When they reached the central room, Black sighed. "It's true."

The others were speechless. The storage room was certainly living up to its name. Its pocket of the network was designed with multiple views of the room below, allowing the Navis to get a good look at the many bodies filling the room. They were all sitting in huge, bulky chairs with what looked like metal canopies on top, so no heads could be seen. A cacophony of beeps was coming from the room, muffled by the distance between reality and network. Meiru didn't recognize what the chair machines were, but Laika did. "They're all hooked up to PTSes," he said.

Meiru looked around at them all; she could see uniforms, jeans, a denim skirt and blue cardigan... It was her own body. She stared down at it, transfixed. She was completely limp down below, not moving when she clenched and relaxed her hand up above. Next to the PTS that housed her was a monitor. About every second, a spike appeared in its readout, marking her slow heartbeat. The person next to her was less fortunate; the readout there was a steady, straight line. A row ahead of her was Austin, still hanging on much like she was. The more Meiru looked around, the more flatlining readouts she saw. The less she wanted to connect bodies to names, the more she seemed to recognize. "Jess..."

"Theirs must have malfunctioned," Laika said. "The PTS was still in the experimental stages - there was a risk of something like this happening."

"I wish." Black explained, "The 'Pulse Transmission System', as you call it, was old hat to my group by the time Sharo managed to figure one out. We thought we knew the dangers, but when Sigma came back, the first thing he did was pass out when he wasn't attached to the system. He was hospitalized for a week after that, hooked up to life support. He didn't look like he would recover. Then, the hospital was attacked by Vava and he vanished. When he showed up again, he was right as rain. We took interest in him because we chalked this whole story up to you suffering adverse effects from your little test run. We wanted to see what the Science Labs got wrong, what your future behavior would be like, and whether you'd have a relapse. If you ever stepped too far out of line, we'd either kill you or slice your brain open and kill you in the process. But considering what was really going on, I doubt there's much of a point."

"That's pretty cold," Meiru said.

"What do you expect? We're the bad guys. Anyway, Sigma got Sharo's brain-link experiment halted after his little adventure, officially because he didn't want anyone else suffering like he did and probably so nobody could figure out that Laika had been replaced with a Net Navi. He turned to us when he wanted more. Everything you see below, every piece of technology in this building, is ours." Black sighed. "I helped develop a lot of programs for brain-link terminals, like the armor you're using right now. I know this thing from the inside out, and there are more safeguards than you can shake a stick at. Nothing save death on the inside - deletion - should be able to kill someone hooked up to a 'PTS'."

Laika turned to face Black's window. "You aren't saying..."

Grimly, the hacker said, "Yeah, I am."

"That's as far as you're going," said a voice from behind them. A dragonfly Irregular, his visored head twitching to the side on occasion before snapping back straight, was hovering in front of the entrance. "My duty is to terminate you." A pair of smaller dragonfly viruses appeared on either side of him.

"Just try!" Roll said as they zipped toward the Net Saviors. "Roll Arrow!" She wasted no time in knocking them off target and away, but another four had taken their place.

"Yammar Option!" The dragonflies started firing down as they flew in formation.

"I bet we can just shoot them off target again," Meiru said. Sure enough, she and Roll easily cleared out the dragonflies before they could hit their marks.

"But we're not hitting that Irregular," Laika said, starting on the next wave. "At least one of us needs to be focusing on him - this can't be the only trick up his sleeve."

"Leave it to me, Laika-sama," Searchman said. "Scope Gun!" His powerful shot sent the green Irregular flying back. He nearly made it out the doorway before a second shot struck him, sending him out of view. The Irregular wasn't running away, though. He charged back into the room, sending out the largest dragonfly swarm yet as he shot toward the Net Saviors. Searchman continued to pound the Irregular with attacks, but he wasn't as easily shaken as his viruses. He kept charging forward even as his visor began to splinter. With his last swarm of dragonflies mostly taken care of, Roll lent one of her arrows to Searchman's next attack. Their combined power was enough to both halt the charge and shatter the visor, revealing the face beneath.

Meiru was startled out of attacking. "Misaki?!"

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"What are Navis to you?"

Enzan was a little startled by the interruption. So far, Laika had been watching in silence for the entire time he and Blues had been fending off Vava. The green-haired man went on, "Can you trust them?"

"It depends on the Navi," Enzan replied honestly. "I would trust Blues with anything. But I wouldn't send a Navi like Gutsman off to do anything complicated, would you? And some Navis are clearly dishonest."

"Like me!" interrupted Punk before diving in for the sixteenth kill with a triumphant yell.

"They're a lot like people, in that respect." He looked over at Laika, scrutinizing him. "What's the point of this?"

"I want to get the opinion of someone else," Laika said. "That's all." Enzan turned his attention back to the Netbattle, sending Blues a Z-Saber just in time to counter a fist to the face. "I believe that Navis should be considered to be the equals of humans."

"Is that what this is all about?" Enzan asked. "Then you should argue for it before your country's political leaders. Performing acts of terrorism and kidnapping people will only hurt your cause. I'm sure the Darkloids would've loved to be acknowledged as the equals of the humans whose oppression they hated, but that would've looked like an admittance of weakness to the people and Navis we had to protect." Enzan watched Laika's face carefully. Its expression didn't change. The man in the chair sat with perfect posture - never fidgeting, rarely blinking. "Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

Silence was the only response he got.