Jonas Faukman awakens bound and hooded on the metal floor of a speeding vehicle, struggling to breathe as his phone buzzes in his pocket. From the voices, he believes his two captors are Americans who have already rifled his backpack and taken the manuscript he was carrying.

The van leaves the highway and stops in a dark, wooded area near heavy machinery. The hood is removed, revealing a muscular, buzz-cut man in black seated close to Faukman, while a second man in the front seat works on a laptop; a ceiling-mounted camera is aimed at Faukman’s face.

The buzz-cut captor shows Faukman a photo of Faukman’s ransacked Upper East Side apartment, demanding to know what they were searching for. When Faukman deflects with sarcasm, the captor punches him hard in the stomach, then warns that the camera is linked to “Avatar,” an AI veracity analysis system that reads micro-expressions and posture.

The captor asks whether the manuscript taken from Faukman’s backpack is the only copy. Faukman tries to lie, but the laptop operator immediately flags deception. Pressed again, Faukman claims there are digital copies on PRH servers, but the captors reveal those have already been deleted and demand to know if any other versions exist.

Cornered, Faukman admits the backpack manuscript was the only remaining copy. The buzz-cut man corrects him and ends the interrogation with the claim, “We’ve already destroyed it.” The scene then shifts to PRH’s security center, where Alex Conan—unable to reach Faukman, Katherine Solomon, or Robert Langdon—uses unauthorized access to track them and is horrified by an image that convinces him someone trying to kill the book has killed a PRH author.