INT. BEST BUY — DAY
Best Buy is a fluorescent purgatory. The lighting is too bright, the aisles too wide, and the silence too heavy, broken only by distant beeping from demo tablets that no one is touching. The air smells faintly of plastic, carpet cleaner, and broken promises.
FRANK REYNOLDS and CHARLIE KELLY are crouched low in the printer aisle, bodies hunched with the instinctive posture of men who believe authority can smell fear. Frank is squatting on his heels, elbows on knees, his bulk somehow compressed into something tactical. Charlie is supposed to be keeping lookout, but he's distracted—slowly lifting phone chargers off the peg hooks, turning them over, whispering to himself as if deciphering runes.
A DEEPLY SKETCHY MAN in a faded blue polo shirt kneels across from Frank. The polo suggests Best Buy branding but contains no actual logo, as though designed specifically to confuse witnesses. Between them sits an unzipped duffel bag.
Inside the bag:
Standard grocery-store egg cartons, cracked and mismatched.
Vacuum-sealed eggs wrapped in industrial gray foam.
A hard black case, corners dented, warning stickers partially scraped away.
Frank reaches in and taps one of the regular cartons with a knuckle. The carton flexes unpleasantly.
FRANK
These better not be the skinny eggs.
The Sketchy Guy shrugs with a practiced indifference.
SKETCHY GUY
Eggs are eggs.
Frank recoils as if personally insulted.
FRANK
That's bullshit. You ever crack a weak egg? No resistance. No integrity. That's a runt egg. I don't pay full price for runts.
Charlie peers down the aisle, squinting.
CHARLIE
I don't know what we're hiding from, but I feel like they can smell us.
Frank snaps open the black case.
Inside rests a single egg—large, matte black, its surface etched with faint yellow spirals and dull red dots. It radiates a low warmth, subtle but undeniable, like something alive pretending very hard not to be.
Frank freezes.
For once, there's no calculation. No hustle. He instinctively cradles the egg against his chest, protectively, like a football or a newborn.
FRANK
This one's special.
The Sketchy Guy stiffens.
SKETCHY GUY
That one's extra.
Frank nods immediately.
FRANK
Everything's extra. That's how business works.
A REAL BEST BUY EMPLOYEE appears at the end of the aisle, holding a clipboard, eyes already dead from a thousand micro-confrontations.
EMPLOYEE
Uh… what are you guys doing?
Frank goes completely still. Possum-level stillness.
FRANK
We're shopping.
Charlie panics instantly, knocking over a tower of printers.
CHARLIE
FAST shopping!
Alarms chirp. The Employee shouts. Frank tucks the black egg under his jacket and bolts.
They run.
Egg cartons spill behind them, smashing open in glorious yolk carnage—but the black egg remains untouched, protected at all costs.
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD: FRANK FINDS AN EGG