A desolate urban landscape, leached of color. The air is brittle with cold.
SOUND of a relentless, biting WIND howling through the skeletal branches of street-side trees.
ALEX (20) sits on a cold metal bench, breath pluming in thick, white clouds. His gloves are worn, his coat too thin. He shivers, a deep, bone-felt cold.
Across from him, CORRINE (20) pulls a thin scarf tighter around her face. Her eyes, dark with fatigue, track a DERELICT FIGURE shrouded in layers, pushing a wobbly shopping cart down the cracked street.
SOUND of the cart’s rusted wheels groaning in protest.
The cart and figure disappear around a corner. The sound fades, replaced by a distant, nagging CAR ALARM.
Alex shifts on the bench, the metal biting through his jeans. He glances at a half-healed scrape on his palm.
His focus blurs. He remembers... a man's blank, dead-eyed stare from earlier today. Alex holding out a dropped glove. The man just looking through him. The glove falling to the pavement, already freezing to the ground.
A single flake of ash drifts past his eye, settling on his sleeve. He brushes it away. A futile gesture.
Her gaze is still fixed on the empty street. A smudge of grease marks her temple. She doesn't notice. Or care.
She hugs her knees to her chest, making herself a smaller target for the wind. The cheap fabric of her jacket CRINKLES.
His eyes drift to a dark apartment window across the street. He thinks of his neighbor, Clara. He hasn't checked on her in weeks. He looks away, a flicker of guilt on his face.
A broken neon sign for a long-closed bar across the street flickers—BLUE, RED, DEAD—casting a sickly, stuttering light over them.
Her voice is softer now, almost lost in the wind. She finally looks at him, her eyes searching.
He shrugs, a small, pained movement.
She traces a pattern on the frosty plastic panel of the shelter.
SOUND of a distant SIREN wailing, rising and falling, then swallowed by the city's drone. They don't flinch.
A shiver runs through her, not from the cold.
Corrine shakes her head slowly, her gaze finding a dirty pigeon pecking at the gutter.
Her voice cracks on the last word. She clears her throat. A loose sheet of newspaper, headlines screaming about "DWINDLING RESOURCES," scuds past their feet.
The question hangs between them, fragile.
The first hesitant snowflakes begin to fall, melting into dark spots on the pavement.
As she speaks, the single fluorescent bulb inside the bus shelter FLICKERS violently. It BUZZES, then DIES with a final POP.
They are plunged into deeper shadow, lit only by the fractured neon dance across the street.
Silence. Then...
SOUND of a faint, deep, MECHANICAL RUMBLE. Distant. Unnatural. Not a truck or a train.
They exchange a nervous glance.
The snow falls harder now, dusting their shoulders.
The RUMBLE grows, a low-frequency VIBRATION that runs through the metal bench, up their spines.
A sodium-vapor lamp down the block SPUTTERS, dies. Then another. The darkness is creeping towards them, swallowing the street light by light.
Corrine doesn't answer. She stares into the encroaching dark, her eyes wide.
SOUND: The RUMBLE is louder. Closer. The ground TREMORS.
The last functioning streetlight on their corner CRACKLES... and goes out.
Absolute, stinging darkness.
The only light is the broken neon, painting their terrified faces in stuttering flashes of red and blue.
SOUND: The RUMBLE is DEAFENING now. It's HERE. The sound of immense, grinding, relentless machinery moving down their street, just out of sight.
CLOSE ON ALEX AND CORRINE
Their heads snap towards the unseen source of the sound. Breath caught in their throats. Their faces are masks of pure, stark horror.
The future is here.
FADE TO BLACK.
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