Subterranean Escape Tunnel – 1:14 p.m.
A section of floor beneath the consciousness chair hissed open, revealing a steep, dust-lined stairwell into shadow. Lenka led the way, sweeping the path with her flashlight. Katherine gripped Langdon's hand, limping slightly.
Above them, the air began to hum with unnatural vibration—the machine was awakening.
As they descended, the stone gave way to rough earth and a wooden support beam, etched faintly with another Latin phrase:
"Memoria est templum mentis."
Memory is the temple of the mind.
Katherine whispered, "That phrase was in the lost section of the Corpus Mentis manuscript—copied from a 14th-century Prague text. It describes a mind palace not just as a mnemonic device... but as an actual shared realm." "A psychic architecture," Langdon said, breath catching. "You weren't building a machine to control thought. You were building a bridge." "To awaken collective memory," she nodded. "To connect people through shared inner experience, stored deep in the unconscious. My research showed ancient myths may not have been allegories—they may have been echoes. Fragments of a shared ancestral mind." Lenka stopped suddenly. "Voices." They froze.
Faint chanting echoed from ahead—familiar words. Greek? No… something older.
Proto-Indo-European. Langdon recognized a single repeated line:
"Phōs anthrōpōn."
The light of man.
They reached a vast underground chamber—an old Masonic crypt, abandoned since the 1800s. In its centre, candles encircled a raised dais where three cloaked figures stood. At their feet, a cube-shaped device—the amplifier core—was connected to cables leading up to the library.
Langdon whispered, "They relocated the real interface down here. They're not just trying to use the device—they're conducting a ritual." Katherine paled. "They want to bind memory to ideology. To seed the collective mind with symbols of obedience, hierarchy. They're turning the Corpus into a Rosetta Stone of control." Lenka checked her weapon. "We stop them here. Or the next generation will remember only what they want them to." Langdon's eyes narrowed.
He stepped forward and began reciting loudly:
"Where the living die to remember… where memory becomes mind." The amplifier core glowed blue.
The chamber pulsed. Candles blew out in a single gust.
The cloaked figures turned in shock.
And the machine began… to reprogram itself.