Dead Air

Episode 1 script — “Boarding”

Fade in:

Int. Airport Terminal — Day

A departure board. Flight 417 — DELAYED — now BOARDING.

MINH (32, tired eyes, camera strapped to his bag) films LENA (30, bright, annoyed at him) on his phone.

She laughs. Real couple energy. He keeps filming.

Int. Jet Bridge — Moments Later

Passengers shuffle forward. We drift past faces we’ll learn:

KHOA (40s, calm, aisle seat 3C) — watches everything, carries nothing but a small backpack.

BEO (20s, 18F) — jaw clenched, keeps checking his phone. No signal, just staring.

TAM (30s, 22A) — window seat, laptop bag hugged like a life vest.

HUNG (50s, 7D) — older, hands shaking slightly, rosary in his fist.

CARRIER (40s, gaunt, seat 14C) — holds a dented aluminum medical case on his lap like it matters more than his life. A biohazard sticker, half-peeled.

MIA (20s, flight attendant) scans boarding passes, smile on autopilot.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

The cabin: cold blue-white light, recycled air. Minh and Lena squeeze into 16A/16B.

She elbows him. He pulls out a small wrapped box.

Across the aisle, the CARRIER locks the medical case under the seat in front of him. Checks the latches twice. Then a third time.

Khoa, three rows up, watches him in the reflection of his dark phone screen. Just a glance. Files it away.

Int. Plane Cabin — Later

Takeoff. The roar builds. Lena grips Minh’s hand during rotation — not scared, just ritual.

Through the window: the ground drops away. Clouds swallow the wing.

Title card: Dead Air — Episode 1

Int. Plane Cabin — Cruising Altitude

Seatbelt sign dings off. Cabin exhales.

Mia pushes the cart down the aisle.

His hand trembles taking the cup. Hung, across the aisle, notices. Looks away fast.

TAM opens his laptop. Types. Deletes. Types again. On screen, a seating chart of the plane — with four seats highlighted: 3C, 18F, 22A, 7D.

Minh films Lena by the window.

A beat. That lands — they’ve left kids behind for this.

In 14C, the Carrier opens the medical case a crack. Inside: vials in foam, frost on the glass. He checks a temperature strip. Frowns.

TURBULENCE hits — hard. The case SLAMS shut on his fingers.

Vials rattle. One rolls loose in the foam. He shoves it back, hands shaking now. Locks the case.

Khoa turns at the sound. Watches the Carrier for a long two seconds.

Int. Galley — Moments Later

Mia restocks cups. The CAPTAIN’S VOICE crackles over the intercom — calm, routine.

Mia glances toward the cockpit door. Then back down the cabin.

Her eyes stop on Beo — standing now, in the aisle, staring toward the front.

Beo doesn’t sit. He looks at Khoa.

Khoa gives one small nod.

Beo reaches into his waistband.

TAM stands. HUNG stands, rosary wrapping tight around his fist.

Minh’s camera is still rolling. It catches Lena’s face changing — smile dying.

Khoa stands in the aisle now, holding a compact pistol low, professional. Not waving it. That’s worse.

Beat. The cabin freezes.

The Carrier, in 14C, slowly slides the medical case further under the seat with his foot.

A VIAL inside the case — the loose one — we see it in close-up: a hairline crack in the glass. Frost melting.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 1

DEAD AIR

Episode 2 — “Takeover”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • Picks up on the exact frame Episode 1 ended on.

New in this episode: CAPTAIN (50s) and FIRST OFFICER (30s) in the cockpit, and DAN (40s, seat 14B, businessman) — the passenger sitting next to the Carrier.

Episode 2 script — “Takeover”

Smash in:

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

KHOA in the aisle, pistol low. The cabin frozen.

BEO moves fast down the aisle, zip ties out — yanks a man’s wrists too hard.

Beo eases off, jaw working. TAM is already at work in 22A — laptop open, flight manifest on screen, a handheld radio scanner crackling low.

HUNG stands frozen in 7D, rosary wrapped tight around his fist, breathing hard.

That lands. The gun is new to Hung too.

Minh’s phone is still recording. LENA grabs his wrist.

He lowers the phone — but doesn’t stop recording. It sits face-down on his tray, red light on.

MIA steps forward, hands raised, flight-attendant calm cracking at the edges.

(beat)

I need to talk to your pilots.

Khoa turns for the cockpit. MINH’s eyes track him — then Beo. Distances. Hands. Who is closest to Lena. His shoulders come up. He starts to half-rise out of his seat —

LENA’s hand clamps down on his wrist again. Hard. She doesn’t even look up.

Minh holds — one second — then sinks back down. Jaw tight. He hates that she’s right.

He has filed it away anyway: the distances, the hands, and who the real threat is.

Int. Cockpit — Moments Later

CAPTAIN (50s) and FIRST OFFICER (30s), hands half-raised, as Khoa enters. Beo behind him, too close, too wired.

(beat)

What’s in the cargo hold?

Khoa absorbs that. Something crosses his face — not surprise. Recognition. He buries it.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

Tam’s laptop: a flight-tracking map, their little plane icon sliding off course. A second window scrolls radio frequencies.

Khoa faces the cabin. Calm. Measured.

A baby cries. A mother shushes it.

In 14C: THE CARRIER. Sweat beading on his forehead. He stares at the medical case under the seat ahead. His hand trembles. He coughs — wet, wrong.

DAN (40s, 14B, businessman) glances over, annoyed.

Another cough. Worse. The Carrier grips the armrest — knuckles white, veins dark.

Mia moves down the aisle with water, doing her job on pure autopilot, holding normal together with both hands.

Mia really looks at him now. The sweat. The eyes — unfocused, clouding.

Heads turn. Khoa’s eyes snap to 14C.

(to Mia)

Back to the galley.

Mia retreats. The Carrier breathes hard, staring at nothing — then his whole body goes rigid. Back arches against the seat. A seizure?

The Carrier’s head snaps toward Dan. His eyes are wrong — clouded, yellow-white.

He LUNGES. Teeth sink into Dan’s forearm.

DAN’S SCREAM tears through the cabin.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 2

DEAD AIR

Episode 3 — “Outbreak”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • Picks up on Dan’s scream, seconds after Episode 2 ended.

New in this episode: No new principals. The outbreak spreads to Dan (14B) and a WOMAN IN 15A who helps restrain the Carrier — everyone else is a face already locked in Episodes 1–2.

Episode 3 script — “Outbreak”

Smash in:

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

DAN’S SCREAM is still tearing through the cabin. The CARRIER is locked onto his forearm, teeth in deep, thrashing like an animal caught in wire.

Passengers in rows 12 to 18 surge out of their seats — nowhere to go. Aisle jammed in both directions.

Khoa and BEO haul the Carrier back by his collar and hair. He comes away with blood on his mouth — and goes for Beo’s hand. Beo jerks clear by an inch.

That choice costs him: no easy way out. They wrestle the Carrier into the aisle, seatbelts lashed around his wrists and chest, a blanket over his head. He bucks against all of it, strength wrong for a man his size.

MIA is on her knees beside Dan, both hands clamped over his forearm. Blood wells between her fingers.

LENA is already there. She tears the wrap off her own shoulders, folds it, presses it into Mia’s hands.

MINH holds Dan’s shoulders down. Dan is grey, shaking, staring at the bite like it belongs to someone else.

Minh does not believe it. Dan can see that he does not believe it.

Int. Plane Cabin — Moments Later

Silence, almost. The Carrier has gone still under the blanket. Too still. His chest does not move.

HUNG kneels beside him, two fingers at his neck. A long beat. Hung looks up at Khoa and shakes his head, once.

A breath the whole cabin takes together. Mia sits back on her heels, hands red. Dan starts to cry with relief.

Under the blanket, the Carrier’s hand TWITCHES. Once. Twice. Then it closes, hard, around Hung’s wrist.

Hung SCREAMS. The blanket comes off in the scramble — the Carrier’s eyes are open. Clouded white-yellow. No one home in them, and yet they find Hung’s face instantly.

He lunges — seatbelts tear out of the seat tracks — Khoa tackles him into row 14 as passengers stampede forward and back, a crush in the aisle, a child crying somewhere behind the noise.

A WOMAN IN 15A grabs the Carrier’s arm to help — he twists and his teeth rake her hand open. She stares at the wound. She understands before anyone says a word.

Woman in 15A

(quiet)

No. No, no—

Int. Rear Galley / Cabin — Continuous

Khoa makes the call in one breath — soldier’s triage, no debate.

It is ugly, fast work: the Carrier, still thrashing, dragged down the aisle and forced into the rear galley. Mia begs Dan to move under his own power while he still can.

That lands. Dan walks himself to the galley on shaking legs, like a man walking to his own verdict. The Woman in 15A follows without a word, holding her bitten hand away from her body like it is already not hers.

Drink carts are slammed across the aisle, wheels locked, lashed together with seatbelts and extension straps. A wall of aluminum and plastic between the cabin and the galley.

On the far side, the Carrier throws himself at the carts. The wall shudders. Holds.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

The cabin splits apart. Forward: Khoa, Beo and Tam hold the cockpit end, passengers packed into the front rows, every face turned toward the barricade.

And a third pocket: Minh, Lena and Mia are cut off in the last rows, trapped between the jammed dead zone ahead of them and the lashed carts behind them — with the infected on the other side of those carts. They were helping Dan when the line closed. Now there is no way forward.

Lena looks down. In the scramble, the small wrapped gift box has fallen from Minh’s bag. She picks it up, holds it a second, then puts it in her own pocket.

HUNG, forward with the others, stares at the shaking barricade. He unwinds the rosary from his fist and presses it into the hands of the mother holding the crying baby.

Beo watches him do it. Something hardens in Beo’s face.

On Minh’s tray table, row 16 — now inside the dead zone between the lines — his phone is still face-down. Still recording. Red light blinking at an empty seat.

Behind the carts: coughing. Wet, wrong. Then Dan’s voice, thin through the curtain—

His voice stops mid-sentence. A long silence. Then the carts take a hit from the other side — harder than the Carrier ever hit them. Two sets of hands now.

Int. Cockpit — Same Time

The FIRST OFFICER has his headset half off. The CAPTAIN flies one-handed, the other pressed to his earpiece, face draining of color as he listens.

He listens. Whatever he hears, he makes them repeat. Khoa, at the cockpit door with Beo, reads the Captain’s face and already knows.

Beat. He closes his eyes.

He turns in his seat. To Khoa, to the cabin beyond the door — a man delivering a sentence, not a message.

Behind them, through the door: the barricade takes another hit. The whole cabin can hear it now. No one screams. That is worse.

Title card: Dead Air — Episode 3

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 3

DEAD AIR

Episode 4 — “Leverage”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • Picks up minutes after Episode 3, on a fuel clock.

New in this episode: No new principals. The geography is the one locked in Episode 3: the hijackers hold the front cabin, Minh, Lena and Mia are cut off in the rear rows, and between them is the dead zone — rows 10 to 20, empty, with the Carrier’s case under 14C and Minh’s phone still recording at row 16.

Episode 4 script — “Leverage”

Smash in:

Int. Rear Cabin — Continuous

Quiet, the wrong kind. Behind the lashed drink carts, something breathes — wet, uneven — and stops. Starts again.

MINH, LENA and MIA sit low in the last rows, backs to the fuselage, as far from the carts as the cabin allows. Mia’s hands are still stained from Dan’s arm. She keeps wiping them on a napkin that stopped helping a while ago.

The galley interphone BUZZES. All three flinch. Mia crawls to it, lifts it like it might bite.

Int. Front Cabin / Rear Cabin — Intercut

Forward, KHOA holds the front interphone. TAM is beside him, laptop open on a serving tray: a cargo manifest, a news feed, and a fuel readout relayed from the cockpit.

In the rear, Lena looks at Minh. That is new, and it is worse than the hijack.

Khoa (cont’d)

Tam pulled the cargo manifest. The medical case in 14C — the one your sick man guarded — it’s listed as a sealed trial shipment. Vials. That case is the only thing on this plane anyone on the ground wants.

Int. Front Cabin — Continuous

BEO has been listening from the cockpit door. He laughs once, with no humour in it.

Tam does not look up. His silence answers for him.

Hung, in 7D, rosary-less since he gave it away, watches this. He says nothing. He does not volunteer either — and hates himself for it, visibly.

Int. Rear Cabin — Continuous

Khoa (V.O.)

(filtered)

Here’s the offer, Minh. One of you crosses forward — now, while the dead zone is quiet — as a sign this isn’t a trick. Then you go back in and bring me the case. Your person stays with me, safe, until it’s in my hands.

Khoa (V.O.)

Then we all sit in our two halves of a plane and listen to the fuel gauges. And to them, behind your carts, getting stronger. You choose how this ends. I’m trying to choose a version where it ends on the ground.

A long beat. Behind the carts: a THUD. Then scratching — nails, or teeth, on aluminium. Mia closes her eyes.

Lena stands. Before Minh can stop her.

Lena

If one of us has to be up there, it’s me. You’re the one who can carry a case and run. And if he’s lying — if it’s a trap — you’re still back here with Mia, and you figure something out. If it’s you up there and me in the dead zone, we’re both dead and you know it.

She picks up the small wrapped gift box from her pocket, presses it into his hand, closes his fingers over it.

Int. Dead Zone / Cabin — Minutes Later

The row-10 service cart is hauled aside just wide enough for one person. The dead zone beyond it: rows of empty seats in emergency-light gloom, an overturned drink tray, a single shoe in the aisle. No movement. That is not the same as empty.

Lena steps through with a torch from the crew kit, held low. Every seatback is a place something could be sitting, perfectly still, waiting for her to pass it.

She does not run. Running is noise. Halfway — row 14 — she stops. Under the seat ahead: the aluminium case, dented, latches shut, frost gone from its seams. She looks at it a long second. Does not touch it. That was the instruction, and for once an instruction is also survival: Minh carries it, she doesn’t slow herself with it now.

Row 16: Minh’s phone, face-down on the tray, red light still blinking. Lena’s torch finds it. She almost smiles — proof, still recording, whatever happens — and keeps moving.

A seat cushion SETTLES somewhere behind her, rows back, with a slow exhale of air. No one sits down that slowly. Lena freezes. Torch off. Ten seconds of black and her own heartbeat. Nothing comes. She goes — fast now, the last rows, hands raised as she reaches the front cart.

Int. Front Cabin — Continuous

Hands grab her — Beo, too hard, hauling her through the gap before the cart is slammed back into place. Lena is pulled into the front rows, shaking, unhurt, and Khoa gives one nod: the offer honoured, so far.

Beo pushes Lena down into the aisle seat — and keeps his pistol out, low, pointed nowhere in particular and somehow at her in general. He zip-ties one of her wrists to the armrest. Not tight enough to hurt. Tight enough to mean it.

Beo turns and calls down the cabin, loud enough to carry past row ten, past the carts, all the way to the rear rows.

Khoa’s jaw tightens. This was not his phrasing, and they both know it. He does not correct it in front of the cabin. That silence is its own kind of answer — and Lena hears it, and files it, exactly as Minh would have.

Int. Rear Cabin — Continuous

Minh stands at the rear carts with the interphone dead in his hand. He has heard every word. Mia is beside him, holding the crew torch and a fire axe from the galley kit — standard equipment, absurd and real at once.

He looks at the wrapped gift box in his hand. Puts it in his shirt pocket, buttoned down, over his heart. A stupid, tender place to carry something into a fight — and the only place he trusts.

Behind him, behind the carts, Dan’s breathing stops. Completely. In the sudden silence, a buckle somewhere in the galley CLINKS, dragged slowly across the floor.

Minh takes the torch. Not the axe — he leaves that with Mia, for the carts, for the rear. His hands are empty. That’s the instructor in him, and it may get him killed.

He steps through the gap Mia hauls open at the edge of the rear rows and into the first row of the dead zone. Row 20. Emergency light. Empty seats ahead of him, all the way to a dented aluminium case waiting under 14C.

Behind him, the gap closes. Ahead of him, in the dark between the seats, something that was sitting perfectly still — stands up.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 4

DEAD AIR

Episode 5 — “Thầy Minh”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • Picks up on the exact frame Episode 4 ended on.

New in this episode: No new principals. The reveal the season has been planting since the Episode 1 seat banter: Minh is a kids’ taekwondo instructor, and in the dead zone that stops being a joke.

Episode 5 script — “Thầy Minh”

Smash in:

Int. Dead Zone — Continuous

Row 20. Emergency light. MINH stands where Episode 4 left him — torch in one hand, the other empty. Ahead of him, a figure rises slowly out of seat 17D, unfolding at the wrong angles.

It was a passenger once — bitten in the Episode 3 stampede, wrist still wrapped in a bloodied napkin, a man who hid in the dead zone rather than go behind the carts with the other bitten. Now his head tracks Minh the way a dog tracks a sound. His mouth is dark.

The figure answers by coming over the seatbacks — fast, graceless, all weight. Minh sidesteps at the last instant and it crashes into row 19, tangled in seatbelts.

Minh does not run. The case is at 14C, forward. Running back solves nothing for Lena. He raises the torch like a short staff, the way he holds a foam blocker for six-year-olds, and moves forward, seat by seat.

Int. Dead Zone — Continuous

The infected tears free and charges down the aisle. Minh meets it with the first clean technique of the season: a front push kick — teep, heel to the chest — that folds it back over an armrest. Not a movie kick. Short, drilled, ten thousand repetitions.

It comes again. Minh pivots off the aisle line, lets it pass, catches its arm the way he catches a child who has swung too hard — redirect, do not meet force with force — and drives it face-first into a tray table. The tray snaps down and pins its head for one precious second.

He is already moving: seatbelt off a dead seat, a loop around the infected and the seat frame, cinched with a knot his hands remember from tying tiny belts in a dojang. It thrashes under the strap. It will not hold forever. It holds long enough.

Row 16. His phone, face-down, red light still blinking. He leaves it — evidence matters, and his hands are about to be full. Row 14. He drops to his knees under 14C.

The aluminium case. Latches shut. Frost gone. He works it free of the seat frame and hugs it to his chest — lighter than he expected. That thought lands and he pushes it away.

Int. Dead Zone / Front Cabin — Minutes Later

Behind him, a seatbelt strap SNAPS. The restrained infected has torn free of the seat frame and is coming down the aisle on all fours. Minh runs the last five rows with the case under one arm, torch beam bouncing off seatbacks, and hits the row-10 cart sideways.

The cart scrapes aside. Hands haul him through. The cart slams home behind him a half-second before the infected hits it. The whole front cabin hears its hands find the aluminium.

Int. Front Cabin — Continuous

HUNG is already cutting the zip tie off LENA’s wrist — no one ordered it, no one stops him. She gets her arms around Minh and holds on while the cabin stares at the case.

BEO steps in and pulls the case out of Minh’s hands — not a trade, a taking. He levels the pistol at Minh’s chest to make the taking stick.

Minh does not back up. He catches Beo’s wrist with both hands and turns it — the way he turns a student’s arm in a self-defence drill, slow on purpose in class, not slow now — and the pistol goes up toward the ceiling as Beo’s weight commits forward.

A front kick to the hip folds Beo. A sweep takes the leg he catches himself on. Beo hits the seats hard, shoulder first, and Minh is on him — knee pinning the gun arm, the pistol stripped and slid across the floor to Khoa’s feet. It is over in four seconds. The cabin has forgotten to breathe.

Minh could finish it. His free hand is already a fist. He looks at it — and opens it, and takes Beo by the collar instead, and hauls him upright like a kid after a bad fall.

Beo stares at him — the joke from Episode 2, except nobody in this cabin is laughing now. Least of all Lena, who is looking at her husband like she is meeting him.

Khoa picks up Beo’s pistol, checks it, and sets it on a seat — pointedly out of Beo’s reach. Then he turns to the case.

KHOA opens it himself. Foam inserts. Cold packs, sweating. Four neat vial slots.

Every slot is empty.

Silence, except for hands on the cart behind them. Khoa looks at the empty foam for a long time. Then, very quietly, he looks up — not at Minh. At TAM, who has gone the colour of paper.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 5

DEAD AIR

Episode 6 — “No Landing”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • The fuel clock from Episode 4 runs out.

New in this episode: No new principals. Tam’s vials, the rear breach, and the first true Khoa–Minh alliance.

Episode 6 script — “No Landing”

Smash in:

Int. Cockpit — Night

Fuel needles the CAPTAIN does not like. The FIRST OFFICER reads the latest message off the screen a second time, as if a second reading could change it.

Int. Front Cabin — Continuous

The empty case sits open on a seat like an accusation. KHOA has TAM by the collar against the cockpit door — controlled, not wild. That is worse.

Tam nods at his laptop bag, where it has sat at his feet since the takeover. Beo drags it into the light, unzips the false bottom. Four vials, nested in a sock, frost still on the glass.

HUNG steps between Khoa’s fist and Tam’s face and takes half the swing himself. He stays standing between them, bleeding from the lip, done with all of it.

Int. Rear Galley / Dead Zone — Same Time

A SCREAM from behind everyone — MIA, rear pocket, alone since Minh left her. The lashed carts at the rear do not shudder this time. They MOVE. Dan has learned the straps the way Mia feared: he watched them being tied, and something in what is left of him remembers.

The carts grind apart. Dan comes through first, then the Carrier, then the Woman in 15A — three shapes spilling into the dead zone, and Mia backing down the rear rows with the fire axe raised and nowhere left to go.

No discussion. No vote. Khoa throws Minh the crew torch and goes through the row-10 gap at a run, gun holstered — his own rule — and Minh is half a step behind him.

Int. Dead Zone — Continuous

They meet the infected at row 15, in the aisle, in the dark. It is the ugliest fight of the season and the least choreographed: Khoa with a seat cushion up as a shield, taking the Carrier’s weight so Minh can work — a side kick to Dan’s knee that buckles it, a forearm block, an elbow, both men shouting counts at each other like a drill.

Together they drive all three back, step by step, past row 18, row 19 — and MIA, axe forgotten, throws her whole weight into re-lashing the carts from the rear side, seatbelts flying, knots she ties with her teeth in the gaps.

LENA arrives through the row-10 gap with the strap bag — nobody sent her, nobody could have stopped her — and feeds webbing forward hand over hand. The Woman in 15A lunges sideways out of a seat row as Lena passes her load up. Claws — nails, a ring, seat metal, in the noise it is impossible to say — RAKE down Lena’s forearm as Minh’s kick takes the Woman away.

It is over in two seconds. The line holds. The carts are lashed double. Three people are breathing like they have run a mile, in a space ten feet long.

Lena looks at her forearm. A thin red line wells up along it. She pulls her sleeve down over it in one smooth motion and holds the fabric there with her other hand.

He checks the line. The moment passes. Nobody in the cabin will think about that red line again — which is exactly what she needs.

Int. Front Cabin — Minutes Later

Khoa takes the rear watch himself, without being asked, so Minh can sit with Lena for sixty seconds — the first time since row 16. An alliance, in the only form he has. Then the interphone buzzes and the Captain’s voice flattens the cabin.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 6

DEAD AIR

Episode 7 — “Holding Pattern”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • The quiet episode: one decision, made by everyone at once.

New in this episode: No new principals. The island and its decommissioned strip enter the story; Lena keeps a secret for the second time.

Episode 7 script — “Holding Pattern”

Fade in:

Int. Plane Cabin — Later

The quiet episode. No attacks. The barricade holds. Under the engine drone, people speak in the low voices of the very tired — and for the first time since the takeover, the hijackers and the passengers are simply people on the same plane.

TAM, laptop open, charts layered over charts, has gone still over one grey rectangle in an ocean of blue. He carries it to the cockpit himself.

Tam

There. Decommissioned. Military strip, closed before I was born. Nobody staffs it, nobody can refuse us. It is too short and it is falling apart — and it is the only runway on Earth that cannot say no.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

MIA crouches beside Lena with the first-aid kit, reaching for the sleeve Lena has not rolled up since the breach.

Mia hesitates — a flight attendant’s instinct for the passenger who says they are fine — and lets it go. Lena watches her walk away, then presses her palm flat against the scratch through the fabric, hard, as if she could hold something in.

Across the cabin she catches Minh watching. She smiles for him — the anniversary smile, produced on command. He almost believes it.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

MINH takes the wrapped gift box out of his shirt pocket. Water-stained now, crushed at one corner. He holds it out.

He puts it back over his heart. Buttoned down. She watches his hand do it and looks away first.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

BEO, shoulder wrapped from Episode 5, unwraps the MOTHER’S sleeping baby from her exhausted arms without being asked and holds it the way Hung taught him an hour ago — two hands, no sudden moves. The mother sleeps with her head on a coat. Beo does not move for a long time.

HUNG sits with Khoa in the dark at row 3, two men at the end of a plan that died hours ago.

Int. Cockpit — Night

Two F-16s slide into view off the wing, close enough to read. The radio is a wall of orders: turn back to open ocean, ditch under escort, no landing will be authorised. The Captain listens to all of it. Then he takes his headset off and sets it gently on the console.

Through the windshield, far below: a green speck in black water, and on it, a pale straight line — the scar. The plane begins, very slightly, to descend.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 7

DEAD AIR

Episode 8 — “Descent”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • The forced approach. Beo breaks Khoa’s rule.

New in this episode: No new principals. Hung’s last stand, Beo’s panicked shot, the blown window, and the decompression.

Episode 8 script — “Descent”

Smash in:

Int. Plane Cabin — Descent

Brace prep, fast and practised: passengers moved clear of the rear, bags lashed, the infected double-strapped in the rear galley behind both cart walls. MIA walks the aisle doing the safety demo of her life to a cabin that finally listens to every word.

HUNG volunteers for the rear — the straps, the carts, the thing nobody else should have to stand next to when the plane hits. Khoa argues for exactly four seconds.

BEO takes the mid-cabin post at the row-10 cart — close enough to hear the rear, pistol in hand, jaw working the way it has worked since the takeover. Khoa looks at the gun, then at him.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

The descent is not smooth. The plane drops, catches, drops again — weather over the island, or damage, or both. Each jolt works on the rear straps the way a hand works on a knot.

Behind the carts: a strap parts with a sound like a snapped belt. Then another. Dan is standing in the galley dark, swaying with the turbulence, and the Carrier is standing behind him, and neither of them is restrained any more.

They come through the weakened carts together and Hung meets them alone, with a galley drawer as a shield and no illusions at all.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

Khoa runs the aisle as the plane lurches, Beo half a step behind him. Hung is down under Dan, one arm up, still holding the drawer between Dan’s teeth and his own throat — a dying man doing one last piece of good work. The Carrier is on Hung’s legs, clawing up him toward the aisle.

Beo does not hear the rest. He never does. He sees Hung going down, panics, and fires — breaking Khoa’s rule, the rule from the takeover: a bullet through the hull kills everyone.

The first shot takes Dan through the head at arm’s length — and the second, as the plane rolls, walks high. A WINDOW in row 18 blows out, frame and all, into the slipstream.

EXPLOSIVE DECOMPRESSION. The cabin screams sideways: masks, paper, dust, a river of air tearing for the hole. The weakened fuselage panel around the window peels back with a sound like a sail ripping — the hole is suddenly far bigger than a window.

The Carrier is taken off his feet and gone through it. A passenger in row 17, unbelted in the brace shuffle, follows him screaming. A second passenger clings to a seat frame for one second, two — and is gone.

Hung — bitten, dying — is dragged by the wind across the seats. Khoa lunges after him, catches his arm and locks both hands around Hung’s wrist, bracing a knee against a seat frame — doing everything right, the way he has done everything since the takeover. For a moment they hold, two old soldiers against a hurricane made of their own plane.

Hung’s strength goes first. He looks almost relieved. The wind tears him out of Khoa’s grip.

Khoa himself starts to slide. MINH gets a seatbelt strap around Khoa’s forearm and a seat frame with the other hand and holds both — feet braced, tendons standing out, a taekwondo stance doing the work it was drilled for — until the pressure equalises and the wind dies to a roar.

Behind them, BEO is on his knees in the aisle where the recoil and the wind left him, the pistol gone down the cabin. He stares at the hole where the window was, then at Khoa’s empty hands.

Khoa does not look at him. There is nothing in Khoa’s face to forgive him with, and no time — the Captain’s voice is already coming over the cabin address.

Int. Cockpit — Continuous

Alarms in layers. The Captain flies with both hands and his whole body, the First Officer calling numbers that keep getting worse.

Below: the island, huge now, jungle and surf and the pale scar of the strip rushing up at them at entirely the wrong speed.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 8

DEAD AIR

Episode 9 — “Impact”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • The plane comes down on the island strip.

New in this episode: No new principals. The crash, the wreck in pieces, and who does not walk away from it.

Episode 9 script — “Impact”

Smash in:

Ext. Island Airstrip — Night — The Impact

SOUND FIRST: the strip, the gear, the scream of metal — then the picture catches up. The plane comes in too fast and slightly sideways, touches, bounces once, and puts a gear leg through the cracked concrete on the second contact.

It slews. A wing digs in and tears away. The fuselage breaks its back behind row 16 with a sound the survivors will hear in their sleep for years, and the two pieces grind to a stop a hundred feet apart in mud and broken jungle, in steam and spilling rain.

Then — silence. Real silence. The first since the takeover. No engines. No alarms. Rain on hot metal.

Int. Wreck — Rear Section — Moments Later

MINH wakes hanging in his seatbelt, sideways world, gift box still buttoned over his heart. He cuts himself down with a seatbelt buckle and finds LENA two seats away — eyes open, dazed, a cut on her forehead, already trying to sit up and argue that she is fine.

MIA is trapped behind a fallen cart at the break, conscious, one leg pinned. Minh and a passenger lever the cart off her with a piece of seat frame while she talks them through it, grey-faced, professional to the last.

Ext. Wreck — Continuous

Evacuation through the tear in the fuselage: the MOTHER out first, her baby passed hand to hand down a human chain — and BEO, at the break, takes the baby the last stretch and gets it clear of the fuel smell before he turns back into the smoke for the mother’s seatmate.

He does not come back out. The rear section shifts, settles, and the gap he went through folds shut like a book closing. Nobody sees it happen. Afterwards, people will simply stop being able to find him.

A shape hauls itself out of the rear wreckage on all fours — the WOMAN IN 15A, broken and still coming, drawn by voices. Minh meets her in the mud with a piece of wing strut, no technique left, just the last of himself: kick, fall, scramble up, kick again — until KHOA arrives with a fire extinguisher and finishes it, and both men stand in the rain breathing over the still shape.

Int. Wreck — Front Section — Continuous

Fire starts in the front section — small, then not small. The cockpit is crushed: the Captain is gone, the First Officer with him. Khoa stands in the smoke for a moment with his hand flat on the cockpit door, saying nothing, while the fire makes up its mind.

On his way out, through row 16 — what is left of row 16 — Khoa stops. Minh’s PHONE. Face-down on a tray, cracked, red light still blinking under the grime. Nine episodes of evidence. Khoa rips it free and throws it out of the tear, down to Minh in the mud.

Minh catches it. The smoke wall drops between them. Minh goes up the fuselage side twice and is beaten back twice, screaming Khoa’s name into heat — and the front section goes up, all at once, the way fuel goes up.

He does not come out of it. Let the record be exact about Khoa, in the end: he held the door for everybody else.

Ext. Airstrip — Dawn

Wide shot, held a long time. The plane in pieces across a dead military strip. A column of smoke. Survivors sitting in the mud at a distance, wrapped in foil and seat cushions: the mother rocking her baby, passengers staring at nothing.

Minh sits with Lena’s head against his shoulder and Mia asleep against his other side, her leg splinted with a tray table. The phone, dark now, sits in his fist.

Behind them, unnoticed, TAM picks his way along the tree line with his laptop bag hugged to his chest — the way another man once hugged a medical case — and is gone between the trees.

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 9

DEAD AIR

Episode 10 — “Tarmac”

Draft script • Approx. 8 minutes • Season finale. Aftermath, separations — and one secret, kept.

New in this episode: An INVESTIGATOR in hazmat, heard through a quarantine partition. Tam and the vials are gone; Lena’s is the last face of the season.

Episode 10 script — “Tarmac”

Fade in:

Ext. Island Airstrip — Day

The wreck, cordoned. Military helicopters on the strip. Hazmat teams in white suits moving among the survivors at a careful distance, and drones above everything, patient as flies.

No embraces out here. Survivors are walked, one by one, into separate quarantine tents by exposure — crew here, front cabin there, anyone who touched blood somewhere else entirely. Saving everyone was the first job. Trusting anyone is not part of the second one.

Int. Quarantine Tent — Day

An INVESTIGATOR in a respirator speaks to Minh through a clear partition, kind and procedural at once. Minh’s phone goes into a sealed evidence bag between them.

Minh looks at him. Something cold settles in his face — because he has not seen Tam since the mud, and he is only now understanding that he has not seen Tam since the mud.

Ext. Island Airstrip — Continuous

The headcount comes up one short, and then the search finds the empty tent: cot un-slept-in, water untouched, and a line of footprints going down off the strip into the jungle until the rain takes them. In the tent, nothing. No laptop bag. No vials.

MIA, leg in a real splint now, is loaded toward a medical helicopter. As the litter passes Lena’s tent line, Mia reaches out and catches Lena’s hand through the plastic — hold on the two of them.

Mia looks at her a moment too long — the flight attendant who has logged a thousand passengers lying about being fine — and chooses, terribly, to believe her friend. The litter moves on.

Int. Quarantine Tent — Evening

Same exposure, married, and past arguing about it: Minh and Lena have been cleared to share a tent. The gift box comes out of his shirt pocket at last — nine episodes, a hijack, an outbreak and a plane crash in that pocket. It is crushed, rain-ruined, and perfect.

Lena shakes her head, gently, and closes his hand back over it — the mirror of her own gesture in Episode 4, when she gave it back to him.

Int. Lena’s Tent — Night

Alone. The camp settling. Lena sits on the cot and, slowly, rolls up the sleeve she has not rolled up since Episode 6.

The scratch is still there. It has not healed. From it, dark veins have begun to spread up her forearm — fine, branching, wrong — a map of something moving under her skin, at the speed of a secret.

She looks at it for a long time. Not panic. Recognition. She has known since the aisle, in the noise, in the two seconds it took — she has known longer than anyone watching cared to notice.

Outside the tent, Minh’s voice, close, gentle, with a cup of something hot in it:

Lena rolls the sleeve down. Smooth. Practised. Her hand only shakes once, and she stills it with the other.

She stands. She smiles into the shape she is about to be for him. Nobody knows.

Title card: Dead Air — Season 1

Smash to black.

END OF EPISODE 10 — END OF SEASON 1

Production notes — Episodes 1–10

One locked set. Episodes 1–8 play in the cabin, galley, jet bridge, and cockpit — a single cabin reference holds continuity across every generation. Episodes 9–10 open out to exactly one exterior: the island strip and the wreck, which is the same set, broken.

Grade. Cold blue-white light for Episodes 1–2, matching the story’s cold reality before the outbreak. The sickness in Episode 2 reads through performance, not color, until Episode 3.

Faces to camera. All eight principals are introduced with faces to camera in Episode 1, so character sheets can be locked from that episode.

One VFX plant. The cracked vial is the only effects plant in Episode 1. Everything else is performance.

Episode 1 hook. The episode ends on two threats at once: the hijack has just begun, and the vial is already cracked — the outbreak is coming whether anyone sees it or not.

Episode 2 — one gore beat. The bite is the episode’s only gore beat — keep it fast, one shock, no lingering.

Episode 2 — the crack in the hijackers. Hung’s “no guns” line is the crack in the hijackers’ unity — it pays off when they have to choose sides.

Episode 3 — the split set. The same cabin now plays as two sets: the forward cabin under the hijackers and the rear galley behind the drink-cart barricade. The barricade is one repeatable dressing — carts, seatbelts, extension straps — not a new location.

Episode 3 — gore stays counted. Three beats only: Dan’s bite carries over, the Woman in 15A’s hand, and the Carrier’s reanimation. The horror is the barricade shaking, not close-up effects.

Episode 3 — Khoa’s rule. He refuses to fire inside a pressure hull. That keeps the gun from solving scenes and makes every infected fight a hands-on blocking problem.

Episode 3 — planted for later. Minh’s phone is still recording in the dead zone, and the anniversary gift box is now in Lena’s pocket, still unopened — “when we land” has become a threat, not a promise.

Episode 3 hook. The episode ends on two sounds: the barricade taking hits from two infected at once, and the words no one on a plane ever wants to hear — Flight 417 is denied landing, everywhere.

Taekwondo plant — Episodes 1–2. Episode 1 plants Minh as a kids’ taekwondo instructor in the seat banter — Lena teasing him about a whole week with no little tigers climbing all over him, and Minh answering for “Thầy Minh.” Episode 2 pays it down: Minh sizes up Khoa and Beo and half-rises to act, and Lena shuts him down — “Don’t be stupid. You only teach little kids!” The plant, the instinct, and the undercut are all in place for the Episode 5 reveal, when the instructor has to fight hijackers and infected for real.

Episode 4 — the simmer episode. No full zombie attack and no Minh fight in Episode 4 by design: the infected are heard behind the carts and sensed in the dead zone, never shown in a set-piece. The episode’s one violence spike is human — Beo’s gun and a zip tie on Lena’s wrist.

Episode 4 — leverage, not cruelty. Khoa’s offer is a trade (the sealed case for a landing clearance); Beo is the one who turns it into a threat. Khoa not correcting him in front of the cabin is a deliberate crack — it sets up the Ep6 alliance, when the two men have to hold a line together.

Episode 4 — the gift changes hands. Lena gives the unopened gift box back to Minh before she crosses — “when we land, you give it back.” He carries it buttoned over his heart into the dead zone. Keep the box unopened through the season until the landing pays it off.

Episode 4 hook. The episode ends on Minh stepping into the dead zone alone and unarmed — and something that was sitting still, standing up. Episode 5 opens on that frame.

Episode 5 — the reveal pays off. Minh fights the infected first, then Beo: grounded taekwondo only — push kicks, pivots, redirections, a seatbelt used as a restraint, a wrist turn drilled in self-defence class. He is an instructor, not an action hero; he gets winded, he improvises, and he restrains where a soldier would finish. Against Beo he disarms, folds and pins him in four seconds — then opens his fist, hauls him up, and lands the plant’s payoff line: ‘I teach kids not to do this.’

Episode 5 hook. The case is empty. Four foam slots, four missing vials, and Khoa looking at Tam — the trade that was supposed to land the plane never existed.

Episode 6 — the scratch, deniable on first watch. Lena is raked in the breach chaos in under two seconds, mid-shout, while passing straps. The camera does not hold on it and neither does she: sleeve down, ‘seat edge,’ move on. On a rewatch the red line is plainly there — that is the design.

Episode 6 — the alliance. Khoa holsters the gun by his own rule and holds the line with Minh by counts, like a drill. Khoa taking the rear watch afterwards, so Minh can sit with Lena, is the alliance signed without a speech. Hung cutting Lena’s zip tie in Episode 5 is the first crack in the crew’s discipline — nobody ordered it.

Episodes 7–8 — the island and the rule Beo breaks. The landing place is a decommissioned military strip on a remote Pacific island — the only runway that cannot refuse them. In the descent, turbulence frees the restrained infected; they take Hung; Khoa orders hands only, and Beo — the crew’s loose cannon since Episode 2 — panics and fires inside the hull, breaking the rule Khoa stated in Episode 2 and restated minutes earlier, blowing out the row-18 window. Khoa does everything right and loses Hung anyway: he catches Hung’s arm, locks both hands around his wrist, and the wind tears him free. The decompression takes the infected, two passengers, and Hung, and Minh’s braced stance is what keeps Khoa inside the plane. Beo’s guilt is the debt Episode 9 collects.

Episode 9 — the crash, kept practical. One impact, no fireball ballet: gear through cracked concrete, a wing gone, the fuselage broken behind row 16, steam and rain. Khoa’s death stays off the fire — he is last seen handing Minh the phone, the season’s evidence, through the tear. Beo’s loss is an absence discovered after, not a set-piece — and it is his redemption: the man whose panicked shot in Episode 8 killed Hung gets the baby clear of the wreck before he turns back into it.

Episode 10 — the reveal. Play Lena’s tent scene plain: no score sting in the copy, no monster beat. A scratch, dark veins, a practised sleeve, and ‘Coming.’ in her steadiest voice. The horror is that she has been this calm about it since Episode 6.

Season shape — locked at ten. Season 1 ends with the plane on the ground in pieces and three principals alive together: Minh, Lena and Mia. Khoa and Hung die as the alliance redeems them; Tam and the vials vanish into the island, which is Season 2’s buyer thread.

Season 2 hook

Lena was scratched in the Episode 6 breach and has hidden it through four episodes, two fights, a decompression and a crash. A scratch turns slower than a bite — Season 2 asks whether she is turning slowly, or whether she is immune, and what the people who took the island will do when they find out. Tam is in the jungle with four vials and a buyer still waiting in Da Nang. And Minh’s phone — nine episodes of recording, now in an evidence bag — can clear the survivors or condemn them, depending on who gets to it first.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episode-01.md

Smash in:

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

KHOA in the aisle, pistol low. The cabin frozen.

BEO moves fast down the aisle, zip ties out — yanks a man’s wrists too hard.

Beo eases off, jaw working. TAM is already at work in 22A — laptop open, flight manifest on screen, a handheld radio scanner crackling low.

HUNG stands frozen in 7D, rosary wrapped tight around his fist, breathing hard.

That lands. The gun is new to Hung too.

Minh’s phone is still recording. LENA grabs his wrist.

He lowers the phone — but doesn’t stop recording. It sits face-down on his tray, red light on.

MIA steps forward, hands raised, flight-attendant calm cracking at the edges.

Khoa turns for the cockpit. MINH’s eyes track him — then Beo. Distances. Hands. Who is closest to Lena. His shoulders come up. He starts to half-rise out of his seat —

LENA’s hand clamps down on his wrist again. Hard. She doesn’t even look up.

Minh holds — one second — then sinks back down. Jaw tight. He hates that she’s right.

He has filed it away anyway: the distances, the hands, and who the real threat is.

Int. Cockpit — Moments Later

CAPTAIN (50s) and FIRST OFFICER (30s), hands half-raised, as Khoa enters. Beo behind him, too close, too wired.

Khoa absorbs that. Something crosses his face — not surprise. Recognition. He buries it.

Int. Plane Cabin — Continuous

Tam’s laptop: a flight-tracking map, their little plane icon sliding off course. A second window scrolls radio frequencies.

Khoa faces the cabin. Calm. Measured.

A baby cries. A mother shushes it.

In 14C: THE CARRIER. Sweat beading on his forehead. He stares at the medical case under the seat ahead. His hand trembles. He coughs — wet, wrong.

DAN (40s, 14B, businessman) glances over, annoyed.

Another cough. Worse. The Carrier grips the armrest — knuckles white, veins dark.

Mia moves down the aisle with water, doing her job on pure autopilot, holding normal together with both hands.

Mia really looks at him now. The sweat. The eyes — unfocused, clouding.

Heads turn. Khoa’s eyes snap to 14C.

Mia retreats. The Carrier breathes hard, staring at nothing — then his whole body goes rigid. Back arches against the seat. A seizure?

The Carrier’s head snaps toward Dan. His eyes are wrong — clouded, yellow-white.

He LUNGES. Teeth sink into Dan’s forearm.

DAN’S SCREAM tears through the cabin.

Smash to black.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episode-02.md

SMASH IN on Dan's scream continuing from Episode 2.

INT. PLANE CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Chaos. Passengers screaming, climbing over seats away from 14C. THE CARRIER is on top of DAN, biting. Blood on the armrest.

BEO raises his pistol —

Khoa grabs a folded blanket from an overhead bin, throws it over the Carrier's head. He and Beo wrestle the thing off Dan — it is inhumanly strong — and pin it back into 14C. TAM helps lash it to the seat with zip ties and a belt. The Carrier snarls under the blanket, snapping at air.

MIA drops beside Dan. His forearm is torn open. She presses a stack of napkins to it, hands shaking.

Dan's eyes flutter. He goes still. Too still.

His eyes open — clouded, yellow-white. Exactly like the Carrier's.

Mia scrambles backward just as Dan lunges — the seatbelt catches him. He strains against it, teeth snapping at empty air.

Screams. Passengers stampede toward the rear. A MOTHER (30s) presses her BABY against the back wall, shielding it with her body.

The hijackers herd the front section — first class and the cockpit corridor. TAM wedges the service cart across the aisle at row 10. A barricade.

INT. REAR CABIN / GALLEY - MOMENTS LATER

The survivors, maybe ten people: MINH, LENA, MIA, the MOTHER with her baby, an OLDER MAN (60s), a TEENAGE GIRL (16), a few others. Minh checks his phone.

The Teenage Girl cries silently. The Older Man puts a steady hand on her shoulder.

Minh checks the phone. The video file sits there, unsent. A notification slides in: "Message failed to send."

INT. COCKPIT - CONTINUOUS

The CAPTAIN on the radio. Khoa stands behind him, pistol visible but lowered.

Silence in the cockpit. The FIRST OFFICER stares at the radio like it betrayed him. Khoa's face doesn't move — but his plan just died on that frequency.

Hung stands there, rosary in his fist.

Khoa doesn't answer. He looks down at the papers in his hand — the cargo manifest. The medical shipment.

INT. FRONT CABIN - CONTINUOUS

TAM at his laptop. News alerts stack up on screen: "FLIGHT 417 OFF COURSE," "PASSENGER TEXTS DESCRIBE HIJACKING." A shaky photo of the cabin — already viral.

INT. REAR CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Through the gap in the barricade, LENA watches the front. Minh puts his arm around her.

Minh doesn't answer. His eyes drop to his bag — the small wrapped anniversary gift inside. Open it when we land.

MIA moves among the survivors, checking the Mother and baby.

A THUD from the front — the Carrier, still strapped into 14C, slamming against his restraints. Then Dan, straining at his seatbelt, snarling. Two of them now.

The Teenage Girl whimpers.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 3.

---

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep3):
- Two infected principals now: the Carrier (restrained, 14C) and Dan (seatbelted, 14B). All infection reads through performance + makeup; no new VFX.
- The barricade at row 10 (service cart) is the key set piece — it becomes the front line for Ep4.
- ATC voice is post-production audio only — no new cast needed.
- Cabin grade stays cold blue-white. The sickness still reads through performance, not color — save the grade shift for Ep4.
- Khoa's plan dying on the radio is the episode's emotional climax, not the bite. Play his stillness.
- Seed for Ep4: Khoa studying the survivors through the barricade gap — the first frame of the alliance.
- The unsent video on Minh's phone and the viral passenger photo are the binge-cut connective tissue: the outside world knows.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episode-03.md

SMASH IN.

INT. COCKPIT - CONTINUOUS (moments after Ep3's denial)

Silence after ATC's flat refusal. The FIRST OFFICER stares at the radio.
The CAPTAIN slowly hangs up the mic.

KHOA stands in the doorway. Two hours. His whole plan — divert,
land, trade — is ash.

Hung in the doorway behind him, rosary gone — he gave it to the
mother in Ep3.

INT. FRONT CABIN - MOMENTS LATER

TAM at his laptop. On screen: the cargo manifest. He turns it to Khoa.

He looks down the aisle, through the barricade gap, toward the
survivor pocket.

INT. SURVIVOR POCKET - CONTINUOUS

MINH sits with LENA, her head on his shoulder. MIA checks on the
MOTHER and baby. The OLDER MAN dozes. The TEENAGE GIRL stares
at nothing.

The service cart SCREECHES as Beo and Tam haul it aside. BEO storms
through, pistol up.

He grabs LENA by the arm, hauls her to her feet. Minh lunges —
Beo swings the pistol toward him.

Survivors scream. MIA steps forward —

Beo drags Lena through the barricade gap to the front side. Minh
follows, hands raised.

He nods at Beo, who presses the pistol to Lena's temple. She
doesn't flinch — she looks at Minh.

She reaches into her pocket — the small wrapped anniversary gift —
and presses it into his hand.

He closes his fist around it.

Khoa shoots Beo a look that could cut steel.

INT. DEAD ZONE THRESHOLD - MOMENTS LATER

Minh stands at the rear curtain, the divider to the galley. MIA
tears a strip from a blanket and wraps his hands without a word.

Beyond the curtain: dark. Wet sounds. The Carrier's restraints CREAK.
Dan's seatbelt STRAINS. Three shapes in the gloom.

Minh steps through.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 4.

---

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep4):
- The hostage-taking is the episode's tension engine. Keep Beo's
violence quick and ugly; Khoa's calm is the counterweight. Khoa is
pragmatic, not sadistic — he needs Minh alive and motivated.
- The gift-box handoff is the emotional core. Play it small: no
swelling music, just her hand closing his fist around it.
- The dead zone stays dark. Do not show the infected clearly yet —
sound design does the work. Save the visual reveal for Ep5's fight.
- Minh wrapping his hands is the only martial-arts tease. No
techniques shown, no stance held for the camera. The audience should
feel something is coming without knowing what.
- Fuel clock is now running: ~2 hours. It tightens every episode
from here.
- Crew fracture tease: Beo's "His word" and Khoa's glare. Hung's
"This wasn't the plan." All three pay off in Ep6's alliance.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episode-04.md

SMASH IN on Ep4's final frame: the dark dead zone. Something standing.

INT. DEAD ZONE (REAR GALLEY) - CONTINUOUS

Dark. Minh steps through the curtain. His eyes adjust: DAN stands in the gloom — seatbelt snapped, swaying, head tilted wrong. The CARRIER lashed to 14C, snarling against zip ties. The WOMAN IN 15A half-restrained, straining at a belt.

The aluminum case — under 14C, beside the Carrier's feet.

Minh breathes. Slow. He slides left, keeping seats between him and Dan.

Dan's head snaps toward him. Charges.

Minh backpedals — a front PUSH KICK catches Dan square in the chest, stops him cold for a heartbeat. Dan grabs a seatback, swings around it, lunges again. Minh strips a folded blanket off a seat, throws it over Dan's head — wraps, turns — a TURNING KICK sends Dan sprawling over two rows. Dan's up instantly. They don't stay down.

Minh's gasping. A cut opens on his forehead where he clipped a seat. He's not winning. He's surviving.

He dives for the case — the Carrier SNAPS at his hand, teeth clicking an inch from his fingers. Minh yanks back, seizes the case by its handle, swings it like a hammer into the Carrier's temple. The Carrier slumps, dazed.

The Woman's hand closes around Minh's ankle. He wrenches free — not a strike, an escape — and runs.

Dan cuts him off at the curtain — blanket tangled on his head, arms windmilling. Minh drops low, drives a shoulder into Dan's midsection — ugly, desperate — and bursts through the curtain into—

INT. THRESHOLD (ROW 10 GAP) - CONTINUOUS

—where BEO waits.

Beo swings — a wild street haymaker. Minh isn't there: inside the arc, a CUT KICK to Beo's thigh buckles the leg. Beo swings again — Minh catches the wrist, turns, throws. Beo hits the floor hard. Minh's knee on his chest, Beo's own arm twisted up behind him. Beo spits blood.

Minh looks at him. Lets go. Stands.

He walks past with the case. Through the curtain gap, MIA has seen all of it. She stares like she's never seen him before.

INT. FRONT CABIN - MOMENTS LATER

Minh sets the case in front of KHOA. Khoa studies him — the cut forehead, the limp, the steadiness.

Beo slices Lena's zip-tie, seething. Lena goes to Minh — sees his face, his hands. Her fingers brush his pocket. The gift box. Still there. He nods.

Khoa opens the case. Foam slots. Fourteen empty slots. Nothing.

Silence. In the corner, TAM looks away — a half-second too long.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 5.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep5): The reveal is physical, never verbal — nobody says "taekwondo." Minh's style: distance, kicks, control; he never throws the first punch. He gets hurt (forehead cut, a limp) — the cost keeps it grounded. The Beo fight is 20 seconds and humiliating in its ease — that's what enrages Beo. Tam's half-second look-away is the episode's quiet hook.

---

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md

SMASH IN.

INT. FRONT CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Khoa goes very still. That stillness is worse than shouting.

First time he's said it in front of everyone.

Hung walks past him — to the back, sits with the survivors. Beo watches, torn — stays.

INT. COCKPIT - MOMENTS LATER

Khoa stares out at nothing but water.

INT. REAR GALLEY - CONTINUOUS

The WOMAN IN 15A works at her belt — it gives. She slides free. Behind her, DAN — never re-secured after Ep5 — turns his head.

They surge forward through the survivor pocket. Panic. People flee, trample the row-10 carts — the barricade topples, breached.

INT. ROW 10 / FRONT AISLE - CONTINUOUS

Khoa grabs a fire extinguisher. Minh takes the fire axe from MIA.

Side by side in the aisle — Khoa brutal and efficient, Minh precise and defensive. Extinguisher blast blinds Dan; Minh's axe ends it — for good this time, Khoa makes sure. Beo with a broken cart handle, wild. The Woman is driven back, wounded, retreating — they slam carts across the galley entrance, re-barricading her in the rear. The Carrier still tied to 14C, snarling.

In the surge: the Woman's nails rake LENA's forearm as Lena tears free and stumbles back. One chaotic beat — a grab, a wince. Lena yanks her sleeve down. Says nothing. Nobody sees.

Aftermath: the cabin is one space now — the row-10 carts are wreckage. Khoa and Minh, breathing hard, splattered. They look at each other. Khoa nods once.

Hung sits with the survivors, staring at nothing. Khoa looks at him — then away.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 6.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep6): The alliance fight is the centerpiece — shoot Khoa and Minh's contrasting styles: his military brutality, his teacher's precision. Lena's scratch: one beat, no close-up, no dialogue — the audience must be unsure whether skin broke. The barricade's destruction merges the cabin; stage the new single-space geography clearly, it governs Eps 7–8.

---

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md

SMASH IN.

INT. FRONT CABIN - CONTINUOUS

TAM at his laptop, the CAPTAIN beside him, old charts on screen.

INT. COCKPIT - MOMENTS LATER

Khoa takes the mic. Calm.

He hangs up.

INT. CABIN - LATER

The quiet hour.

Minh takes out the gift box, offers it to Lena.

She pushes his hand closed around it.

Mia notices the graze on Lena's forearm where her sleeve slipped.

Lena pulls the sleeve down.

Mia studies her — lets it go.

Minh touches Lena's forehead. She's pale, sweating.

He holds her.

INT. LAVATORY - MOMENTS LATER

Lena alone. She looks at the scratch — faint dark lines at its edges. Breathes. Wraps it tighter.

INT. CABIN - LATER

Khoa to Minh, quiet:

Tam checks his bag. A flicker. Hung sits apart, staring out the window. Khoa watches him — can't reach him.

(beat)

Beginning descent.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 7.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep7): The calm episode — play it as the quiet before. Every beat is character, not plot. Lena's tells must stay deniable (bruising? fear? exhaustion?). The audience should feel dread without certainty. Khoa's radio line is the spine — play it flat, never heroic.

---

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md

(Replaces the current Ep8 in the doc. Key change: BEO fires the shot,
not Khoa. Khoa tries to save Hung and loses him.)

SMASH IN.

INT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Descent. Turbulence building, then violent. Everyone braced.

INT. REAR - CONTINUOUS

The CARRIER's lashings fray — snap. In the galley, the WOMAN slams
against the re-barricaded carts — they give. Both loose.

HUNG sits near the rear, apart, staring at nothing. The Carrier sees
him first.

Hung looks up — too late. The Carrier is on him, mauling. Hung screams.

KHOA moves — not for his gun, for Hung, to pull him clear —

But BEO is nearer. Pistol up before anyone can shout. Beo FIRES.

The round catches the Carrier high in the shoulder — spins it off
Hung — and punches through into the window behind.

The window SHATTERS.

Explosive decompression. The roar. The WOMAN, TWO PASSENGERS near
the breach — sucked toward the hole, gone. The Carrier is ripped
off Hung — slammed into the overhead bins by the pressure wave,
pinned under collapsed luggage, shrieking, trapped. Alive.

Hung, mauled and dying, claws at the seats — Khoa lunges, grabs his
arm, holds against the wind — Hung's fingers slip through his. Gone.

Masks drop. Screaming.

Minh holds Lena down against the wind. Loose items fly.

Khoa stares at the hole where Hung was. His hand still shaped around
nothing. Then — slowly — he turns to BEO.

Beo stands frozen, pistol still raised, staring at what he's done.

No words. None needed.

Through the clouds: the island. A gray strip — too short, crumbling,
ocean at both ends.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 8.

---

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep8, revised):
- The set piece. The decompression must feel like the world tearing —
sound design over VFX.
- The rule Khoa set in Ep2 ("A bullet through the hull kills
everyone!") is broken by the one man who never respected it. That
is the tragedy — not a lapse in Khoa, but the loose cannon's
chaos detonating at the worst possible moment.
- Khoa never reaches for his gun here — he moves to pull Hung clear.
That contrast (Khoa saves, Beo shoots) is the whole episode in
one beat.
- Hold on Khoa's empty hand after Hung is taken — then the slow turn
to Beo: no dialogue, just the look. That look is the seed of Beo's
Ep9 redemption (he dies getting the baby clear).
- The Carrier pinned under luggage (not dead) keeps the threat
breathing for Ep9 — Minh puts patient zero down in the wreck.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episode-08-revised.md — replaces the Ep8 portion of episodes-05-10.md.

SMASH IN.

INT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Descent. Turbulence building, then violent. Everyone braced.

INT. REAR - CONTINUOUS

The CARRIER's lashings fray — snap. In the galley, the WOMAN slams against the re-barricaded carts — they give. Both loose.

HUNG sits near the rear, apart, staring at nothing. The Carrier sees him first.

Hung looks up — too late. The Carrier is on him, mauling. Hung screams.

Khoa is there in three strides — pistol up — FIRES. The shot takes the Woman mid-lunge — the bullet passes through her and SHATTERS the window behind.

Explosive decompression. The roar. The Woman's corpse, TWO PASSENGERS near the breach — sucked toward the hole. The Carrier is ripped off Hung — slammed into the overhead bins by the pressure wave, pinned under collapsed luggage, shrieking, trapped. Alive.

Hung, mauled and dying, claws at the seats — KHOA grabs his arm, holds — the wind takes him. Hung is torn from Khoa's grip. Gone.

Masks drop. Screaming.

Minh holds Lena down against the wind. Loose items fly.

Khoa stares at the hole where Hung was. His hand still shaped around nothing. His rule — broken by his own hand.

Through the clouds: the island. A gray strip — too short, crumbling, ocean at both ends.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 8.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep8): The set piece. The decompression must feel like the world tearing — sound design over VFX. One bullet, one window: the rule breaks exactly once, and it costs Hung. Hold on Khoa's empty hand after — that's the shot of the episode. The Carrier pinned (not dead) keeps the threat breathing for Ep9.

---

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md — superseded by the revised set piece (episode-08-revised.md).

SMASH IN.

INT. COCKPIT - CONTINUOUS

The strip rushes up — too short, too broken. Too fast.

Touchdown: the gear collapses on the crumbling surface. The plane slews — the fuselage SPLITS behind the wing — sections tear apart, sliding, fire blooming.

INT. WRECK - MOMENTS LATER

Smoke. Screaming. The cabin in pieces, open to the sky.

Minh drags Lena from under a collapsed bin — dazed, moving. MIA is pinned under a seat two rows back — Minh frees her.

A shriek from the dark end of the wreck: the CARRIER — freed by the impact — lunging through the smoke. Minh meets him with a broken seat leg — precise, exhausted, teacher-still — and puts him down. For good. Patient zero, ended where it began.

BEO sits frozen among the wreckage, staring. Minh grabs him.

He drags Beo toward the light.

They stumble out onto the grass — the MOTHER with her baby (carried by the OLDER MAN), the TEENAGE GIRL, TAM clutching his laptop bag, others. Behind them, the wreck burns. KHOA drags the FIRST OFFICER clear of the cockpit wreck — then the soldiers are on him.

Minh, Lena, Mia — together, breathing, alive.

SMASH TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 9.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep9): The crash must be felt, not just seen — shake, sound, dust. Keep the geography readable: one continuous push from the split fuselage to daylight. Minh's last fight is pure exhaustion — no flourish, just ending it. The Carrier's death closes the outbreak's first chapter. Tam clutching the bag is the only thread you carry forward — make the audience notice it.

---

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md

SMASH IN.

EXT. ISLAND STRIP - DAWN

The wreck smokes. Military cordon: helicopters, troops, a ship offshore. Slow, methodical. This island is nowhere.

Triage under canopies: hazmat suits, separating people. Interrogations.

Minh finds his phone in the wreckage — cracked, dead battery, files intact. He pockets it.

By dawn, TAM is gone. A guard stares at an empty chair.

On the beach: a supply landing craft pulling away. No one saw him board. The boat's wake.

KHOA sits apart in flex-cuffs. Minh passes. Their eyes meet. Nothing to say — everything said.

Minh, Lena, Mia — together.

Lena opens the gift box: a photo — Minh's taekwondo class, little kids in white uniforms, a banner: "COME HOME SAFE — YOUR LITTLE TIGERS." Tears. They hold each other.

Lena slips away.

Alone by the rocks, the water. She unwraps the bandage on her forearm: the scratch — dark veins crawling up toward her elbow. She stares. Her hand trembles. She re-wraps it — neat, practiced.

She looks back: Minh laughing with Mia, holding the photo.

Her smile.

SMASH TO: SEASON 2.

PRODUCTION NOTES (Ep10): Dawn light — the anti-Ep1, warm where Ep1 was cold. Play the aftermath procedural and quiet; all the horror lives in the last two minutes. Lena's reveal: no music sting, no dialogue — just her face, her hands, and the veins. Let the audience sit in it. The photo is the season's emotional thesis: everything he fought for, and the secret that could take it from him.

Script package: ~/workspace/research_notes/film-scripts/dead-air/episodes-05-10.md