GOTHAM CITY, NIGHT
Bats are leaving a building’s chimney, just as police sirens are heard. The police car stops in front of the building, two cops, Mike Rucka and Mazzuccheli, enter it.

POLICE RADIO
There has been a report of screaming at location 1939 Harbor Way. Possible shots fired.


Inside, they find a Batarang stuck into one of the walls. The cops approach what seems to be a door to the basement.

OFFICER RUCKA
Go.

They go down the stairs. Asian women are locked in a cage

ASIAN WOMAN (SUBTITLED)
It saved us. A devil.

OFFICER RUCKA
It's okay. It's okay. We're-We're going to help.

ASIAN WOMAN (SUBTITLED)
It saved us.

OFFICER RUCKA
Okay, we're going to get you out of here. Okay?

He opens the door… and the frightened woman shuts it in fear. She points her finger upwards.

ASIAN WOMAN (SUBTITLED)
It's still here.

OFFICER RUCKA
I - I don't understand.

A loud punch along with an “AH!” is heard upstairs, the women gasp. Rucka nods to the other, goes up to check on it.

SCARED MAN (O.S.)
Please don’t, please don’t. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who he is.

Another beating sound, followed by screams. Rucka keeps walking thorught he dark corridor, pointing his shotgun forward…

OFFICER RUCKA
Oh, fuck!

…and finds Cesar Santos, owner of the house, tied up to a radiator. Rucka turns around, feeling suspicious. Then he sees Batman lurking on the wall behind him. Frightened, he tries shooting at the vigilante, who easily evades the bullets before leaving through a hole on the ceiling. He then sees a man wielding a flashlight coming from the cellar and shoots in his direction.

OFFICER MAZZUCHELLI
Christ!

OFFICER RUCKA
I saw him. I never saw him before. I didn't know...

The angry Mazzuchelli comes to him.

OFFICER MAZZUCHELLI
You almost took my face off. How about you don't shoot the good guys, huh?

Mazzuchelli then goes to the radiator and sees Santos...

OFFICER MAZZUCHELLI
Oh, Jesus Christ!

Close-up on a bat-shaped burn scar on Santos’ chest.

OFFICER MAZZUCHELLI
He branded him!

Cut to BATCAVE

An elevator goes down, and out of it comes Bruce Wayne, who walks onward through the Batcave’s underground corridors. He passes by his butler Alfred, currently doing electrical repairs on a Bat-helmet and its microphone.

BRUCE WAYNE
Still working. You're getting slow in your old age, Alfred.

ALFRED
It comes to us all, master Wayne. Even you got too old to die young, and not for lack of trying.

As Bruce drops his jacket and other things in front of a computer, Alfred grabs the in-helmet microphone.

ALFRED
[distorted voice] Funnel, fairy, bubblebath. Funnel, fairy, bubblebath. [normally, to Bruce] There's nothing wrong with the microphone. [looking at an armored cowl ] It's this new layer of armor. I'll just have to rewire.

Alfred approaches master Bruce with a tray of drinks.

ALFRED
So... last night was productive?

BRUCE WAYNE
Nope. He's too low level, he knew nothing. This, is a man who knows things. Anatoli Knyazev. He's Russian. Contracts all over the globe but he's base out of the port of Gotham. Weapons and human trafficking.

ALFRED
So, the "White Portuguese" is a Russian, that's the theory?

BRUCE WAYNE
No. The theory is that the Russian lead me to the man himself.

ALFRED
If he is indeed a him. You don't know if he exist. He could be a phantasm.

BRUCE WAYNE
One that wants to bring a dirty bomb into Gotham?

ALFRED
Ah, high state front.

Alfred tosses on the desk a copy of the Gotham Free Press where Santos is being taken by the police, the headline above reading BAT BRAND OF JUSTICE!

ALFRED
New rules.

BRUCE WAYNE
We're criminals, Alfred. We've always been criminals, nothing's changed.

ALFRED
Oh. Yes it has, sir. Everything's change. [he presses a button, scenes from the Battle of Metropolis play] Men fall from the sky. And gods hurl thunderbolts. Innocents die. That's how it starts. The fever, the rage, the feeling of... powerlessness that turns good men... cruel.

Alfred walks away. Bruce tosses the newspaper on the floor, as we hear a voiceover whose origin comes in the next cut…

Cut to: CLARK KENT’S APARTMENT, MORNING
While cooking breakfast, Clark is listening to the television.

REPORTER (VO)
Justice turn dark across the harbor when police found an alleged sex trafficker apparently tortured and branded by the Gotham bat.

Eventually, the news intrigues him and makes Clark leave the frying pan for a while and watch, with a visibly disturbed expression.

REPORTER
The man is the second criminal found baring the bat brand. The first victim, an accused child predator later was assaulted in prison and remains in critical care from his injuries. One source tells Metropolis, that many believed the mark of the Bat brand in prison essentially is a death sentence. In other news, the mayor has announced that Metroplis...