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Maximilian Kohler follows Captain Rocher through the darkened Apostolic Palace, disgusted by the Vatican's wealth and impatient with the failed search for the antimatter. Ill and coughing, Kohler accepts that he may soon die, but remains determined to confront Camerlegno Ventresca before his work is destroyed.

Swiss Guards block Kohler near the Pope's office, suspicious of Rocher's claim that Kohler will speak only to the camerlegno. Kohler tries to push past them in his wheelchair, relying on the pity people show toward his disability, but stops when a guard draws a gun. Forced to wait, Kohler sees his reflection and channels his long-standing rage against religion.

Kohler remembers being eleven years old in Frankfurt, gravely ill while his devout parents refused medical treatment and prayed instead. Doctors pleaded to administer medicine, warning of paralysis or death, but Kohler's parents believed intervention would defy God's will. One doctor eventually disobeyed them, injected Kohler with medicine, and saved his life, but Kohler was left crippled.

Afterward, Kohler's parents and priest credited God for his survival and framed his disability as punishment for insufficient faith. The memory reinforces Kohler's hatred of religious authority and his belief that science, not faith, saved him.

The camerlegno agrees to see Kohler, and Rocher orders that the meeting take place as Kohler requests, alone. The guards frisk Kohler poorly because of discomfort with his disability; they miss a revolver hidden beneath his wheelchair and another object Kohler has brought to bring closure to the night's events. Kohler enters the Pope's office, where Camerlegno Ventresca kneels in prayer and asks whether Kohler has come to make him a martyr.