal you eat when eating is just refueling.
He opens the laptop.
Traffic cameras. Police scanners. Anything that might show where Taras went in his last hours.
His fingers move fast. Practiced. This isn’t his first time hunting a ghost through digital snow.
Nothing.
The man vanished into Buffalo like blood into lake water.
Vadim leans back. Stares at the screen like it personally betrayed him.
Outside, through the grimy window, the city keeps moving. Oblivious.
He picks up the burner phone again.
Scrolls through contacts that have no names. Just numbers. Just purposes.
Finds one.
Hesitates.
Doesn’t dial yet.
He dials.
The line clicks. No greeting.
VADIM
(quiet, controlled)
He was last seen near the Fruit Belt. Check the hospitals. Check the
morgue.
Beat.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Check anyone who might have seen a man bleeding in a parking lot.
His eyes drift to the window. Snow starting to fall.
VADIM (CONT’D)
And check the building where he lived. Someone there knows
something.
Pause. The kind that carries weight.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Someone always knows.
He hangs up. Silence fills the room like smoke.
On the wall: a surveillance photo. Taras’s building, West Side. Brick, peeling paint, the kind of place people land when they’re trying not to be found.
Vadim uncaps a pen. Circles one unit number.
3B.
He doesn’t know who lives there yet.
He taps the photo twice. Slow. Methodical.
The snow outside thickens. Buffalo erasing itself, one flake at a time.
VADIM
(to himself, almost gentle)
Someone always knows.
EXT. TOPS SUPERMARKET - PARKING LOT - LATE AFTERNOON
The sound hits first. That specific violence of metal finding metal at speed.
Then the screaming.
Daryna is halfway to her car, plastic bags cutting into her palm. The frozen pierogies already sweating through the bag.
Everyone moves toward the windows. She moves toward the wreck.
A pickup truck embedded in a sedan’s passenger side. The Loss logo—a smiling cartoon grocery bag—folded in on itself like origami. Steam rising from the hood.
People filming. Always filming. A woman on her phone with 911, reciting the address like she’s ordering pizza.
Daryna drops her bags.
The sedan’s driver-side door is crumpled, jammed. She can see him through the window—thirties, dark hair, the wrong color spreading across his shirt.
She pulls the door handle. Nothing.
She braces her foot against the frame and pulls again.
The door shrieks open.
He’s trying to speak. Blood on his teeth. Words in Russian, garbled, drowning.
She answers in Ukrainian without thinking.
His eyes snap to her face. Recognition of something deeper than her—the shape of the language, the home of it.
He reaches for her wrist. His grip is already weak, already leaving.
Behind her, someone shouts that the ambulance is coming. Five minutes. Four.
His other hand moves to his jacket. Fumbling. Desperate. He’s trying to show her something.
The blood is pooling in the footwell now. Too much. The kind of amount that means the clock isn’t measured in minutes.
He finds what he’s looking for. His hand closes around it.
Then closes around her hand.
“Sestra,” he whispers.
Sister.
The man inside is folded wrong. Blood spreading dark across his shirt, pooling in the seams of the seat.
He tries to speak. Russian, choked and wet.
She answers in Ukrainian without thinking.
His eyes lock onto hers. Not seeing her—seeing the language. The shape of home in a stranger’s mouth.
He grabs her wrist. His grip already failing.
TARAS
(barely audible)
Sestra…
Not her sister. Just—Ukrainian. The word for one of us.
He’s crying. Trying to form words but they’re drowning in his throat.
His other hand fumbles inside his jacket. Shaking. Desperate.
He pulls out a hard drive. Black plastic, small, no bigger than a lighter.
Presses it into her palm. Closes her fingers around it with both hands now, like a prayer.
TARAS (CONT’D)
Don’t let them—
He chokes. Blood on his lips.
TARAS (CONT’D)
Don’t let them have it. Mariupol.
They sold—
His eyes are still open.
But he’s gone.
TARAS
Sestra…
The word breaks on blood. Sister. Not her sister—just the sound of home.
His eyes aren’t seeing her anymore. They’re seeing something else. Someone else.
Tears cut through the blood on his face.
His hand moves inside his jacket. Shaking. Desperate. Searching.
He pulls out a hard drive. Black plastic. Small enough to hide anywhere.
He presses it into her palm. His fingers close over hers, forcing her to hold it.
TARAS (CONT’D)
Don’t let them—
Blood fills his mouth.
TARAS (CONT’D)
(forcing it out)
Don’t let them have it. Mariupol.
His grip tightens. One last surge.
TARAS (CONT’D)
They sold—
The words die in his throat.
His hand doesn’t let go. She has to pry his fingers open.
His hand falls away.
His eyes stay open. Empty windows.
The parking lot sounds rush back in—cart wheels, car doors, someone’s radio playing classic rock.
Daryna is kneeling in someone else’s blood.
Sirens now. Close.
A woman in a Sabres jacket: “Do you know him?”
Daryna looks down at the drive in her palm. Black plastic. Still warm from his body.
She knows Mariupol. She knows what they sold.
She stands. Her legs don’t feel like hers.
The hard drive disappears into her pocket.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
She moves through the space like a ghost. Doesn’t turn on lights.
Seven blocks. Her lungs still burning.
The coat comes off. Blood on the sleeve—dark, rust-brown. She stares at it.
Her hand finds the drive in her pocket. Pulls it out.
Black plastic. Warm. Smaller than she expected.
A smear of blood across the casing.
She sets it on the counter. Steps back.
It sits there. Ordinary. Deadly.
She moves to the window. Pulls the curtain back an inch.
The street below—empty. Sodium lights. A car passes, slow.
She lets the curtain fall.
The drive is still on the counter where she left it. She circles back to it.
Picks it up. Turns it over. Generic. No markings. Could be vacation photos. Could be nothing.
Could be why a man bled out in a parking lot.
She opens the junk drawer. Shoves it inside, under takeout menus and dead batteries and a phone charger that doesn’t fit anything she owns anymore.
Closes the drawer.
Opens it again.
The drive sits there among the debris of her American life. Waiting.
She slams the drawer shut. Harder than she meant to.
Her reflection catches in the microwave door—pale, hollowed out. She looks away.
The bathroom. She needs to shower. Needs to get his blood off her hands even though she’s already washed them twice.
But she doesn’t move.
Just stands there in her kitchen, in this apartment she can barely afford, in this city she never chose, holding herself very still because if she moves she might scream.
The radiator clanks. Steam hisses.
Outside, someone laughs—drunk, happy, alive.
She looks at the drawer again.
“Fuck.”
Whispered. Ukrainian. The first word in her own language since the parking lot.
It breaks something. Her knees give. She catches herself on the counter, breathing hard, the kind of breathing that comes before crying except she won’t let herself.
Can’t afford to.
The drive is in the drawer. The blood is on her coat. The man is dead.
And she has no idea what happens next.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - KITCHEN - NIGHT
The drive sits in her palm. Small. Weightless. Wrong.
She turns it over. Generic plastic casing. No logo. Could be anything.
Could be why he’s dead.
She moves to the counter. Her phone lies there, cracked screen glowing with missed calls from the catering company.
She holds the drive next to it. The port doesn’t match. Too old. Too new. Wrong generation of desperate.
DARYNA
(whispered, to herself)
Блять.
She sold her laptop in September. Rent or computer. There was no choice.
Now she’s holding something a man bled out to protect and she can’t even see what it is.
She sets it down. Picks it up. The plastic is still warm from her hand.
His hand was cold. Already cold.
She thinks about the library. The public computers with their fifteen-minute timers and their cameras and their logs.
She thinks about asking someone. Who? Gary next door with his good-guy smile?
The drive goes back in her palm. She closes her fist around it.
Stands there. Breathing. Deciding.
She moves to the kitchen drawer. The one that holds everything that doesn’t have a place.
Opens it.
Takeout menus. Dead batteries. The expired work permit with her photo from three years ago, when she still thought the smile would matter.
She drops the drive in. It lands on paper, silent.
Her hand hovers. Pulls back.
Closes the drawer.
The click is too loud.
She stands there. Opens it again.
The drive sits there. Innocent. Generic. A man died holding this.
She closes the drawer.
Her heart hammers. Won’t stop. Won’t slow.
The smell is still on her—parking lot oil, dirty snow, the copper-penny taste of blood in cold air.
She backs away from the drawer like it might follow.
INT. DARYNA’S BATHROOM - NIGHT
The shower runs. Steam fills the small space.
Daryna stands under the stream, water scalding. She scrubs her hands. Her forearms. The skin goes red.
Pink water circles the drain.
She scrubs harder. The blood is already gone but she can’t stop.
The water goes cold. She doesn’t move.
Finally, she turns it off.
Sits on the tile floor in a towel, back against the tub.
Her shoulders shake. No sound comes out.
The coat hangs on the door hook, dark stains across the front.
She stares at it. Another thing she can’t afford to lose.
INT. DARYNA’S BEDROOM - NIGHT
She lies on top of the covers. Fully dressed. Boots still on.
Stares at the ceiling. The streetlight through thin curtains makes shadows that don’t move.
Tomorrow she’ll smile at Clarence in his Friday fez. She’ll nod through his lecture about maritime law and the Articles of Confederation.
She’ll serve hors d’oeuvres to lawyers who don’t see her face.
The drive sits in the drawer. A cheap piece of plastic. Nothing.
She closes her eyes.
She will forget the parking lot. The weight of him. The words she couldn’t save.
This is survival. You forget everything that doesn’t keep you here.
INT. RENTED OFFICE - NIAGARA STREET - NIGHT
Above a bail bonds storefront. Fluorescent buzz. Water-stained drop ceiling.
Vadim sits at a folding table. Laptop glow on his face. Watching footage frame by frame.
His associate—younger, nervous energy—scrubs through timestamps with two fingers on the trackpad.
The parking lot. Empty frame. Empty frame. Then—
Movement. 2:47 AM.
A figure enters frame. Kneels. The angle is shit but the action is clear.
She takes something from Taras. Holds it. Looks at it.
VADIM
(in Russian)
There.
The associate freezes the frame. Her face is half-shadow, half-streetlight. Not enough for facial recognition.
But the car behind her—
VADIM (CONT’D)
Plates.
The associate zooms. New York. The numbers pixelate but they’re readable.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Run it.
Fingers on keys. The DMV database loads like it’s 1998. Progress bar. Then—
A registration. A name.
The associate pulls up another window. Immigration records. Someone always keeps lists. Someone always makes it easy.
A photo appears. Visa application. Professional. Unsmiling.
Daryna Koval. Twenty-eight. Odesa.
The associate scrolls. Address on the West Side. Fiancé visa, 2021. Status: pending adjustment of status.
Employment history. Three jobs. Telemarketing. Catering company. Promotional modeling agency.
No arrests. No warrants. No parking tickets.
A ghost trying to become real.
Vadim leans back. Lights a cigarette even though the office is non-smoking. No one’s coming to complain.
He studies her photo. She’s looking just past the camera. The way people do when they’re told to look natural and can’t.
VADIM
She knows what she has?
ASSOCIATE
(in Russian)
No way to tell.
Vadim smokes. Thinks.
VADIM
Then we ask politely.
He closes the laptop.
The associate’s fingers move to a new window. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn.
ASSOCIATE
(in Russian)
Social media.
Vadim watches the screen populate. A handful of photos. Car show in Rochester—she’s holding a sign for a dealership, smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. A sunset over Lake Erie, no caption. A repost about Ukrainian relief funds, six months old.
Nothing personal. No friends tagged. No locations. No patterns.
ASSOCIATE (CONT’D)
Careful.
VADIM
Smart.
The associate pulls up her work records. Telemarketing firm on Delaware Avenue—extension 47. Catering company downtown—she’s scheduled for a wedding reception Saturday, Statler City.
Her modeling agency lists her availability: weekends, trade shows, automotive events.
She exists in fragments. Data points. A constellation of someone trying not to be noticed while being just visible enough to stay legal.
Vadim stubs out his cigarette on the folding table.
VADIM (CONT’D)
She goes to work. She goes home. She doesn’t know anyone.
He looks at her visa photo again.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Alone is good. Alone is easy.
The associate opens a new tab. Property records.
ASSOCIATE
(in Russian)
Apartment 3B. Lease signed two years ago.
Rent paid on time.
He scrolls down.
ASSOCIATE (CONT’D)
Co-signer was the fiancé. Lease renewed
solo last March.
Vadim leans closer. The screen shows a credit check. Thin file. No car loan. No credit cards. Just the apartment, a phone bill, utilities.
VADIM
Income?
ASSOCIATE
Telemarketing. Catering. The modeling.
He pulls up her bank statements—Vadim’s people have access to everything.
ASSOCIATE (CONT’D)
Combined, maybe thirty thousand a year.
Vadim watches the numbers. Deposits. Withdrawals. Rent. Groceries. Nothing unusual. Nothing hidden.
A life lived in the margins of legality, documented just enough to prove she’s trying.
VADIM
She has nothing to lose.
He lights another cigarette.
VADIM (CONT’D)
That makes her dangerous.
Vadim scrolls to her DMV photo. Stares.
She’s looking at the camera like it’s another audition. Not smiling. Not trying.
VADIM
(in Russian)
Pretty.
The associate glances over.
ASSOCIATE
Problem?
VADIM
People remember pretty.
He zooms in on her face. High cheekbones. Eyes that photograph darker than they probably are.
VADIM (CONT’D)
But no family here. Fiancé married
someone else last fall.
He closes the window.
VADIM (CONT’D)
She’s alone. That helps.
INT. VADIM’S HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
Vadim closes the laptop. Reaches for his coat pocket.
Pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Tears the cellophane.
VADIM
(in Russian)
Send Leonid to the apartment.
Watch only. We go tonight.
He lights one. First drag in three years.
The associate checks his phone.
ASSOCIATE
(in Russian)
Moscow called again.
Vadim exhales slowly. Thirty-six hours. The drive has been gone thirty-six hours.
VADIM
I know.
INT. TELEMARKETING BOILER ROOM - DAY
Third floor. Dying building. Windows that haven’t opened since Clinton.
Forty cubicles under fluorescent tubes that hum like insects. The carpet smells like divorce and energy drinks.
Daryna sits in cube 23, headset on, posture perfect.
Her nameplate says DONNA.
DARYNA
(pure Midwestern sunshine)
And for just three hundred dollars down,
you’re looking at a lifetime of memories
in beautiful Sarasota!
She’s got a laminated script. Doesn’t look at it.
Around her: a Somali woman selling the same dream in the same voice. A guy from Eritrea. Two Karens from Cheektowaga who actually need the job.
VOICE ON PHONE (O.S.)
(tinny, skeptical)
You ever been? To Sarasota?
Daryna doesn’t blink.
DARYNA
Oh my gosh, yes—I try to get down
there every winter. The beaches?
Unreal. And Siesta Key at sunset…
She’s never seen an ocean that wasn’t the Black Sea.
But her voice has a tan. Has a condo. Has a golden retriever named Bailey.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
You can practically feel the sand
between your toes just thinking about it.
She clicks her pen. Three times. Old theater warm-up habit.
The man buys the timeshare.
Daryna logs the sale. Removes the headset for exactly thirty seconds.
Drinks water from a plastic bottle she’s refilled six times.
Through the glass partition: KYLE, 23, man-bun and a vape pen, gives her a huge thumbs-up.
She’s top seller this week.
The prize is an Applebee’s gift card.
She puts the headset back on. Straightens her spine.
Becomes Donna again.
KYLE
(through the glass, mouthing)
CRUSHING it, Donna!
He vapes. Blows a cloud shaped like ambition.
Daryna sees the leaderboard on the wall. Her name—DONNA K.—at the top.
Below it: APPLEBEE’S GIFT CARD - $25.
She needs it.
Rent’s due Friday. The catering gig canceled—bride’s father died, no reception, no check.
She’s forty-three dollars short.
She clicks NEXT CALL.
DARYNA
(into the phone, radiant)
Hi there! This is Donna calling from
Sunshine Resorts with an incredible—
The person hangs up.
She doesn’t flinch. Clicks again.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Hi there! This is Donna—
Her accent is flawless. Weaponized. Each vowel costs nothing and buys everything.
She learned this in Odesa. Theater conservatory. Voice and movement.
How to make your body a lie the audience believes.
The conservatory took a missile last March.
She smiles into the phone.
Smiling changes the sound waves. Lifts the soft palate. Opens the throat.
Science and survival.
The customer hears sunshine.
Buys the dream.
Daryna logs it. Doesn’t celebrate.
Just breathes. Refills her water bottle.
Puts the headset back on.
INT. TELEMARKETING OFFICE - BREAK ROOM - 2:47 PM
Daryna stands at the microwave. The timer counts down.
The smell hits first—earthy, sharp, unmistakable.
Heads turn. A Somali woman, HAWA (29), approaches.
HAWA
What is that?
DARYNA
Borscht. Beets, cabbage—
HAWA
Sour cream?
DARYNA
You know it?
HAWA
My mother makes something. Different.
But the same.
They sit at the plastic table. No one else joins them.
Daryna eats slowly. The borscht is three days old, tastes like Sunday.
Hawa unwraps something in foil. Rice, spiced meat.
They don’t talk about Odesa. Don’t talk about Mogadishu.
Don’t need to.
The microwave hums. Someone’s Hot Pocket burns.
Hawa slides her phone across the table—a photo of her kids.
Daryna smiles. Real this time.
EXT. TELEMARKETING OFFICE - FIRE ESCAPE - 2:53 PM
Daryna’s phone vibrates. Unknown number. She swipes it away.
It buzzes again immediately.
She pushes through the metal door. The fire escape overlooks a parking lot, a Tops, the 33 in the distance.
Hawa’s cigarette tastes like cloves.
She opens the message.
Ukrainian letters on the screen. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
The cigarette burns down to her fingers. She doesn’t feel it.
She deletes. Blocks the number. Her thumb hovers over the phone icon—Gary? Police?
Across the street, a black sedan idles near the dumpsters.
She doesn’t see it. She’s watching smoke rise toward clouds that look like snow.
INT. TELEMARKETING BOILER ROOM - CONTINUOUS
Daryna slides back into her cubicle. Kyle’s already forgotten which name she’s using today.
DARYNA
Hi, this is Donna from Sunshine—
She catches herself. Checks the script taped to her monitor.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
—Darlene. From Sunshine Resorts.
Four sales before six. She’s good at this. Being someone else.
The headset comes off. She clocks out, doesn’t say goodbye.
EXT. BUS STOP - DUSK
Earbuds in. Okean Elzy drowning out traffic on Genesee.
The 25 pulls up. She takes a window seat, watches Buffalo slide past in February gray.
Three cars back, the sedan merges into traffic.
EXT. DARYNA’S STREET - 6:47 PM
She steps off at her stop. The sedan continues past, parks three houses down.
Daryna’s already thinking about borscht. About whether Gary’s home yet.
About Clarence and his fez and whether this time, finally, the paperwork goes through.
She doesn’t think about the jacket in her closet.
Doesn’t think about what’s wrapped inside it.
INT. SEDAN - THREE HOUSES DOWN - NIGHT
The engine ticks. Cooling metal in February cold.
Two men sit in silence. The driver scrolls his phone—Vadim’s text, just an address and a screenshot. Daryna at some Ukrainian festival, vyshyvanka blouse, forced smile.
The passenger snaps the glovebox. Pulls out latex gloves. Blue, medical grade.
PASSENGER
(Ukrainian, subtitled)
How long?
DRIVER
She walks from the bus. Seven minutes.
The passenger works his fingers into the gloves. Practiced. The snap of latex like punctuation.
They’ve done this in Cleveland. In Pittsburgh. In a suburb of Philadelphia where the target kept a Rottweiler and they had to improvise.
Buffalo’s easier. Buffalo’s cold and people stay inside.
DRIVER (CONT’D)
Vadim says careful. She doesn’t know yet.
PASSENGER
They never do.
The driver pockets his phone. Checks the rearview. A porch light two houses up. Someone taking out trash, breath clouding.
They wait for the door to close.
PASSENGER (CONT’D)
The neighbor?
DRIVER
Works days. Probably home.
PASSENGER
We’re quiet.
The driver nods. Reaches under his seat. Two Makarovs in a canvas bag. Old Soviet issue, untraceable, the kind you leave behind if you have to.
The passenger takes one. Checks the magazine. Slides it back.
DRIVER
She comes home. We wait inside. She tells us where it is. We leave.
PASSENGER
And if she doesn’t know?
The driver doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.
They’ve done this before.
EXT. DARYNA’S DUPLEX - NIGHT
The sedan doors open. No interior light—they disabled it in Cleveland.
Two shadows move up the driveway. Not hurrying. Not hesitating.
The porch light’s burned out. Has been for weeks.
No one’s watching.
INT. DARYNA’S DUPLEX - CONTINUOUS
The lock surrenders. Thirty seconds, tension wrench, rake pick. The door whispers open.
They step inside. Shoe covers already on. No flashlights—not yet.
The passenger closes the door behind them. Tests the knob. Locked again from inside.
Through the wall, Gary’s TV mutters. Crowd noise. Post-game analysis.
Their eyes adjust. Streetlight through cheap blinds. Enough.
The living room takes shape. Futon. IKEA coffee table. That specific poverty of recent immigration—nothing extra, nothing wasted.
The driver moves to the kitchen. Positions himself where he can see the front door, the living room, the hallway. Draws his Makarov. Holds it low, casual.
The passenger walks the apartment like he’s taking inventory.
Opens the silverware drawer. Closes it. No sound.
Checks under the futon cushions. Runs gloved fingers along the baseboards.
Finds the bedroom. Single mattress on the floor. Suitcase for a dresser.
The closet door sticks. He eases it open.
Winter coats. Goodwill tags still attached to some.
He works through pockets. Methodical. Patient.
Finds the jacket. Finds the weight in the inner pocket.
Pulls out the hard drive.
Holds it to the window light. Checks the label.
Nods once.
INT. DARYNA’S DUPLEX - CONTINUOUS
The passenger moves through the apartment like a home inspector. Methodical. No rush.
Opens the silverware drawer. Counts forks. Closes it without sound.
Lifts the futon cushions. Runs gloved fingers along the seams.
Checks behind the microwave. Under the sink. Inside the oven.
The driver watches from the kitchen. Gun low. Breathing quiet.
The passenger reaches the bedroom. Single mattress on bare floor. Suitcase open—folded clothes in neat stacks.
He kneels. Checks under the mattress. Nothing.
The closet door sticks. He eases it open with two fingers.
Winter coats. Goodwill tags still attached.
He works through the pockets. Left to right. One coat at a time.
Fourth coat. Thrift-store peacoat, navy blue.
His hand stops. Finds weight in the inner pocket.
Pulls out the hard drive. Small. Black. Seagate label half-peeled.
He holds it to the window light. Turns it over once.
Looks back at his partner.
Nods.
The passenger pockets the drive. Meets his partner’s eyes across the apartment.
The driver tilts his head toward the door. Time to go.
But the passenger shakes his head. Taps his watch twice.
The driver’s jaw tightens. He knows what that means.
Vadim’s instructions weren’t just retrieve. They were confirm.
No copies. No backups. No journalists on speed dial.
That conversation requires her presence.
The passenger moves to the light switch. Leaves it off.
INT. DARYNA’S DUPLEX - NIGHT
The passenger takes the kitchen chair. Turns it to face the door. Sets the pistol across his thighs like he’s holding a newspaper.
The driver positions himself flat against the wall beside the bedroom doorway. Sightline to the front door. Sightline to his partner.
They don’t speak.
Through the wall: Trebek’s muffled voice. A contestant buzzing in.
Outside: the pneumatic sigh of bus brakes. Diesel idle, then pulling away.
Footsteps on concrete. A woman’s gait.
The passenger’s thumb finds the safety. Doesn’t click it yet.
INT. GARY’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
The game flickers blue across three faces. Wings cooling in grease-stained boxes. Empty Labatt bottles forming a small city on the coffee table.
Donnie’s sprawled across the couch like a man who’s never paid rent here. Spit’s on the armrest, that dangerous perch of someone three beers past caring about furniture.
The Sabres are up 3-1. Second period. Which in Buffalo means the loss is just warming up.
DONNIE
You know what your problem is?
GARY
The Sabres defense?
DONNIE
You’ve been making moon-eyes at her for six months.
Gary watches the screen. A player misses an open net.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
She smiles at you. She says hi. She exists in your proximity. That’s
basically a marriage proposal in your world.
SPIT
(snorting)
She’s a smoke show and he’s got khakis from Kohl’s. Math doesn’t
work.
Donnie throws a crumpled napkin at him.
DONNIE
Shut up. Gary’s a catch.
SPIT
Gary’s a participation trophy.
DONNIE
He’s got a pension.
SPIT
He’s got a Subaru with duct tape on the bumper.
Gary opens his mouth.
On screen, the Sabres give up a goal. Soft. Through the five-hole. The kind that makes you believe in curses.
Gary closes his mouth.
SPIT (CONT’D)
See? Even the universe agrees with me.
Donnie reaches for another wing, considers it, puts it back.
DONNIE
Look. Worst case? She says no. You’re already not dating her. Nothing
changes.
SPIT
Except his dignity.
DONNIE
What dignity? Man watches the Sabres voluntarily.
The apartment settles into the comfortable silence of men who’ve known each other since they had different teeth.
On screen, Buffalo gives up another goal.
Nobody’s surprised.
DONNIE
You’ve been making moon-eyes at her for six months.
GARY
The Sabres defense?
DONNIE
She smiles at you. She says hi. She exists in your proximity.
He reaches for another wing, considers the physics of it.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
That’s basically a marriage proposal in your world.
SPIT
(snorting)
She’s a smoke show and he’s got khakis from Kohl’s.
He takes a pull from his Labatt.
SPIT (CONT’D)
Math doesn’t work.
Gary watches the screen. A player skates backward into trouble.
DONNIE
What’re you gonna do? Wait until you’re both sixty and she’s taking out
the same garbage?
SPIT
“Hey, nice Hefty bag. Wanna get coffee?”
Gary opens his mouth.
On screen, the puck slides through the goalie’s legs like it’s greased. The kind of goal that doesn’t need commentary.
3-2 now.
Gary closes his mouth.
SPIT (CONT’D)
See? Even the universe agrees with me.
DONNIE
Universe is a Sabres fan. Doesn’t count.
INT. GARY’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
The game bleeds into overtime. Predictable as weather.
4-3. Then 4-4 with two minutes left.
SPIT
This fucking team.
But he says it like a prayer. Like he’ll say it again next week.
Overtime lasts ninety seconds. A turnover at the blue line, a breakaway, done.
DONNIE
(standing, stretching)
Seriously though. Ask her to Spot or something. Worst she says is
no.
GARY
Worst she says is yes and then realizes.
Donnie looks at him. Doesn’t argue. Just collects empties, the clink of bottles saying what words won’t.
SPIT
(pulling on his jacket)
You’re gonna die alone with a Sabres blanket.
GARY
Got worse ways to go.
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
Donnie’s truck pulls away, taillights swallowed by snow flurries.
Gary stands there, breath clouding. Two beers past smart decisions, one beer short of courage.
He tilts his head back. Third floor, corner unit.
Her window glows amber against the dark.
He watches it longer than he should. Imagines knocking. Imagines her opening the door in that oversized Sabres hoodie she wears on cold nights, the one that makes her look smaller than she is.
Imagines what comes after that.
Nothing good, probably.
INT. HALLWAY - NIGHT
Gary freezes at his door. Keys halfway to the lock.
The sound comes from Daryna’s apartment—not a crash, but the specific silence after one. The kind that makes your spine know something’s wrong before your brain does.
He turns. Looks at her door.
His hand drops from his own lock. Moves toward hers instead.
INT. HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS
Gary’s hand shakes. The key misses the lock once. Twice.
From inside Daryna’s apartment: a male voice, low. Speaking Ukrainian. Not asking—instructing.
The key slides home.
He turns it.
The lock clicks like a gunshot in his ears.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - CONTINUOUS
Gary hits the door with everything he has.
The cheap frame gives. Splinters. The door swings wide and slams against the interior wall.
He’s through before he can think. Before he can stop. Before any part of him that knows better can intervene.
His shoulder throbs. His breath comes in gasps.
The apartment is small. Smaller than his. He’s never been inside.
There’s a lamp on the floor. Still lit. Casting shadows at the wrong angles.
The coffee table is on its side.
Daryna kneels beside it. Her face turned away. Her hair pulled back tight in someone’s fist.
Gary sees the hand first. Then the arm. Then the man attached to it.
Dark coat. Expensive. Wrong for Buffalo.
A second man crouches near the overturned table. He holds something small. Metal. It catches the light from the fallen lamp.
Not a gun.
A phone. Or a drive. Something that fits in a palm.
Both men turn.
Not startled. Not afraid.
Annoyed.
The way you’d look at a dog that wandered into the wrong yard.
The one holding Daryna’s hair doesn’t let go. Just shifts his weight. Adjusts his grip.
The crouching one stands. Slow. Deliberate.
He’s older. Harder. His face has the worn neutrality of someone who’s done this before.
He looks at Gary the way you’d look at a problem.
Solvable. Tedious. Inevitable.
Gary’s hands are empty.
His keys are still in the door behind him.
He doesn’t remember dropping them.
The man holding Daryna speaks first. Ukrainian. Three syllables. A name, maybe. Or a question.
The older one answers without looking back. His eyes stay on Gary.
He sets the drive on the counter behind him. Careful. Deliberate.
Then he straightens.
Daryna tries to pull away. The grip in her hair tightens. She gasps—not a scream, just air forced out.
The older man reaches into his coat.
Not fast. Not slow.
The motion of someone who’s done this enough times that it’s become muscle memory.
Gary sees the shape of it before it clears the fabric.
Black. Compact. Real.
His legs don’t work.
His throat closes.
The man’s hand emerges.
Not a gun.
A knife.
Folding. The blade snaps open with a sound like a bone breaking.
He doesn’t point it. Doesn’t threaten.
Just holds it. Low. Relaxed.
The way you’d hold a tool.
The man with Daryna says something else. Sharper this time.
The older one nods.
Steps forward.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Gary launches himself across the threshold.
No form. No plan. Just forward.
He catches Vadim mid-torso, drives him sideways into the kitchenette counter. The impact rattles dishes. Something ceramic shatters on the linoleum.
They go down together in a tangle of limbs and desperation.
Gary’s shoulder screams. His elbow finds something soft—ribs, maybe stomach. Vadim’s face is inches away, breath hot and sharp: Marlboros and Altoids.
The knife is still in Vadim’s hand.
Gary grabs for the wrist. Misses. Grabs again.
His fingers close around fabric, then bone.
They’re rolling now. The floor is slick with something.
Vadim’s knee comes up. Finds Gary’s thigh. Not where he was aiming, but close enough to make Gary’s grip loosen.
The blade catches light.
The second man moves from the doorway. Gun rising.
Daryna doesn’t think. Launches from the wall.
Her teeth find his wrist before the barrel steadies. Taste of leather and salt. Her knee drives up, finds the soft collapse of groin.
He makes a sound like air leaving a tire.
The gun clatters. Spins across warped floorboards. Disappears under the radiator with a metallic scrape.
The second man doubles. Staggers back.
Vadim sees it. The math changing. The easy job becoming expensive.
They go.
Not scrambling. Not fleeing. The professional retreat of men who’ve done this math before—when noise becomes exposure, when a neighbor becomes a witness.
Vadim gestures. The second man straightens, still bent around his injury.
The door frame splinters as they pass through it. Hinges scream.
Gary collapses. Hands and knees on cheap carpet. Blood drips from his hairline, his mouth, somewhere. He’s breathing like he’s forgotten how.
Daryna slides down the wall. Lands hard. Her whole body shaking with adrenaline she can’t metabolize.
The apartment settles into silence.
But it’s not silence. It’s the ringing absence where violence was.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Two men move with the efficiency of a rehearsed dance.
The first produces a folding knife. Not theatrical. Just business. The blade catches fluorescent light from the kitchen.
The second positions himself at the door. Blocks it with his body. Hands loose at his sides.
Daryna backs into the counter. Nowhere left to go.
VADIM
(in Russian, almost gentle)
The drive. That’s all.
She shakes her head.
The knife-man moves. Fast. Professional. Catches her wrist, twists, brings her down hard onto the linoleum.
Her arm wrenches behind her back. The angle wrong, painful.
He kneels beside her. Weight on her shoulder blade.
KNIFE-MAN
(in Russian)
We can make this easy.
The knife hovers near her face. Close enough to feel the threat of it.
Gary stands by the couch.
Gary who has never thrown a punch. Gary who apologizes when he bumps shopping carts. Gary whose hands are shaking.
Gary who sees a woman on the floor and a man with a knife and something in him just—
Breaks.
He launches himself across eight feet of kitchen.
Not graceful. Not trained. A bowling ball with bad knees and absolutely no plan beyond get there.
His shoulder catches the knife-man in the ribs.
Both of them crash into the counter. Dishes explode. The knife skitters across tile.
The second man pivots. Smooth. Reaches into his jacket.
His hand comes out holding a gun.
Gary’s fist connects with the knife-man’s ribs. Both bodies slam into the counter. A coffee mug detonates on tile.
The second man pivots. Jacket opens. Hand moving inside.
Daryna sees it happening in slow motion—the gun emerging, Gary’s back exposed, the angle of execution.
She doesn’t think.
She lunges. Catches the gunman’s wrist between her teeth. Bites down hard, jaw locked, tasting copper and salt.
He screams. High and animal.
The gun discharges. Deafening in the small space.
Plaster explodes from the ceiling. White dust raining down like snow.
Outside, a car alarm starts wailing.
Daryna holds on. Her jaw aching. Blood in her mouth.
The gunman tries to shake her off. His other hand clawing at her hair.
She bites harder.
Gary’s on the floor now, gasping, trying to get up.
The knife-man recovers first. Kicks Gary in the ribs. Gary folds.
For one suspended moment, it’s just bodies and violence and the car alarm screaming.
Then the bleeding man barks something in Ukrainian.
An order. Final.
They’re leaving.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - CONTINUOUS
The knife spins across linoleum. Stops against the baseboard.
Gary swings wild—connects with nothing, then cabinet. Wood splinters. His knuckles split.
The bitten man backhands Daryna. Her head snaps sideways. She hits the fridge hard. Magnets rain down. Expired Tops coupons flutter like confetti.
Knife-man finds his feet. Plants a boot in Gary’s stomach.
Gary folds. All the air punched out.
Three seconds. The kitchen suspended between outcomes.
The bleeding man speaks. Ukrainian. Sharp. Final.
A command, not a question.
Knife-man hesitates. Looks at Gary on the floor.
Then nods.
Decision made.
They back toward the door. Professional now. The chaos collapsing into retreat.
The door slams open. Both men gone—fast, controlled. Already on phones before they hit the hallway.
Gary rolls onto his side. Gasping. Blood from his nose, his mouth, somewhere. Can’t tell.
Daryna slides down the wall. Her hands won’t stop shaking. She sits on them.
The apartment reeks. Cordite. Fear-sweat that isn’t theirs.
The refrigerator hums its stupid song.
A siren wails. Blocks away. Nothing to do with them.
Yet.
INT. GARY’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
GARY
What the fuck.
Not a question. A declaration. Blood runs from his nose, drips off his chin.
DARYNA stares at the floor. The smear where she bit him. Red on linoleum.
Her jaw works. Math happening behind her eyes.
DARYNA
We have to go. Now.
GARY
Why—
She’s already up. Coat in hand. Her face answers every question he hasn’t asked.
All the answers are worse.
INT. GARY’S SUBARU - NIGHT - MOVING
Gary’s knuckles bone-white on the wheel. The Subaru fishtails out of the parking lot, back end sliding on ice he didn’t know was there.
GARY
We should call the cops.
His voice cracks. Sixteen again.
Daryna twisted in the passenger seat. Watching behind them through the back window. Her breath fogs the glass.
DARYNA
No cops.
GARY
What do you mean no cops? Someone just—
DARYNA
No. Cops.
Not panic. A door closing. The kind that doesn’t open again.
They blow through a red light at Seneca. A horn blares, Doppler-shifts into nothing.
GARY
Why—
DARYNA
Drive.
His brain trying to catch up to his body. Which is apparently doing thirty over down Seneca Street. Past the Polish church. Past the pierogi place. Past every landmark of his entire life.
GARY
Why no cops?
She doesn’t answer. Just keeps watching the mirror. Her hand finds the door handle. Grips it.
Then her other hand shoots out. Clamps onto his arm.
DARYNA
There.
He checks the rearview.
Black SUV. Three cars back. Keeping perfect distance. Not trying to hide. Not trying to catch up.
Professional.
Gary’s stomach drops into his shoes.
GARY
That’s—
DARYNA
Yes.
The SUV changes lanes. Smooth. Patient. A shark adjusting depth.
Gary’s never driven like this. Gary’s never had to.
His foot finds the accelerator.
The Subaru’s engine whines. 140,000 miles of municipal employee commutes suddenly asked to be something else.
The speedometer climbs.
The Subaru screams through the intersection at Abbott.
Gary’s brain three seconds behind his hands. Which are doing things he didn’t know they could do.
GARY
Jesus—
The SUV doesn’t speed up. Doesn’t need to. Just follows. Three car lengths. Might as well be a rope.
Daryna’s still twisted backward. Her face lit red-white-red by passing streetlights.
DARYNA
Turn. Next right.
GARY
That’s—
DARYNA
Turn.
He cranks the wheel. The Subaru tilts, tires screaming. A sound he’s never heard his car make. Like it’s surprised at itself.
They rocket down a residential street. Parked cars blurring into a wall.
The SUV makes the turn. Doesn’t even slow down.
Gary’s vision tunneling. His whole life has been staying in lanes. Signaling. Checking mirrors twice.
His foot goes down harder.
The speedometer needle climbing past places it hasn’t been since 2015.
GARY
(to himself)
Okay. Okay.
Not okay.
Behind them, the SUV’s headlights fill the mirror. Patient as cancer.
EXT. SUBARU (MOVING) - NIGHT
Gary’s knuckles bone-white on the wheel.
The engine screaming in a register it’s never hit. Like it’s asking permission.
He doesn’t give it. Just aims the car at gaps that close before he reaches them.
A delivery truck. He swerves. Misses by a coat of paint.
GARY
(breathing like he’s drowning)
Fuck. Fuck.
The word tastes new in his mouth.
He’s never said it while driving. Never said it and meant it.
His whole body shaking but his hands—
His hands are steady.
The Subaru cuts left. No signal. No thought. Pure animal geometry.
A sedan honks. Gary doesn’t hear it.
He’s inside something now. A space where the only math is through.
The SUV’s headlights swing wide, then correct.
Still there.
Always there.
The Subaru wasn’t built for this.
The whole frame shudders. Something metal grinding against something else metal.
The check engine light strobes. Morse code for please stop.
But it’s a Subaru. Which means fifteen Buffalo winters. Salt and ice and the kind of cold that kills weaker machines.
Which means it has one more impossible thing left in it.
DARYNA
(quiet)
There—
Gary doesn’t ask. Just yanks the wheel.
Hard right down a street that shouldn’t exist.
Between warehouses like tombstones. Narrow. Dark. The kind of gap you only take if you know what’s on the other side.
Or if you’re out of choices.
EXT. ABANDONED STEEL PLANT - NIGHT
The SUV’s headlights sweep the intersection behind them.
Miss the turn.
Keep going.
Gary watches in the mirror. Doesn’t breathe until the lights disappear.
He knows these streets. Played war here as a kid, back when the plant was still dying instead of dead.
Muscle memory takes over. Through the gap in the fence—still there, rusted wider now.
The Subaru scrapes through.
Then: nothing but snow and the skeletons of what Buffalo used to be.
INT. SUBARU - NIGHT
Gary kills the engine. His hands won’t stop shaking.
The blast furnace looms through the windshield like a cathedral built for something darker than God.
Snow ticks against the glass. That’s the only sound.
He turns to her.
GARY
Who the fuck are you?
Not angry. Scared. Which is worse.
Daryna’s breath fogs between them. She’s done this before—the math of disclosure, the economy of truth.
DARYNA
My name is Daryna. That part’s real.
GARY
What part isn’t?
She reaches into her coat. Gary flinches.
She pulls out the drive. Small. Black. Weighs nothing.
DARYNA
Three days ago, a man died in a parking lot. Loss, on Walden. He was
bleeding—I stopped. He spoke Ukrainian. He gave me this.
Gary stares at it like it might detonate.
GARY
What’s on it?
DARYNA
I don’t know.
GARY
Bullshit.
DARYNA
I don’t. He said—
Her voice catches. Not performance. Memory.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He said people needed to see it. That people died because of what’s on
it. Then he died.
GARY
So call the cops. FBI. Whoever—
DARYNA
You think I have that option?
The question lands like a slap.
She gestures at herself—the accent, the precarity, the fact of being foreign in a country that’s decided who belongs.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I’m on a work visa that expires in four months. I have an interview with
a man who wears a hat from a cartoon. You think I walk into a police
station with a dead man’s secrets and walk back out?
Gary opens his mouth. Closes it.
Because she’s right.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
There are people looking for this. Dangerous people. Professional
people.
She doesn’t say the rest. Doesn’t tell him about Mariupol, about blood money, about the kind of men who make bodies disappear.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
You should go. Drop me anywhere. Forget you saw me.
Gary looks at the drive. At her. At the snow falling on the ruins of what his city used to build.
GARY
I know a place.
GARY
What kind of dangerous?
DARYNA
The kind that followed us from my apartment.
She says it flat. No drama. That’s what makes it land.
Gary’s jaw works. He’s trying to find the question that makes this make sense.
GARY
The guy who died. What was he to you?
DARYNA
Nothing. A stranger.
GARY
But he spoke—
DARYNA
Ukrainian. Yes.
She looks at the drive in her palm. Turns it over like a prayer bead.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He said people needed to see this. That people died because of what’s on
it.
Beat.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Then he died. In my hands. In a parking lot in Buffalo, New York.
The absurdity of it hangs there. The distance between Odesa and Loss. Between whatever war produced this and the snow falling on a Subaru.
GARY
You looked at it?
DARYNA
No.
GARY
Why not?
She meets his eyes.
DARYNA
Because then I’d know. And knowing makes you responsible.
Gary understands that. The logic of willful ignorance. The safety of not asking.
He’s about to cross that line anyway.
GARY
(quiet)
My buddy Donnie’s got a cabin. Out past Springville.
He’s still looking at the plant. Not at her.
GARY (CONT’D)
No one uses it this time of year. Heat works. Lock on the door.
DARYNA
Gary—
GARY
I’m not saying I understand this. Any of this.
He finally turns to her.
GARY (CONT’D)
But those guys back there? They weren’t cops. And they weren’t asking
politely.
His hands are still on the wheel. White-knuckled.
GARY (CONT’D)
So we go to Donnie’s. We figure it out. Then we decide.
The ‘we’ lands between them like a contract neither signed.
He doesn’t start the car.
Just sits there, breath fogging the windshield, hands still locked on the wheel like it’s the only solid thing left.
Daryna watches his jaw set. His shoulders square.
She’s seen this before. In the parking lot. Taras, bleeding out, still trying to explain.
The look of a man deciding to be decent when decent gets you killed.
Gary’s hand moves to the ignition.
GARY
Okay.
One word. Like he’s answering a question she didn’t ask.
GARY
I know a place.
He turns the key. Engine catches.
GARY (CONT’D)
Donnie’s got a cabin. Up in Arcade.
Middle of nowhere—no cell service,
no neighbors.
He pulls onto what used to be a road. Cracked asphalt, weeds claiming the edges.
GARY (CONT’D)
We go there. Figure this out.
We.
Like it’s already decided. Like there’s no version where he drops her at a bus station and drives home to his life.
Daryna’s eyes close.
She should tell him to stop the car.
She doesn’t.
INT. DONNIE’S COUSIN’S CABIN - KITCHEN - NIGHT
The door gives with a cheap click. Gary pockets the credit card, steps inside like he’s trespassing on his own life.
Wood paneling. A couch the color of rust. That bass on the wall, mouth open in permanent surprise.
Daryna moves past him to the kitchen table. Sits. Doesn’t look around. Every bolt-hole has the same geometry.
Gary finds a jar of Folgers in the cupboard. Fills a kettle that hasn’t been used since deer season.
The water takes forever to boil.
He sets two mugs down. Chipped ceramic, Buffalo Bills logo faded to ghosts.
She wraps her hands around hers. Doesn’t drink.
DARYNA
His name was Taras.
Gary sits across from her. The table between them scarred with bottle rings and old poker nights.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I was getting shopping carts. For the catering van. Tuesday morning,
nobody there yet.
She stares into the coffee like it’s a window.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He came from the side lot. Walking wrong. Holding his stomach.
Gary watches her face. Doesn’t interrupt.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I thought drunk. Then I saw the blood.
The cabin settles. Old wood contracting in the cold.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He said—dopomozhit. Help me. In Ukrainian. Not Russian.
Ukrainian.
Her accent thickens. She’s back there.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Three years I’m here, I don’t hear my language except on my phone. And
this man is dying in it.
Gary’s coffee sits untouched. Going cold.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He fell. I caught him. He was so heavy. Like holding someone already
gone.
She finally looks up. Her eyes are dry. Past tears.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He kept saying Mariupol. Over and over. Like a prayer.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
He gave me this.
She pulls the drive from her pocket. Sets it on the table between the coffee mugs.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Said Mariupol again. Then names. Russian names, Ukrainian
names. Then he just—
Her hand makes a small gesture. Air leaving.
GARY
What was his name?
DARYNA
Taras. Taras Boyko. He said it once. At the end.
The wind picks up outside. Something creaks in the eaves.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I held him until the shaking stopped. Then I took the drive and I
left.
GARY
Before anyone—
DARYNA
Before anyone.
She finally drinks. The coffee’s gone cold.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I put my uniform in a dumpster on Genesee. Went to my shift. Smiled at
the people buying their breakfast sandwiches.
Gary looks at the drive. Small black rectangle. Could be anything.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
For three days I carried it. Didn’t know what to do. Then the man in the
parking garage. Then you.
She meets his eyes.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
So now you know. A stranger died and I stole from him.
GARY
Why not just—I mean, why not go to the police?
She laughs. Not mean. Just tired.
DARYNA
My visa status is… complicated. I overstayed. I’m in removal
proceedings. You know what that means?
GARY
Like deportation?
DARYNA
Like maybe. Like probably. Like if I cooperate with police and then they
send me back anyway—
She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I’ve seen what money does. In Odesa. In Kyiv. Here too. You think
Buffalo police can’t be bought? You think USCIS cares if I help?
She looks at him directly.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
I trust cops exactly as much as I trust immigration. Which is not with
my life.
Gary stands. Moves to the window. Outside, snow falls harder, erasing the road.
He thinks about his water department badge. His lease. The Subaru that needs an alignment. The small, predictable shape of yesterday.
He turns back.
GARY
So what’s actually on it? The drive.
She shakes her head. Doesn’t know. Can’t read the files. Was too afraid to open them anywhere with internet.
GARY (CONT’D)
Then we look.
Simple as that.
INT. CABIN BEDROOM - NIGHT
Donnie’s cousin’s Dell, circa 2011. Password screen. Gary tries “buffalo”—it works.
They sit side by side on a grandmother’s quilt, shoulders touching. The drive mounts with the grinding patience of obsolete technology.
Spreadsheets. Hundreds of them.
Daryna’s finger traces columns—Cyrillic names, dollar amounts with too many zeros. Her English is good. Not accounting-good. Gary’s worse.
But numbers speak plainly.
Millions. Tens of millions. Dates that align with news footage he scrolled past. Mariupol. Bucha.
Names in Cyrillic beside names from American headlines.
She goes very still.
DARYNA
(barely audible)
This is why he died.
The screen flickers, casting blue light across their faces. Gary’s hand hovers over the trackpad, uncertain. Daryna reaches past him, takes control.
She opens folders methodically. Each click deliberate. Each filename a small violence.
DARYNA
These dates…
She doesn’t finish. Opens another file.
The spreadsheet loads in chunks, rows populating like a slow-motion avalanche. Names in Cyrillic. Amounts in dollars. Routing numbers that mean nothing to Gary but everything to someone.
He watches her face instead of the screen. Watches the small muscle in her jaw tighten.
GARY
What are we looking at?
DARYNA
A shopping list.
She scrolls. The trackpad clicks softly, rhythmic. Her breathing changes when she reaches March 2022. The dates he remembers from headlines. The dates she remembers from phone calls that wouldn’t connect.
GARY
Daryna—
DARYNA
Tanks cost money. Missiles cost money.
Men who say there is no war, they cost
money too.
She taps a cell. $850,000. Then another. $1.3 million. Her finger moves faster now, adding them in her head, a terrible arithmetic.
The laptop fan whines louder, protesting the weight of what it’s being asked to display.
Gary sees a name he recognizes. Not from the news. From the envelope Taras gave her. Scrawled on the back in dying handwriting.
GARY
That one. He wrote that name.
Daryna opens the associated file. More spreadsheets. These ones different. Addresses in Ukraine. Names without amounts. Just names. Hundreds of them.
She stops scrolling.
Her hand goes to her mouth. Stays there.
DARYNA
(through her fingers)
These are not accounts.
GARY
What are they?
She closes the laptop. Sits back. Stares at nothing.
DARYNA
Targets.
She scrolls. The trackpad clicks under her finger, steady as a metronome until it stops.
A name.
Kozlov.
She says it once, testing the shape of it in her mouth. Then again, harder.
DARYNA
He was on television. After Bucha.
Her finger hovers over the cell.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Saying there were no bodies.
The amount: $4.2 million. Routed through Deutsche Bank. Destination: a shell company in Delaware. Three clicks on a spreadsheet. A man’s conscience, purchased.
Gary stares at the number. Tries to make it mean something. It’s more than he’ll earn in his lifetime. Less than a mansion in Williamsville.
GARY
Four million to lie about—
DARYNA
Not to lie. To make the lie official.
She opens the payment history. Monthly installments. Regular as a mortgage. Someone budgeted for this. Put it in a forecast. Got approval from a supervisor.
Gary watches her face in the laptop’s glow. Watches her learn the exact dollar value of denial.
The topology of evil, rendered in Excel.
She clicks into a subfolder. “Infrastructure.”
The list loads. Power stations. Water treatment. Hospitals.
Each entry: GPS coordinates. Attack dates. Payment schedules.
Gary leans in. Recognizes the format—longitude, latitude. He’s seen it on work orders.
GARY
Those are map coordinates.
He pulls out his phone. Types the first set into Google Maps.
The pin drops. Blue dot on a white building.
Children’s Hospital No. 1. Mariupol.
He scrolls down to the payment line.
$340,000.
Less than his supervisor’s house in Clarence.
GARY (CONT’D)
Someone got paid… for that?
Daryna doesn’t answer. She’s already opening the next file.
Another hospital. Another payment.
Then a school.
Then a shelter.
Each one: coordinates, date, price.
A menu of atrocities.
Itemized. Budgeted. Approved.
Daryna opens a PDF. Scanned pages, Cyrillic letterhead. Official seals in red ink.
Her hand stops on the trackpad.
DARYNA
FSB.
Gary looks up. Doesn’t understand.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Russian intelligence.
She scrolls. Signatures at the bottom of each page. Authorization stamps. Dates that line up with the payments, with the coordinates, with the deaths.
A paper trail from Moscow to the money to the graves.
Her jaw sets. Hands trembling—not cold. Something harder than cold.
She keeps scrolling. Can’t stop now.
Gary opens the last folder. Freezes.
GARY
Jesus Christ.
Names he recognizes. A congressman’s chief of staff. A partner at his cousin’s law firm. Addresses in Clarence Hollow, Amherst. The money didn’t just pass through—it nested.
He slams the laptop shut.
Beat.
Opens it again. Stares at the screen like it might change.
GARY (CONT’D)
We can’t… we can’t just…
But his voice dies. Because they can’t unknow it either.
INT. CABIN - LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS
Gary paces. Three steps, turn, three steps back. The floorboards creak the same pattern.
GARY
The FBI. We go to the FBI.
Daryna doesn’t look up from the window. Snow accumulates on the sill.
DARYNA
With what? A stolen drive?
GARY
Evidence. It’s evidence.
DARYNA
Of federal money. Moving through federal accounts.
She turns. Her face is very still.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
You think FBI doesn’t know? Or you think they care?
GARY
They have to—
DARYNA
They have to nothing.
Beat. Gary stops pacing.
GARY
Okay. A journalist. Someone who—
DARYNA
Who gets killed? Or who takes money not to write?
She lights a cigarette. Her hand doesn’t shake.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
In Odesa, we had journalist. Good man. Wrote about corruption. They
found him in his car. Heart attack, they said. He was thirty-two.
GARY
This is America.
DARYNA
Yes. More expensive here. Same ending.
Gary sits. Stands. Sits again. His leg bounces.
GARY
There has to be someone. Some… some office, some—
DARYNA
Who? You tell me who.
GARY
The state attorney general—
DARYNA
Whose campaign manager is on page forty-seven.
GARY
Jesus. Okay. The… the Inspector General—
DARYNA
For which agency? The one funding it or the one washing it?
Each suggestion dies faster than the last. Gary’s voice gets smaller.
GARY
A lawyer. We get a lawyer, someone who knows—
DARYNA
How to bill us before we disappear?
Silence. The cabin settles. Something in the walls contracts with cold.
Gary looks at his hands like they belong to someone else.
GARY
We’re fucked.
DARYNA
Now you understand.
She doesn’t say it mean. Just factual. The way you’d confirm the weather.
INT. CABIN - LIVING ROOM - LATER
Daryna opens the laptop again. The screen glow makes her face ghostly.
She scrolls. Names. Amounts. Routing numbers like veins in a body.
Her finger stops.
DARYNA
Kurwa.
GARY
What?
She turns the screen toward him. Points to a name halfway down page twelve.
DARYNA
This one. Processed my work permits. Two years ago.
Gary leans in. Reads.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
His office has bronze plaque. Mahogany desk. Secretary who smiles like
she pities you.
She scrolls further. More names. A councilman. A planning commissioner. Someone’s cousin at the port authority.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
They’re everywhere.
Not angry. Tired. Like she’s explaining something obvious to a child.
Gary sits back. Stares at nothing.
The Buffalo he knows—union halls and fish fries and the Thruway to nowhere—suddenly has a second floor. Has always had it.
He just never needed to look up.
GARY
(quiet)
Jesus Christ.
Outside, snow erases the driveway.
INT. CABIN - LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS
Hours pass. The propane heater ticks like a countdown.
Gary makes instant coffee on Donnie’s camp stove. Two mugs. The spoon scrapes ceramic too loud in the silence.
They sit on opposite ends of the couch. The laptop between them like evidence at a crime scene.
His hand rests on the cushion. Six inches from hers.
He doesn’t move it.
She scrolls. Stops. Scrolls again. Her jaw works like she’s chewing something bitter.
GARY
You should eat something.
DARYNA
Not hungry.
The coffee goes cold. Neither drinks it.
Outside, wind pushes snow against the windows. The glass creaks.
Gary watches her face in the laptop glow. Wants to say something. Anything.
Doesn’t know the words for this.
DARYNA
(quiet, not looking at him)
My cousin Oksana. In Mariupol.
She stops. Starts again.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
They said if you stayed quiet, cooperated…
She believed them.
Her finger traces the edge of the laptop. The files glow between them.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
This money. It bought the men who made those promises.
Who sold the lists. Who aimed.
Gary doesn’t move. Doesn’t offer comfort he can’t give.
Just sits there. Present.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
She was a music teacher.
The heater ticks. The wind answers.
INT. DONNIE’S COUSIN’S CABIN - NIGHT (4 AM)
The heater’s rhythm. Two bodies on opposite ends of the couch, awake, not speaking.
The space between them has shrunk. An inch. Maybe two.
Daryna’s head tilts toward his shoulder. Doesn’t land. Almost.
Gary’s hand rests on the cushion. Her fingers near enough to feel the heat.
Then—
Light sweeps across the pine wall. Wrong speed. Wrong intention.
They both freeze.
GARY
(barely breathing)
That’s not a plow.
EXT. DONNIE’S COUSIN’S CABIN - NIGHT (4 AM)
The Escalade materializes from the tree line. Black on black. No headlights.
It stops fifty yards out. Engine idles. Vapor rises from the exhaust.
The driver’s door opens.
Vadim steps out. Long coat. Hands in pockets. His breath clouds white in the cold.
He doesn’t hurry. Doesn’t call out.
Just stands there. Looking at the cabin like he’s reading a menu.
INT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS
Gary’s face pressed to the gap in the curtains. His reflection trembles in the glass.
GARY
(whisper)
He’s alone.
DARYNA
(already moving)
He’s not alone.
She’s stuffing the laptop into her bag. Phone. Charger. The drive still around her neck.
Her hands don’t shake. Muscle memory from a life Gary’s never had to live.
GARY
Maybe we can—
DARYNA
Back door. Now.
EXT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS
Vadim tilts his head. Listening.
He pulls one hand from his pocket. Raises it slightly.
Two more shapes detach from the darkness behind him. Younger. Heavier.
They spread out without being told.
INT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS
Daryna grabs Gary’s wrist. Pulls him away from the window.
They move through the kitchen. Her boots silent. His sneakers squeaking on linoleum.
She reaches the back door. Tests the knob.
Locked.
Gary fumbles for the deadbolt. His fingers slip once. Twice.
EXT. CABIN - FRONT - CONTINUOUS
Vadim nods.
The first window explodes inward.
Not a gunshot. A brick.
Then the gunshot.
INT. CABIN - BACK DOOR - CONTINUOUS
The deadbolt slides free.
They’re already running.
EXT. DIRT ROAD BEHIND CABIN - CONTINUOUS
They hit the Subaru at a dead sprint.
Gary’s hands shake. Keys slip through his fingers. They hit the gravel.
GARY
Shit—
Daryna scoops them up. Shoves him toward the passenger side.
She’s in the driver’s seat before he’s closed his door.
Engine roars. Tires spray dirt and pine needles.
Behind them: muzzle flash. The cabin window explodes outward.
EXT. DIRT ROAD - MOVING - CONTINUOUS
The Subaru fishtails. Daryna corrects. Accelerates.
Gary twists in his seat. Sees headlights igniting in the trees.
GARY
They’re—
The rear windshield doesn’t shatter.
It explodes.
Safety glass everywhere. The car lurches hard right.
DARYNA
(calm)
Tire.
The steering wheel fights her. Metal screaming against dirt.
Sparks fountain from the rear wheel well. Orange in the darkness.
She keeps the accelerator down.
EXT. DIRT ROAD - HALF MILE DOWN - CONTINUOUS
The wheel seizes. The Subaru slews sideways.
Daryna kills the engine.
They sit in sudden silence.
Just their breathing. And the sound of an Escalade getting closer.
EXT. TRAILHEAD PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
Three vehicles in the gravel lot.
Donnie’s truck—too recognizable. A Prius with a coexist sticker.
And a lifted F-250. Punisher skull. “Don’t Tread on Me” plate frame.
Gary tries the door. Unlocked.
Flips down the visor.
Keys drop into his palm.
GARY
You’re kidding me.
Daryna’s already climbing in. Adjusts the seat. Finds the ignition.
GARY (CONT’D)
This is—we’re stealing—
DARYNA
Yes.
The diesel engine turns over. Loud enough to wake the mountain.
Gary looks back toward the road. No headlights yet.
He gets in.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Western New York.
GARY
What?
DARYNA
People are stupid-trusting.
She drops it into drive.
INT. STOLEN F-250 - NIGHT - MOVING
Gary stares at the road. The math isn’t working.
GARY
They’ll have people at my place. Yours. Airport, bus station—
DARYNA
Train.
GARY
We don’t have trains that go anywhere.
She almost laughs. Doesn’t.
He’s running through the map in his head. Every exit covered. Every logical move anticipated.
Then something clicks.
GARY (CONT’D)
What if we don’t run?
She glances over.
GARY (CONT’D)
What if we hide in plain sight?
INT. STOLEN F-250 - NIGHT - MOVING
Gary’s hand hovers over the wheel like he’s about to say something stupid.
GARY
Highmark Stadium.
Daryna stares at him. The look you give someone who’s just suggested jumping off a bridge.
GARY (CONT’D)
Seventy thousand people. All wearing the same thing. Security’s looking
for contraband, not—
DARYNA
This is your plan? Football?
GARY
Playoff implications. Dolphins. The whole city’ll be there.
She’s already turning the truck toward the 90.
DARYNA
You are completely insane.
GARY
Go Bills.
INT. STOLEN F-250 - NIGHT - MOVING
Gary’s thumb hovers over his phone. The screen glow catches his face—blue, uncertain.
GARY
What day is it?
DARYNA
Does it matter?
He scrolls. Stops.
GARY
Sunday. December seventeenth.
The highway unreels ahead of them. Sodium lights strobing through the cab.
GARY (CONT’D)
One PM kickoff.
She doesn’t look at him. Knows where this is going.
GARY (CONT’D)
Bills-Dolphins. Division game.
DARYNA
Gary—
GARY
Playoff implications. Winner takes the East.
He’s building to something. She can hear it in the spaces between words.
GARY (CONT’D)
The whole city stops for this game. I mean stops. Streets empty. Bars
packed. Seventy thousand people at Highmark.
DARYNA
No.
GARY
You haven’t heard it yet.
DARYNA
I don’t need to.
But she’s already doing the math. Crowds. Chaos. The particular madness of Buffalo when the Bills are winning.
Gary sets the phone down. Looks at her for the first time.
GARY
Seventy thousand people. All wearing the same colors. Security checking
for bottles and fireworks, not—
He gestures vaguely at the glove box. The drive inside it.
GARY (CONT’D)
We blend in. We disappear. Right there in the open.
The truck eats road. She should say no. Should keep driving until they hit Canada or run out of gas or Vadim puts a bullet in both of them.
Should.
DARYNA
This is the stupidest thing you’ve said.
GARY
I know.
DARYNA
And you’ve said many stupid things.
GARY
I’m aware.
She checks the mirror. Nothing but darkness and distance.
Then she signals. Starts to merge.
Toward Buffalo. Toward the stadium. Toward seventy thousand drunk people in blue and red.
DARYNA
If we die, I’m killing you first.
INT. STOLEN F-250 - NIGHT - MOVING
GARY
I have an idea.
The way he says it—careful, like he’s defusing something—makes her stomach drop before he even continues.
She watches the road. White lines disappearing under the hood.
GARY (CONT’D)
You’re going to hate it.
DARYNA
Then why tell me?
GARY
Because it’s the only one I’ve got.
He’s gripping the phone too tight. She can see his knuckles white in the dashboard glow.
DARYNA
This is already worse than I thought.
GARY
We go back.
Beat. She almost laughs.
DARYNA
Back where?
GARY
Buffalo. The stadium. The game.
Now she does laugh. Short, sharp, humorless.
DARYNA
You want to hide at a football game.
GARY
I want to hide at the football game.
The truck hums. Engine steady, world not.
GARY (CONT’D)
Seventy thousand people. Everyone drunk. Everyone loud. Security looking
for weapons, not—
He gestures at the glove box.
DARYNA
This is insane.
GARY
Yeah.
She should say no. Should keep driving until the gas runs out or the border appears or Vadim catches them and makes the choice for her.
Should.
GARY
You’re going to hate it.
He says it like a warning label. Like fine print you should’ve read before signing.
She turns to look at him. Really look.
DARYNA
If you already know I will hate it—
GARY
I do.
DARYNA
—then maybe we should find different idea.
GARY
There isn’t one.
His face in the passing headlights. Apologetic. Determined. The combination makes her want to hit him.
DARYNA
Gary—
GARY
Just hear me out.
DARYNA
No.
GARY
Daryna—
DARYNA
Whatever you are about to say, answer is no.
But she’s still listening. Still waiting.
He knows it too.
DARYNA
(cutting him off)
No. Whatever it is—
GARY
We go to the game.
Silence. The engine hum. A truck passing in the opposite lane.
She stares at him like he’s just suggested they fly to the moon.
DARYNA
The game.
GARY
Highmark Stadium. Sixty-five thousand people.
We walk right in.
Her mouth opens. Closes. No words come.
She doesn’t say yes.
She doesn’t say no.
She looks out the window at the gray highway, the trees stripped bare, the sky the color of old dishwater.
DARYNA
(finally)
Sixty-five thousand people.
GARY
And Vadim.
DARYNA
And Vadim.
She turns back to him. Studies his face like she’s seeing something new there. Or maybe just something she hadn’t wanted to see before.
EXT. ORCHARD PARK STADIUM LOTS - DAY
The Subaru rolls to a stop three rows deep in the frozen carnival. RVs form wagon circles. Grills smoke defiance at eighteen degrees.
Through the windshield: a folding table EXPLODES under a man’s body weight. The crowd erupts. Beer arcs through winter air, catching sunlight like champagne.
Gary kills the engine. Sits there a moment.
GARY
This is the stupidest plan we’ve ever had.
DONNIE (O.S.)
(through phone)
It’s perfect. You’re invisible in ten thousand drunk people.
A GRANDFATHER, seventy if he’s a day, does a keg stand while his grandkids film. His form is excellent.
Gary watches a woman in a Zubaz jumpsuit scream ‘SQUISH THE FISH’ at the sky itself. A shirtless man in a Josh Allen jersey backflips off a truck bed, lands clean, raises his arms in victory.
GARY
(to himself)
Okay. Okay.
He looks at the passenger seat. The hard drive sits there in a Wegmans bag, next to two six-packs of Labatt and a bag of beef on weck sandwiches.
The most dangerous object in Buffalo, wrapped in plastic next to lunch.
Gary picks up the bag. Steps out into the roar.
The cold hits first—that lake-effect bite that makes your lungs hurt. Then the noise. Then the smell: charcoal, spilled beer, hot sauce, exhaust, someone’s deep fryer working overtime.
A TABLE SHATTERS two rows over. The crowd chants something incomprehensible and beautiful.
Gary shoulders the Wegmans bag and walks into the chaos.
Behind him, a black Audi turns into the lot. Moves slow. Hunting.
Daryna steps out of the Subaru into pure American chaos.
The sound is a living thing—ten thousand voices merged into one tribal roar. Someone’s car alarm has been going off for so long it’s become percussion.
She pulls her coat tighter. Scans the crowd for Gary.
A GRANDMOTHER, maybe seventy, shotguns a beer while her family counts down. She crushes the can against her forehead. They lift her onto their shoulders like she’s won the Super Bowl.
Daryna’s seen war footage. Seen Maidan. Seen what crowds become when the state turns on them.
This is different. This is voluntary madness. Chosen chaos.
A SHIRTLESS MAN—it’s eighteen degrees—runs past carrying a bowling ball painted like a football. He’s screaming something about the Dolphins. His friends chase him with Silly String.
DARYNA
(to herself, Ukrainian)
Божевілля.
But she’s smiling. Can’t help it.
Because somewhere in this beautiful stupid circus is Gary, carrying a hard drive that could end them both, and somehow—impossibly—they might actually survive this.
A FOLDING TABLE EXPLODES three rows over.
The crowd chants: “ONE MORE TIME.”
Daryna moves deeper into the temple.
EXT. ORCHARD PARK PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
The van looms like a monument. ‘BILLS MAFIA’ bleeding down its side in letters taller than Daryna.
Next to it: a folding table, genuinely on fire.
Not an accident. A sacrament.
The flames climb through the metal legs. People film it, cheering like it’s a gender reveal.
A KID—twenty, maybe—backs up for a running start.
DARYNA
(Ukrainian, quiet)
Ні…
He launches. Passes through the fire. Hits the snowbank beyond.
Stands. Raises his arms. In his hand: a chicken wing, somehow intact.
The crowd ROARS approval.
Daryna watches him accept high-fives, his eyebrows slightly singed, grinning like he’s conquered death.
She thinks of Taras in the parking lot. Different kind of fire.
The kid takes a bite of the wing.
Gary’s hand finds hers—grip tight, practical. Survival, not romance.
They push into the river of bodies. A tailgate presses Labatt Blue on them. A man in a Zubaz onesie flips steaks at 10 AM, smoke rising like incense.
A circle of women—fifties, Bills jerseys, coordinated—dance to Shout. Perfect timing. Perfect chaos.
Nobody sees them. Nobody cares.
In the congregation, they’re invisible.
EXT. ORCHARD PARK PARKING LOT - DAY
A woman in a Josh Allen jersey vomits cheerfully into a snowbank. Her friends cheer.
Vadim moves through the crowd—black coat, scanning faces. A man in a Zubaz onesie bumps him, beer sloshing. Doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t notice.
Vadim’s hand goes to his pocket. Stops.
A BILLS FAN (60s, face paint) grabs his shoulder.
BILLS FAN
SQUISH THE FISH, BABY!
Vadim freezes. The fan moves on, absorbed back into the mass.
No sightlines. No patterns. Just chaos.
EXT. ORCHARD PARK PARKING LOT - LOT 5 - DAY
Donnie stands beside his F-150, folding table deployed like a forward operating base. Aluminum trays steam—wings, three levels of heat. A Bills flag snaps in the wind.
He’s mid-story, gesturing with tongs, when he sees Gary.
And the woman.
Donnie stops talking. Spit, perched on the tailgate with a Labatt, follows his gaze.
DONNIE
What the fuck, Gary.
Not a question. A statement of ontological crisis.
Gary approaches like a man walking to his own intervention. Daryna beside him, scanning the crowd with the wrong kind of attention.
SPIT
(to Donnie)
That’s not Melissa.
DONNIE
I have eyes.
Gary reaches them. Opens his mouth. Closes it.
GARY
I need—
A DRUNK FAN careens past, nearly taking out the wing table. Donnie steadies it without looking.
DONNIE
You need what? A folding table? We got six.
GARY
There’s a guy. With a gun. Looking for—
He gestures vaguely at Daryna, who’s watching a man in a black coat move through the crowd two rows over.
SPIT
Looking for her?
GARY
For something she has. That someone died giving her. In a parking lot.
At a Loss.
Silence. Someone’s sound system thumps bass three trucks over.
DONNIE
(slowly)
You’re telling me this woman—
DARYNA
Daryna.
DONNIE
—Daryna is being hunted. By a man with a gun. At a Bills game.
GARY
Yes.
Spit slides off the tailgate. Looks at Donnie. Twenty years of friendship compressed into three seconds.
DONNIE
(to Gary)
You’re not lying.
GARY
No.
DONNIE
(to Daryna)
You good people?
DARYNA
I’m trying to be.
Donnie picks up a Labatt from the cooler. Hands it to her.
DONNIE
Then you’re with us now.
GARY
There’s a drive. A hard drive. With—with money stuff. Laundering.
For—
A SOUND SYSTEM three trucks over erupts with “Shout.” The Isley Brothers version. A hundred people scream the chorus.
Gary raises his voice.
GARY
—for people funding the guys who sold out Mariupol—
DONNIE
What?
GARY
(louder)
Bad guys! Ukrainian bad guys! Working for Russian bad guys!
The song hits the breakdown. Everyone’s jumping. A folding table collapses somewhere.
GARY
And there’s a man. A professional. Who will kill us to get it back.
Donnie looks at Spit. Twenty-three years of friendship. Paste-eating in Mrs. Kowalski’s class. That time with the BB gun. The thing with Gary’s dad they don’t talk about.
Gary doesn’t lie. Gary doesn’t do drama.
If Gary says it’s real—
DONNIE
(to Daryna)
He’s telling the truth?
DARYNA
Every word.
Donnie nods once. Decision made.
The song ends. The crowd roars.
SPIT
(doesn’t look up from his beer)
So we’re fighting Russians?
DARYNA
Ukrainians. Working for Russians.
SPIT
(shrugs)
Close enough.
He cracks his knuckles. The sound pops even over the crowd noise.
SPIT
I hate those guys.
He has never met those guys. Has no idea what oligarch money laundering looks like. Couldn’t find Mariupol on a map.
This will not stop him.
DARYNA
You don’t have to—
SPIT
Gary says you’re good people. That’s the whole story.
He drains his Labatt. Crushes the can one-handed.
SPIT
Plus I’ve been looking for a reason to hit somebody all season.
The Bills are 10-6. It’s been a frustrating year.
DONNIE
(already texting)
Got cousins in Lot 7. Buddies in Lot 3.
His thumbs move fast. He knows exactly who to call.
DONNIE
Brother-in-law’s got the RV in Lot 9. You need to disappear into ten
thousand drunk assholes in Zubaz pants—
He looks up. Grins.
DONNIE
—we can do that.
He’s already thinking it through. Exit routes. Choke points. How to move two people through this crowd like refugees through a very loud, very drunk underground railroad.
This is what he does. Logistics. Protection.
Buffalo takes care of its own.
SPIT
(handing her the bottle)
You’re with us now.
Not a question. Not charity. Statement of fact.
The bottle’s already frosting over in her hand. She takes it. Nods once.
SPIT
(to Gary)
Your girl can throw a table, right?
He’s grinning, but his eyes are serious.
SPIT
’Cause if shit goes sideways, everybody throws.
Daryna looks at the folding table. Back at Spit.
DARYNA
In Odesa, we throw chairs.
SPIT
(delighted)
Fuck yeah.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - DAY
Two men in dark overcoats move through the tailgate crowd like sharks in a kiddie pool. Leather shoes already soaked through. Vadim’s men.
They scan faces with the mechanical efficiency of people who’ve done this before. In other places. Quieter places.
A BILLS FAN in a Josh Allen jersey—number seventeen, ketchup stain on the sleeve—lurches into their path. Three beers deep, maybe four.
BILLS FAN
AYYYY!
He throws an arm around the nearest man’s shoulders like they’re old friends. Like everyone here is old friends.
BILLS FAN (CONT’D)
Fireball?
He shakes a half-empty bottle in the man’s face. The liquid sloshes, catching light.
The man steps back. His hand moves toward his jacket. Not casual. Trained.
His PARTNER mutters something in Russian. Low. Urgent.
They keep moving. Eyes tracking. Hunting.
But they don’t know the terrain. Don’t know that every person here is watching them now. The way you watch something that doesn’t belong.
A WOMAN in Zubaz pants—electric blue, lightning bolt pattern—steps into their path. She’s swaying slightly. Could be drunk. Could be stance.
ZUBAZ WOMAN
You guys Dolphins fans?
Not a question. An accusation.
The crowd around her goes quiet. That specific Buffalo quiet that comes before folding tables fly. Before someone gets thrown through a windshield. Before the parking lot becomes something else entirely.
One of Vadim’s men tries to move past her.
She plants herself wider. Arms out. Human roadblock.
ZUBAZ WOMAN (CONT’D)
I ASKED if you’re DOLPHINS FANS.
Behind her, the crowd tightens. Closes ranks.
The men are surrounded now. They just don’t know it yet.
The first man tries to step around her.
She shifts. Not aggressive. Just immovable.
ZUBAZ WOMAN (CONT’D)
Because we don’t like Dolphins fans here.
Her voice carries. Heads turn. Conversations stop mid-sentence.
The second man says something in Russian. His partner shakes his head. They need to keep moving. Find the targets. Get out.
But the woman doesn’t move.
And now there are more people. Not closing in. Just… there. Filling space. Holding beer. Watching.
A MAN in a Tre White jersey steps up beside Zubaz Woman. Then another. A woman in a puffy Bills coat. A guy with face paint—half blue, half red, smeared from drinking.
No one says anything.
The crowd just breathes. Waits.
One of Vadim’s men reaches into his coat.
A hand lands on his wrist. Gentle. Firm.
DONNIE (O.S.)
Easy there, buddy.
Donnie. Six-three, two-forty, wearing a hoodie that says SQUISH THE FISH.
He’s smiling. Everyone’s smiling.
But no one’s moving.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - DAY
Donnie catches movement at the perimeter. Wrong coats. Wrong walk.
He taps Spit without looking. Spit taps Mikey from the bowling league. Mikey taps two guys from his crew.
No words.
They shift. Still holding beers. Still laughing at something Daryna just said.
But they’ve formed a loose circle now. Gary doesn’t notice. Daryna does.
Vadim’s men push deeper into the lot, scanning faces.
Someone’s truck stereo erupts—“SHOUT” at full volume.
A folding table goes up. Not thrown. Just erected, ceremonial.
Then another. Then three more.
A wall of tables. A wall of people.
Still drinking. Still smiling.
But the space has closed.
The uncle steps forward, breath visible in the cold.
UNCLE
You got a problem?
The tall man reaches inside his coat. Wrong move number two.
A woman in a Tre White jersey sees it. Screams “GUN!”
She’s wrong. It’s a phone. Doesn’t matter.
The word spreads like fire. Tables start moving. Bodies converge.
Vadim’s second man tries to retreat. Backs into a grill. Hot coals scatter.
Someone’s coat catches. More screaming.
The chaos detonates in layers—first the shove, then voices rising, then a wing spiraling through frozen air trailing hot sauce like a comet.
The first punch lands. Someone answers with a folding table.
The lot becomes a storm of Bills jerseys, beer cans, bodies colliding in that specific drunk-cold fury that only exists at eighteen degrees.
Vadim’s men disappear into the surge. Swallowed whole.
Gary’s hand finds Daryna’s. Donnie and Spit form a wall at their backs.
They push through. Moving fast.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - TAILGATE CHAOS - DAY
Gary pulls Daryna through the madness. Her hand locked in his like a lifeline.
They weave between folding tables. Portable grills. A guy in a Zubaz onesie doing shots off a car hood.
Behind them—the brawl expanding. Vadim’s men buried somewhere in that mass of blue and red jerseys.
DARYNA
(looking back)
They will follow—
GARY
Not through this they won’t.
He pulls her left. Past a group doing the Shout song. Past someone’s grandmother shotgunning a Labatt.
Daryna’s head swivels. Taking it in. The absolute lunacy of it.
A FOLDING TABLE sails overhead. Lands with a crash. Nobody even flinches.
Gary navigates by instinct. This is his terrain. His people.
They pass a grill station where someone’s cooking something that might be wings, might be a crime against food.
Daryna nearly trips over a cooler. Gary catches her. Keeps moving.
The crowd thickens. Bodies pressed together in that specific tailgate density where personal space doesn’t exist.
DONNIE and SPIT push through behind them. Clearing path. Running interference.
A roar goes up from somewhere—touchdown on someone’s TV.
The whole lot erupts. Strangers hugging strangers.
Gary uses the surge. Pulls Daryna deeper into the crowd.
She grips his hand tighter. Her other hand finds his jacket. Holding on.
They’re almost through. Almost to the far edge where Donnie’s truck waits.
Behind them—sirens starting. Someone called the cops on the brawl.
Perfect timing.
The chaos covers their exit like a blanket. Like providence.
Gary glances back once. Makes sure Donnie and Spit are still with them.
They are. Always are.
He looks at Daryna. Her face flushed from cold and adrenaline.
She’s not looking back anymore. She’s looking at him.
They slow. Just for a second. Breathing hard in the frozen air.
Daryna stares at the chaos. The absolute beautiful madness of it.
DARYNA
Your country is insane.
A WOMAN in a Bills bikini top—it’s eighteen degrees—appears from nowhere. Hands Daryna a beer like it’s communion.
BIKINI WOMAN
Go Bills!
She vanishes back into the crowd.
To their left: someone doing a keg stand. Three guys holding him up, counting in unison.
To their right: pierogies sizzling on a hibachi that’s duct-taped to a shopping cart. The engineering is questionable. The smell is perfect.
Daryna looks at Gary. Waiting for explanation.
He can’t help it. Despite everything—the violence, the fear, Vadim somewhere behind them—he grins.
GARY
Yeah. But it’s ours.
She almost laughs. Almost.
Then her expression shifts. Something softening.
She looks at the beer in her hand. At the madness around them. At Gary.
DARYNA
(quieter)
Ours.
The word hangs there. Means more than geography.
Gary nods. Squeezes her hand.
They keep moving.
They slide behind the RV—American flag, Bills flag, and yeah, that’s Gritty. The Flyers mascot. No one knows why. No one cares.
Donnie and Spit stumble in behind them, hands on knees, gasping.
DONNIE
(between breaths)
This is… the dumbest… escape plan…
SPIT
Best escape plan.
The kickoff happens. Everywhere. All at once.
Ten thousand people roar as one organism. The sound is physical. Primal. A wall of noise that swallows everything—fear, consequence, the past three days.
Daryna flinches. Then realizes: they’re invisible in this. Camouflaged by chaos.
Gary catches her eye. Raises his beer slightly.
GARY
Welcome to Buffalo.
She shakes her head. But she’s smiling.
She doubles over, hands on knees. Not from running anymore.
From laughing.
Gary stares at her like she’s lost it. Maybe she has.
DARYNA
(gasping between laughs)
We hide… at football party…
with ten thousand witnesses…
GARY
Yeah.
DARYNA
This is your plan.
GARY
This is Buffalo.
She wipes her eyes. Looks at him—really looks at him. This ridiculous man who drove into a nightmare because she asked.
The roar swells again. Someone’s winning. Someone’s always winning.
For one perfect second, she believes it might be them.
The crowd parts. Not for him—just drunk luck and bad timing.
Vadim. Thirty feet and closing.
His hand rests inside his coat. Not showing. Not yet.
VADIM
(barely audible over the noise)
The drive, Daryna.
He doesn’t threaten. Doesn’t need to.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Last chance.
Around them: “LET’S GO BUFFALO”—
A folding table explodes into pieces.
No one notices the man with his hand on a gun.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - DAY
Vadim moves like water through the crowd.
Smooth. Inevitable.
A guy in a Diggs jersey stumbles backward, beer sloshing. Doesn’t see him pass.
The distance closes. Twenty feet. Fifteen.
VADIM
The drive, Daryna.
His voice cuts through the noise without rising above it. A frequency only she can hear.
She feels Gary tense beside her. His hand finds hers.
VADIM (CONT’D)
Last chance.
His hand shifts inside his coat. Not drawing. Just… adjusting.
The promise of metal. The weight of consequence.
Ten feet now.
Around them, the chaos continues—
A woman in a Bills Zubaz bodysuit chugs from a bowling ball. Someone’s filming it.
“CIRCLE OF TRUST! CIRCLE OF TRUST!”
A folding table arcs through the air, end over end, beautiful and stupid.
It detonates against the pavement. Plastic shrapnel everywhere.
The crowd roars approval.
Vadim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look.
His eyes stay on Daryna.
VADIM (CONT’D)
(in Ukrainian, almost gentle)
You know I have to.
She does know. That’s the worst part.
He’s not angry. Not cruel.
Just employed.
Five feet.
His hand emerges slightly from his coat—
Not the gun. Just knuckles. The edge of something dark.
Enough.
Behind him, someone screams the fight song off-key.
A man in a table-smashed Bills helmet staggers past, victorious.
Vadim steps around him without breaking stride.
Three feet.
Daryna can see the gray at his temples. The tiredness in his eyes.
He’s been doing this too long.
So has she.
VADIM (CONT’D)
(English again, quiet)
Please don’t make this—
Gary doesn’t think.
Thinking would stop him. Would show him all the reasons this is insane.
He steps forward.
Between Vadim and Daryna.
His Carhartt jacket suddenly feels like tissue paper. Like nothing.
GARY
She doesn’t have it.
His voice cracks on the last word.
Breaks like a teenager’s.
He’s never been in a fight. Not once. Not even in high school.
He’s a water department guy.
He knows pipe diameters and pressure ratings and where the shutoff valves are.
He doesn’t know this.
But he doesn’t move.
His boots stay planted in the slush.
Around them, someone’s playing “Shout” from a truck bed.
The bass is all distortion.
Gary’s hands are shaking.
He shoves them in his pockets so Vadim won’t see.
GARY (CONT’D)
(quieter, but still there)
You’re gonna have to go through me.
It’s the dumbest thing he’s ever said.
Also the truest.
Behind him, Daryna’s breath catches.
Vadim’s eyes narrow.
Calculating.
Vadim’s expression doesn’t change.
But something shifts behind his eyes.
Not respect. Recognition.
The way you’d look at a dog that won’t move from the porch.
VADIM
You protect something you don’t understand.
His English is perfect. Unaccented. Worse somehow.
VADIM (CONT’D)
This is not love story. Not Buffalo romance.
He takes one step closer.
Gary can smell his cologne. Expensive. European.
VADIM (CONT’D)
This is geopolitics. Money that moves governments. You are—
He searches for the word.
VADIM (CONT’D)
—child. Playing in traffic.
His hand moves inside his coat.
Slow. Deliberate.
The music keeps playing.
Someone screams “LET’S GO BUFFALO” into the cold air.
Gary sees the movement.
Knows what it means.
Still doesn’t move.
Daryna’s hand clamps on Gary’s arm.
Pulls hard. He doesn’t budge.
DARYNA
Gary—
But he’s cement. That Buffalo-Polish stubbornness that looks like courage because there’s no functional difference.
Twenty yards away, Donnie’s head comes up.
Sees Gary. Sees the stranger. Sees the geometry of threat.
Taps Spit’s shoulder.
They move through the crowd like linebackers.
Reading violence the way some men read weather.
Vadim’s fingers curl.
The gun shifts beneath wool.
Gary doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe. Just stands there like every Polish grandfather who ever refused to move off a porch.
The crowd surges. BILLS CHANT thundering.
Vadim’s eyes flick: Donnie. Spit. The thousand phones that could film. The impossibility of clean extraction.
His hand withdraws.
Empty.
VADIM
(quiet, in Ukrainian)
This isn’t finished.
He melts backward into the tailgate chaos.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - NIGHT
Daryna steps forward through the circle of bodies, past Gary’s protective arm, past Donnie’s bulk.
The parking lot goes quiet except for distant traffic on the 190.
She looks at Vadim—not at the gun, at his eyes—and speaks in Ukrainian, her voice carrying:
DARYNA
Ти працюєш на людей, які продали нашу країну.
The words hang in the cold air. Gary doesn’t understand them. He understands everything.
Vadim’s face doesn’t change. But something behind it does.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
(still in Ukrainian)
You know their names. The ones who took Russian money before the
invasion. Who told Moscow where our soldiers were.
She takes another step. Vadim’s gun stays level but his trigger finger straightens.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
My cousin called me from Mariupol. March seventeenth. The theater. She
said they’d written ‘children’ outside in letters three meters tall.
Her voice is steady. Clinical. Like she’s reading a grocery list written in blood.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
She said the Russians could see it from the air. She said surely they
would see it.
Vadim’s jaw tightens. He was in Kharkiv when it started. He got out.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
The bomb fell anyway. Your bosses’ money bought that bomb.
Behind her, Spit shifts his weight. Donnie’s hand finds the folding table leg he’d dropped.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Taras knew. That’s why he ran. That’s why you killed him in a parking
lot like a dog.
She’s close enough now to touch the gun. She doesn’t.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
So shoot me. Add me to the list. But you’ll still be what you are.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Хто брав гроші, коли Росія увійшла в Донбас.
She switches to English mid-sentence, her accent thicker with rage.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Who took money while Russia rolled into Donbas.
Vadim’s expression cracks—just for a second. Recognition. Shame. Then the professional mask returns.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
While they bombed Mariupol. While they shot civilians buying bread.
Every word lands like a physical blow. She’s not pleading. She’s prosecuting.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Who let our people die so oligarchs could buy yachts. Could send their
children to London.
Vadim’s gun hand wavers. Drops half an inch.
He knows she’s right.
His finger moves back to the trigger guard.
It doesn’t matter.
Behind Daryna, one of the Bills fans—a woman in a Diggs jersey—has her phone out, recording. Another fan slowly sets down his beer.
The wind picks up, carrying the smell of snow and lake water.
Vadim’s breathing changes. Faster. Shallower.
VADIM
(quietly, in Ukrainian)
I had a sister in Kharkiv.
Past tense.
She takes another step.
Gary’s hand finds her shoulder—she shakes it off without looking back.
DARYNA
My cousin was nineteen.
Her voice carries across the parking lot. The Bills fans have gone still.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
She died in a theater. Mariupol. Three hundred people.
She takes another step. Vadim’s gun doesn’t move but his eyes flicker—calculating exits, witnesses, consequences.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
They wrote ‘CHILDREN’ on the ground outside. In Russian. So the planes
would see.
The word hangs in the cold air.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
Men like your bosses gave Russia the coordinates.
A Bills fan lowers his beer slowly. Another pulls out a phone.
The wind shifts. Carries snow that hasn’t fallen yet.
Daryna stops three feet from the barrel.
Close enough to see the micro-tremor in Vadim’s trigger finger. The professional calculation flickering behind his eyes—exposure versus extraction, witnesses versus worth.
She holds his gaze. Lets him see what he’s become.
Then spits at his feet.
The gesture is ancient. Biblical. Ukrainian. A thousand years of refusal in one act.
DARYNA
Slava Ukraini.
Not shouted. Spoken. The way you speak over a grave.
Her voice carries across the parking lot. Past the Bills fans frozen mid-cheer. Past Gary’s white-knuckled fists. Past the professional in Vadim trying to calculate acceptable losses.
It’s not a salute. It’s a sentencing.
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move.
Five seconds. The entire lot holds its breath.
Vadim’s hand tightens on the Glock.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
The table spins horizontal through sodium light—white plastic against black sky—a perfect rotation.
It catches Vadim across the shoulders with a sound like a baseball bat hitting meat.
The Glock jerks up. The shot goes wide.
Vadim stumbles forward, professional training fighting drunk-fan physics. He’s already pivoting, recalculating—
DONNIE
(no words, just a roar)
—and three hundred pounds of construction worker hits him like a linebacker.
They go down together. The gun skitters across asphalt.
SPIT
BUFFALO!
Spit’s already diving for the Glock. His hand closes around it as a size-thirteen Timberland steps on his wrist.
Not Vadim’s man. A Bills fan in a Diggs jersey, eyes glassy with Labatt, who saw a gun and decided nope.
DIGGS JERSEY
The fuck is this?
More jerseys closing in. A woman in a Josh Allen hoodie. Two guys in matching Tre White gear. A grandfather in a throwback Kelly.
They don’t know what’s happening. Don’t know about hard drives or oligarchs or blood money.
They know: parking lot. Woman. Gun pointed.
KELLY THROWBACK
We got a problem here?
Vadim’s trying to stand. Donnie’s on his back, arm around his throat, no technique, all heart.
VADIM
(choking)
This is not—your business—
ALLEN HOODIE
Everything in this lot’s our business, sweetheart.
She’s got her phone out. Filming.
The circle tightens. Fifteen people. Twenty. Someone’s chanting LET’S GO BUFFALO and it’s spreading like a virus.
Vadim stops struggling.
He’s done the math. Professional to the end.
You can’t shoot your way through the Bills Mafia.
The table’s still spinning when Spit’s already got another one overhead—where the fuck did he get a second table—
SPIT
FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT!
Donnie’s charge becomes a stampede.
Behind him: Tre White jersey. Diggs jersey. A woman in a Von Miller hoodie who’s five-foot-nothing and absolutely feral. Two guys in matching Kelly throwbacks moving like they practiced this.
They didn’t practice this.
This is instinct. Parking lot law.
DIGGS JERSEY
NOT IN OUR HOUSE!
A beer can arcs through the air. Then another. Labatt Blue missiles raining down.
One of Vadim’s men tries to draw. Gets tackled by a grandfather in a Jim Kelly jersey who moves like he played linebacker in ’72. Probably did.
The gun hand goes down. Three people pile on top.
VON MILLER HOODIE
(to Daryna)
You good, hon?
Daryna nods, can’t speak.
The woman turns back to the pile, drops an elbow like she’s jumping through a table herself.
She might’ve done that earlier tonight.
This is Buffalo.
The chant erupts from a single throat—some guy in a Tre White jersey, voice already hoarse from four quarters of screaming.
LET’S GO BUFFALO!
Ten voices pick it up. Twenty. Fifty.
It becomes something else. Not a cheer anymore—a declaration. A line in the snow.
Bodies converge on Vadim’s crew like they’re goal-line stands. No formation. No plan. Just mass and momentum and beer-fueled righteousness.
A guy in a Josh Allen jersey goes low. Another goes high. Someone’s swinging a terrible towel like a goddamn lasso.
TERRIBLE TOWEL GUY
BILLS BY A BILLION!
Vadim’s second man tries to run. Gets clotheslined by a woman with a Sabres tattoo and Bills face paint.
She doesn’t even break stride.
A Zubaz-clad linebacker type drives KNIFE GUY into a pickup bed.
Someone swings a Playmate cooler—connects with a jaw, ice and Labatt cans exploding like shrapnel.
WOMAN IN KELLY JERSEY, phone held high, delivers a field goal kick to a shin while screaming into her livestream.
Three men pile onto Vadim. He disappears under flannel and denim and the smell of Frank’s RedHot and bad decisions.
Gary yanks Daryna back toward the Subaru, her hand locked in his.
The chaos spreads like spilled beer—Vadim’s tactical training means nothing against the pure kinetic stupidity of fifteen drunk strangers who just decided someone’s fucking with their parking lot.
A FOLDING TABLE sails overhead.
Vadim tries to create distance, professional instinct kicking in—but there’s nowhere to go. Just more flannel. More Zubaz. More Bills Mafia math where loyalty beats logic every single time.
EXT. HIGHMARK STADIUM PARKING LOT - NIGHT
Vadim’s men disappear under a pile of Zubaz and fury—one tries to draw a weapon and gets it knocked away by a beer can, another goes down under three guys in matching Diggs jerseys who don’t even break their chant rhythm.
The third operative attempts a tactical retreat.
A WOMAN IN A JOSH ALLEN JERSEY intercepts him with a folding chair. Not swinging it—just holding it out like a traffic cop. He stops. Confused.
She SWINGS.
Vadim himself is backing toward a black SUV, hand inside his jacket, eyes scanning for an exit vector that doesn’t exist. The crowd has him surrounded without meaning to—just drunk people stumbling in random directions that happen to form a perfect perimeter.
DONNIE charges through like a Bills linebacker, all two-forty of construction-worker mass.
Vadim sidesteps—professional, economical.
Donnie crashes into a tailgate. Bounces off. Keeps coming.
SPIT appears from nowhere with a TRAFFIC CONE, wielding it like a medieval flail. Completely ineffective. Absolutely committed.
Vadim tries to draw his weapon—
A BEER BOTTLE explodes against his hand. Not thrown hard. Just thrown from eight feet away by someone who wasn’t even aiming at him.
The gun skitters under a pickup truck.
Vadim looks at his empty hand. At the crowd closing in. At the absolute chaos of people who have no training, no coordination, no plan—
Just proximity and numbers and the kind of loyalty that makes men jump through burning tables for no reason at all.
He runs.
Gets maybe six feet before someone’s girlfriend—tiny thing, can’t be more than five-two—sticks out a leg in UGG boots.
Vadim goes DOWN HARD on asphalt.
Stays down.
The crowd’s chanting fractures into competing rhythms—half still on “U-S-A,” the other half switching mid-word to “LET’S GO BUFFALO”—nobody notices the contradiction, nobody cares, it’s all the same drunken hymn.
A BILLS FLAG waves over the scrum. Someone’s playing “Shout” from a truck bed.
Gary pulls Daryna back as the crowd surges forward, a tide of Zubaz and loyalty that doesn’t know what it’s protecting, only that it’s protecting.
GARY
(barely audible over the noise)
You good?
She nods. Can’t speak. Watching her country’s enemy go down under an avalanche of people who couldn’t find Ukraine on a map.
A WOMAN IN A KELCE JERSEY (wrong team, nobody cares) helps zip-tie one of Vadim’s men with someone’s phone charger cord.
The parking lot sounds like chaos. Sounds like a stadium after a comeback win. Sounds like what freedom might sound like if you stopped trying to define it and just let it be loud and messy and completely, accidentally righteous.
VADIM
backs toward his Mercedes, hand moving to his jacket—not for a weapon, for keys. Professional enough to know when extraction beats completion.
But DONNIE’s already there. Blocking the driver’s door. Arms crossed like a bouncer, like a union rep, like every Polish kid who ever held a line in South Buffalo.
DONNIE
Nah.
Behind him, SPIT hoists a FOLDING TABLE overhead. Not as a joke. As a weapon system perfected through decades of pre-game ritual.
SPIT
(to Vadim, almost apologetic)
You picked the wrong parking lot, bud.
Vadim calculates. Three steps to the passenger side. Twelve feet of open asphalt. A crowd that’s stopped being a crowd and become something older—a mob in the classical sense, the demos armed with plastic furniture and municipal beer.
He doesn’t run.
Doesn’t need to.
The table comes down like thunder.
They don’t parse the Cyrillic on her necklace, don’t know a Kalashnikov from a Kalashnikova, think Zelenskyy’s that comedian guy—
But Gary said “she’s one of us.”
That’s doctrine. That’s gospel.
The woman in the knockoff jersey with the wrong number is Buffalo now. Which means the guy in the expensive coat isn’t.
Math’s simple when you’re six Labatts deep and someone threatens your people.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
The mob doesn’t need a translator. Doesn’t need context.
Gary’s bleeding. Daryna’s cornered. Some asshole in a thousand-dollar coat thinks money buys him passage through their kingdom of rust and loyalty.
Wrong city. Wrong people. Wrong fucking day.
They move like a single organism—Zubaz and Carhartt, folding tables raised like shields, beer cans crushed into makeshift weapons.
Vadim’s professionals try to form a perimeter.
The Bills Mafia forms a wall.
EXT. BILLS STADIUM PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
Sirens shred the air. Red and blue strobing across a sea of Zubaz.
Buffalo PD cruisers first, then the sedans—unmarked, federal plates, the kind that mean someone in Washington made a phone call.
Vadim doesn’t resist. Hands behind his back, face blank as they cuff him.
A professional to the end. Even his surrender is efficient.
The hard drive disappears into an evidence bag. Chain of custody forms. Agents in windbreakers with three-letter acronyms.
EXT. AMBULANCE - CONTINUOUS
Daryna sits on the rear bumper, shock blanket draped like a cape she didn’t ask for.
Her English comes slower now. Accent thicker when the adrenaline drains.
An FBI agent takes notes. Nods. Asks her to repeat the part about Mariupol.
She does. Doesn’t cry. Hasn’t earned that yet.
Around them, Bills fans give statements to cops who’ve been working this lot for twenty years. No one saw anything clearly. Everyone saw everything that mattered.
EXT. GARY’S SUBARU - CONTINUOUS
Gary leans against the driver’s door. His right hand wrapped in gauze that’s already bleeding through.
Different agent. Younger. Keeps using words like “commendation” and “civilian valor.”
GARY
I don’t know anything about drives or—
AGENT
You intervened in an active—
GARY
I saw a guy grab my neighbor.
The agent writes this down like it’s testimony. Like it explains anything.
AGENT
You’re a hero, Mr. Kowalczyk.
Gary looks past him. At Daryna on the ambulance bumper. At the parking lot that will never look the same.
GARY
I just live next door.
He means it. Didn’t choose this. Didn’t want it.
Just happened to be there when courage stopped being optional.
EXT. GARY’S SUBARU - CONTINUOUS
Gary shifts his weight. The Subaru door cold against his back.
His bandaged hand throbs. He doesn’t look at it.
GARY
I don’t know anything about drives or—whatever that was.
AGENT MORRISON
(patient, practiced)
You intervened in an active federal investigation. Prevented a foreign
operative from—
GARY
I saw a guy grab my neighbor.
Morrison writes this down. Every word matters now, even the ones that don’t.
AGENT MORRISON
The Bureau will want a full debrief. Tomorrow, probably.
Gary nods. Doesn’t know what that means. Doesn’t care.
His eyes find Daryna across the lot. Still on that ambulance bumper. Still wrapped in that blanket.
Still here.
AGENT MORRISON
You understand what you did today? You’re a hero, Mr. Kowalczyk.
Gary finally looks at him. Shakes his head once.
GARY
I just live next door.
The truth of it sits between them.
Didn’t choose this. Didn’t want it.
Just happened to be the guy there when being the guy there mattered.
Morrison closes his notebook. Studies Gary like he’s trying to understand something that doesn’t translate.
EXT. STADIUM PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS
Donnie and Spit stand with a third officer, animated, talking over each other.
DONNIE
—grabbed the guy’s arm, right? And Gary just—
SPIT
Folding table. Swear to God.
DONNIE
(grinning)
Like it was fourth down.
The officer writes. Tries not to smile. Fails.
Around them, the Bills Mafia crowd thins out slowly. No one wants to leave. Phones still up, recording the tape, the vehicles, the aftermath.
Someone’s already filming a TikTok explainer. Someone else is on Reddit.
A woman in a Diggs jersey holds up her phone to a friend—
WOMAN IN DIGGS JERSEY
It’s at forty-two thousand. Started twenty minutes ago.
By Tuesday, Daryna’s GoFundMe will clear fifty grand.
By Wednesday, she’ll have three lawyers offering to work pro bono.
The parking lot empties. The story doesn’t.
INT. FBI MOBILE COMMAND UNIT - NIGHT
Agent Reyes bags the drive. Seals it. Logs it.
AGENT REYES
(into phone)
We have it. Chain of custody intact.
Through the window: flashing lights, dispersing crowd, someone still holding up a phone.
AGENT REYES (CONT’D)
Taras Boyko. Yeah. He got it here.
She looks at the evidence bag.
AGENT REYES (CONT’D)
Just not the way he thought.
The drive goes into a case. The case closes.
Somewhere, journalists will open files. Investigators will trace names. Money that funded collaboration, betrayal, the selling of cities.
Mariupol. Kherson. Names that mean everything.
Taras bled out in a Loss parking lot for this.
It made it.
INT. GARY’S SUBARU - NIGHT
Silence except for the heater. Daryna’s hands still shaking. Gary drives like he’s carrying something breakable.
Snow melts on the windshield. Red and blue lights fade in the rearview.
He pulls up to her building. Leaves the engine running.
GARY
I can walk you—
She’s already nodding. They get out.
EXT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT BUILDING - CONTINUOUS
Up the stairs. Her keys fumble. He doesn’t reach to help—knows better.
She gets the door open. Turns.
Her hand finds his. Squeezes once. Hard.
No words. What would they be?
She goes inside. He stands there a moment.
Then walks back down.
INT. GARY’S APARTMENT - LATER
Gary on the couch, still in his jacket. Staring at nothing.
The ceiling creaks above him. Her footsteps.
Neither of them sleeping.
Both of them changed.
INT. DARYNA’S APARTMENT - AFTERNOON
April light, thin and honest. The kind that shows dust.
Boxes stacked against the wall. Some taped shut, some open. A life suspended between staying and going.
The Bills pennant—new, still has the fold creases—tacked above the futon.
Gary’s Subaru keys on the counter next to a jar of pickles, a Ukrainian brand from the international market on Hertel.
A knock. Three soft taps.
DARYNA
(from the bedroom)
It’s open.
The door opens. Gary steps in, one hand behind his back.
He’s wearing the nice shirt. The wedding shirt from 2019.
DARYNA (CONT’D)
You knock like you don’t live here.
GARY
I don’t live here.
DARYNA
Your keys are on my counter.
GARY
For emergencies.
She emerges from the bedroom, hair up, wearing one of his old Sabres t-shirts. It swallows her.
They look at each other. Three months of this. Learning how to stand in the same room without flinching.
DARYNA
What’s behind your back?
GARY
I got you something.
He’s nervous. Shifting weight like he’s at a free throw line.
GARY (CONT’D)
For, you know. If you’re staying.
She waits. Doesn’t make it easier for him. Smiles just a little.
He brings it out: a Bills jersey, royal blue, crisp from the package.
Number 28. KOVAL across the shoulders in white block letters.
DARYNA
Twenty-eight?
GARY
Your age. I thought—I don’t know. They don’t just put any number.
She takes it. Holds it up. The fabric catches the light.
GARY (CONT’D)
For next season.
He says it quiet. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s a promise he’s terrified to make.
She looks at him. The jersey. Him again.
Then she closes the distance.
The kiss happens before either of them decides.
Her hand finds his collar. The wedding shirt, finally earning its keep.
He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t overthink it. For once in his life, Gary Kowalczyk is exactly where he needs to be.
When they break, she keeps her forehead against his.
DARYNA
(whispered)
I’m staying.
GARY
Yeah?
DARYNA
Someone has to explain to you
what offsides means.
He laughs. The real one. The one his friends know.
She steps back, still wearing the jersey over his Sabres shirt. Layers of belonging.
GARY
It looks good.
DARYNA
Everything looks good on me.
GARY
Yeah, well. That’s just facts.
She moves to the window. April light on her face. The street below—ordinary, hers.
DARYNA
Next season. We’ll go to a game?
GARY
Every home game if you want.
She turns back to him.
DARYNA
I want.
He nods. Doesn’t need to say anything.
He never did.
DARYNA
You know I still don’t understand football.
GARY
Yeah. But you understand showing up.
She pulls the jersey on over his shirt. The fabric settles against her shoulders.
KOVAL across the back in blue and red.
She looks down at herself. At the number. At the name that’s hers now, in a language that finally is too.
DARYNA
It fits.
GARY
Told you.
She smooths the front. Her fingers trace the Bills logo.
DARYNA
Next season, you’ll teach me?
GARY
Every Sunday. I’ll make wings.
DARYNA
The kind that burn?
GARY
The only kind.
She looks up at him. Really looks.
The space between them is nothing. Is everything.
The kiss lands like everything they’ve survived—soft and certain.
His hand spreads across her back, pulling her closer. Her fingers trace his jaw, the stubble, the realness of him.
The jersey bunches between them. Blue and red fabric, her name across his chest now.
They break apart. Foreheads touching.
His eyes closed. Hers open.
DARYNA
(whispered)
Stay.
He nods against her. Doesn’t need to say yes.
The afternoon light catches the number on her sleeve.
FADE TO BLACK.
The opening horns of “Shout” by The Isley Brothers—pure, defiant joy.
OVER CREDITS:
A photograph. Could be real. Could be hope made tangible.
Gary and Daryna at a Bills tailgate. His arm slung around her shoulders. A folding table blurred in the background, mid-flight.
Both grinning. Faces of people who fought for ordinary.
Who won.
FADE OUT.