"Julian Kyle, I'm Detective McCoy. We have some questions we'd like you to answer," he said to the teenager in front of him.

"We have permission to search the house," Jemma said, handing the kid a warrant.

Julian led them into the house and walked over to a women in her late eighties. "These are, uh, police officers, Ma. They are here to ask me some questions, but don't worry." Leonard gave the kid a look. "They chromed me late. The machine's downstairs." Jemma headed in that direction. "My father got it to make his own pills, his own, uh, drug regimen. At the end, his doctors were trying all sorts of different treatment avenues."

"How long have you been dealing?" Leonard asked. "We found the DNA profile of the girls who died on the backup log of your ChemPrinter, along with every customer you ever printed a pill for. Bet you didn't know it had that feature. So when did you…"

"You don't believe me. Now you know why I didn't come forward," Julian said.

"Come again?" Leonard asked. That was… odd. Then again, everything about this kid was off.

"You don't believe me. Now you know why I didn't come forward," Julian repeated.

"I didn't ask you why you didn't come forward."

"Not yet. This conversation happened already. Can't you see them? Our words? They're all here. Your answers, are in the air," Julian said.

"So there's no point in us having this conversation, right?" Leonard asked.

"He's on the drug right now, Bones," Jemma said as she returned to the main room.

"I am," the kid smiled.

"Well, we're gonna have this conversation anyway. What does the drug do?" he asked the kid.

"It's called Vero," Julian told them. "It expands the mind, it opens it up to things that are in the universe that we are not supposed to see. It enables you to realize your full potential. The next Einstein, or Macgregor."

"Scarlett and Elinor were deliberately OD'd. Did you kill them?" Leonard asked.

"No, I didn't. If I was gonna kill someone, I wouldn't get caught. Certainly not with the machine in my own house," Julian shrugged.

"Unless that's exactly what you wanted us to think. Committing a crime so carelessly that we'd assume it wasn't you. How could someone so smart, be so dumb?" Leonard asked.

"That'd be smarter, I guess."

"And you knew the machine had a backup, so it was pointless getting rid of it," the detective offered.

Julian smiled, "So many roads."

"Is that how she drowned?" Leonard held up his tablet, a picture of Irina on the screen. He spotted a flicker in Julian's eyes, something he's seen in the mirror every day since he woke ups from his coma; regret, guilt and sadness. "Did you kill her? Was it unintentional?"

"I didn't kill Irina. You wouldn't understand," Julian said, more subdued than before.

"Yeah, I've heard that a lot lately. Did the other girls find out? They were gonna rat, so you OD'd them to shut them up?

"I didn't do anything to Irina, she was my friend. I'm trying to tell you, the printer was hacked. Somebody messed with the doses," Julian told them.

"Hacked?" This kid had to be messing with them. "You're telling us that you didn't kill these girls even though your machine made the drugs? That their deaths had nothing to do with Irina Hoving? And you got hacked? I don't believe you." The kid nodded. "I don't believe you."

"I told you that you wouldn't. Now you understand, why I didn't come forward," Julian said. Leonard nodded, that much was true.

"Come on, kid," Leonard said, handing him off to an officer that was waiting outside the house. He looked at Jemma, "There was a kid we interviewed today at Cerberus named Lee, studies advanced computer science. Same class as all three girls."

"You're thinking he might be our hacker," she said, the circuitry in her face lighting up as they got the car. "Let's look closer."

"Jem, you drive," he sighed, his hand still on door. "It's not any worse than me blacking out."

"I'll try not to be insulted by that."

"You got something?" Uhura asked, looking at Lee Drake's file on the screen Leonard and Jemma had up. "Ugh, not that kid again."

"Julian said his ChemPrinter was hacked. Is it bad I want it to be him no matter what?" Leonard said. He already knew the answer to that. Jemma gave him a look. "I know, I know, we don't a motive for him."

"No, but I think I have something better," Uhura said as she swiped her finger along her tablet, putting the information on the larger screen. "I've been looking for communication between the kids around the time of Irina's death. Nothing really popped up, but then I found this. It's an exchange between Scarlett and her father. It's a couple of weeks after Irina's death. That's the last transmission, 'till she died."

"He reached out to her several times after that, but she never responded," Leonard said. The messages were only mildly cryptic, something about Mister Davis taking care of something.

"They talked all the time, and then all of a sudden, nothing. There'd have to be a very good reason for a daughter to write off her father. So what'd he 'take care of' to get her so upset?" Uhura said.

"Good question," he said. "We'll ask him in the morning."

"Got somewhere to be?" Jemma asked.

"Yea, Pike wants to see me," he told her. "Goodnight, ladies."

"Hey," Leonard said as he sat next to Chris at the bar.

"Hey. I took the liberty of ordering," the other man said. The only person to ever get Leonard's appreciation of good bourbon was Chris Pike.

"Thanks," Leonard said before taking a drink. "I'm guessing this ain't a social call."

"Sorta," Chris sighed, "how you feeling?"

"You sound like Jemma."

"I guess I'll just get to the point then. Are you using alternative therapies to help you remember things? Because you seem a little unsteady to me."

"Unsteady?" Leonard asked.

"Tell me what's going on."

"I'm remembering some things. Stuff during the ambush. Things before the ambush."

"They said this would happen. You should let it happen naturally, Leonard. What are you remembering?"

"Things about Jocelyn, but nothing significant yet," he told his CO.

"You need to focus on the successes you've just had. That's how you rebuild. You saved the precinct a week ago."

"It doesn't make up for who we lost."

"Hey, those were my men too. You're not the only one who's responsible."

"I let her in, Chris. She has answers. Now that this is all coming back to me, I'm consumed by it," he replied honestly.

"Look, Leonard, I know how you are. And I care enough about you to tell you the truth. If you obsess about revenge, it'll take you down," Chris told him. There aren't a lot of people brave enough, or who care enough to bother. "Now that you are remembering things, you're gonna have to talk to Internal Affairs again."

"Oh, joy. You know they'll just try to blame me again. They think I conveniently forgot everything."

"We both know you didn't. That's why I have to talk to them too," Chris said. "I can tell you to stop 'til I'm blue in the face but I know you won't listen, so do me a favor, if you're gonna keep this up, bring Jemma in on it."

"Why?"

"Because she had to pull you out a recollectionist's chair last week. Don't worry, no one knows but me. She's not a VX, as much as it annoys the brass, she decides what information she passes on. She has your back and it worries her when your locator's off."

"I worry her?"

"I told you, she's special, that's why I requested her for you. Her soul… it's just as real as ours. If she were human, you wouldn't even question that she's worried. She is. Do you remember what happened to the JTKs?"

"Just that they lost it," Leonard said.

"They didn't, the GSKs did. Their operating system was designed to emulate human emotion, I'm sure you know that by now. Some of them became unstable and reckless. Others… killed themselves, shut themselves down after becoming emotionally overwhelmed. The JTKs that were made were just prototypes of a female GSKs. There weren't enough of them to know if they'd lose it or not and they got scrapped with the GSKs just in case."

"And you gave one to me?"

"Jemma was my partner back when she was first activated," Chris said. "I never met anyone who wanted to be a cop more than her, human, synthetic or otherwise. When she was deactivated it literally broke my heart. I put Jemma with you because you're surly, gruff, bitter. She's approachable, caring, empathetic even. You need a partner like that."

"So she's what, my opposite?"

"Basically. You need someone who's gonna bitch at you about not eating and call you out when you don't sleep but at the same time, won't report every little thing you do. The VXs are all about logic and you do a bunch of illogical shit," his CO chuckled. Leonard gave Chris a look. "For the right reasons most of the time but still. Putting Jemma with you was as close as I could get to giving you a human partner without actually giving you a human partner."

"You care about her."

"Just like I care about you."

"I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow. You've been here five days straight. Give your mind a rest," the recollectionist told him.

"You're a recollectionist, so let's recollect. I want to get in the chair, tonight," Leonard told the other man.

"I'd argue but I doubt you'll listen to me," the man said.

"You're right, I won't," he said before pulling off his jacket and shirt, and getting in the chair.

"In three… two…"

"I've got something for you…" Jocelyn.

The ambush.

Jocelyn.

Phil going down.

Jocelyn.

The VX leaving them to make their way out alone.

"I hope you like it…" Jocelyn's voice was sweet but she was wearing the black combat gear from the raid. "It's kind of silly. I got something...for you. I got something for you. It's just something small. I just saw it and I thought of you."

The Matroyshka doll.

"Chekov."

"No," the kid said without looking up from whatever he was working on in the lab.

"I need you to check something out. It's got to do with the..."

"Section zirty-one ambush," the young Russian lab-tech said.

"Yeah. I need you to run these for DNA, tech, fingerprints. Anything we can trace back to a suspect," Leonard said, handing the kid the Matroyshka doll that Jocelyn gave him. It was sitting on a shelf in his apartment all this time.

"A Matroyshka doll?" Chekov gave him a look.

"It was a gift, I just need you run it."

"And you want it off ze books like ze others?"

"It's important."

"Ewerything I do around here is important, it is my job," Chekov pointed out. "A job I would like to keep, but zat won't happen if I keep logging in owertime on an unspecified case."

"Look, I'll sign off on it myself."

"If I get in trouble for zis, I will tell zem you threatened me."

"You're in luck. They'll believe that. You're the best."

"Tell zat to all ze girls."

"You went back to the recollectionist," Jemma said from the driver's seat the next morning. She refused to let him drive and he couldn't even argue about it.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"Aside from the physiological evidence, I'm getting to know you and you're like a dog with a bone. You're trying to figure out how you let Jocelyn get so close, how got she information she wasn't supposed to have, how you didn't see that it wasn't real. It's like an open wound that won't heal until you find her," she said.

"That's pretty insightful."

"That's what I do. How was your talk with Pike?"

"It was good. I didn't know you were his partner."

"That's because it was redacted. They wiped a lot of my memories from before. According to Chris, I have to relearn a lot of stuff he taught me. It sucks."

"I know the feeling. Is that why you keep tabs on me?" Leonard asked.

"You're my partner, it's my job to care about your well being, even if you don't."

He smiled, "Phil used to say that."

"I'm sorry he's gone. I met him once, nice guy," she said sadly.

"He was the nice one. I guess that's your job now."

"I hope I can live up to his example."

Leonard didn't say anything, there wasn't a need. Maybe Chris was right and he needed her more than he thought.