EP0 is 28 minutes of pre-production-locked cinema, broken to 19 scenes across five acts, with 14 interaction beats already designed. It can become the playable vertical slice — the 5 minutes a producer needs to greenlight the rest.
SETTING · Soviet ZATO · Ural mountains · April 1983 PROTAGONIST · Mira Levina · age 9
Frost on the Window
A nine-year-old wakes to frost on her window. Her father is silent at breakfast. The bus takes her past monuments she has been told not to look at. The school day is supposed to start the way it always does. It does not.
Frost · A Formula Drawn With a Fingertip
She wakes up and draws on the frost. The shape is not a flower. It's a vector field.
Kitchen · The Sugar Cube and the Spoon
Father stirs his tea. He doesn't say anything. She counts the rotations.
The Watch · 07:00
Father's wristwatch. Brass case, sweep-second hand, scratch on the bezel. It will become important.
The Silence · Father's Profile
He is not angry. He looks like he's already saying goodbye. She doesn't know that yet.
Aerial · The Science City
State machine first. Child second. The city's geometry is more honest than its slogans.
Science City · Lenin's Unfinished Colossus
Wide. The whole town in one frame. The system she lives inside is bigger than her. The slogan is unfinished, but the apparatus is complete.
Bus Window · Profile
She watches the monument slide past. Her face on the glass. The monument behind it. Two layers.
School · Oblique Arrival
She reaches school. She does not enter the classroom.
Principal's Office · The Notice
An adult hand passes a Soviet form to a child's hand. The day's destination has changed.
He left the apartment without turning around. He already knew he wasn't coming back.
The Test
She is taken to a Pioneer Palace test. She has been told she is being evaluated for a special program. The test is a card-flipping game watched by an inspector. What happens during the test does not yet have a name. What happens to the room afterward does.
Pioneer Palace · Exterior Monument
The building is bigger than the institution it serves. A cosmonaut statue. Boots crushing snow.
The Brass Door
Heavy brass handle. The institution announces itself before any adult speaks. She pushes it with her shoulder. The shoulder remembers, the hand doesn't.
Waiting · By the Window
Other children are quiet in a way that adults notice. Mira is quiet in a way only children notice.
The Hall · Lateral Reveal
The test room is too clean. The blackboard reads in two languages. Neither of them is for a nine-year-old.
Round Two · The Recorder
A reel-to-reel begins to turn. The inspector writes one number per card. There are fifteen cards. There should be fourteen.
Card 7 · The Star
She turns it before the inspector says "next." The room temperature drops half a degree.
The Switch · Behind Her Eyes
For 1.5 seconds her face is not the face of a child. The inspector looks up. She looks back.
Heat Wave Through the Room
The window frosts crack. The thermometer rises three degrees. No fire. No source.
Alone in the Room
The adults left in a hurry. The recorder is still turning. She is not crying. She is counting.
She did not pass. The test was not actually about cards.
The City Stops Working For Her
She walks home alone. The bread shop won't sell her bread. The neighbor doesn't open the door. The radio in her apartment still works — but the seven o'clock broadcast has been replaced by something else, and there is a piece of fig candy in the seam of the dial.
Crack One · The Bread Shop
Her ration card is no longer in their ledger. The clerk doesn't look at her face.
The Red Rim of an Eye
Not crying. Just the body's first honest report.
Crack Two · The Wrong Door
A woman she has never seen opens her neighbor's door. The apartment number on the frame is correct. The family inside has been replaced.
Crack Three · The Radio at Seven
The seven o'clock broadcast cuts out. A piece of candy falls from inside the radio's seam.
Inside the Wrapper · A Pebble
Not candy. A small, smooth pebble. Wrapped in a fig candy's wrapper.
The Wrapper, Reversed
Father's handwriting. Three words she will not be able to read for seven years.
She is nine. The room has stopped pretending.
Run · The Volga at the Door
She tries the phone booth. KGB officers come up the building's stairs. She hides in the boiler room until a woman she has been told never to trust knocks on the door using a rhythm she has been told never to forget.
The Phone Booth
Glass cracked. Power station humming behind. She dials the number from memory.
"Wrong Number."
The voice is calm and informed. He has been waiting for someone to call this number. He just hoped it wouldn't be her.
The Volga · At the Entrance
Black GAZ-24. Engine running. No one inside. Yet.
Through the Door Crack
Three men. They are not looking for her — they are looking for what her father left.
Boiler Room · Between the Pipes
Cold concrete. Wool socks soaked through. The pressure gauge reads 4.2 bar. She counts the gauge ticks.
The Pebble on Her Knee
She has unwrapped the candy. The wrapper is folded in her palm. The pebble is on her knee. She has decided to keep both.
The Mirror in the Dome
A woman drives her into the mountains. The drive is long. The conversation is shorter. At the end of the road there is a building that is not on any map, and inside the building there is a room, and inside the room there is a mirror that is not a mirror.
The City, Retreating
Tail lights. Sodium-vapor orange. Snow falling slowly enough to count.
"Don't Talk Until We're Past the Dome."
Yelena explains exactly half. The other half is on the other side of the room they are driving toward.
Counting Telephone Poles
She does not cry. She counts. This is her body's first language.
The Dome · First Sighting
Through the windscreen. Snowfield. Moonlight. A geometry that should not be there.
The Building With No Sign
The fence has a star and a book stamped into it. The Soviet education department's mark. It is the wrong mark.
Dome Hall · First Look
White-painted floor lines. A wooden chair with restraint marks. A central plinth, empty. Yet.
The Spiral Mirror
Kozyrev geometry. Aluminum. Wound like a watch spring. It is reflecting something she is not standing in front of yet.
The Reflection · Half a Beat Late
She moves her hand. Her reflection moves a half-second after. Then it doesn't move at all.
00:15
Father's watch. The hand has stopped. From this point forward in the season, all watches read 00:15.
Prague · A Bench by the River
Her body is sixteen now. Her hands remember how to count. She has not yet seen her face in a window.
The Coat Pocket · An Envelope, A Piece of Candy
Someone dressed her. Someone left her instructions. Someone left her a piece of fig candy. Same wrapper. Same handwriting.
She Turns Around
Cold morning. Wenceslas Square in the distance. The season's first episode begins on her next breath.
She walked into a room at nine. She walked out at sixteen. She does not know yet that the world spent those seven years getting ready for her.
