They exited through the rooftop.
Renko had an emergency route that, apparently, no one had accounted for in the Consortium's breach plans—a maintenance ladder running down the building's exterior, camouflaged among ventilation ducts, ending in an alley that opened onto a parallel street.
Mateus went down first. Then Dora. Renko came last, and Mateus was surprised by the agility of a man of his size—then remembered that being fat didn't necessarily mean anything in an age where you could have synthetic muscle beneath any amount of body fat.
Down below, the alley smelled like wet garbage and ammonia. Three mechanical rats—cheap rodent-shaped surveillance drones—scurried past their feet, completely ignoring them. Good sign. The Consortium's drones were bigger.
"Where to?" Mateus asked.
"There's a place," Renko said, already moving. "Off the grid. We need to stay off the networks."
"I've got nanites in my head," Mateus said. "I'm connected to the network all the time."
Renko stopped. Turned. Looked at him with those camera-like eyes.
"You used a pirated NNI to get into the Consortium," Renko said slowly.
"Yes."
"And you still have it."
"Yes."
"Mateus," Renko said, and there was something different in his tone. Something that wasn't his usual calculated coldness. It was almost… pity. "They can track pirated nanites. The emission frequency is different from official ones. If they have a next-generation scanner—"
"They do," Dora said flatly.
"Then you're lit up like a beacon." Renko started walking again, faster now. "We need to get that out of your head."
"You can't remove nanites without surgery," Mateus said.
"Not without killing you, no. But we can deactivate them."
"How?"
Renko didn't answer right away. They turned a corner, entered a corridor covered with plastic awnings, passed by closed stalls of an informal market.
"There's an android," Renko finally said. "She can do it."
"An android," Dora said. It wasn't a question. It was the tone of someone processing information they didn't like.
"She's the only one I can contact outside the official network. And she… understands neural systems in a way no human does."
"Why?" Mateus asked.
"Because she was built with one," Renko said. "AURORA designed her with an integrated neural interface. To study how humans process information. And then they tried to shut her down."
Pause.
"And?" Mateus said.
"She didn't let them."