"Damn, I was having a good day," Leonard groaned.

"Day just started, Bones," Jemma whispered.

"Woke up next to you, didn't I?" he whispered. They haven't gone much further than making out on his couch and him sleeping with her in his arms -thank you, portable charger- but it was perfectly fine with him to go slow. Truthfully, his day was gonna go downhill from there anyway, but a crazy bot who killed people –including some cops- breaking out of the evidence locker just made it a whole lot worse.

"So, you wanna tell me why I can't find any information on this XTK?" she asked from where she was leaning against his desk.

"Most of it's redacted," he sighed. "It's an embarrassment to the department. You heard of a company called RoboSys?"

"Of course, it's where I was born."

"Well, then you know not long after they were integrated into the police force, the GSKs began to malfunction, the JTKs got lumped into the whole thing and you all got replaced by the VXs. After RoboSys' order was canceled they went from being one of the most successful companies in the world to a complete failure overnight. They had a mountain of debt and a bunch of androids that nobody wanted, the guy who ran the company came up with a new bot."

"The XTK."

"Designed to be more soldier than cop, there was a big demo for it downtown. All the politicians were there, major power players. Let's just say it didn't go well. I only remember pieces but I know that it was a three day siege. We had triage set up outside the building… Medics couldn't keep up with the casualties. We fought it with everything we had. Armor-piercing rounds, light bombs, waves of VXs. Almost thirty cops went into the building, none of them came out alive."

"How many XTKs were there?" Jemma asked. Leonard slowly raised one finger and her eyes widened.

"On the third day, we finally cornered her up on the top floor. We destroyed it. The only thing that was left was its head. Which has been sitting in evidence for two years. Until today."

"No wonder Section Thirty-one was trying to get their hands on it," she said. "This thing could start a war."

"And fight it. And probably win," Leonard sighed just as his phone rang. "McCoy."

"Hey lad, Pike sent me what was left of the bot that walked out of your evidence locker. I got good and bad news," Scotty said over the phone. Leonard put him on speaker, Stiles and Uhura moved closer. "Bad news is, whoever programmed it is talented."

"How talented?" Uhura asked.

"Well, the body was basically just an old scrap bot, lass," Scotty told her. "There's nothing unique or traceable about the materials used, but it's been ingeniously modified. Designed with a hidden secondary power source. The officers that took the android out thought they'd destroyed it, but once it was booked into evidence, that alternate power activated, and, well, we all know what happened next." The damn thing went on a rampage.

"Do you have any idea who could create such a thing?" Leonard asked.

"Uh, I don't know. I could make a few calls, ask around," Scotty told them.

"You said something about good news," Stiles sighed.

"Aye. The good news, she may have her own Achilles' heel. As I was saying, the materials used to make the body are very crude, and if it's running on a secondary power source, I'll wager she won't get very far. She'll need a new body."

"That's not gonna be hard," Uhura said. "San Francisco is one of the top tech and robotics cities in the world."

"She could get a body anywhere in this city," Stiles agreed.

"Or not. I have a disturbance call," Jemma told them, her face lit up. "Warehouse district. Target fled the scene but there's a victim, conscious, minor lacerations. It's a robotics repair shop."

"Leonard, Jemma, go," Pike ordered.

"The warehouse is owned by a Nigel Bernard. The bot was here when he got home. EMTs are with him now," his partner gave him the preliminary report.

"Looks like it came here to change bodies," Leonard said. The body it left the precinct in was dead on the ground, minus the head. "What does this Bernard guy do?" He expected an answer from his partner but she was staring behind him. "Jem?"

"Whoever Doctor Bernard is, that's not him," she said.

"What do you mean? Do you know this guy?" he asked as 'Bernard' walked over to them.

"You're still a police officer," the man said with a wistful look in his eyes.

"I am. They call me Jemma," she told him.

"Yes, of course they do," 'Bernard' smiled. "May I?" Jemma nodded at the question and 'Bernard' reached out and gently held her face his hands like he couldn't believe she was there. Jemma's face lit up almost like it does when Leonard touches her. "I never thought that…"

"Am I missing something?" Leonard asked. He was only a tiny bit jealous.

"Forgive me. It's been quite a morning for surprises," 'Bernard' smiled.

"Detective Leonard McCoy, This is Doctor Lawrence Marvick, he is, for all intents and purposes, my father," his partner told him. That explained the look that the man gave her. Jemma was the daughter he probably never thought he'd see again.

"You're the Larry Marvick, founder of RoboSys?" Leonard asked.

"Regrettably, I'm a very long way from those days. I had to change my name just to live in peace," Marvick told them. "How are you still on the force?"

"I was recommissioned," Jemma said with a smile. "I'm the only one."

"I've missed you so much," Marvick touched her face again and Leonard could see the tears in the man's eyes. Definitely a father/daughter moment.

"Jems?" Leonard whispered. She gave him a nod. "Doctor Marvick, what did the bot want from you?"

"Her name is Miranda, she's the XTK prototype. She wanted me to take her to my lab but I told her that I no longer have a real lab. I lost my license to practice robotics. She didn't take that very well."

"You know, for a guy who doesn't have a license in robotics, you kind of got a lot of robotics here," Leonard said, looking around the room.

"I just repair things now and I sell old parts whenever I can. We all have to eat, Detective," Marvick told him.

"Why would she want to use your lab?" Jemma asked.

"I don't know," the robotics expert told them.

"You changed your name. You've gone to extraordinary lengths to keep a low profile, but somebody programmed Miranda's head to find you. Do you have any idea who?" the detective asked.

"I've made a lot of enemies since that botched demonstration, Detective. As I'm sure you can imagine," Marvick sighed.

"Any of them capable of building an android like the one that broke into our evidence locker?" Leonard asked.

"I honestly don't know."

His partner looked up at her creator, "Doctor Marvick…"

"Please, Jemma, call me Larry."

"Larry, do you have any idea where she's going? What she might need or want?"

"No. I went through all of this two years ago. I don't know what she wanted then, and I don't know what she wants now. Miranda… she was the greatest mistake of my career… of my life. I take responsibility for that, but it's not my fault that she got out." The man took a deep breath and looked Leonard in the eyes. "I don't know if you know what it's like to be part of something that defines you forever and in a way that you do not wish to be defined."

"I do," Leonard said.

"Then you also know that it's not easy. Everywhere I went, people looked. They knew. They heard my name, they knew. 'There goes that guy that made that killer robot that murdered all those people.' My whole life defined by that one thing," Marvick said. Leonard could actually feel his pain. A few months after the XTK went rogue, he lost his team and it's been following him around since.

"Thank you for your time, Doctor. If you can think of anything that'll help us in our investigation, please give me a call," Leonard said.

"Larry, I know this is hard for you," Jemma said. "It's not our past that defines us. It's what we do now."

"That's insightful," Marvick smiled.

"My partner's pretty smart when he wants to be," she chuckled.

"There is a chance, mind you, a very small chance," Marvick said, "that if I had some of my old equipment back I might be able to trace her."

"We'll take all the help we can get," Leonard sighed. "I'll call Pike."

"Oh my God…" Scotty squeezed Jemma's shoulder in excitement. "That's Larry Marvick." Leonard never thought he'd see the day where Scotty gushed over someone.

"We know," Jemma smiled.

"This your temple?" Marvick asked Scotty.

"It is. Doctor Montgomery Scott at your service," the engineer said.

"You're recording this, right?" Leonard whispered to Jemma. She nodded with a smile.

"You've been such an inspiration. The JTKs are a work of bloody art. They're the greatest robotic, uh, achievement of our generation, uh, in my humble opinion," Scotty said.

"Thank you," Marvick smiled.

"He's only saying that because I help him pick up girls," Jemma chuckled. "Or… I did before he started dating Uhura."

"You interact outside of your work?" Marvick asked Jemma.

"I do. I even have an apartment," she smiled.

"She's something, that one," Scotty said. "Saved my life a few times. Saved all of us a few times."

"You're my friends," Jemma wrapped an arm around Scotty's shoulder.

Marvick just watched her the whole time. It was like a proud papa seeing his kid go off to an Ivy League college. To her friends, Jemma was human. Yes, she was technically a synthetic but her actions, her emotions, her soul, it was all human. How they treated her was no different than you would treat any of your friends and her creator could see it.

"So, Miranda?" Leonard asked. As much as he was enjoying Scotty fanboying over his hero and Jemma getting a family reunion, they had a homicidal bot to stop.

"I need the silver case marked ten-sixty-eight," Marvick said as he looked though the gear that Pike had released to them. "The contents may give us the ability to track Miranda, and I emphasize 'may'."

"After we find her, what then?" Jemma asked.

"Well, hopefully, we'll be able to shut her down peacefully and avoid any further bloodshed," Marvick said.

"That's a pretty big 'if'," Leonard sighed.

"Aye, it is," Scotty said.

"I think I found something," Jem told them.

"Yes? May I see?" Marvick asked.

Jemma handed him the clear case, "What are these?"

"My greatest achievement. It's what makes you you, my dear," Marvick smiled.

"Synthetic souls. So, you're to thank for that," Leonard chuckled.

"May I ask what your inspiration was?" Scotty asked as they all looked at the tiny silver cylinders that somehow became everything that Jemma was.

"Well, I was trying to capture the intangible. You understand, of course, that DNA can be isolated under a microscope. Uh, you know, hair color, eye color, height, weight, ethnicity... the fundamental basic data can be traced to individual chromosomes. But the soul… That is who we are. That is our passion. Our pain. It's why we laugh, why we cry, why we strive to be better. DNA, it's the data, but the soul that's the story," Marvick said as all the eyes in the room turned to Jemma. "That is the essence of life. I wanted to create life."

"What did you do differently? With Miranda's synthetic soul?" she asked Marvick. Her creator looked like he was about to say something but Leonard beat him to it.

"Doesn't matter, you're not like her, darlin'," he smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. "You're you."

"The blueprint is the same," she whispered. "What if…?"

"You. Are. Not. Her," Leonard repeated, ignoring their audience. "There is nothing in the universe that would make you like her."

"I had hoped..." Marvick said with a smile. "You two are…"

"A work in progress," Leonard smiled at his girl as his phone rang. It was Uhura and Stiles calling to tell them that the XTK stole a bunch of ZNA processing cores. "Miranda just hit a company downtown and stole processing cores. That mean anything to any of you?"

"They're processors," Jemma said. "Every android has one."

"She stole five hundred ZNAs," he told them.

"That's bad," Scotty muttered. "ZNAs are highly advanced. And that many…"

"Simple math. One chip per android," Marvick said. "With those processing cores, you'd be well on your way to conceivably making an android army."

"That is bad."

"Are you okay?" Leonard asked his partner… girlfriend… both.

"I don't know," Jemma told him, she was sitting on the edge of Scotty's bed. As soon as he got within reach of her, she was in his arms, her face pressed against his neck.

"You're having one hell of a day, huh?" he chuckled. "It's gonna be okay. We're gonna find her and stop her."

"It's not her I'm worried about. You heard Larry. Her mere existence ruined his life. Who's to say I won't be political causality of this fight?"

"I do. I will not let anything happen to you."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Bones."

"I wouldn't do that and you know it," Leonard smiled and pressed a soft kiss against her lips. "We will figure this out, darlin'. Come on."