In predawn darkness, Jonas Faukman speeds toward Manhattan in a stolen SUV, crossing the George Washington Bridge and repeatedly checking his mirrors for pursuit. He hopes to reach the safety of Random House Tower before the vehicle is reported missing.

While driving, Faukman reels from alarming information just relayed by Alex, a PRH tech, about events in Prague. Faukman tries to make sense of why anyone would kill over the discovery in Katherine Solomon’s book, recalling that her central idea had seemed radical but not overtly dangerous.

Faukman remembers a lunch from a year earlier with Katherine and Robert Langdon, where Katherine explains nonlocal consciousness: consciousness is not produced by the brain but exists everywhere, and the brain functions as a receiver that “tunes in.” Katherine uses analogies of radio waves and smartphones accessing remote data to argue that the brain may similarly access information nonlocally.

In the flashback, Katherine and Langdon connect the theory to spiritual traditions and to phenomena the traditional model struggles to explain, including sudden savant syndrome, ESP, déjà vu, and precognition. Katherine argues that practice refines the brain’s “signal,” and that unusual “tuning” could also explain debilitating experiences like schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder.

Back on the bridge, acting on Alex’s warning that his phone is likely being traced, Faukman rolls down his window and throws the phone over the guardrail into the Hudson River. As it falls, he recalls Alex’s final, urgent claim: Alex has figured out who hacked them.