Page 112 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

As he descended, Langdon found himself wishing their escape through the retracting wall had led to daylight, rather than to a ramp that spiraled deeper into the earth.

While it was logical that a bomb shelter would have a lower level—after all, the nuclear command centers at Cheyenne Mountain and Yamantau Mountain were both built under more than a thousand feet of solid granite—Langdon had hoped to be carrying the evidence they had gathered up and out of Threshold… not farther into it.

With luck, whoever had entered Threshold behind them was not a threat, but still Langdon and Katherine had wasted no time beginning their descent and putting distance between themselves and whoever was entering behind them.

Having finally obtained the proof they needed, they now had to find their way out.

Spiraling deeper, they reached the bottom of the ramp just as a frightening sound materialized above them—the rapid staccato of hard-soled shoes on concrete, moving at an accelerated pace. This was no janitor.

“We need to go !” Langdon whispered.

At the base of the ramp, there was another retractable wall, identical to the one above.

They hurried through it and found themselves in an eerie corridor that was approximately thirty feet long.

In the dim light, the matte-black walls, ceilings, and floors gave off the aura more of a mausoleum than a tech facility.

“It’s a different world down here…” Katherine whispered.

Wherever they now were, Langdon estimated they had less than twenty seconds to find a place to hide.

The spiral ramp had left him increasingly disoriented, and the exit at Crucifix Bastion felt farther away with every step.

Being spotted way down here, Langdon now feared, would result in an alarm being sounded, making escape nearly impossible.

They jogged down the sepulchral hallway, passing a long window on their right, beyond which a sea of green and red pinpoint lights pulsed in the darkness. Langdon could just make out the silhouettes of dozens of massive computer racks housed inside a meshed cage.

“Faraday shielding…” Katherine whispered. “Those computers must be quantum.”

Langdon knew very little about quantum computers except that they required shielding from cosmic rays and other forms of radiation. Another reason why Threshold is underground?

As they passed the computer room entrance, Katherine never slowed, apparently sharing Langdon’s instinct not to trap themselves inside a literal metal cage.

The hallway took a sharp left, and as they rounded the corner, more soft lighting came on, illuminating a much longer section of similar black corridor.

“There!” Katherine whispered, pointing to the far end of the hall.

What lay ahead did indeed offer a ray of hope, but Langdon now heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps echoing behind them again.

We’ll never make it in time.

In the distance, the hallway terminated at a metal door, above which a message was emblazoned in the most efficient and universal language on earth—a symbol whose entire meaning was instantaneously conveyed.

The symbol of the ascending staircase was a welcome sight, and Langdon felt confident that if they could climb back to the upper floor, they could find their way to the bastion exit the way they had come.

But we can’t reach the stairs unseen, he thought, hearing the footsteps getting closer.

The hallway ahead offered two other doorways, both on the right. Regrettably, Langdon could already see that neither would be of any help.

The first door, just ahead, was marked Supply Room . If it was anything like the medical supply room upstairs, the space was a long warren of shelving with automatic lights and no exit. A death trap.

The second doorway, just beyond it, was much larger and set back several feet in a recessed alcove. Whatever lay beyond the door was apparently important, because Langdon could see from here that it was equipped with a familiar security device—a circular pad of black glass.

An RFID scanner…for which we no longer have authorization.

The footsteps behind them were getting loud.

As they approached the supply room door, Langdon slowed to a stop as a thought materialized.

One of the great mysteries of consciousness was where ideas came from.

Katherine claimed the mind was a receiver that tuned into a greater field of consciousness.

Gessner claimed the brain was a computer whose trillions of neural switches simply solved the problem.

At the moment, Langdon didn’t care who was right. The source of his idea was irrelevant. All that mattered was that he suddenly knew exactly what to do.

Why did he stop?!

Katherine turned back to Langdon, who was opening the supply room door. It was obvious they could not reach the stairway at the end of the hall without being seen, but hiding in the supply room seemed like suicide.

She hurried back to stop him, but Langdon had already stepped inside.

The fluorescent lights directly above flickered on to illuminate the entrance to the narrow warren of shelves that extended away from them into darkness.

Without hesitation, Langdon grabbed a bottle of liquid cleaner off the shelf and, like a bowler, slung the bottle down the aisle between the shelves.

It skittered along the floor and slid all the way to the end without touching either side, triggering a series of motion lights into the deepest recesses of the supply room.

Even before the bottle had hit the far wall, Langdon stepped back into the hall.

He closed the door but left it open a crack, allowing a sliver of fluorescent light to spill into the dimly lit corridor.

Then he grabbed Katherine’s hand and pulled her as quickly as possible in the direction they had been going, toward the stairwell door that was still at least forty yards away.

As they ran, she felt buoyed by a sudden optimism, having just realized Langdon’s clever thinking. We don’t need to reach the end of the hall yet…

As she anticipated, when they neared the recessed alcove with the RFID scanner, Langdon cut hard right, pulling Katherine with him into the alcove.

The recess was shallow—less than three feet deep—and they spun around and stood with their backs against the cold metal of the heavy door, making themselves as tall and slender as possible, hoping the alcove was deep enough to conceal them from view.

A moment later, the sound of footsteps entered the hall and stopped.

There was a long silence.

Then Katherine heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

Jonas Faukman’s eyes opened abruptly, and he realized he had drifted off at his desk. He was uncertain why he had awoken so suddenly—perhaps the sound of rain that was now pelting his window—but as he stood to stretch, he was surprised to feel the cool creep of returning dread.

Everything is fine, he assured himself. RL&KSRGUD.