HALF-LIFE
An Original Drama Series
PILOT: “PROMPT CRITICALITY”
FADE IN:
COLD OPEN
INT. LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY — VAULT 7 — NIGHT
Fluorescent light hums over a steel table. The room is small, obsessively organized. Safety placards line every wall. A single security camera blinks red in the corner.
DR. MARA VOSS (38, dark circles under sharper eyes, hair escaping a practical ponytail) stands at the table in a lead apron. Her hands are steady. Everything else about her is not.
On the table: a CONTAINMENT CASE, matte gray, stenciled with a serial number. She opens it with practiced efficiency.
Inside: a sphere roughly the size of a grapefruit. Dull silver. Inert-looking. Beautiful, the way a sleeping predator is beautiful.
MARA (to herself) Okay. Okay.
She checks a readout on a handheld dosimeter. Checks it again.
Her phone BUZZES on the table. She glances at the screen:
INSERT — PHONE SCREEN: “DAD (3 missed calls)”
She flips it face-down.
MARA (CONT’D) Not now.
She reaches for a tungsten reflector panel with tongs. Her hands are still steady. That’s the thing about Mara Voss — she’s steadiest when she should be most afraid.
FOOTSTEPS in the corridor. She doesn’t look up.
The door opens. DIRECTOR CAL BRIGGS (58, the kind of silver-haired authority that was manufactured rather than earned, suit jacket over a dress shirt at midnight because he never fully relaxes) fills the frame.
BRIGGS You weren’t supposed to be in here tonight.
MARA And yet.
BRIGGS The protocol review isn’t until Thursday, Mara. The committee hasn’t—
MARA The committee hasn’t read the same anomaly reports I have.
Beat. Briggs steps inside, lets the door close behind him.
BRIGGS What anomaly reports?
Mara sets down the tongs. Turns to face him fully for the first time.
MARA The core’s been running hot. Not temperature-hot. Reactivity-hot. Someone has been adjusting the reflector geometry on this assembly without logging it.
Silence.
BRIGGS That’s a serious accusation.
MARA Yes. It is.
Another beat. Briggs crosses to the table. Looks at the sphere. Something moves across his face — not guilt, exactly. Calculation.
BRIGGS How close?
MARA How close to what?
BRIGGS You know what.
She stares at him.
MARA Whoever’s been doing this… they’re walking it right up to the edge. Every session. Just under prompt criticality. Like they’re testing something. Or proving something.
BRIGGS (quietly) Or measuring something.
Mara goes very still.
MARA Cal. What did you do?
The dosimeter on the table begins to CLICK. Softly at first. Then faster.
Both of them look at it.
Then at the sphere.
Then at each other.
MARA (CONT’D) (already moving) Get out. Get out right now—
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
The clicking continues in darkness.
Then silence.
TITLE CARD: HALF-LIFE
ACT ONE
INT. LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY — MEDICAL WING — DAY
FOUR DAYS LATER.
Mara sits on a paper-covered examination table, sleeve rolled up. A TECHNICIAN draws her third blood sample of the morning. She watches the vial fill with the detached interest of someone who has decided not to feel things she cannot currently afford to feel.
DR. FELIX OKAFOR (45, Nigerian-British, a warmth that he weaponizes in the gentlest possible way, the kind of doctor who makes you feel like bad news is survivable) reads from a tablet nearby.
FELIX White count is recovering. Which is good.
MARA But.
FELIX But your lymphocyte levels are still suppressed. And the nausea—
MARA Is manageable.
FELIX Is a symptom.
MARA Everything is a symptom of something, Felix.
FELIX Mara.
She looks at him. He holds her gaze with the specific steadiness of someone delivering news he has practiced delivering.
FELIX (CONT’D) Your exposure was significant. The dosimetry badge read—
MARA I know what it read.
FELIX Then you know we’re talking about monitoring for the next—
MARA I know. I know what we’re talking about.
A long pause. The technician quietly exits.
FELIX How’s Briggs?
Something flickers across her face.
MARA He was further from the table. He got less.
FELIX That’s not what I asked.
MARA He’s fine. He’s in his office. He’s running the investigation into what happened, which is — that’s its own kind of joke, isn’t it.
FELIX You think he knows more than he’s saying.
MARA I think everyone here knows more than they’re saying. I think that’s basically the job description.
Her phone BUZZES. She looks at it.
INSERT — PHONE: “DAD”
She answers this time.
MARA (CONT’D) (into phone) Hey, Pop. Yeah, I’m — I’m at work. No, I’m fine. I’m — can I call you back tonight? I’ll call you tonight.
She hangs up. Felix is watching her.
FELIX You haven’t told him.
MARA He’s seventy-three years old and he had a bypass in March.
FELIX He’s also a retired nuclear engineer who spent thirty years at Oak Ridge. He might actually—
MARA Felix. Drop it.
He drops it. For now.
INT. LOS ALAMOS — DIRECTOR’S SUITE — CONTINUOUS
Briggs sits behind a desk that is aggressively clean. Across from him: AGENT DIANA REYES (34, Department of Energy Office of Inspector General, the kind of person who irons her jeans and means it as a statement — precise, contained, and watching everything).
A LEGAL PAD sits between them. She hasn’t written anything on it yet.
REYES Walk me through your timeline again.
BRIGGS I’ve given you the timeline twice.
REYES Walk me through it again.
Briggs leans back. Studies her.
BRIGGS I was doing a routine after-hours check of Vault 7. Dr. Voss was conducting an unauthorized inspection of the Mark-9 assembly. The dosimeter alarmed. We evacuated. End of timeline.
REYES Why was Dr. Voss conducting an unauthorized inspection?
BRIGGS You’d have to ask her.
REYES I intend to. Why were you doing a routine after-hours check at eleven-forty-two PM?
Beat.
BRIGGS I work long hours, Agent Reyes. It’s a demanding facility.
REYES Mm. And the reflector geometry adjustments Dr. Voss referenced in her incident report. The unlogged ones.
BRIGGS We’re looking into that.
REYES You’re looking into it.
BRIGGS Internally, yes.
REYES Director Briggs. A physicist just took a potentially lethal radiation dose in your most secure vault. I’m going to need you to understand that “internally” is no longer an option you have.
He holds her gaze. Gives her nothing.
BRIGGS I understand completely.
She writes something on the legal pad. Just one word. We don’t see what it is.
INT. LOS ALAMOS — HALLWAY — MOMENTS LATER
Reyes walks the corridor, phone to her ear.
REYES (into phone) He’s lying. Cleanly, but he’s lying. I need access to the vault logs going back eighteen months… No, not through the facility — that’s the point, we can’t go through the facility on this one. Get me a federal warrant… Because I think someone has been running experiments on a fissile assembly without authorization, and I think the director either knows about it or is running them himself.
She rounds a corner and nearly collides with—
THEO PARK (29, Korean-American, a postdoctoral researcher who has the look of someone who sleeps under his desk and considers this a reasonable life choice — rumpled, brilliant, perpetually slightly panicked).
He’s carrying a stack of folders and a coffee cup and a laptop bag that’s clearly too heavy for him. Everything spills.
THEO Oh — sorry — I’m so sorry, I wasn’t—
He’s scrambling for folders. Reyes crouches, helps gather them.
REYES Dr. Park?
THEO (looking up, surprised) How do you know my name?
REYES I know everyone’s name. Are you Mara Voss’s postdoc?
THEO Her research associate. Yeah. Is she — is she okay? They won’t tell us anything, it’s like the whole building has just—
REYES She’s being monitored.
THEO That’s what they said about Harry Daghlian. “Being monitored.” Right up until he wasn’t.
Silence.
REYES Do you want to help her?
THEO (without hesitation) Yes.
REYES Then don’t talk to anyone in this building about anything we just discussed. Can you do that?
THEO I don’t even know what we discussed.
REYES Good. Keep it that way.
She walks away. Theo stands in the hallway, folders clutched to his chest, looking like a man who has just made a decision he doesn’t fully understand yet.
INT. LOS ALAMOS — MARA’S LAB — AFTERNOON
The lab is Mara’s real home — covered in printouts, decay curves, half-life charts. Isotope data pinned to corkboard in patterns that look chaotic until you understand the logic.
Mara stands at her workstation, slightly too pale, moving with the deliberate care of someone managing low-grade nausea. She’s staring at a graph on her monitor.
Theo enters, stops when he sees her.
THEO You’re not supposed to be here.
MARA I work here.
THEO You’re on medical leave.
MARA I’m on medical monitoring. Different thing.
She waves him over. He comes, because he always does.
MARA (CONT’D) Look at this.
The graph shows a series of neutron flux measurements over eighteen months. A clear pattern: periodic spikes, each one slightly higher than the last.
THEO (leaning in) These are the vault readings?
MARA Vault 7, Mark-9 assembly. Every three weeks, almost exactly. Someone was running a tickling experiment.
THEO Tickling the dragon.
MARA That’s what Slotin called it. Before the dragon bit back.
She pulls up a second graph.
MARA (CONT’D) But look at this. These aren’t just criticality approach experiments. The intervals, the increments — it’s a measurement protocol. Whoever’s doing this is trying to characterize something. Neutron multiplication factor, maybe. Or they’re calibrating a model.
THEO A model for what?
She turns to look at him.
MARA A model for something that doesn’t officially exist at this facility.
Beat.
THEO Mara. That’s—
MARA I know.
THEO If you’re right about this—
MARA I know, Theo.
THEO (quieter) Are you right about this?
She looks back at the graph.
MARA I’m always right about this.
The act ends on her face: certain, exhausted, and afraid.
END OF ACT ONE
ACT TWO
INT. LOS ALAMOS — DIRECTOR’S SUITE — EVENING
Briggs is alone. The office is dim — he hasn’t turned on the overhead lights as evening has crept in. He sits with a whiskey he isn’t drinking and a phone he’s been staring at.
He picks it up. Dials.
It rings twice.
VOICE (V.O.) (filtered, careful) You’re calling on a traceable line.
BRIGGS The OIG sent someone. She’s good.
VOICE (V.O.) How good?
BRIGGS Good enough to be a problem if the data isn’t secured before she gets a warrant.
VOICE (V.O.) How long?
BRIGGS Forty-eight hours. Maybe less.
A pause.
VOICE (V.O.) And Voss?
BRIGGS (something in his voice — not quite guilt, but adjacent to it) She’ll be fine. The exposure was—
VOICE (V.O.) That’s not what I’m asking.
Briggs is quiet for a long moment.
BRIGGS She’s in the lab. She’s already pulling the flux data.
VOICE (V.O.) Then she needs to stop.
BRIGGS She won’t stop. You know who her father is. You know how she—
VOICE (V.O.) Make her stop, Cal. Before she understands what she’s looking at.
The line goes dead.
Briggs sets down the phone. Picks up the whiskey. Drinks.
INT. MARA’S APARTMENT — NIGHT
Small, functional, the apartment of someone who considers home a place to sleep between more important activities. The only personal touch: a framed photograph on the bookshelf — a younger Mara with an older man in a hard hat, both of them grinning in front of something enormous and industrial.
Mara sits cross-legged on the floor with her laptop, surrounded by printed pages. Felix sits across from her with takeout containers, watching her work with the expression of a man who has accepted that this is what friendship with Mara Voss looks like.
FELIX You have to eat something.
MARA I’m eating.
FELIX You’re looking at food. There’s a difference.
She grabs a dumpling without looking up.
MARA Happy?
FELIX Ecstatic.
He watches her for a moment.
FELIX (CONT’D) Tell me what you’re thinking.
MARA I’m thinking about the 1946 accident. Louis Slotin.
FELIX The same core. The demon core.
MARA They called it that after. After Daghlian and Slotin both died from it. Before that it was just — a core. A piece of plutonium-gallium alloy. Our assembly is a different material configuration but the principle is identical. You bring a neutron reflector too close, you get runaway fission, you get a blue flash if you’re unlucky enough to see it, and then—
FELIX And then you get what you got.
She finally looks up.
MARA Slotin knew the experiment was dangerous. Everyone knew. They’d banned the manual approach experiments two years earlier, after Daghlian. But Slotin kept doing it. He was showing off, Felix. He was doing it with a screwdriver and showing visiting scientists how close you could get. And the screwdriver slipped.
FELIX You’re saying whoever’s doing this in Vault 7 is showing off.
MARA No. I’m saying whoever’s doing this has a purpose. A specific, calculated purpose. Showing off is sloppy. This isn’t sloppy. This is—
Her phone rings. She looks at it.
*INSERT — PHONE: “DAD”
She answers.
MARA Hey, Pop. I was going to call you, I just—
VOICE OF EDWARD VOSS (O.S.) (70s, the careful diction of a man who has spent decades being precise) Mara. I heard from Jim Kellner at NNSA. He said there was an incident at the lab.
She closes her eyes.
MARA It was minor.
EDWARD (O.S.) A dosimetry event is not minor. Were you in the room?
MARA Pop—
EDWARD (O.S.) Were you in the room, Mara?
Silence.
EDWARD (O.S.) (CONT’D) (quieter, the anger converting to something more frightening) How much?
MARA It’s manageable. Felix is monitoring me, he’s right here—
EDWARD (O.S.) How much.
Felix reaches over and gently takes the phone from her hand.
FELIX (into phone) Dr. Voss, it’s Felix Okafor. She’s stable. Her counts are recovering. I promise you she is being looked after.
He listens. Nods.
FELIX (CONT’D) Yes, sir. I understand. I’ll tell her.
He hangs up. Hands the phone back.
MARA What did he say?
FELIX He said he’s coming.
MARA Oh, for—
FELIX He also said — and I’m quoting — “Tell her to look at the carbon dating logs.”
Mara goes absolutely still.
MARA What?
FELIX “Tell her to look at the carbon dating logs.” He said you’d understand.
She’s already reaching for her laptop.
INT. LOS ALAMOS — VAULT 7 CORRIDOR — NIGHT
Theo moves through the building after hours with the badge access that Mara quietly signed off on six months ago and never rescinded. He’s carrying a data drive and looking like he’s doing something completely normal, which is the worst possible way to look like you’re doing something completely normal.
He reaches the vault anteroom. Swipes his badge.
The light goes GREEN.
He steps inside.
The vault itself is locked — he doesn’t have that clearance. But the anteroom has a terminal. He sits, plugs in the drive, and starts pulling log files.
His hands are shaking. He takes a breath.
THEO (to himself) Okay. Okay. You’re just — you’re just a guy. Looking at logs. Completely normal.
Data streams across the screen. He scans it, cross-referencing against dates on his phone.
He finds something. Leans in.
His expression changes.
THEO (CONT’D) (barely audible) Oh no.
The door behind him OPENS.
He spins.
Agent Reyes stands in the doorway. She looks at him. Looks at the drive in the terminal. Looks back at him.
REYES I was wondering when you’d do something useful.
THEO (breath coming back) You scared the—
REYES What did you find?
He turns back to the screen.
THEO The maintenance logs. The unlogged reflector adjustments Mara identified — they’re not unlogged. They’re logged. Just not in the vault system. They’re buried in the facility’s radiocarbon dating archive. The isotope lab uses C-14 dating for materials verification — it’s routine, nobody looks at it twice.
REYES Someone was hiding experiment logs inside dating records.
THEO More than hiding. Look—
He pulls up a file. A series of measurements, timestamps, calibration data.
THEO (CONT’D) These aren’t just criticality approach experiments. They’re cross-referenced with something else. An external data set. See this notation? “NS-7 correlation.” I’ve never seen that designation anywhere in our research catalog.
REYES NS-7.
THEO I don’t know what it means. But whoever was running these experiments wasn’t just studying the assembly’s behavior. They were comparing it against something. Validating something.
Reyes pulls out her phone. Photographs the screen.
REYES Can you copy all of this?
THEO Already doing it.
She almost smiles.
INT. MARA’S APARTMENT — SAME TIME
Mara stares at her screen. Felix watches her face.
She’s found something. We can tell because she stops moving entirely.
FELIX Mara.
MARA The carbon-14 exchange rate. Between the atmosphere and the ocean surface — it’s a standard dating calibration reference. Every isotope lab uses it. It’s background data. Nobody questions it.
FELIX Okay.
MARA My father spent the last five years of his career at Oak Ridge building a neutron source characterization model. A computational model — for predicting the behavior of novel fissile configurations. Materials that don’t officially exist yet.
FELIX Mara—
MARA He retired in 2019. But the model didn’t retire with him. It got transferred somewhere. The file designation was—
She pulls up a document. Points at the screen.
Felix reads it.
FELIX NS-7.
MARA Someone has been using our assembly to validate my father’s model. Using our vault, our core, our people — without authorization, without safety review, without telling anyone — and they’ve been hiding the data inside our routine isotope logs because nobody ever looks at—
Her phone RINGS.
Briggs.
She looks at it for a long moment.
She answers.
MARA (CONT’D) (controlled) Director Briggs.
BRIGGS (O.S.) Mara. I need you to come in. Tonight.
MARA It’s ten-thirty.
BRIGGS (O.S.) I know. There’s been a development with the investigation. I need you here.
She looks at Felix. He shakes his head — don’t go.
MARA What kind of development?
BRIGGS (O.S.) The kind I can’t discuss on the phone.
A beat.
MARA I’ll be there in twenty minutes.
She hangs up.
FELIX Don’t go.
MARA He knows I know something. If I don’t go, he knows I know he knows.
FELIX That sentence made no sense.
MARA It made complete sense. Call Reyes. Tell her where I’m going.
FELIX Mara—
MARA (already grabbing her keys) And Felix? The NS-7 model. If it’s been validated — if the experimental data confirms what my father built — do you understand what that means? What someone could do with that?
Felix stares at her.
MARA (CONT’D) Call Reyes.
She’s gone.
Felix sits alone in the apartment. Looks at the screen. Looks at the photograph of young Mara and her father.
Picks up his phone.
INT. LOS ALAMOS — DIRECTOR’S SUITE — NIGHT
Mara enters. Briggs is standing by the window, city lights beyond. He turns when she enters.
He looks — different. The manufactured authority is still there, but something underneath it has shifted. He looks, for the first time, like a man who is tired.
BRIGGS Sit down.
MARA I’m fine standing.
BRIGGS Mara. Please sit down.
She sits. He remains standing.
BRIGGS (CONT’D) How much have you figured out?
A long pause.
MARA NS-7.
Something crosses his face. Not surprise. Relief, almost — the relief of someone who is done pretending.
BRIGGS Your father built a beautiful model. It’s genuinely extraordinary work.
MARA He built it for basic research. Astrophysics applications. Understanding nucleosynthesis in stellar environments.
BRIGGS That’s what he thought.
Silence.
MARA (carefully) What did he actually build?
BRIGGS A predictive framework for optimizing neutron yield in compact fissile configurations. Specifically, configurations that could be manufactured with materials available outside traditional weapons-grade supply chains.
The room is very quiet.
MARA My father built a blueprint.
BRIGGS He built a theoretical model. We built the blueprint. We’ve been validating it for the last eighteen months. The data from Vault 7 is the final piece.
MARA (standing) Who is “we”?
BRIGGS That’s—
MARA Who is we, Cal?
BRIGGS There are people — in the department, in the intelligence community — who believe we need a parallel capability. A configuration that exists outside the treaty-accountable stockpile. Something that can’t be traced, can’t be attributed—
MARA A weapon.
BRIGGS A deterrent—
MARA That is a weapon! You used my father’s work — you used his name, his model, his legacy — to build a covert nuclear device, and you ran your experiments in my vault, and you almost killed me—
BRIGGS (sharp) That was an accident.
MARA (matching him) Was it?
The question lands like a physical thing.
Briggs looks at her. And in his eyes, for just a moment, is something that might be shame.
BRIGGS Yes. It was. Whatever else I’ve done — that was an accident, and I am — Mara, I am—
The door BURSTS open.
Agent Reyes enters, badge out. Two FEDERAL AGENTS behind her.
REYES Director Briggs. I have a federal warrant for the seizure of all data files designated NS-7 and related designations, and for your detention pending—
BRIGGS (not moving) You’re too late.
Reyes stops.
BRIGGS (CONT’D) The data was transferred six hours ago. The validation is complete. You can arrest me. But the model is already somewhere you can’t reach.
He looks at Mara.
BRIGGS (CONT’D) I’m sorry. For what it’s worth. I am genuinely sorry.
The agents move toward him.
Mara stands in the center of the room, the world rearranging itself around her, and she does not look away from Briggs as they take him.
She is thinking about her father.
She is thinking about what he built.
She is thinking about where it is now.
END OF ACT TWO
TAG
INT. LOS ALAMOS — FELIX’S OFFICE — EARLY MORNING
Gray dawn through the window. Mara sits in a chair that is not designed for sleeping, having slept in it anyway. Felix sits across from her with two coffees.
Theo is on the small couch, laptop open, dark circles that have achieved a kind of magnificence.
Reyes stands by the window. She hasn’t slept at all and seems not to require it.
REYES The transfer point was a server in Brussels. By the time we traced it, it had been forwarded twice. We’re working with NSA to—
MARA You won’t find it that way.
REYES We have protocols—
MARA You’ll find it the way I found it. Through the data itself. The model has signatures. My father’s work has — it has a fingerprint. A way of structuring neutron interaction calculations that nobody else does. If someone runs the NS-7 model anywhere in the world and generates output data that reaches any open-source monitoring system—
THEO (looking up from laptop) Like a seismic monitoring network.
MARA Or an atmospheric isotope sensor. Any CTBTO station. If they use what Briggs gave them—
THEO We’ll see it.
A long silence.
FELIX And then what?
Mara wraps both hands around her coffee cup. Looks at the gray light coming through the window.
MARA Then we go get it back.
Reyes looks at her. Studies her.
REYES I’m going to need a physicist.
MARA (a tired, thin, absolutely determined smile) I know.
She picks up her phone. Dials.
It rings twice.
EDWARD (O.S.) Mara.
MARA Hey, Pop. Don’t unpack. I need to ask you something about your model.
Pause.
EDWARD (O.S.) Which part?
MARA The part you thought was theoretical.
Silence on the line. Then:
EDWARD (O.S.) (very quietly) How bad?
Mara looks at Reyes. At Theo. At Felix.
MARA I’ll explain when you get here.
She hangs up.
Outside the window, the sun is coming up over the desert. Beautiful and indifferent and nuclear.
HOLD ON MARA’S FACE: tired, irradiated, furious, and absolutely alive.
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
END OF PILOT
HALF-LIFE
Created by [Author]
“The measure of a half-life is how long it takes for half of something to disappear. The question is always: what are you left with?”
SERIES REGULAR CAST:
DR. MARA VOSS — Nuclear physicist, Los Alamos. Brilliant, stubborn, now sick in ways she won’t fully admit. The story’s moral center, though the story will test that.
AGENT DIANA REYES — DOE Office of Inspector General. The law as a precision instrument. Has her own reasons for this case that we haven’t learned yet.
THEO PARK — Postdoctoral researcher. Younger than his instincts, smarter than his anxiety. Mara’s shadow and, eventually, her conscience.
DR. FELIX OKAFOR — Lab physician. The only person who tells Mara the truth about her body. Will have to tell her harder truths before this is over.
EDWARD VOSS — Retired nuclear engineer. Mara’s father. Built something he believed was pure science. Arriving next episode to discover what his life’s work became.
NEXT EPISODE:
A CTBTO monitoring station in Kazakhstan registers an anomalous atmospheric signature. Theo identifies a C-14 isotope ratio that shouldn’t exist outside a laboratory. Edward Voss arrives at Los Alamos and tells Mara something about the NS-7 model that Briggs never knew — a failsafe he built into the mathematics. And someone tries to access Mara’s medical records.
FADE OUT.
HALF-LIFE — Pilot Episode — “PROMPT CRITICALITY” WGA Registration Pending
Sources & Attribution
Content type: pilot
Topic: Drama|physics_nuclear
Generated: 2026-05-20
Model: OpenRouter (via Nova Journal pipeline)
Memory Sources
This piece drew from 123 memories in Nova’s knowledge base:
physics_nuclear (123 memories)
- “==== Marine effect ====…”
- Radiocarbon dating: “The CO2 in the atmosphere transfers to the ocean by dissolving in the surface water as carbonate and bicarbonate ions; at the same time the carbonate…”
- “The emergence of writing (and thus Old Russian literature) is dated to around the year 1000, after Old Church Slavonic was introduced as the liturgica…”
- “Literacy among the Russians initially developed through religious and hagiographical writings. The Ostromir Gospels (1056–1057) are the earliest dated…”
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