Katherine Solomon, facing Everett Finch’s gun, fully grasps that Threshold is not a consciousness-research “death lab” but a weaponized remote-viewing operation. She recognizes how Gessner’s pods solve two core noetics problems at once: they can force almost anyone into prolonged out-of-body states, and the neural implant can record experiences that would otherwise vanish like a dream.

Katherine presses Finch about how the implanted neural mesh integrated so quickly. Finch explains a technique he calls “forced cooperation,” in which virtual reality presents the same puzzle simultaneously to the subject’s brain and the implanted chip, driving rapid synapse formation through Hebbian learning. He adds that drugs used in the VR lab increase neural plasticity and make tasks harder to accelerate adaptation.

Katherine suspects the method was not taken from her own thesis and asks if Brigita Gessner originated it; Finch credits Gessner as essential despite their conflicts. When Langdon demands to know how the CIA obtained Katherine’s thesis, Finch says the agency monitored Blavatnik Awards submissions and ensured a Stanford Research Institute presence among judges; he adds that Katherine’s professor Cosgrove confronted the committee, realized SRI’s involvement, and then backed off into silence.

Langdon tries to negotiate their exit, offering silence and an NDA, but Finch insists they have no leverage and suggests Ambassador Heide Nagel cannot help them. Langdon argues that their disappearance would be noticed, unlike Dmitri Sysevich, and Katherine accuses Finch of using Dmitri and Sasha Vesna as human guinea pigs; Finch counters that Gessner “saved” them by curing epilepsy and improving their lives.

As the confrontation escalates, Finch justifies Threshold’s abuses as necessary for national security and claims he has literally kept Boston standing. Langdon challenges the ethics, and Finch deflects with a quote Langdon identifies as misused. Finch then asserts Sasha is “far from innocent,” accusing her of murdering Gessner and also killing Finch’s field officer upstairs, pointing to an “epilepsy wand” found near the body—until an unseen, “ghostly” voice from the darkness declares the wand belongs to the speaker and demands it back.