Sasha Vesna comes out of her seizure and regains focus, telling Robert Langdon her medication is hidden in her purse. Langdon goes to fetch Sasha’s magenta water bottle from her office and refills it, trying to steady himself while worrying that Katherine Solomon may have encountered Brigita Gessner’s attacker at the lab.

In the restroom, Langdon is suddenly grabbed and pinned to the mirror by ÚZSI Lieutenant Pavel, who presses a gun into Langdon’s ribs and demands to know where Gessner and Solomon are, insisting another person has arrived. Langdon says Katherine is not there and that Gessner is dead, but Pavel does not believe him and escalates the pressure on Langdon’s arm.

Sasha intervenes, striking Pavel with a fire extinguisher and knocking him unconscious. Langdon disarms Pavel and puts the gun out of reach, while Sasha clinically assesses Pavel’s head trauma and predicts he will wake soon with a severe headache. Realizing this will tie them to an assault on an ÚZSI officer, Langdon tells Sasha he needs to reach the U.S. embassy to contact Michael Harris, who has been helping him.

Sasha reveals she knows Harris but says going directly to the embassy is too dangerous because ÚZSI will likely be searching vehicles. She proposes texting Harris and having him pick them up at her apartment in an official embassy vehicle. As they prepare to flee, Sasha takes Pavel’s gun to prevent him from pursuing them once he regains consciousness.

Sasha and Langdon exit the bastion quietly—Janáček’s sedan is still outside but the foyer is deserted—and they avoid the front approach by slipping through an opening in the retaining wall to descend a wooded slope toward Folimanka Park. As they struggle down the snowy embankment, The Golěm watches from above, noting ÚZSI and Langdon’s presence as complications, and decides to shadow them, delaying but not abandoning his plan to enter Threshold.