Mercer entered behind them. "You are deliberately leaving access open while a federal witness is traveling."
"We're removing the access needed to change the route," Maya answered. "The driver has direct instructions and control of the vehicle. We're taking authority away from the software, not from him."
He frowned at the monitor. "If communications fail in that area, what then?"
"Then he follows the verified road instructions already given. We use county communications rather than depending on a city system whose authority is in question."
Ben arrived after hearing that the route approached Mill Creek Road. His uncle operated a repair shop in the agricultural district, and Ben had driven those roads many times while helping with deliveries on weekends. On the screen he recognized a turn he had once missed during heavy rain, when a navigation app had suggested a shortcut onto a gravel road too narrow for a tow truck.
"That turn toward Mill Creek isn't where I'd send them," he said, stopping beside Lena. "If they stay on Fourteen to State Road Eight, there's a volunteer fire station with a county relay nearby. They'd have a better chance of keeping contact."
Maya turned to him. "Show us the route, but don't change anything on the workstations."
Ben pointed with the end of a capped pen. Lena compared his suggestion with the infrastructure map. The road was longer by a modest distance, but it remained near communications coverage and passed through an intersection with clear physical landmarks. Maya asked the county dispatcher to validate the recommendation rather than rely solely on Ben's local knowledge.
A dispatcher named Helen Ward answered in a voice as steady as a weather report. She had spent years guiding ambulances and volunteer crews across the same rural grid.
"Fourteen to Eight is clear. There's no current closure. Tell your driver there's a white church on the north side of the intersection and an old feed store across the road. Those are the landmarks. Once he sees both, he takes State Eight south."
Maya relayed the instructions. The driver repeated them exactly. Behind him Nathan remained quiet. His hands rested on his knees, and he watched the road through a window streaked with dust. The fields outside looked harmless. It disturbed him that they could become frightening simply because the direction displayed on a screen was no longer trustworthy.
The municipal navigation interface issued another instruction. Turn left onto Mill Creek Road. The driver ignored it. A second update followed, then a third. The display recalculated the journey repeatedly.
Owen confirmed that the requests belonged to the same monitored contractor certificate family. They were persistent rather than accidental remnants of an earlier route plan.
"Block the control function as soon as you can do it without affecting county voice communications," Maya said.
Owen and Elise coordinated a narrow containment step. The next unauthorized routing request failed, while the attempt itself remained visible in the preserved activity record. Another request arrived and failed in the same way. The contractor session was still observable, but it could no longer change the navigation instructions delivered to the federal vehicle.