THE OPERATION — REVISED TIMELINE

PHASE 1 — THE START (AGES 16–18)

Setting: South Oakland backstreets, cheap apartments, late-night noodle shops.

• Dominic is a small-time runner working freelance — making deliveries for different crews, mostly doing cash drops and “package swaps.”

  He’s charming, reckless, and always broke.

• Adrian works at her parents’ restaurant after school. Dominic is a regular — flirty, aimless, a little magnetic.

  One night he asks her for a favor: “Hold this bag in your freezer. Just overnight.”

  She hesitates, then agrees. That’s how it begins.

• Soon she’s helping him count cash in the kitchen, labeling boxes, doing quick drop-offs between shifts.

  It feels like a game — adrenaline, freedom, secrecy.

  Neither of them fully understands how close they’re skating to something bigger.

• Their dynamic: Dominic is the muscle and motion; Adrian is the brain that quietly organizes his chaos.

  He brings her in because she’s sharp — she keeps track of who owes what, who’s late, who can be trusted.

(visual motif: bills drying under a kitchen heat lamp, Adrian’s handwriting on delivery slips.)

PHASE 2 — THE GROWTH (AGES 19–21)

The turning point: they catch attention.

• Boss, an older distributor controlling mid-level territory, notices Dominic’s efficiency and Adrian’s clean bookkeeping.

  He recruits them to “legitimize” their side gig — folding their street-level hustle into his larger network.

• Boss gives them structure:

  • Dominic becomes a runner-manager: coordinating pickups and street drops.

  • Adrian runs the cash and delivery ledger, disguised through the restaurant’s sales.

• Around this time, Norah enters — a chem-student dropout who knows how to “cut and stretch” product.

  She’s introduced by one of Boss’s upstream contacts to clean up the operation’s quality issues.

• At first, Dominic and Adrian don’t trust her — she’s clinical, detached, speaks like a scientist.

  But Boss likes her precision. She wins his confidence fast.

(visual: Norah testing powder in a kitchen bowl while Adrian watches, uneasy; Dominic jokes, but Boss just nods.)

PHASE 3 — THE NEW ORDER (AGES 22–23)

Over months, power shifts quietly.

• Norah becomes indispensable — she controls the formula and the finances.

  She moves the cutting and packaging underground (literally, into the restaurant basement).

  Boss begins routing all money through her system.

• Adrian is pushed sideways — still vital, but no longer the one making calls.

  She handles day-to-day logistics: counting, couriering, keeping appearances clean.

  She’s the frontline face that bridges street and kitchen.

• Dominic remains the field leader — loyal but impatient.

  He’s seen Norah rise above him and resents her quiet influence.

  He wants his own cut, his own “route.” That’s when he starts going off-grid.

(visual: Adrian behind the counter, Dominic pacing outside on the phone, Norah downstairs labeling packages — all in one continuous sound bridge.)

PHASE 4 — THE COLLAPSE

• Dominic secretly sells one batch through an off-record buyer.

  Boss’s upper-tier supplier finds the gap. Pressure falls down the chain.

  Boss blames Dominic, and because Norah now holds the books, she can’t cover for him.

  Adrian gets caught in between — the courier who unknowingly touched the missing shipment.