CHRISTMAS SPECIAL — A Romanian DIY Sci-fi Short Film
A classified Christmas night in Bucharest: infiltration, a “simple delivery for a kid”, and an alien intelligence wired directly into human DNA.
Internal dossier-style document. What you see here is the cleaned-up version — no major spoilers, just enough to understand where the Christmas Special sits in the ZONA ZERO universe.
On Christmas night, a motorcycle courier accepts a simple job “for my little girl”. It should have been an easy ride and a quick tip. Instead, he gets pulled between bodyguards, a Christmas market, a frozen park, a teenage hacker named Ali, a giant bodyguard… and a secret underground lab where an alien intelligence called PUKINO is kept alive by a radioactive stone.
Cold lights, steam, a ninja on the rooftop. Shini infiltrates a secured villa and the
bodyguards drop one by one. At the poker table, someone wipes blood off his hands:
“They don’t want to talk… or they really don’t know anything.”
In the basement, two hostages. In the final room, Alexa and Antonius look dead.
BLACK SCREEN: ONE YEAR EARLIER…
Christmas market, warm lights. Alexa and Shini want, for once, a normal evening. Her phone buzzes. A delivery request: “for my little girl… she’s still small.” Alexa wants a break. Shini still accepts the job: it’s for a kid, it’s Christmas, and “we could use the extra cash.”
In a frozen park, Shini meets Ali, 16, calm, too intelligent for her age.
The handoff looks harmless until three boys start mocking her — and it turns into a grounded,
cinematic fight.
Key line: “Yeah… I’m the one who blew up your apartment.”
From the shadows, Ali’s bodyguard steps in: 1.90m, black suit, calm.
A fight sequence in the vein of Matrix / Daredevil — heavy hits, asphalt, reflections.
Shini goes down. The bodyguard lifts him up just to say one word: “Respect.”
Ali: “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
A breath between violence and revelation. Dry jokes between Ali and Shini: the contrast between a tired adult and a 16-year-old genius who talks about blowing up an apartment like it was “a test that worked”.
In the lab, one tank holds a translucent alien body, another holds an incomplete human body.
The “normal” USB stick Shini carried for years becomes the key: inside it is living matter —
technology that does not come from Earth.
One name: PUKINO — Psychotronic Uplink for Kinetic Interference and Neural Operations.
Telepathic voice: “Hello, Shini. You finally came.”
Motorcycle courier, caught between the street, mafia and alien tech. On Christmas night, one “small job” puts him face-to-face with his real destiny.
Shini’s partner — the only one trying to keep him tethered to a normal life. Short appearance, heavy emotional weight.
Calm, hyper-intelligent, with dry one-liners.
“Yeah… I’m the one who blew up your apartment.”
A prodigy in neuro-nanotech, obsessed with biological symbiosis between humans and AI.
1.90m, black suit, neutral face. When he speaks, it’s only: “Respect.” A wall between Ali and the world.
Psychotronic Uplink for Kinetic Interference and Neural Operations.
An alien entity kept alive by a radioactive rock — communicating telepathically.
Ali’s glove is not a gadget. It’s an interface between blood and code. The physical stick Shini carries contains living matter — a piece of technology that arrived with PUKINO. When the two connect, they trigger a symbiosis: the human body becomes the hardware, and the alien intelligence becomes its software.
For Season 2, this episode is ground zero for the “hybrid” concept: ordinary people with access to impossible abilities — at a price they do not yet understand.
ZONA ZERO – CHRISTMAS SPECIAL connects the end of Season 1 to the beginning of Season 2. If this universe resonates with you — share it, comment, and subscribe.