A FEW DAYS AGO
[ MORNING]
Yuka wakes, blinking at weak sunlight. Her room is small, cluttered half-finished sketches pinned to walls, a cracked phone charging beside her bed, a single dying plant on the windowsill. She never remembers to water it.
She yawns, shuffles to the kitchen in rumpled pajamas. Pours cereal straight into her mouth. Grabs the remote.
The TV flickers on some old movie is being shown.
MRS. HANEDA:
"Movie? At six in the morning?"
Her mother appears, arms crossed, already dressed for work.
MRS. HANEDA
"School. Now."
Yuka groans, drags herself to the shower.
[after taking a shower]
Yuka wipes the mirror, checks her reflection—tired eyes, uniform straightened, hair still damp.
She turns to leave.
CRASH.
The mirror drops. Shatters across the tile.
MR. HANEDA [passing through and sees the mirror shattered on the floor]
"Seven years bad luck, you know."
Yuka freezes.
MR. HANEDA
"Old superstition. Just... be careful today, yeah?"
She nods, but something cold settles in her stomach. She steps around the glass. YUKA: Dad I don't feel like going to school today.
MR HANEDA [smiles while helping her pick the shattered mirror on the floor] you can come help me out at work.
Taru: No thanks. [waves her dad goodbye as she goes to school]
[AT SCHOOL ]
Students packed tight, shouting, pointing.
Yuka pushes through.
STUDENT
"It actually worked, can you believe it"
YUKA
"What happened?"
STUDENT
"The African kid. Monaki. He built the teleporter. It worked."
Yuka knows the stories. Monaki, a transfer student from Africa who was labeled a Genius, for inventing a working teleportation device. But it was just absurd to her that it actually worked.
RUMBLE.
The ground shifts. An earthquake?
[note this was before the mutation]
PRESENT DAY
Silence. And wind.
Monaki staggers through waist-deep snow, Carrying YUKA over one shoulder, TARU unconscious over the other. frozen blood on Taro's coat. The monster's blood or her own Monaki wondered.
His left arm hangs useless beneath his sleeve. Scales. Pulsing.
One mile. Maybe two. His knees buckle.
He drops them both. Collapses.
Snow begins to cover their bodies.
VOICES
"three bodies, northeast sector"
Boots crunching snow. Shadows overhead.
VOICE
"They're alive. Get the sled."
Darkness takes Monaki.
[MEDICAL TENT ]
Warmth. The first thing Yuka feels is warmth.
She blinks awake on a thin mattress, lantern light flickering above. Thin walls. Somewhere distant.
Her arm is in a splint. Her leg too. She tries to sit pain and gasps.
VOICE
"Don't."
A creature steps into the view, a pretty human like creature with feminine traits, Short hair with doglike ears, scar across her eyebrow. She holds a metal cup.
Creature:
"Drink. It's just water."
Yuka [who was almost dying of thirst] hesitates but drinks it
YUKA: Stuttering
"Where..what
Creature
"We found you in the outer zone." A pause. And ask "How? In all the maps and histories, there haven't been a single record of life ever found in a frozen zone of this magnitude not to talk of human life. We can't even survive for more than two hours in a frozen zone and we are snow beastfolks. What are you?
YUKA
"The others that were with me, where are there?"
Creature:
"The girl is next tent. breathing." She sets the cup down. "The other one..."
"He's in our custody."
[Yuka limps outside, splinted leg dragging.]
Creature: "where do you think your going "] The settlement is small—twenty huts, a fence of scrap metal, watchtowers with bulb-like lights but with fire flies in it. Beyond the fence: green pasture, the opposite of where she last remembered.
The Creature grips her firmly on her hand "where do you think your going?" Yuka feeling a little pain from the firm grip reacts by slapping the creature to leave here alone.
Blood stains on the thin wall the creature drops on the floor dead her skull shattered. [Yuka had accidentally killed her.] In her despair YUKA screamed which alerted the guards who ran to the room seeing their commander lying dead on the floor her skull shattered, there drew their swords and we're about to attack [YUKA frightened Screamed]
[ISOLATION CELL]
Dark. Cold. Monaki sits against the wall, left arm chained to a pipe. The scales have spread to his shoulder now. Black veins web upward toward his neck.
He breathes hard. Sweat on his face.
The door opens. Yuka slips in. And unchanged him
MONAKI: in a weak voice "where's Taru?" YUKA:"she's outside, we need to leave [she helps him up and takes him outside] The beautiful yellow morning sun pierced through MONAKI'S eyes, he looks further and he sees a beautiful pale brown skin girl waving at him she's covered with blood and it's dripping down her hands [the entire place looks destroyed as if an earthquake just occurred here and there are so many dead creatures I do not recognize] MONAKI thought to himself.
Then Taru asked him "what now MONAKI? What do we do next." MONAKI stood in awe and couldn't comprehend what was going on