Page 135 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Hovering in darkness, Robert Langdon floated high above Prague.

He gazed down at Charles Bridge far below him, the gas lanterns glimmering like strings of pearls that stretched across the black river.

Weightless and detached, Langdon drifted downstream, crossing over the waterfall, feeling no emotion except a vague annoyance at a distant pounding noise.

As the pounding grew louder, gravity suddenly seized him, and Langdon felt himself being dragged downward in a panicked free fall…

accelerating toward the frigid river…until he shattered its mirrored surface.

Jolting awake, Langdon sat up in bed, surprised that he had not realized he was dreaming.

It was a baffling paradox to him—the human mind’s ability to find itself in an obviously impossible situation and yet accept the situation as fact, ignore every incongruity, and never suspect it was not really happening.

Alert now from the adrenaline of the dream, Langdon scanned the darkened hotel room.

All was silent except for Katherine’s soft breathing beside him.

The scent of her exotic perfume hung in the air, and Langdon could still feel the luxuriously smooth texture of whatever she had been wearing when she sat on the edge of the bed and whispered, “So sorry to wake you, Professor…”

Langdon could still feel the afterglow.

Dr. Solomon, please feel free to wake me like that anytime.

He slipped quietly out of bed, put on a bathrobe, and walked into the suite’s living room. To his dismay, the grandfather clock showed just past 9 p.m.

I’ve barely slept at all.

He gazed out the bay window, realizing his bizarre dream was not all that surprising.

His brain was probably still trying to sort through the trauma of his frantic leap from this very window into the frigid water.

Dreams had always fascinated Langdon, and he’d been shocked today when Katherine claimed to have discovered what caused them.

Incredibly, her experiments had revealed that a dreaming brain was similar to a dying brain.

In both instances, GABA levels plummeted, thus lowering the brain’s filters, opening the door to wider bandwidths of information.

The influx of unfiltered data was the reason dreams manifested as such illogical jumbles of images and ideas.

Furthermore, it explained why, within seconds after waking, even the most vivid dreams began to fade despite our desperate attempts to remember them.

The brain reset, GABA levels increased, and filters reengaged…

purging the information and once again regulating our perception of reality.

Dying felt a lot like dreaming, she had explained, describing how in dreams we often perceived ourselves as weightless, massless beings, with the ability to move through obstacles, fly through the air, or shift locations—in essence, we became a consciousness without a physical form.

The bardo body, Langdon thought, recalling its description from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

In many cultures, the dream body was held sacred for its perceived ability to pass back and forth between the realms of life and death.

As consciousness becomes untethered, our powers of perception grow.

Langdon was still standing at the window when every phone in the suite suddenly began to ring at once. He rushed to the living room extension and picked up the receiver, hoping the call had not awoken Katherine.

“Mr. Langdon, this is the night manager,” announced the familiar voice. “I’m sorry if I woke you. I tried knocking, but there was no answer.”

The pounding in my dream. “Yes, is everything…okay?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the manager replied, clearly alarmed. “There’s a Marine Kerble here from the U.S. embassy. He says it is critical the ambassador see you immediately.”

In a locked conference room in the U.S. embassy, The Golěm gazed down at the restraints on his wrists.

I will not let Sasha see herself bound, he thought.

She endured enough of that during her years in the institution.

The Golěm had yet to release Sasha back into the forefront of his mind since he had left the rubble of Threshold, but that moment was fast approaching.

Everything is going to plan.

Despite Sasha being effectively incarcerated at the moment, The Golěm remained confident the ambassador would become a sympathetic ally to her.

Gessner’s confession revealed all I needed to know.

“Ambassador Nagel knows nothing!” Gessner had insisted. “She would be horrified to know what is happening down here—she’s only in Prague because Finch tricked her into her job. He needed a diplomat as an ally!”

I need one too, The Golěm had decided.

And so he had reached out to her.

Please help Sasha.

No doubt the ambassador was trying to sort out precisely what “helping Sasha” would entail, but it would not take her long to realize there existed only one workable scenario. The Golěm had planted the idea ever so delicately, and it had already taken hold.

Minutes ago, the ambassador had uttered the only word The Golěm wanted to hear.

Asylum.