Katherine Solomon wakes on Ambassador Heide Nagel’s couch and finds Robert Langdon still meeting privately with Sasha Vesna. Nagel checks her watch and says Langdon and Sasha have been talking for half an hour, then mentions Langdon earlier pressed her to order the CIA to return Katherine’s missing manuscript. Nagel reports that Director Gregory Judd confirmed Q’s team destroyed all copies, following stricter post-WikiLeaks disposal protocols; Katherine refuses to fully believe it but absorbs the loss.

Trying to frame why her work mattered, Katherine explains terror management theory and how the brain’s dominant motivator is fear of death. She describes how constant exposure to catastrophic threats keeps “mortality salience” running in the background, pushing people to subconsciously prepare for death over years rather than just triggering immediate fight-or-flight.

Katherine lays out the research finding that increased fear of death reliably drives selfish, divisive behavior—nationalism, intolerance, materialism, lawlessness, and abandoning environmental responsibility—creating a feedback loop that worsens global instability. She contrasts this with evidence that people who do not fear death tend to be more cooperative and benevolent, arguing that reducing death anxiety could transform society. She cites Stanislav Grof’s view that eliminating fear of death changes how a person exists in the world.

Nagel jokes about medicating the world, and Katherine counters with a different hope: emerging scientific ideas suggesting death may be an illusion and consciousness could survive physical death. Katherine argues that proving this could, over generations, dissolve humanity’s universal fear and reduce the destructive behaviors it fuels; Nagel quietly admits she hopes Katherine is right.

Langdon returns, looking worn but satisfied, and tells Nagel it is time to call Director Judd. In Langley, Judd ends his second call with Nagel, recognizing her clarity and negotiation skill as she briefs him on Sasha Vesna and the implications for rebuilding Threshold. Though Judd focuses on harnessing the mind research for national security, he briefly allows himself to imagine a future where Threshold’s discoveries foster empathy and make national security obsolete—before returning to the immediate work ahead.