When a blank spot appeared on an otherwise clear map, people usually would not have the good sense to avoid it. Instead, they would lean closer to see what was there.
At least, Wade was like that.
In truth, the odds of expecting Snail Automatons to pick out someone suspicious from the vast sea of people—and for that person to happen to be Prometheus or one of the Scourers—were extremely low.
Most of the time, what they found was Muggle crime. Occasionally, they would come across a few clumsy wizards who had done a poor job concealing their tracks.
But the snails scattered throughout every corner of New York were like probes Wade had planted.
When several of them suddenly lost their signals, leaving an entire area as a black hole in the surveillance network, Wade knew he had truly found his target.
That was because the first batch of Snail Automatons excelled not at surveillance or analysis, but at camouflage and hiding.
They hid at the tops of trees, where the leaves were thickest. Even if people stood on tiptoe and searched with all their might, they would not spot them;
They could also cling tightly to leaf stems or vines, changing into similar colors and looking like tiny bulges that had naturally grown from the plants;
If a household kept livestock or pets, they could even hide inside the animals' ears or fur.
Even without any of that, those tiny things, no bigger than a fava bean, could conceal themselves perfectly in any random corner.
So when they began disappearing, it definitely was not because they had been caught by humans, birds, or beasts. It could only prove that the other side had used some kind of magical interference.
And people like that were exactly the targets Wade