Discovery of dissolved Solublon bag

Agent Christoph Brüder lowered himself into the chest-deep water of the Yerebatan Sarayi cistern, the submerged floor slippery beneath his boots. The cool liquid permeated his clothing as he stood motionless, watching concentric ripples spread across the lagoon. He moved slowly, creating no turbulence, while Robert Langdon stood at the railing above, scanning the surrounding boardwalks and confirming that nobody had noticed the agent's descent. Brüder turned to face the colossal upside-down head of Medusa, brightly lit by a red spotlight, and followed Langdon's whispered suggestion to follow Medusa's gaze across the lagoon—a direction that matched Zobrist's flair for symbolism and dramatics. Using a waterproof Tovatec penlight, Brüder submerged the halogen beam and began a methodical sweep of the cistern floor, moving in slow motion like an underwater minesweeper.

The Discovery of the Plaque and the Ruptured Bag

Brüder's light picked up the sharp glint of metal on the submerged floor. He took a delicate step closer, cautious not to disturb the water, and made out a sleek rectangle of titanium bolted to the floor—Zobrist's plaque. The water was so clear he could almost read tomorrow's date and the accompanying text: "IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER." Brüder felt a surge of confidence, believing they had several hours to stop the release before the date arrived. He gently inched the flashlight beam to the left of the plaque, searching for the tethered Solublon bag he had seen in Zobrist's video. The beam illuminated the darkened water, but Brüder strained his gaze in confusion—there was no bag. He moved the beam farther left to the precise spot where the bag had appeared on the video, but still found nothing. For a brief, hopeful instant, Brüder wondered if the entire threat had been an illusion, a hoax designed only to scare them.

The Confirmation of Catastrophe

Then Brüder saw it. To the left of the plaque, barely visible on the lagoon floor, lay a limp tether. The flaccid string looked like a lifeless worm in the water. At the far end of the string was a tiny plastic clasp, from which hung a few tatters of Solublon plastic. Brüder stared down at the frayed relic of the transparent bag, which clung to the end of the tether like the tattered knot of a popped party balloon. The truth settled slowly in his gut: they were too late. He pictured the submerged bag dissolving and breaking apart, its deadly contents spreading out into the water and bubbling up to the surface of the lagoon. With a tremulous finger, he flicked off his flashlight and stood a moment in the darkness, trying to gather his thoughts. Those thoughts turned quickly to prayer. He radioed Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, who was descending the stairwell, and reported that the bag had dissolved and the contagion was in the water. Sinskey, standing at the base of the stairwell and seeing the hundreds of unsuspecting people confined in the underground space, reacted on instinct and ordered an evacuation. Brüder's reply was instantaneous: "Absolutely not! Seal the doors! Nobody gets out of here!" He repeated the command, insisting that containment was the only viable option in the face of a possible pandemic.

Consequences and Aftermath

Sinskey, gripping her lapis lazuli amulet and accepting the principle of sacrificing the few to save the many, confirmed the order to seal the doors. But before the doors could be closed, Sienna Brooks, who had been hiding in the cistern, burst from her concealment and sprinted toward the exit, knocking people out of the way and shouting in Turkish, causing a ripple of panic that turned into a full stampede. Sinskey screamed for her team to lock the doors, but the crowd surged up the stairwell behind Sienna, and the doors were never sealed. Containment had failed. Brüder stood alone in the waist-deep water, the sounds of pandemonium echoing through the darkness as frenzied tourists and musicians shoved their way toward the exit. Later, when the SRS team set up PCR detection devices around the cistern, every machine began blinking red, revealing that the entire cistern was teeming with virus and that the radius of contamination was enormous. The window for containment had closed long ago; the Solublon bag had apparently dissolved sometime during the previous week, most likely on the opening night of the concert series that had been playing for seven nights straight.