“Quite the Buffy dreamhouse you whipped up here.”

Andrew has brought Spike and the BuffyBot – containing Buffy’s stored brain patterns – to suburbia, to the home he’d outfitted for the real Buffy, whose knowledge of her true life has been erased. Standing in the real Buffy’s kitchen, Spike is suitably impressed. ‘Buffy’ quips that all it’s missing is a pink convertible.

Andrew is in love with the place – it’s styled exactly as a woman of Buffy’s age and social standing might have, decorated accordingly. He’s clearly very pleased with himself. It’s only when he notices the red stain on the floor that his smile begins to falter.

Spike confirms by smelling it that it’s wine and not blood. But the glass surrounding it indicates Buffy fought her attacker. ‘Buffy’ looks at Andrew: with her memories removed would she have even been able to fight? Andrew doesn’t know, which worries Spike. The vampire resists the notion that this situation was planned – and even if it was, someone now has the real Buffy in a vulnerable position! Andrew looks at him pointedly as he glares at him, but then points out which Buffy he’s referring to: the Bot containing Buffy’s mind has vanished!

Luckily, she’s only exploring the rest of the house, pausing at the top of the stairs to once again admire her surroundings. Spike catches up with her and Buffy asks him how Andrew managed this – not the plan itself, but giving Buffy a normal life: something she has been unable to find for herself, despite the multiple attempts. “He gave me the kind of life I couldn’t create for myself.” As Buffy looks around her, all she sees is potential: the study where she worked, the pictures on the wall, the room that could one day be a nursery. Spike reminds her that the real Buffy only thinks it’s all real, but Buffy disagrees. To her, with no memories, it must be very real. Andrew calls them from downstairs. He had placed a tracking device in the real Buffy’s jewellery, so he could track her down if needed – and the signal just activated.

Buffy, not that she knows who she is, awakens tied to a chair in a dank basement. Her mouth is covered in duct tape, which is suddenly, and painfully, ripped off her face by her captor, rogue renegade Slayer, Simone Dofler. “I always knew you were a joke,” her former student tells the clueless Buffy. In fact, she’s rather embarrassed that the ‘great and powerful’ Buffy would give it all up and live in suburbia while a decoy fights her battles for her. She notes that Severin must have taken more of her power than she first thought.

Buffy looks up at Simone. She has no idea about any of the things she’s referring to: “Slayer? What? Who are you? Do you want money?” Simone strikes her across the face with a closed fist. “Don’t insult me Summers,” she maintains, getting angrier at her prisoner’s denials. “I thought you were gutless before. Before I saw this. What kind of a woman leads an army to battle just so she can see them die?” Simone has a firearm in her hands now. She wants to know how ‘The Chosen One’, the great Buffy – the greatest Slayer of all time – could give that up to become a housewife. She’s actually quite disgusted.

Buffy, still confused, just agrees with everything her captor says: “I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m terrible at Slaying! You’re the best Slayer!” She yells in defiance. The tears coming from her eyes, however, are real. “But, just let me go… Please?”

For the first time since she started talking, Simone stops, quiet suddenly. “Who are you?” she asks her prisoner.

Outside San Francisco Police Department’s Headquarters, Xander, Dawn and Dowling are on edge. There’s no lights on inside the building, Xander notes. Dawn asks if the Miranda zompire could have already taken the whole building, but Dowling wants to know if the police have been targeted on purpose. As they move closer to the entrance, Xander spots a body on the floor. “Zompires can’t put sentences together – much less master plans. Your partner was just unlucky and unprepared.” There’s a coldness to his voice, almost no empathy in his words.

Dowling takes offence at Xander’s tone: “Unprepared? She was a cop!” He’s determined to go inside and discover what’s going on, but Xander tells him that if there are bodies outside then the vamp has left the scene. Xander checks the corpse: Miranda has only just left. He tells Dawn to prepare the truck, rather harshly. Dawn reminds him that she’s been doing this for a long time, but he uncharacteristically yells at her, telling her to just listen to him. Dawn is taken aback by his loud response.

Before she can lodge another protest, the police officer Xander was looking over wakes up! She grabs a hold of Dowling, begging him to take her away from here. He asks who did this, as if he needs confirmation of the answer, but the officer is barely even to speak a description that matches Miranda and points down towards the last place she saw the creature.

Dawn calls an ambulance, while Xander retrieves an axe from the back of his truck. He asks Dawn to stay with the survivor, but she thinks she’ll be more help to him. Unnoticed by the couple, Dawn’s phone falls into the back of the truck.

Xander apologises for barking at her, but he’s frustrated: there’s no way Dowling, drunk or not, is going to let them go in there and just stake his partner. He’s going to go in whether they tell him to or not. That’s why he needs Dawn to wait outside. As he walks towards Dowling, Dawn doesn’t quite buy his explanations.

Dowling takes a weapon from Xander and asks him if they really have to do this. Xander replies with a yep. Dowling’s nervous – he explains that he hasn’t taken out many vampires and this one is his partner. Xander stops what he’s doing and slams Dowling into the wall with surprising force and anger: “Yeah, it sucks. First time I had to kill one of my friends I was sixteen years old. And when I think about that night, I don’t see the face of a vampire. I just see Jesse’s face, but believe me, you don’t want her hurting more people.” He releases his grip and taps Dowling on the shoulder.

Dawn stays with the wounded officer as the two men walk into the nearest alley. Dawn cannot hear her phone ringing from the truck – and certainly can’t see Buffy’s name flash up on the screen.

Aboard Spike’s ship, Buffy gets through to Dawn’s answer machine and leaves a message. She thinks better of telling her that she’s actually not pregnant and is a robot, thinking it best to talk in person. She asks her sister to call her back. Spike catches the end of the message and realises that Buffy hasn’t told anyone that she isn’t pregnant. As she starts to explain, a cockroach comes into the room to inform them that ‘Master Andrew’ has requested their presence on the bridge. Spike is clearly not amused, but Buffy calms him down: they need Andrew.

On the bridge, or rather in the cramped cockpit of the small craft, Andrew reveals that he has managed to track the signal in the real Buffy’s necklace. They’ll be there in ten. It’s an island, just off the coast of Sausalito, a place ironically named Angel Island. Andrew chuckles at the joke, but Spike doesn’t find it very amusing, walking out the room due to the sheer awkwardness of Angel’s mention.

In a small lab onboard, Andrew later finds himself adding a new arm to the BuffyBot. He apologises for the entire situation. He realises now he should have asked before doing and that he’s responsible: if he hadn’t done any of this, she wouldn’t have had to feel all of this mess. The BuffyBot literally gets up in the middle of his procedure, which Andrew wasn’t anticipating, sending him backing away in fear. “Yeah, Andrew. I would rather not have gone through any of this. And you know I’m not talking about the arm.”

She sits up, holding the bedsheet close to her chest, a literal symbol of how her privacy has been breached. “You have any idea… you can’t have any idea… how…how the world just fell out from under me when I saw that test,” she explains, still quite angry. But there’s a tone of gentleness underneath. “Then having to come to such crystal clear certainty…” Andrew removes his goggles, face drawn and avoiding her gaze. “You know, I understand you,” Buffy suddenly says, this time more softly.

“Your ‘mastermind’ thing? You’re still trying to impress Warren, even now. You know how lame that is? But that house – what kind of game was that? Why put so much work into it, so much detail?”

He looks at her, this time with great truth and clarity on his face: “I thought I could give you the life you’d want if you spent the last however many-years saving the world.” He looks away from Buffy in sadness. She looks at him. There’s gratitude in her eyes. There’s silence for a moment, no words between them. Andrew breathes in deeply and then exhales. “That was kind of a moment for us, right? So we’re good?”

“Fat chance,” Buffy tells him, smiling. An alert from the cockpit informs them that they’re approaching the island and that they should report to the nearest, and also, the only airlock.

On the streets hunting Miranda Cheung, Xander tells Dowling to tighten his grip on his axe, but Dowling sees something in the shadows and tells him to hang back. “I appreciate your history with this stuff, Xander. Sorry I showed up drunk at your place. Very unprofessional.” There’s another dead officer on the floor. Dowling checks his pulse and then moves forward. As they pass another body, trying to keep the noise down, Xander whispers, mostly to himself. “I don’t miss any of this: the smells, the shadows… the way it gets your head buzzing.” Dowling tells him to shush and that he doesn’t smell anything, but as they approach the centre of the building, they walk into a bar strewn with bodies and blood.

Xander looks at Dowling: “You just don’t recognise it yet.” Dowling calls in reinforcements, but as a result, he misses Xander’s whispered warning: Cheung comes from underneath a corpse that she had been feeding on, still naked from her autopsy. She easily dodges Xander’s stake, and throws him to one side. She looks at Dowling and snarls. He looks at her and wonders if she knows him still. The horror in front of him in the place of his friend is too much however, and he races forward, stake in position – but he’s not strong enough.

As her teeth go for his throat, a strike from Xander with his axe is caught mid blow by the zompire, who throws the blade aside. As she grabs Xander and prepares to feed, a gun shot is heard suddenly. Dowling stands behind his former partner, knowing the gun won’t kill her, but doesn’t have time to move before the angry vamp throws Xander’s limp body towards Dowling. Both of them on the floor, Miranda walks towards them and, as she picks up Xander by the scruff of his neck, Dowling, once again, reaches for a stake. As Xander is thrown back he hits his head and yells in pain. His screams distract the zombie Miranda who doesn’t notice Dowling strike until the stake is already in her chest.

There is a genuine look of recognition on her face, Dowling thinks, as she explodes into dust. He stands there, shaking, eyes wide, mouth open, clearly in shock. As he shrinks to the floor, Xander looks at him, rubbing the back of his head. “Was I right, Detective,” he asks politely. “As the dust clears, which face do you see?”

On Angel Island, the cockroaches take the ship aloft, having dropped Spike, Buffy and Andrew onto the shore. Buffy thinks the ship will ruin any element of surprise. Spike isn’t that worried: he doesn’t see anyone attacking them, while Andrew also points out that they are dealing with kidnappers: they’re not going to send someone to attack. Spike suggests that until they know who they’re dealing with, Buffy should hold back.

This suggestion does not go down well: “We’re not playing that game anymore Spike. I’m not pregnant, remember. I’m not human.” Spike takes her statement just as badly and leaps on ahead without her. Buffy watches as he waits for them on a rock, looking out to sea. Andrew reminds her that they’re on the island to find her real body and don’t need distractions, and Buffy agrees. She asks Andrew who they’re looking for. “Who’d you leave in that house? If my personality is in this,” she says pointing to her chest, “did you just ‘program’ the one in the house?” Andrew confirms that the body was left blank without Buffy’s essence, so yes, he programmed Buffy’s mind.

“But I kept an eye on her, and she started taking on more personality. Sometimes, she’d have people over and she’d interact with them naturally.” Buffy asks what the personality is like, but Andrew is hesitant to answer. Spike tells Buffy not to worry. He can’t see anything from his vantage spot. Buffy then decides that they should separate: they stand a better chance of finding her body quicker that way. They plan to reconvene in fifteen minutes, and set out in different directions – with an order from Buffy not to engage.

Spike comes across an abandoned gas station. He scoffs at Buffy’s “Do not engage” strategy, but investigating closer, he finds nothing amiss. Andrew is also not finding anything, apart from that he’s still afraid of the dark.

Buffy finds a stretch of abandoned warehouses and starts inside. Walking into an old workshop, Buffy finds what she’s looking for: the real Buffy’s necklace in the centre of the room, still beeping it’s silent signal out to Andrew. “So what happened to her?” she questions. Before Buffy can do anything, she’s smacked across the head with a plank of wood and rendered unconscious. The real Buffy stands over her. There’s a look of intense anger on her face and she has newly added pink streaks in her normally blonde hair.