"Officer Rand and two other officers were killed, three VXs were destroyed, and the suspect escaped," one of the officers told him as he watched a recording of the escape on a tablet.

"I'm sorry," Jemma said. Leonard nodded, handed the tablet back and walked over to Mitchell's body.

"The morgue's lab is too slow. Get a lab box, take a sample of his blood, and send it to Scotty for analysis," he said.

"Don't need a lab box," his partner said as she grabbed a syringe and took a sample of Mitchell's blood. Then, she injected it into her neck, the blue circuitry under her skin lighting up as she did. "I just downloaded the information. Scotty should have the data now."

"That's a neat trick," he muttered.

"Just you wait, I got plenty," she smiled. Was she flirting with him? It's been way too long if he has to ask himself that question.

"Why him? Why target Mitchell?" Leonard asked.

"Was it a case?" Jemma asked.

"Maybe," he said. "Let's head back to the precinct."

They drove back in relative quiet. When they walked into the bullpen, Uhura looked up at them, "You okay?"

"Fine. Jemma, scan every case Mitchell was on," Leonard said. "Any connection to biotech, science, medicine, DNA, I want to see it."

"I don't know if this is anything," the android said, "but one of his files is missing. Case file number six-nine-six-three. It's gone from all internal records."

"Wait a minute, Gary told me this morning that he couldn't get access to his terminal. Maybe whoever took him deleted the file," Uhura offered. She and Mitchell went to the academy together, they were pretty close.

"They got into the whole system," Leonard said as he read over Jem's shoulder. This has Section 31 all over it.

"Who is they?" his partner asked.

"See if anyone downstairs can get that file back," Leonard told Uhura.

"On my way," the other detective said before she grabbed her jacket and left the room.

"The way you said that, you're thinking someone specific is behind this. Who?" Jemma asked as he searched though the files on his computer.

"When I want your help, I'll ask for it," he told her.

"You know what your problem is?" she asked.

"Always my favorite part of the day: a synthetic telling me what my problem is."

"That word," Jemma practically growled. "Your problem is, you don't know yourself. You don't trust anyone."

"Is that my problem?" Leonard asked sarcastically.

"And I don't blame you. After all you've been through, if I were like you, I wouldn't know myself either," she said.

"You're not like me."

"And I'm not like them. VX units are logic-based and rule-oriented. They have no true free will and they are designed to feel nothing. Now, I can't say that I was born, I can't say I grew in a womb or had a childhood, but I was made to feel and I do feel, just as much as you do. I read what you wrote in your report from the ambush: that if a VX hadn't left you behind, your partner might have made it out of that mess alive, and that part may be true, but I read the whole report. By the time the ambush had begun, it was already too late and it was you who led them in, so you can blame a VX or you can blame yourself."

"Okay, you know what?" Leonard said.

"I am nothing like a VX," she said.

"You're obviously malfunctioning right now. Why don't you just take a second to reboot yourself?"

"Do not talk to me that way. If anyone is malfunctioning, it's you, McCoy."

"You know what I'm gonna stop doing? I'm gonna stop arguing with a piece of silicon and carbon fiber," he told her before stepping around her. His phone rang. "McCoy."

"It's Scotty. All police in the department are required to have mandatory inoculations designed in police labs for officers only. Those inoculations are meant to keep cops safe. Protects against biowarfare, gases, pathogens, et cetera. We found Myklon Red in Mitchell's blood, combined with programmable DNA. It targets the inoculation directly. It's like getting a hundred different diseases at once. The immune system goes berserk."

"What are you saying, Scotty?"

"I'm saying that that's why his body reacted in the way that it did. That's why he died. I believe Detective Mitchell was a test subject. Whoever we're up against..."

"They're targeting cops," Leonard finished for his friend. He hung up his phone and took a deep breath, he needed to know what he remembered. Leonard grabbed his jacket and walked past his partner.

Jemma called after him, "Where are you going?"

"I cannot allow you to do this. It's far too soon," the man told him. Leonard went to see the recollectionist, a man who performed the illegal medical procedure of helping you pull your memories from the recesses of your mind and to the forefront. Unfortunately, there were a lot risks with the procedure, which is why it was illegal.

"Look, this isn't about me," Leonard said. "Someone is killing police officers, and the only way we're gonna find them is if I remember more about the people who are doing it."

"Leonard, it's not safe for you."

"You do this and you do it now," the detective insisted, there was something about the information in his head and this case that were connected. The man nodded. Leonard pulled off his jacket and his shirt before getting settled in the chair and hooked up to a bunch of electrodes.

"They were ready for us, Len," Phil said. "How did Section thirty-one know we were coming? How did they know? How'd they...?"

There was a VX. Leonard never really liked the damn things but they were useful, until they weren't. The robot spouted out a bunch of statistics before leaving Leonard and his bleeding partner behind.

"Hey, come back here! You… Damnit," Leonard said before he pulled the other man to his feet and practically carried him away from the firefight. Then something hit his leg.

People in black.

Jocelyn. Something in her hand. A pulse charge.

She threw it in his direction.

Blackness.

"I am so sorry. I told him it was too dangerous," Leonard heard someone say. He felt hands on his neck. Warm, soft hands. He blinked his eyes open and found a pair of blue eyes locked onto him.

"You used my locator chip," he muttered.

"Someone has to keep an eye on you," Jemma told him.

"Okay," Leonard whispered. She was pissed off at him, he could tell, but she was still looking out for him. He didn't get it.

"You're lucky you got the partner with the bleeding heart. Even if it's just silicon and carbon fiber," she shot at him as she wiped the blood off his face with a damp towel. When she was done, Jemma helped him pull his shirt and his jacket back on, said something to the recollectionist and pulled Leonard across the street to one of the noddle bars.

"You want noodles?" he asked.

"Not for me. You need to eat, your system is all outta whack," she told him. "Do you want to order for yourself, or do I need to do that too?"

"I got it," Leonard told her. He put in his order, he wasn't gonna argue since he hasn't been eating as often as he probably should be. After a few minutes, his bowl was in front of him.

"What did you see when you were under?" she asked as he started eating.

"I saw someone who was close to me. Someone who, I realize now, that I should never have trusted. I want to say I...I'm not even sure it's real, but..."

"But it was. Who was it, Leonard?"

"It was my ex-girlfriend. Jocelyn. When I came out of my coma, she was gone. Took everything but my bones. Now I know why," he shrugged.

"Synthetic fail. Calibration required. Synthetic fail. Calibration required," his leg alerted him.

"I have got a fix for that," Jemma said.

"What?"

"It gets creaky sometimes? I've got a fix for that. Olive oil."

He chuckled, "Olive oil?"

"Yeah, you put it right on the joint," she told him.

"Olive oil?"

"You'll thank me."

"I suppose I… uh... I should acknowledge the fact that you saved my life."

"If you want, but it's not necessary. I'd be scrap metal or floating around in space right now if it wasn't for you. You can't ride without a… me and I've always wanted to be a cop. I can put up with the cranky attitude if it means I get to stick around a while. I like San Fran."

"You're not like them, the VXs. I don't know why, but you're not," he said. The VXs were like copies of each other, and in most cases, they were. He could admit that Jemma was intriguing. Not human but not really machine either. She was different and he could handle being partnered with different.

"I guess I should take that as a compliment," she said.

"You should."

"The VX series is based on first order predicate calculus. VXs have no intuition, or as you might say, no soul. For them, experience, memory is just recorded data. My series is designed to draw conclusions, make inferences. To think and feel… essentially."

He nodded and finished his noodles in silence. A thought occurred to him, "The answer is Mitchell, right? Who was targeting him, what was the payback for?"

"Yeah."

"And the only witness we have is Mitchell's VX."

"Which was blown apart when they took Mitchell," Jemma said.

"I know, stay with me. Scotty said his neural net was completely fried. Worthless to another VX, who wouldn't be able to… to put it together, to make sense of it, but you could make those connections. If we transferred the memory, or whatever is left of the memory from Mitchell's VX to you, you could make the connection."

"That's pretty good," she smiled.

"Well, I am a detective."

Leonard watched as Jemma jacked into the destroyed VX. He was surprised that she streamed the footage to his tablet so he could see what she saw.

"Stand by. I'll be back. ...coffee... sugar," Mitchell said.

Then there was shooting.

Then Gary was on his knees with two men holding onto him at gunpoint.

"Officer Mitchell, it's good to see you again," one of the masked men said.

"Who are you?" Mitchell asked.

"A few years ago, you logged something into evidence that doesn't belong to you. You may remember it as case number six-nine-six-three. No? Well, your precinct has been kind enough to hold it in evidence, but tonight, we're gonna get it back, and you're gonna help us do it."

Jemma looked at him, "That's all there is. Does that mean what I think it means?"

"Yep," he told her as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial. "We've got something they want. Captain, we need to put the precinct in lockdown."

"What's going on, Leonard?" Pike asked.

"They're hitting us tonight. They're after something in the evidence room."

It was pure chaos when they ran into the precinct, VXs dropping all over the place. He looked at his partner, "Why are they shutting down and not you?"

"They're on a different frequency than me. Sometimes newer doesn't always equal better, especially where technology is concerned," she shrugged. He had to give her that one.

"Come on," he said as they ran though the building.

The pair drew their weapons and made their way though the building. When they got to the squadroom, someone started shooting at them. If Leonard had to guess, this was the leader of this Section 31 team. Jemma grabbed Leonard's jacket and pushed him behind a pillar before he could get his head shot off.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied before she left him and went after the man who was shooting at them.

When the man realized that his shots weren't doing any damage, he sprayed the canister in his hand at her face, nothing happened. Just as Uhura and Stiles ran into the room, Leonard shot the terrorist in the shoulder and Jemma grabbed the canister before the human officers were killed with it.

"We've got to go through every piece by hand. We don't even know what we're looking for," Leonard sighed.

"We know it's here. And we know it's valuable because they were willing to kill a lot of cops to get it," Pike said.

"There must be some way to restore the evidence files that were wiped," Leonard said to his partner.

"I'm working on it but the sabotage was extremely thorough. I'll keep trying," she said.

"Thanks, Jemma," he touched her shoulder before walked out of the large evidence room. He smiled when he spotted Scotty restoring the VXs.

"Rise and be counted, lads. Stay out of trouble," the Scotsman said.

"You know, if you hadn't come back... You saved a lot of lives," Pike said as he stood next to him.

"Well, you insisted. Thanks," Leonard smiled. "You put in the rec order. For Jemma. I checked out her record. It's mostly redacted but I saw that it was you who put in the request for me to get her. Why?"

"Figured that a JTK would be good for you," Pike said with a shrug.

"That doesn't answer my question, Chris. Why Jemma specifically?" he asked again.

"Because she's special. Just like you," his commanding officer told him. "See you at roll call."

Leonard smiled as Pike walked away. "Hey, partner, let's go."

"Where to, Detective?" she asked.

"We still got some work to do. And call me 'Leonard'."

"Bones."

"What?" he asked.

"You said something last night about your ex only leaving your bones. I'm gonna call you 'Bones'."

"Alright, then."