It took ten minutes of Fox meticulously going over the bank to find another hint of the rogue program. It was so small, so faded, so close to the water and half washed away the fox nearly missed it, even though this was what it was made to do, what it did better than anyone, but the edge of a boot print was enough. Yes, the rogue had come back across the road and into the brush, out of sight. It remembered the racks of clothes- the rogue had probably completely changed their uniform, a sure-fire way to make sure there were no trackers or bugs that could be used to monitor them. The boots had probably been the next thing to go.

An underling of the drop team found one of the boots further along, caught on the rocks in the water. Not far away, there were more footprints, these ones with different tread and likely made with on-foot travel in mind. The tracks were the right size, and headed in the right direction for the asset getting away from the starting coordinates. But the trail ended at the sidewalk, where the odds of finding more hints or clues dropped to barely a fraction of what it was- which wasn't very promising from the start.

The drop team shuffled uneasily, but didn't move to stop it as Fox stepped onto the sidewalk. After all, this was what it had been created for, what it was best at. Tracking. Hunting.

Some deep part of it's brain took over. A few thoughts drifted near the surface, calculations and observations about the world, but the majority of it was so subtle, so instinctive, so silent and fast that it didn't register what it was thinking until the thoughts had flown past. The set-up of the buildings on the street, the direction and strength of the breeze, the flow of pedestrians and the flow of traffic and the flow of the water behind the team and the clues around them of Cardinal directions and common paths, all calculated and analyzed and slotted into the mental picture without hesitation or conscious effort.

After a moment, it felt the faint tug it had come to recognize during training. They had a direction.

It reported this to it's temporary handler, who swore and directed the rest of the team to hide their weapons. "Stealth is priority," he barked at them, and Fox watched them go through the motions, packing their more obvious guns in their packs, pulling jackets over their Kevlar and holsters until they looked passable as 'not assassins,' until it's handler gave it the go ahead to start following the pull that had gotten minutely more insistent as it stood there waiting.

In it's head, it watched a simulated path. The Rogue stepped out of the cover of the brush, glancing about subtly, everything indefinite except it's height and it's shoe size, leaving faint prints on the sidewalk in it's head, before turning and walking quickly away from the scene, falling into the mess of pedestrians and blending in like they had both been trained. Rogue moved along easily, slipping through a faceless crowd, head tilted down away from any cameras that might be in the area. Fox followed easily, with no crowd to speak of but the group in step behind it. Several blocks away, the mental vision stuttered to a pause, the mental picture of the Rogue freezing in place, and it did the same in real life. Fox's eyes opened wider, and it scanned the area again.

They were in a busier area now. More people clogged the streets, and cars were parked at every open space. A police officer patrolled nearby, nodding greetings to everyone he passed. A gaggle of teen girls giggled as they tottered down the street in heels, pecking at phones and sipping from Styrofoam cups. A man who looked in his early thirties was putting up flyers, a stapler balanced on the stack of papers in his arms. A mother lifted her toddler from the street, grumbling about street cleaners not doing their jobs.

It moved towards where the mother had been subtly, scanning the ground. A small mess of shattered glass was scattered over the pavement- 1/6 inch, untinted, tempered. It matched the standard for a car window. The rogue had stolen a car.

It's handler made a disgruntled face when it passed on the information, waving one of the underlings to start a search on car thefts reported on the date the rogue went missing, narrowing down the area. A list of four vehicles was brought up, and Fox took the tablet thrust it's way in stride, tapping each one for details. A 2010 Challenger, A 2014 Charger, an unspecified 2004 Mercedez-

That one. The Handler looked over the profile for the stolen vehicle, nodding slowly. "Fits. Inconspicuous, reasonably common, old." He focused on Fox again. "So where'd he go, tracker? A week's long enough to get anywhere he wanted to and dig in."

It pulled up the map that had been marked with potential hideouts, and after a moment of rapid-fire calculations and superimposition of that mental picture, it slowly tapped on one of the marked positions- more of a streak, an area that covered most of western Nebraska and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

One of the underlings scratched his beard, glancing at it and the Handler. "That ain't exactly a small area, you know."

The Handler glared at him. "Then we'd better get moving."

Underling grumbled a bit more. "I'm just saying, alright? You sure she knows what she's doing?"

"The asset has yet to fail. It's training was considerably more extensive than your own, so shut up and check if we can get a pick up or if we're on our own."

It took Fourteen hours, thirty-four minutes to arrive at the edge of the target area, so long as the small clock embedded in it's optical array was accurate. The drop team convinced the plane that had dropped them off at the location to land for a hit-and-run pick-up in the same grassy area where they'd made ground, despite Fox's report that it was an unnecessary waste of resources. Unspoken was the calculation that the drop team wasn't efficient enough as a unit to pull off such a quick pick-up. But it's Handler agreed that it was a the quickest way to catch up with their target.

Perched on a crate that held no apparent purpose other from being a perch, it watched and listened to their planning. It's handler had told it to avoid making the team uneasy, then specified that it should keep a distance when possible and not stare, and so it offered no input for their plans or solutions to problems they had not anticipated but it couldn't avoid pointing out, even if only to itself. Instead it planned it's actions in response to the teams failings when those problems arose. It didn't calculate good odds of finding the rogue asset before the team was recalled, which would work for the better, because they were unskilled enough that the rogue would know of their presence long before Fox had any chance of detaining it. Yes, it would be best for it to continue this mission alone.

As they neared the new drop zone, it's Handler spread out a map of the area and started to divide it into sections, instructing each member of the group where they would be in formation. Fox was set to point, where it would have the easiest time sensing any presence not their own. Like a bloodhound, one of the underlings stated. Fox disagreed- bloodhounds were not nearly as lethal as it was.

On the ground, the wooded range was quiet. The drop team took five minutes longer than any team it had used before to ready for the hike; it calculated that they would need to rest within two hours of sundown. A waste of time. It knew the exact amount of time it could remain active before fatigue affected it's abilities- Ninety-six hours at this level, down to just under Seventy-five with previous activity considered- and beyond that how long it could remain active before rest was a necessity(One-sixty-eight hours total) and this team would not last long under even half of that time.

This was relayed to it's Handler when the rest of the team was occupied; this was an important factor to the mission. Lost time meant a chance that the rogue program would catch on and run, which meant a further waste of resources, and it had been trained very thoroughly on efficiency. The Handler gave it a look and warned it to focus on keeping the mission active and less on the problems it seemed determined to find.

It was capable of another seventy-four hours of activity when the team began combing the wood.