"Well, there's not much to eat in here."
"If I knew you were coming, I would've stopped by the store," Leonard smiled as he walked into his kitchen. "Hi, mama."
"There's my boy. You look so much better than the last time I saw you. You're sleeping and eating like you're supposed to?" Doctor Eleanor McCoy asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he chuckled. It was enough that she mothers the hell outta him, but she's a doctor too, so it was a thousand times worse. "I already know what you're gonna say next. Yes, I'm talking to someone."
"Well, you've always had a temper, I wouldn't want you to get in any trouble," she smiled. "Work?"
"Work's good. What are you doing here, mama?"
"I'm giving a series of lectures at UCSF. They don't start for a few days but I figured that I'd come see you first."
"I have to work today. If you called, I would've taken the day off."
"Nonsense. I didn't come to fuss up your life, sugar, I just wanted to see you. Maybe have supper. You can tell me about the ladies in your life."
"There aren't…" he stopped himself. He doesn't really know what to call whatever was going on between him and Jemma. "I…"
"Bones?" his partner called. The smug look on his mother's face was gonna haunt him forever. "You know Pike hates it if we're late. Besides… oh. Hello, Doctor McCoy."
"Leonard, aren't you gonna introduce me to your friend?" his mom asked.
"Mama, this is Jemma. Jem, this is my mother," he said. Leonard didn't say anything about the fact that Jemma wasn't exactly human, he wanted to see how long it would take for his mother to figure out.
"Aren't you as pretty as a summer's day," his mother said.
"Thank you, ma'am. I didn't mean to interrupt but we're gonna be late for roll call if he doesn't get a move on," Jemma said.
"You're a police officer too?" Eleanor asked as Leonard went back to his room to finish getting dressed.
"Yes, ma'am," he heard his partner say.
"How's he doing?" His mama couldn't resist.
"He's been great. Cranky at times but we've all been there. Doesn't eat nearly as well as he should but he's getting better… Well, more like he eats the fruits and veggies I stick in there, so I call that win," Jemma chuckled.
"Do you live nearby?" his mom asked.
"Yes, ma'am. The apartment next door. I wasn't in the best living situation, bad roommates, and he offered to help me out. He's really sweet when he thinks nobody's paying attention."
"You're always paying attention, Jem," he smiled before giving his mother a kiss on the cheek. "I'll see you later, mama."
"Yes, you will. I might stop by the precinct, say hello to Christopher. It was lovely meeting you, Jemma."
"And you, Doctor McCoy," Jem smiled.
"Oh, just call me Ellie, sweetie."
"Yes, ma'am," his partner nodded before he had to pull her out of the apartment. They got into the car and she smiled. "How is that woman your mother? She's friendly and you are not."
"Hey, I'm friendly," he exclaimed with mock hurt.
"To like five people."
"That's still friendly."
"You didn't tell her that I'm an android," she said but it was more like a question.
"Are you? I hadn't noticed."
"Jem, is that…?" he was looking over her shoulder and she turned to see what he was talking about.
"That's a GSK," she whispered.
"Must be weird seeing one of your… brothers."
"It's weird seeing one of us do something like this. We were designed to be cops not maintenance men," Jemma sighed.
"Everyone can't be as awesome as you, partner. Prelim?"
"Victim I.D.s as Thomas Li. Cause of death, cardiac arrest. He was diagnosed three years ago with terminal congestive heart failure. He should've died then," she told him as they stepped into the operating room.
"He had a bio-mech heart. It's a pricey organ. Not as dependable as a perfect stem cell regrow but top of the line for a bio-mechanical organ," one of the doctors said.
"So why are we here?" Leonard asked. Dead guy in a hospital was actually pretty normal.
"There's no record of any transplant for him. He's not on any official recipient list. And there's something else," the man said before handing them a tablet.
"They killed me," Thomas said, waving a gun around, "They killed me... I don't want to hurt anyone."
"If you just put the gun down..." the surgeon said before Thomas switched languages.
"It's Cantonese," Jemma said. "'You're not listening. It's almost nine-eighteen. They killed me.' Nine-eighteen is the time of death."
Leonard looked at his partner, "How could he have known that?"
"May I help you?" the receptionist at Crusher Medical said.
"We're here to speak with Alyssa Ogawa," Leonard said.
"Of course," the woman smiled at him before making a call to Miss Ogawa's office.
Thanks to his mama and Scotty, they learned that Thomas Li had a Crusher Alpha, a top-of-the-line bio-mechanical heart. Scotty found some kind of circuit modifications on it and he was running diagnostics while Leonard and Jemma went to talk to the people at Crusher.
"So…?" Jemma whispered.
"So," he smiled. "You kissed me."
"I did. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable or anything. I just… maybe I read you wrong or…"
"Jem, stop. I'm not gonna lie, it caught me by surprise but it didn't make me uncomfortable. It was nice."
"I'll have to remember that for next time," she smiled.
"So there is gonna be a next time," Leonard looked at her. Jemma gave him a wink and a smile.
"Detectives," the receptionist got their attention. "Miss Ogawa will see you now."
The pair was led into a nice office where a beautiful Asian woman was sitting behind a desk. She rose quickly to shake their hands. "Detectives, what can I do for you?"
"Somehow this heart found its way into a man named Thomas Li," Leonard said, showing her a picture on his phone as they all sat down. "Do you have any idea how that may have happened?"
"I don't, but it's definitely one of our hearts," she said.
"You are aware that it's illegal to resell bio-mech organs," he told her.
"We are very aware of that. Crusher complies with all regulations," Miss Ogawa told him.
"What about this piece? We found it in the heart," Leonard made the picture bigger to show her what Scotty found.
"That doesn't belong. It's aftermarket. Voids the warranty," the executive told him as she typed something into her computer.
"Well, lucky for you, Mister Li's dead," Jemma muttered.
"The heart is registered to a Sylvia Golinski," Miss Ogawa told them. "It says here that she passed away a little over two years ago."
"Standard procedure when someone dies is to destroy the bio-mechanical organ," his partner said. "How is that verified?"
"Well, the funeral home sends us a… a document," Miss Ogawa told them.
Leonard chuckled, "Oh. That's failsafe. We're gonna need that paperwork."
"Henry Mills?" Leonard asked the man in front of him. "I'm Detective McCoy. We're investigating the cremation of a woman here two years ago, Misses Sylvia Golinski."
"You're cops," Henry chuckled. "I know you know how many people die every day."
"We also know statute ninety-two dash six-oh-one dash eleven-B requires you to keep permanent records," Jemma said before handing Mills the electronic paper. "This is a letter to Crusher Medical, confirming the destruction of Misses Golinski's bio-mech heart. And there," she pointed, "is your signature."
"We have to take out any inorganic parts and destroy them. Otherwise, they mess up the machine," Mills told them.
"But you didn't destroy Misses Golinski's heart, Henry. We found it in someone else's body. You wanna tell us how it got there?" Leonard asked.
"I sold it," Henry shrugged.
"How many?" Jemma asked.
"A lot. Over the years, a hundred maybe?" Mills said. "It's only illegal so the people who manufacture them can make more money."
"Do you refurbish the hearts?" Leonard asked.
"When I find one, I make a call," Henry sighed. "Guy named Oscar answers, I don't know his last name. Showed up here, offered to buy any bio-mech hearts I came across. Said he knew people who needed them. That because of me, they'd be staying alive longer. And these perfectly good hearts are going in the trash anyway. Just because something is used doesn't mean it's got no value. He comes by, makes the pick-up, and pays me."
Jemma and Leonard looked at each other just as his phone rang. He stepped away from Mills and his partner. "McCoy."
"I checked into Li's financials. On the fifteenth of every month, he made a transfer to an unmarked account. Always for five grand," Uhura said on the other end of the call.
"How long?" he asked.
"It's been going on for twenty-five months like clockwork," Uhura told him.
"Alright. Keep looking," Leonard sighed.
"Okay. Hey, did your mom and Scotty reach you?" she asked.
"Not yet, why?"
"Call them," Uhura told him before she hung up. He was too curious not to see what they found.
"We figured out what the modifications were for," Scotty said as soon as the call connected.
"Don't keep me waiting, Scotty," Leonard chuckled.
"It's a custom version of a terahertz frequency transponder and limiter. What it does, what all of these little mods working together do, they limit how long the heart will function," the engineer told him.
"It's effectively a timer," his mother added. "It would count down precisely thirty days. Unless someone resets it remotely. At the end of the thirty days, it would stop, the mods shut down the organ."
"That's what they're designed to do. Whoever gave Mister Li this heart did not reset it for him. That's what he meant at the emergency room, when he said, 'They killed me.' And he was right," Scotty sighed.
"There could be more than a hundred of these things out there," Leonard told his friend and his mother. "It's an extortion racket."
"Aye, lad, they're all on borrowed time," Scotty said before he hung up.
"Henry," Leonard said, "You're gonna call Oscar, tell him it's time for a pickup."
"Okay, I can do that," Mills told him.
"We're gonna bait him?" Jemma asked.
He nodded, "Yep."
"Where the hell is this guy, McCoy?" Stiles asked over comms.
"Henry, you better not be wasting our time," Leonard said.
"Yeah, well, I said he'd show. I never said he was punctual. He will be here. Just be patient," Mills told him. "So, what's the deal with your friend? She's hot." Jemma gave Henry a look but she didn't say anything.
"You're aware that even without the two guns on her body, she could still kill you, right?" Leonard asked, earning a smile from his partner.
"I'd let you get first dibs," she said. "You know, an outlet for all that repressed rage."
"That's very sweet of you, darlin'," Leonard smiled.
"Yea, well, I am the nice one," Jemma winked.
"Hey, that's him," Henry said before he grabbed the case and went to meet the car. "Oscar."
"Hey, man. You ready for me?" Oscar asked. They could hear him over the comm they put in the case.
"Yeah. Just one today," Mills said, handing over the organ container.
"Thanks. Be seeing ya," Oscar said before driving off.
"Aerial drone engaged," Jemma said. "Thermal tracking online."
"He's parked outside the back of a warehouse. I'll take the south side. You guys cover the entrance," Stiles said before he took a team with him and ran around the warehouse.
"The building structure is blocking the thermal," Jemma said, the left side of her face lit up. "I don't know how many are in there."
"Directions were good this time," Oscar said over comms.
"You're late. Give it here," another voice inside the room with Oscar said.
"In position and waiting for orders, sir," one of the uniformed officers told him.
"Yeah, just sit tight. Let the wire do it's work," Leonard said.
"Bring me the bath. Bring it here. Don't spill anything," the unidentified voice said.
"Can I watch while you cut her?" Oscar asked.
"Bones, they're doing a transplant," Jemma said.
"All teams, go. Go, go, go," Leonard ordered.
"Police! Everybody down!" one of the officers called as they all entered the building. "Police!"
"Ma'am, can you hear me? Ma'am, open your eyes. Can you hear me?" another officer asked a woman lying on an operating table as the others secured Oscar.
"What have you done? I need that heart to live," the woman told them. "What have you done? What have you done?"
"Do you have any idea what kind of sentence comes with running an organ-trafficking ring?" Leonard asked the woman across from him.
"I'm not running anything," Doctor Julia Bashir told him.
"Then who is?" he asked.
"Someone who cares about people, regardless of how much money they have," the woman shrugged. "Don't you see what I'm doing here? I'm helping people."
"Yeah, you know, I'd almost go with you on that, except for the mods that you put on the hearts. You know, timers which run out to zero," Leonard told her.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"You modify the hearts, then you put them in people. When they can't pay you what you want, you let the timers run out and they die," he said, putting a bunch of pictures on the tablet in front of her.
"That is not true. Those mods are for remote diagnostics, in case any problems arise. W-We... we can..."
"Is that what they told you? Look, I understand. You were manipulated. It's not easy to accept that. Now, don't you want a chance to make that right? Who's in charge?"
"Her name is Karen."