Page 96 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Deep down within Threshold, The Golěm felt like a ghost of himself.

His body was still in shock.

Literally.

Minutes ago, having reached the most innermost chamber of this subterranean facility, he had been overwhelmed with emotion.

He felt a familiar tingling in his temple.

The Ether was gathering…moving in quickly…

threatening to swallow him whole. Instinctively, The Golěm had slid his hand into his cloak pocket to retrieve his metal wand, but he realized in a moment of distress that the wand was missing.

He emptied his pockets on the floor, sorting through all the items that fell out.

The wand is gone…I lost it while struggling with the woman upstairs.

The Golěm knew he was now at the mercy of his condition, with no choice but to accept the impending seizure. He prepared as best he could, taking hasty precautions, finding a safe place to lie down to prevent a fall.

The convulsions had hit him hard, knocking him unconscious.

When The Golěm regained his senses, he was unsure how much time had passed. He needed several minutes to get his bearings.

Finally mustering his strength, he stood to his full height and again took in the astonishing space around him. To engineer something like this in total secrecy seemed an almost impossible feat, and yet he now understood who was behind it all.

They possess nearly unlimited influence—and resources.

Reassimilating, The Golěm shook off his postictal haze and returned to the spot where he had emptied his cloak pockets in search of the wand.

Crouching on all fours, he collected the items one by one, returning them to his pocket—the Vipertek stun gun and a plastic box he had taken from a nearby work surface, which had once contained nuts and bolts, but now contained Brigita Gessner’s black RFID key card… and her severed thumb.

My access to Threshold .

As anticipated, Brigita’s thumbprint had immediately authorized the card whenever he pressed them together.

And led me to this inner sanctum.

Gessner had admitted the existence of this room, and now that The Golěm had seen it for himself, he felt invigorated by the need to destroy it.

More determined now, he moved to the deepest reaches of the chamber, passed through a glass door, and found what he was looking for—a niche cordoned off by a safety gate.

Beyond the gate, the floor was a metal platform, stenciled with the words:

Systems / Utilities

The Golěm stepped onto the platform and, using the toe of his boot, depressed an oversized red button on the floor. A soft hiss of air escaped somewhere beneath him, and the platform began to drop, lowering him through the floor.

The descent was short—maybe twelve feet.

As the platform came to a stop, fluorescent lights flickered on to reveal a low-ceilinged passageway that extended back the way he had come, beneath the heart of the facility.

As The Golěm moved along the cramped concrete tunnel, he passed mechanical vaults of generators, pumps, air handlers, and control panels, plus miles of copper tubing, ductwork, and heavily insulated wiring. It was all connected like a gurgling, breathing, blinking ecosystem.

Despite the absence of employees at Threshold, the heartbeat of this facility was very much alive.

For only a short while longer, The Golěm told himself, pressing toward his final destination.