Inferno

Langdon reconnects with Sinskey at the Swiss consulate and explains that Zobrist has released a vector virus. He also tells her that Sienna wishes to help them deal with the situation. Sinskey at first refuses, but Langdon convinces her and brings Sienna into the room.

Sienna scolds Sinskey alongside members of other global advocacy groups for ignoring and ostracizing Zobrist and driving him underground simply for speaking the truth about an uncomfortable problem. She mourns that Zobrist died isolated, alone, and misunderstood. Sinskey admits that she had done wrong by not listening to Zobrist before, but she is listening to Sienna now.

A summit at the WHO headquarters in Geneva is called, at which leading members of the global health community will decide how to deal with Inferno—including whether they should interfere with its effects at all. Sinskey invites Sienna to sit at the table and argue her perspective.

Sinskey preemptively asks Sienna her opinion; Sienna argues that further tampering with the DNA of the entire human species could be far more dangerous than Zobrist’s reckless vector virus. The trio discusses the moral implications of what has happened, and Langdon argues for the Darwinian point of view that nature’s plans for genetic evolution should not be tampered with artificially. Sienna counters that perhaps Zobrist’s invention was an act of nature, allowing a species to become so intelligent that one of its number elects to single-handedly temper its reproductive capabilities.

Sinskey asks Sienna if she approves of what Zobrist has done. Sienna insists that what Zobrist did was reckless and far too dangerous and that if she could have stopped him, she would have. Sinskey believes her.

At Atatürk Airport, Sinskey and Sienna prepare to board a plane to Geneva while Langdon readies to catch his own flight back to Florence. After parting ways with Sinskey, Langdon has a final moment with Sienna. They kiss and share a long embrace, and Langdon leaves her with a parting quote from Dante: “Remember tonight, for it’s the beginning of forever” (457).

Langdon returns to Florence to attend Ignazio Busoni’s funeral inside Il Duomo. Afterward, he returns to his hotel and finds a package from Sinskey containing his own clothing from before his incapacitation, including his beloved Mickey Mouse watch.

The delivery also contains a second package, which Langdon immediately transports to the Palazzo Vecchio. He attempts to see Marta Alvarez, but the security guard happily tells him that she has had her baby. Langdon sneaks through the museum and stealthily removes Dante’s death mask from the package, placing it back in its display case. He discreetly communicates its return to a passing docent as he slips out of the Palazzo.

Langdon is on a red eye back to Boston and engrossed in a reread of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He marvels at Dante’s poetry and is reminded that the poem is not as much about the horrors of Hell as it is about the “power of the human spirit to endure” (463). He reflects on humanity’s rampant denial of is current state and his own indifference to it, promising to himself not to commit the greatest sin of inaction any longer.