A/N: Some timeline info. The scene with Kari, Takuya and Koji takes place before Tommy…disappears. In the order of days. That means there's still a scene or two missing to explain how much Kari's been able to tell – but the prompt didn't suit it so I'm back to Yutaka. :D

Concurring Overwrite
Data Fragment 10: Glitch

Yutaka had found a number in the purse, and tried calling it. It seemed like an ordinary enough number, and he didn't think anything would be unusual about it…until the operator told him it would cost thirteen ice-cream cones for the next four seconds.

When he'd gotten his head back on straight, hung up the phone and done the mental arithmetic, he'd decided that phone call would have been ridiculously high-priced – and, if he had been younger and more open-minded, out if this world. He'd also decided that either the number or telephone operations had a glitch somewhere, since ice cream didn't qualify as currency anywhere.

He called his brother's cell instead – which rang in his back pocket. Then his friends, because Tommy might have found himself in the station, like a lot of stray passengers, and simply headed over to one of their houses. Like Takuya's, where they had been planning on going. Or JP's because it was closer. After all, trying to find someone in any station was a tall order; he might've headed off and then forgotten to call.

But it was rapidly diminishing as a possibility as JP failed to pick up and Takuya said he hadn't seen anyone. He also added that there wouldn't be much of a party; as welcome as everyone would be, it seemed that only half their group was in good health. Takuya did emphasise though that there was something he needed to talk to Tommy about, so if he could call, if not come, that would be greatly appreciated.

Yutaka found himself saying he didn't know where Tommy was – which got the other's attention.

'You mean he's missing?!'

Yutaka told what had happened on the train. Takuya covered the phone and muttered to somebody on the other end, then uncovered it again. 'Shinya hasn't seen him either.' There was a pause, then he added: 'I'll call Koji. Zoe's parents are taking her to the hospital, so there's no point ringing her.'

Yutaka thanked him and hung up, looking for the number of the last of Tommy's friends in his brother's phone. It was a land-line number, he noted: a problem if the boy wasn't at home – but he was, luckily.

Though he hadn't seen him either.

'He might be stuck on the train,' Koichi, quite ironically in Yutaka's opinion, said. 'There's something blocking all the trains.'

Which is why he'd had to wait for his mother to drive him instead of taking one.

'He was on the train,' Yutaka explained, covering his ears as a loud burst of static screamed from the station's intercom. 'With me. He's not now.'

He explained the rest of the story, to which Koichi was as baffled as Takuya was.

'You think that woman had something to do with it?' he asked tentatively.

'Who else could have taken him? He was practically unconscious – ' Yutaka's voice shook a bit.

'Calm down,' the other said, sounding a tad panicked himself, though he returned to his calm tone thereafter. 'You said this woman had a number you couldn't call?'

'I wouldn't say I couldn't,' Yutaka said, but he gave the number when it was requested. Maybe it was the phone company acting up, he thought, but evidentially Koichi hadn't thought so, as he asked Yutaka to stay on the line as he went to get something.

He was back in a moment and tapping something into – something. A computer? Yutaka guessed – but then the other cried out in surprise and dropped the something. Smaller than a computer, because it made a minute clatter on a tiled floor.

'Virus?'

Koichi sounded like he was talking – or reading – to himself at this point, and Yutaka could make neither head nor tail of it. What did a virus have to do with anything, after all? Unless…

'Tommy's virus, you mean?'

'No…' The boy still sounded distant, and Yutaka wasn't sure if the "no" was addressed to him or not. 'The number…you gave… It just says…virus…'

That made absolutely no sense to Yutaka, but he couldn't help but think it was someone's sick idea of a joke. 'I'm telling the police about Tommy,' he said resolutely. This is getting nowhere. The crowds had finally begun thinning, and he could see a pair of blue-uniformed men talking and writing on a pad in the corner.

'I don't think – ' Koichi began, now sounding more focused, but before he could finish whatever he was going to say, a screech of static interrupted the call and Yutaka was left listening to the dial-tone.