"CSI finished upstairs?" Leonard asked as he passed one of the officers outside the Risa Gardens Hotel. Two weeks back and everything was going well so far.
"Shouldn't be long, sir," the officer said. Leonard nodded his thanks.
"You're a bot," a kid waiting outside said to Jemma.
She smiled, "Yes, I am."
"Cool! What can you do?" the little girl asked. Jemma tucked her long hair behind her ear and made the circuitry on the right side of her face light up. "Whoa."
A little boy's eyes went lit up, "Oh, awesome!"
"Are you a robot, too?" another boy asked Leonard.
"No," Leonard answered, "I'm human."
"Oh. What can you do?" the first little boy asked.
"He catches bad guys," his partner said before Leonard could think of something. That seemed to be enough for the kids because they smiled and told him to be careful.
"Of course you're good with kids," he muttered when they were alone in the elevator.
"Of course you're not good with kids," she retorted.
"It's not that I'm bad with them…"
"I didn't say you were bad, I said you weren't good. There's a difference."
"I guess. You got any information on this case yet?" he asked as they stepped out of the elevator and walked to room 61007.
"Victim is ID'd as Sebastian Jones. He paid for the room with cash. Front desk said he showed up with a woman. Red hair, twenties. About a half hour later, two men showed up," Jemma told him right after they stepped into the room. Her circuity lit up, "There are no fingerprints. I don't think we're gonna get anything from Forensics. Everything is tainted in here. They used a DNA bomb."
"I hate that stuff. Any surveillance?" he asked as he looked at the casings from the bullets.
"She came in at eighteen-fifteen. They arrived twenty minutes later," his partner motioned to his tablet. She must've sent the footage to him already. "They're wearing FlashMask." He hates that stuff too.
DNA bomb was just what it sounded like, a bunch of DNA collected in a small canister and set off to cover anything useful. FlashMask was a surveillance countermeasure that you spray on your face. It makes people appear as a bright, white light on camera. The footage didn't show them what happened inside the room but the two men walked out with a bag that didn't show up with.
"They took his bag."
"Bones, she's an android," Jemma said. He looked at the woman again, he couldn't tell but he wasn't gonna argue with Jem on that one.
"What do we have on our victim?" Pike asked when they were back at the precinct.
"Sebastian Jones was a high-end sex trade bot-maker," Jemma said.
"Yeah, too bad he's dead," Leonard chuckled. "Could've made you a boyfriend."
"What am I gonna do with a boyfriend? Putting up with you is a full-time job," she quipped.
"You know what, I'll give you that one," he said.
"Give? I took that," Jemma said with a wink.
He looked at his partner, "Oh, that's cute. Maybe I should trade you in for a newer model."
"Maybe I should trade you in for a newer model."
"Do I need to get you two a room?" Pike asked.
"No, sir," they replied in unison.
"Good. What do we have?" the captain asked.
"Sebastian Jones' company is called Lexington Sapients. They specialize in Intimate Robot Companions and advanced sexual robotics," Jemma answered while Pike looked at the footage.
"Is this one of his sexbots?" Chris asked.
"We don't know, yet. IRCs are licensed but this one's not registered to anybody," Leonard said. "Jem's already looking."
Chris nodded, "What else do we know about his life?"
"No spouse, no kids, no criminal record. Legitimate businessman. Inventor," Uhura said from her desk.
"He has twenty-three patents to his name and is credited as a pioneer in developing the artificial blush response," Jemma added, making the skin on her face flush a soft rosy color for a few seconds. Leonard did not know she could do that.
"Every red-blooded man in this city owes a debt to this fallen genius," Stiles said, putting his hands over his heart.
"Why, because he makes sex trade bots?" Uhura asked with a look of confused disgust on her face.
"We call 'em 'bang bots.' They actually like it," Stiles smiled.
"And you know this from experience?" Uhura asked.
"You say it like it's a bad thing," Stiles shrugged.
"Crimes in the sex trade are down thirty-eight percent since the Intimate Robot Companions were introduced," Jemma interjected.
Stiles smirked, "Right. Do that math."
"The fewer real women that have to sleep with you, John, the better off the world is," Uhura quipped.
"Okay, children," Pike said, "What else do we know about him?"
"Sebastian Jones couldn't pay his bills," Jemma said. "Lexington Sapients declared bankruptcy three months ago. Creditors seized all of his assets, and now they're currently sitting in a repo storage facility."
Chris looked at him and his partner, "McCoy, Jemma…"
Leonard nodded, "We're already gone."
"Found a court summons. Sebastian was being sued," Jem told him just as his phone rang. He gave her a nod and answered the incoming call.
"McCoy."
"Your case just got weird. The CSIs went through the elevator at the hotel, scanning spots these guys likely touched, trying to pick up some DNA on them but they didn't leave any. However, everywhere the bot touched was DNA from a twenty-five year-old girl named Nicole Bloomquist, who was abducted three weeks ago from a parking garage," Uhura said.
"Are you telling me the sexbot we're looking for is leaving this girl's DNA?" he asked.
"It seems that way," she sighed.
"Thanks, Uhura," Leonard said before hanging up. He filled his partner in.
"The Bloomquist investigation is officially still open but the case hasn't been active for over a week. The detective assigned it has an above average caseload," Jem said.
"Don't we all these days?" he asked sarcastically. "Don't answer that."
"I wasn't going to. You're right, there are far more cases than there are cops to work them," she said as she looked though Jones' belongings.
They stayed at the storage facility for another twenty minutes before Leonard decided that they weren't gonna find anything useful there. On the way back to the precinct, Uhura called again. There was another abduction like Nicole Bloomquist's. A 20-something female, parking structure, cameras were disabled. Uhura also found three more missing persons cases with the same pattern. Unlike the other abductions, they left someone behind. Their latest victim's son, David.
"Can I talk to him?" Leonard asked Uhura when he and Jemma walked into the bullpen.
"Maybe I should talk to him. You're not good with kids," his partner said.
"Hey!" he looked at the women, human and synthetic. "I'm great with kids, really." Jemma and Uhura both raised an eyebrow. "I'm okay with kids and we need to talk to him. Jem, you can back me up if you want."
"He's at your desk," Uhura said with a smile. Leonard turned around, and sure enough, there was a little boy sitting in his chair.
"Hey. I'm Detective McCoy. You must be, David, right?" Leonard said. The boy with the blonde curls nodded. "I know this must be hard but I need you to be brave. You think you could do that for me?" David nodded again. "You think you can tell me what happened to your mom?"
"You like him?" David asked, looking the toy sitting next to Leonard's computer. It was a gift from Phil's little girl a long time ago. Leonard tapped the toy's head and it started walking around the desk. David's eyes lit up.
"I'll give him to you if you want him. But you have to promise me to look after him because he means a lot to me," Leonard told the boy.
"I promise," David said, taking the offered toy.
"Well, since you promise, I trust you," Leonard smiled. "I really need your help, David. I need you to tell me what happened with your mom. You guys were in a car, right? Your mom got out."
The boy nodded, "She went to put the trash away."
"Then what happened?" Leonard asked.
"I saw the car."
"Did you see who was in it?"
"Two men. They put her in the car and drove away," David said.
"What kind of car was it? What color?"
"It was a big, silver car," the boy told him.
Leonard looked up at Jemma, the side of her face already lit up blue. "A big, silver car. That's good."
"When is my mom coming?" David asked him.
"Won't be too long, buddy. You did really good," Leonard said before asking an officer to stay with the boy.
"I stand corrected, you aren't that bad with kids," Jemma said as they fell into step with each other. "I found it."
"The car?" he asked.
"Yes, silver sedan on a traffic cam a block from the parking structure. The license plates track back to a red SUV. I've put an alert out for the plates," she said as he tapped on Pike's glass office door. Leonard filled in their CO on what he and Jem found so far.
"Okay, two girls were abducted in the same manner and one of them, her DNA was found on the sexbot who was with Sebastian Jones when he was murdered," Pike said.
"I think we should focus on finding the sexbot that was with Sebastian," Leonard said.
"If we can access her memory, we might be able to see what happened in the hotel that night. And identify who did it," Jem added. "That's our best bet for finding the missing women."
Uhura tapped on the door before she pushed it open, "Guys, I might have a new angle. I dug into those summonses you found. Sebastian's former business partner Clay Treadway was suing him for intellectual property infringement and he just opened a sexbot showroom downtown for himself. It's motive. He could be involved."
"McCoy, Jemma, check him out," Pike ordered.
"Do you think Carol Marcus is still alive?" Jemma asked when they were in the car.
"I hope so. Every hour she's gone diminishes the chance of us finding her alive," he sighed. They really need to get that woman back to her son.
"What do you tell a small child when someone dies? I've never considered that, what you would tell a small child," his partner said sadly.
"Well, you say the same thing that you'd say to an adult."
"What do they say?"
"You tell them that the person that died has gone to a better place," he said.
"Why would anyone say that when there's no way to really know where living things go when they stop living?" she asked. It was a good question. He actually had to dig through his brain for the right answer.
"It's designed to give hope, comfort, ease the pain. People believe it because they need to."
"Hmm, the data I've studied suggests that the best proof of one's existence is if one is remembered after they're gone. Was your partner's daughter told that her father went to a better place?"
"I don't know," Leonard said. He hasn't talked to Phil's family since before. He's tried to go see them, a few times, but he could never get out of the car.
"You never spoke to your partner's family? I can understand why that would be hard for you," Jemma said, minus her usual snarky attitude.
"It's not easy," he told her. "I'm trying but I can't."
"If you need to me to go with you, I will."
"You don't have to do that," Leonard said.
"I know I don't but if that's what you need me to do then I will," she said before she looked out the window.
He smiled to himself.
"This place is interesting," Jemma said as they walked into Treadway IRC.
"Interesting?" he asked. They were in a room full of scantily clad androids and 'interesting' was all she could come up with? "We can still get you a boyfriend."
"We could get you one too. That guy over there is pretty hot," she smiled. He didn't bother responding. "There's Clay Treadway."
They walked over the man and introduced themselves before Leonard got straight to the point, "Your ex-partner, Sebastian Jones, when was the last time you saw him?"
"Six months? Seven? We'd been sort of on the outs lately," Clay answered.
"On the outs? You were suing him," Leonard pointed out.
"I have intellectual property rights on designs we developed together at Lexington," Treadway told them.
"What happens to the rights now that Sebastian's dead?" Leonard asked, his eyes wondering to the naked bot that walked past them.
"Well, they would naturally revert to me," Clay sighed.
"Is this one of your models?" Jemma asked, putting a picture of the redhead from the hotel onto one of the screens.
"No, she's not mine," the man said after a moment.
"You ever seen these women before?" Leonard asked as his partner switched to pictures of the missing women.
"No, but they're not synthetics," Treadway said.
Leonard asked with a raised eyebrow, "How can you be sure?"
"In my line of work, you get to know," Clay said before looking at Jemma. "You are a rare bird, aren't you? There were only twelve JTKs made, nine were destroyed and two are at NASA, I haven't seen one in a while. You know, the latest sexbots have some of your old tech in them. They're capable of bonding empathetically with their clients. Sense their moods and respond accordingly. It's a significant achievement." Clay looked Jemma up and down for a minute. "If you want an aesthetic or hardware upgrade, I'm sure I'd be able to work something out with the police department."
"She's perfect the way she is," Leonard asserted protectively. So, Jemma might actually be getting under his skin a little. He pulled Clay back on topic, "If your bots are so special, why was Sebastian so in debt?"
"Well, if you knew Sebastian, you'd understand. He was an artist. We were making good money. But he was determined to create the next line. Better than the last. He sunk all our capital into new fabs, tooling, subsystems. He bet the whole company on it. And then our biggest client cancelled their contract with us. Took us completely by surprise. Bankrupted us."
"Who was your biggest client?" Leonard asked. Clay gave him a look. "If you don't want to tell me, that's okay. We'll just subpoena your records. Shut you down for a few days while we go through them."
"It was Orion Syndicate. They said they were cutting out the middle man," Treadway said.
"You mean they found a new supplier?" Leonard asked.
"Apparently. Sebastian couldn't believe that anyone could build a better sexbot than us," Clay sighed.
"The first picture we showed you, does she belong to Orion? Is she why Sebastian was at the hotel the night he was killed?" Jemma asked.
"I wouldn't know. Look, I-I don't want to talk about this anymore," the man in front of them was nervous, scared even.
Leonard and Jemma looked at each other before she asked, "Did they threaten you?"
"No. They were good clients. They always paid on time. And that's all I'm gonna say about them. Excuse me. I have customers," Clay said.
"One more thing, then you can go," Leonard said. "Have you ever heard of people incorporating human DNA into a sexbot?"
"That's illegal. And I think you know that," Treadway told them before he went to talk with some clients.
"I'm perfect the way I am, huh?" Jemma asked. He didn't say anything. "I told you that you'd admit to liking me."
"I didn't admit to anything."
"Your mouth says one thing but your pulse says something else," she said.
"What?" he asked how did she… "You scanned me?"
"All the time. It's part of my protocols, I can't help it. Sorry."
"Make it up to me?" Leonard asked. She nodded. "I want you to hack into Treadway's customer network. Find the Orions."
"We don't have a warrant," she reminded him.
"I know. Does that mean you won't do it?" he asked.
Jemma's circuitry lit up and she smirked, "Got it. Plan?"
"Let's shake the tree and see what falls."