We see Terry sitting listlessly on a couch. He's dressed for a funeral. So is his mother, Mary, seated to his right, and his young brother, Matt, seated to his left. In a time lapse, we see other mourners moving around them, interacting with Mary and Matt. Terry seems to exist outside of time.

We hear voices from another scene: "I'm Detective Lopez. This is Detective Mariano. We'd like to ask you some questions, if you don't mind."

Terry's voice is raw and dull. "Sure."

"You're a teenager? Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"When I was your age, I spent a lot of nights out on the town, enjoying the city. You like to do that?"

"Sure."

"You go out often?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Don't have any money."

"But you did that night, didn't you? The night your dad died? You had your dad's money."

"What are you saying?"

The time lapse slows. Everyone around Terry gradually fades away. He is alone.

The dog approaches and nuzzles his hand. He reacts sluggishly. As he strokes the animal's head, some emotion seems to awaken in him. Tears fill his eyes and we fade to black.

Fade in on Terry driving on a sunny morning. He has the dog in the back seat again, his brother in the passenger seat. They ride in perfect silence. Pulling up at a middle school, Terry turns to Matt, awkwardly using sign language as if he cannot quite remember how: Don't make too many friends in there. Matt flips him off, jumps out of the car, and slams the door.

Back at his mother's apartment, Terry is unlocking the door when the dog starts to growl at it. Terry is perplexed. The door looks undamaged. Suspicious, he eases it open. The dog lunges in, pulling at its leash, racing around the apartment in a frenzy. Moving boxes are scattered everywhere as if someone has been ransacking them. Terry looks down at the trashed box at his feet. It reads, Dad's Stuff.

The dog has calmed down now, sniffing the floor, but it's still whining, agitated. Terry flinches when the door opens behind him. His mother walks in, presumably ending some night shift. "What did that dog do now?"

Terry says nothing. He's trying to figure out what happened.

"Did you at least get Matt to school?" she asks, kicking off her shoes.

"Yeah," he mumbles.

"Good. I'm going to bed. There's a message blinking on the fridge, will you check it?"

In the kitchen, Terry swipes a holographic image off the surface of the refrigerator. It's now floating in his hand, semi-transparent. As he reads it, an incredulous look sweeps over him.

Cut to Terry locking himself in his bedroom. He unpacks the Batman suit and spreads it across the bed. The black material is faded, dusty. There are burn marks. A few seams are torn. When Terry lifts the boots, they look heavy. He plays with the retractable blades on the wrist gauntlet.

A wider shot reveals him wearing most of the suit. He turns back for the last component of the suit: the cape. Terry picks it up for a moment, then tosses it back on the bed. "Nah."

We cut to a grand exterior shot of the Wayne-Powers Industries building. It's monumental, a blend of eastern and western architecture. Hovering limousines and police cars race in the misty air overhead. Terry, wearing street clothes over the suit, looks up at the monolith, self-consciously adjusting his jacket to hide the Batman cowl beneath it.

Interior waiting room. Terry waits outside the door. The plaque reads, Derek Powers, CEO. The secretary, an extremely cold-looking woman, turns to Terry without warning and states, "Mr. Powers will see you now."

Terry stands and approaches the door. When he opens it, however, he does not find an office. He finds a long corridor of white light and Plexiglas walls. The door closes behind him. Setting his jaw, Terry goes down the tunnel until he finds himself in a plastic cube.

An automated voice: "Please raise your arms."

Terry complies. A light mist fills the cube, dampening his hair and clothes. Annoyed, he wipes his eyes, but the stuff doesn't seem to be doing anything to him. The floor beneath his feet suddenly begins moving, and he's lifted into Powers' office.

The entire office has a feng shui vibe, with bubbling water fountains in every corner, but it nevertheless looks like a bullet-proof fortress. Derek Powers stands in front of an oversized desk. He is a smooth, distinguished man in his fifties. There is always a self-satisfied smile on his face. He offers Terry a towel. "Thank you for coming, Terry."

"What was that?" Terry asks, drying his face and hair.

"Your father never mentioned that his boss is a neat freak?"

Terry shrugs.

Powers continues, "I wanted to offer you my condolences."

"Thanks," Terry says sourly, wearily. "Can I go now?"

"Please…" Powers motions to a chair. Sighing, Terry seats himself. "I hope you don't mind my asking, but I was under the impression that you lived alone with your father…"

"Yeah?"

"What was his last day like?"

Sardonically, Terry says, "Well, let's see. He worked late. Then he came home and got murdered."

Instead of sitting, Powers is leaning against his desk. "After the crime, as you were packing to leave, did you find anything work-related?"

Terry glares at Powers. "Why don't you ask whoever ransacked his stuff this morning?"

Powers arches a brow at this. He's holding something back. "I understand this is a painful time for you. I don't want to make it any more difficult, and I certainly don't want to sully his memory with unsubstantiated accusations."

"Is that your best threat?" Terry retorts.

"I'm not threatening you. I'm offering you an opportunity. Your mother works two jobs, your brother – he was born deaf, wasn't he? Back in my day, we had government programs that paid to fix those things, but now…"

Terry is seething, fists knotted. "You expect me to believe you'd pay me to find out whatever it is my dad knew? Instead of just doing what you did to him?"

Powers is still smiling. "I didn't kill your father. But if I'd known what he was up to, I would have." He moves around the desk and seats himself. "Consider my offer. In the meantime I hope, for your sake, that whoever did it doesn't come back for you."

Cut to Terry is storming out of Powers' office, out of the waiting room. He finds a closet to hide in. He removes the Batsuit gloves from his pockets, then removes his street clothes. Most of the suit is still underneath them. Smoothing back his hair, he pulls on the mask, which snaps to fit the shape of his brow and nose. A close shot shows lenses whiting out his eyes and rotating as if to artificially improve his vision. He attaches a gas mask that covers his mouth. Now every inch of him is hidden.

Cut to a close shot of another door with a plaque: Warren McGinnis. It's pushed open, revealing a depressing little office. We can see Terry in the Batman suit reflected in the computer monitor. He steps into the room, pokes around, doesn't find much. There is, however, a second door with a very powerful-looking lock.

Terry punches the lock and it falls to pieces. He flexes his hand and whispers, "Nice." He's impressed with the suit's capabilities.

The door opens to a dimly lit corridor with windows on either side. Terry leans against the wall and peers through a window. It overlooks a laboratory. A half dozen cages and terrariums are scattered across the tables – hosting wasted remains. We can only really make out ribs. The employees are taking off their gear, throwing down their tablets, trickling toward the exit. It's the end of a work day.

Terry startles as the door at the opposite end of the corridor opens. A burly guard steps through and freezes. Terry rushes him, delivers a few sound punches to the face –

The man wilts, unconscious, his nose crushed and bleeding. Terry fumbles to catch him and lower him to the floor. "Whoa," he whispers. The mask distorts his voice. "Sorry."

Down in the lab, Terry gets a closer look at the rotted test animals. He taps a nearby screen, selecting a video labeled Mutagen 3549, Test 74.

It's footage of a dummy wearing combat gear in a glass cube. A greenish gas is pumped in. The armor melts.

He selects the next video, Mutagen 3549, Test 75.

In this test, a healthy pig is exposed to the gas. It twitches in surprise, then starts struggling, breathing heavily. Though it is still alive, its flesh blackens and begins to melt off, exposing sinew, then bone. We only see the final stages reflected in Terry's white eyes.

There is a faint clattering. Terry crouches low and jumps onto the wall. He seems to stick for a moment, long enough to twist and jump to a steel beam stretching across the ceiling.

Something black and shiny snakes across one of the distant work tables. Then it weaves over to a closer one, picking through the tools and gadgets.

From his perch in the ceiling, Terry can't quite make the thing out. Hanging onto the beam with one hand, he taps the side of his mask with another. From his point of view, we can see his visor zoom in on the thing. It's a dark, oily liquid, feeding in from a grate in the floor. The stream thinning, it converges into a more and more feminine shape. Inque is perusing the same videos Terry was watching a moment before.

Terry nearly loses his grip on the beam. Though he catches himself, he fails to do so silently. Inque whirls. She sees him. He twists around to run across the beam, but she transforms again, whipping herself onto the beam and knocking him to the floor below. She peers down at him with one seriously creepy eye.

Motioning as if to surrender, Terry slowly climbs to his feet. "I'm guessing neither of us is supposed to be here," he says. He taps the side of his head.

Terry's point of view. As he's tapping, he's scrolling through a list of suit functions.

Inque forms a long, spindly limb. It morphs into a blade, which she pulls back, aiming at him.