"Well, nobody's acting suspicious," Meiru said. She and Enzan started heading for one of the smaller conference rooms near the back of the convention center, which had a lock on its doors and a large DO NOT ENTER sign.

"Time for Phase Two," Enzan said, plugging in Blues. The lock registered him and opened.

"You just like Phase Two because it's your part of the plan," Meiru said, grinning.

He opened the door as Blues returned to his PET. As they stepped in and closed it behind them, he smirked back and said, "Come on, as long as they don't know, it's foolproof." Meiru flicked on the lights. They weren't using that much of this room; all they needed was four computers.

"We should've taken over one of the offices," she sighed, looking at the large room. Meijin, Yuuichirou, and Manabe joined them as she said, "It would be a lot more super spy than having all this blank space behind us..."

"And this lighting isn't dramatically dark at all," Meijin said. "In the movies, they're always in some tiny, dim, spooky little place."

"Let's get down to business," Manabe said firmly. "For heaven's sake..."

Enzan, Meiru, Meijin, and Yuuichirou each took a seat. "Plug in, Blues! Transmission!"

"Plug in, Roll! Transmission!"

"Plug in, Gateman! Transmission!"

"Plug in, Rockman! Transmission!"

As soon as the four Navis touched down, they got to work. The computers were picking up hundreds of different signals; those of every PET in the conference center. With the proper poking and prodding, they were like a window into those PETs, showing what coding was inside the devices. That told the Navis what programs were running and what sort of Navi was residing there. They were checking for anything out of place, anything that would render an unlucky Navi or Operator helpless. Nobody had any doubt that the kidnapper had something on his person to disable the Net Saviors' skilled Navis.

"At least all of the Net Saviors are attending," Manabe said.

"Yep. Nobody to wonder about," Meiru said.

Down below, Roll focused on analyzing the PET readout for a moment more before letting it go. "Nothing here," she reported, promptly starting on another one.

"Papa, do you think it'd be helpful to keep track of the Navis' attacks?" Rockman asked two computers down.

"Certainly," Hikari-hakase replied. "If we find any signs of a struggle somewhere, it'll come in handy." Meiru had been hoping they wouldn't have to resort to the scientists' brainchild, Phase Three. It was clearly their idea, because they would have nothing to do with it: Meiru and Enzan would be keeping an eye on the hotel's network round-the-clock - and postponing the conference's official end - until something happened so they could immediately pounce. Meiru never did well after the first sleepless night, and depending on how patient their villain was, they could be waiting for days.

There was a yell from outside that fell short far too quickly, the lights flickered, and their computers switched to battery power as the power went out. "I have a bad feeling about this," Manabe muttered as the power came back on. "Meiru-chan, Enzan-kun, come with me," she said, getting to her feet. The two Net Saviors plugged their Navis out, then followed her into the hallway.

"It sounded like Austin," Roll remarked from Meiru's wrist. The three arrived on the scene to find nearly every Net Savior crowded around the reception counter's ports. Just as Roll had said, Austin was missing. Meiru and Enzan needed no prompting to plug in as well.

Roll and Blues landed in the center of more control than chaos. Nothing looked out of place except for the colorful array of Navis scouring every nook and cranny of the system for evidence. The two Navis did a slow trip around the digital room for themselves, senses on full alert. But neither of them said a word - there was nothing to say. Even Roll's antennae, usually such an aid when it came to locating data, were doing her no good. The only thing they noticed was obvious; Commandoman wasn't among the Navis on the hunt. Roll and Blues came to a halt next to Splashwoman. "What's going on?" Roll asked the other girl.

"No idea," Splashwoman reported. "Commandoman was here at some point, but he just plugged out without doing anything. Otherwise, we can't find anything out of place."

"What have you searched for so far?" Roll asked. "There must be something he was trying to do..."

Blues said, "I doubt we'll find any clues in the atmospheric data; it's too easy to tamper with. What we want is tracks."

"Searchman's specialty..." She quickly looked around the room. Now worried, she turned back to the other two and asked, "Hey, where is Searchman?"

"You can't register him, Roll?" Meiru asked, concerned.

"I sure haven't seen him... Blues?" Roll asked.

"Same here," the red Navi said. Both Navis concentrated, Roll spreading her antennae again to pick up as much as she could. Their Operators looked at each other. Neither one of them liked where this was going. Meiru looked up to see that Laika was part of the mob of Operators, just as she'd thought; but he wasn't even pretending to be monitoring anything on his PET. He had his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable.

"He hasn't ever been in here, as far as I can tell," her Navi said, calling her attention back to the scene inside the network.

Blues finished his analysis seconds later. "She's right, Enzan-sama."

Meiru and Enzan turned to Manabe, who had been watching close by. She said, "I hope you're not suggesting what I think you are." Still, she stepped back from the crowd and got everyone's attention. "Please return to your rooms for the moment," she announced. "We need to do a check of the system."

0110100101100100011001010110111001110100011010010111010001111001

Nothing screamed 'suspicious' like the inside of Laika's PET. Searchman couldn't have possibly fit in it; the original OS had been gutted and replaced by strings of data that seemed almost random to the humans' eyes. "They're all system commands," Blues said.

Rockman was giving it a look as well. "Connecting this to another PET would compress the Navi's program into an inert file and store it away in Laika's PET. The Navi's PET would then have its settings reverted to look something like this..." He displayed a text file of code.

"That's the way Alia's PET was - the state it's in at purchase," Enzan said.

"That's much more extensive than what we first thought," Manabe noted. "Nobody would ever get anything from a PET like this. Meiru, Enzan..." She turned to the two teens.

"We know where we're going," Enzan said. "Time to get some answers."

A/N: and once again this is much later than I wanted, life decided it wasn't going to give me time to look this over. I don't think that should happen again this week, but think is the key word there.

Welcome back, MI3! I was hoping you'd see this - you've left so many reviews in the past that I wouldn't want you to not see the whole fic. :) Also, thank you to everyone who's favorited or followed.