Meowth's mechanical ant locked onto the signal almost immediately, antennae spinning and then fixing in one direction with a soft confirming beep.
"Told you," Meowth said flatly. "My tech doesn't miss."
Ash was already moving. "Let's go."
The three of them worked through the crowd quietly, using the foot traffic as cover, closing the distance toward whatever was on the other end of that signal.
...
In a basement two streets away, Annie's fingers were flying across her keyboard, eyes locked on the monitor feeds cycling across her screen. Beside her, Oakley sat with a thick research folder open across her lap, reading with the focused calm of someone who'd done this kind of work for years.
"Annie," Oakley said without looking up, "tell me you haven't lost them."
"I haven't lost... wait." Annie's fingers stopped. The feeds were empty. Three targets, gone from every angle simultaneously. "Okay. I lost them."
Oakley closed the folder. "How."
"They just disappeared off the display. All three at once."
Oakley was quiet for a moment. "Don't panic. Even if they found one of the surveillance units, they can't trace it back here. There's nothing on the hardware that points to this location. Whoever he is, he won't find us."
Annie exhaled slowly and went back to her keyboard. "You're probably right."
"I'm always right," Oakley said, and opened the folder again.
...
The two sisters were, by any measure, exceptional. Annie was sharp, quick-tempered, and ruthless when it mattered, the kind of operative who moved fast and hit hard. Oakley was her opposite in method but equal in result, calm, methodical, and frighteningly intelligent when it came to both technology and historical research.
Together they were Archer's most trusted field agents, dispatched directly by Team Rocket's second-in-command for the most sensitive operations. This mission, capturing Latios and Latias in Alto Mare, was exactly that kind of operation. They hadn't worn their Rocket uniforms specifically to avoid recognition.
It had almost worked.
"We should notify Archer," Annie said, still typing. "He was here. Ash Ketchum, in Alto Mare. If Giovanni finds out we didn't report immediate contact..."
"Report it," Oakley agreed. "But don't escalate. He hasn't seen our faces in connection with the organisation. As far as he's concerned we're tourists. We keep moving, we stay clean, we finish the mission."
Annie nodded and kept working.
...
Back in the alleyway, Meowth threw his hand up. "There!"
Ash was already gone, crossing the distance in a single Soru step. His fist came down on the mechanical spider drone before it could retract, cracking the casing against the pavement.
He lifted his foot to finish it.
"WAIT." Meowth's voice came out in a strangled hiss. "Don't crush it. I can use it."
Ash paused, foot hovering. "Use it how?"
"Just give it to me."
Ash picked up the cracked drone and handed it over without another word. Meowth had already pulled a data cable from the back of his ant robot and was connecting the two units together with practiced hands. A small keyboard appeared from his pack next, slotted into the ant robot's head port, and a projected holographic screen flickered to life above it, data streaming across the display in rapid columns.
James watched with undisguised admiration. "He's genuinely incredible at this. And I say that having watched him build half the tech we use from scratch."
Ash watched Meowth work and said nothing, but he wasn't disagreeing.
...
Back in the basement, Oakley's calm finally broke.
The intrusion alarm on her system was not something that happened. Her security architecture was among the best in the organisation. She'd written most of it herself.
And something was currently walking through it like it wasn't there.
"Annie. Move. Now."
Annie didn't ask questions. She was already sweeping the essential hardware into a bag before Oakley finished the sentence. Within ninety seconds they were in a car and pulling out of the basement, leaving the rest behind.
...
"Got them," Meowth announced, pulling up a map overlay on the projection. A location marker blinked two streets north, already moving. "They're in a vehicle, heading..."
He trailed off as the marker accelerated and turned a corner.
"They ran," James said.
"Fast too." Meowth kept tracking. "Whoever set up that surveillance system knew what they were doing. I got through eventually but it wasn't easy."
"So they know we found them," Ash said.
"Yeah."
James frowned as they watched the marker put more distance between them. "I don't understand though. How did they notice us in the first place? We've been careful the whole time we've been here. Nothing we did should have flagged us."
The words landed casually, an idle observation.
But Ash's Rinnegan contracted to a pinpoint.
How did they notice us.
Not from anything James or Meowth or Jessie had done. They'd been clean. Which meant the surveillance hadn't been set up because of them at all.
It had already been there.
Waiting for someone specific.