In Prague’s Old Town near Havelsky Market, Robert Langdon and Sasha abandon their cab in slow traffic and walk the final blocks to Sasha’s apartment. Langdon learns the apartment is owned by Dr. Brigita Gessner, who lets Sasha live there rent-free, deepening Langdon’s sense that Gessner’s generosity toward Sasha conflicts with her abrasive personality.

Langdon recalls the previous night’s cocktails with Katherine, when Gessner challenged him to arbitrate a dispute about life after death. Gessner bluntly declares the afterlife an illusion sold by religion, while Katherine maintains that out-of-body experiences suggest consciousness can exist beyond the brain.

Pressed to choose between “hypoxic hallucination” and evidence of an afterlife, Langdon explains his materialist view: people tend to see what they want to see, and fear of death drives belief. He notes that near-death accounts have long patterns and religious parallels, yet science still cannot definitively answer what happens when people die.

When Langdon pushes back that Gessner is treating an unprovable premise as certainty, Gessner insults him for cowardice and says she hopes to persuade Katherine to join the “rational world.” Gessner then hands Katherine a business card directing her to the Gessner Institute at Crucifix Bastion and instructs Katherine to give it to her driver in the morning.

As Gessner closes her briefcase, Langdon notices an unusual black card in a lead-lined RFID-protecting sleeve, partially showing six characters. Gessner dismisses it as a “health club” pass, but Langdon identifies one character as a Vel spear, a Hindu symbol of power and insight associated with the god Murugan; Gessner grows evasive. Langdon lets the moment pass, but his suspicion that Gessner is hiding something intensifies.