Angels & Demons - Hassaan Bin Khalil

word. Five days before her ninth birthday, Vittoria moved to Geneva. She attended Geneva
International School during the day and learned from her father at night.
Three years later Leonardo Vetra was hired by CERN. Vittoria and Leonardo relocated to a
wonderland the likes of which the young Vittoria had never imagined.
Vittoria Vetra’s body felt numb as she strode down the LHC tunnel. She saw her muted reflection in
the LHC and sensed her father’s absence. Normally she existed in a state of deep calm, in harmony
with the world around her. But now, very suddenly, nothing made sense. The last three hours had been
a blur.
It had been 10 A.M. in the Balearic Islands when Kohler’s call came through. Your father has been
murdered. Come home immediately. Despite the sweltering heat on the deck of the dive boat, the words
had chilled her to the bone, Kohler’s emotionless tone hurting as much as the news.
Now she had returned home. But home to what? CERN, her world since she was twelve, seemed
suddenly foreign. Her father, the man who had made it magical, was gone.
Deep breaths, she told herself, but she couldn’t calm her mind. The questions circled faster and
faster. Who killed her father? And why? Who was this American “specialist”? Why was Kohler
insisting on seeing the lab?
Kohler had said there was evidence that her father’s murder was related to the current project. What
evidence? Nobody knew what we were working on! And even if someone found out, why would they kill
him?
As she moved down the LHC tunnel toward her father’s lab, Vittoria realized she was about to unveil
her father’s greatest achievement without him there. She had pictured this moment much differently.
She had imagined her father calling CERN’s top scientists to his lab, showing them his discovery,
watching their awestruck faces. Then he would beam with fatherly pride as he explained to them how it
had been one of Vittoria’s ideas that had helped him make the project a reality… that his daughter had
been integral in his breakthrough. Vittoria felt a lump in her throat. My father and I were supposed to
share this moment together. But here she was alone. No colleagues. No happy faces. Just an American
stranger and Maximilian Kohler.
Maximilian Kohler. Der König.
Even as a child, Vittoria had disliked the man. Although she eventually came to respect his potent
intellect, his icy demeanor always seemed inhuman, the exact antithesis of her father’s warmth. Kohler
pursued science for its immaculate logic… her father for its spiritual wonder. And yet oddly there had
always seemed to be an unspoken respect between the two men. Genius, someone had once explained
to her, accepts genius unconditionally.
Genius, she thought. My father… Dad. Dead.
The entry to Leonardo Vetra’s lab was a long sterile hallway paved entirely in white tile. Langdon
felt like he was entering some kind of underground insane asylum. Lining the corridor were dozens of
framed, black-and-white images. Although Langdon had made a career of studying images, these were
entirely alien to him. They looked like chaotic negatives of random streaks and spirals. Modern art? he
mused. Jackson Pollock on amphetamines?
“Scatter plots,” Vittoria said, apparently noting Langdon’s interest. “Computer representations of
particle collisions. That’s the Z-particle,” she said, pointing to a faint track that was almost invisible in
the confusion. “My father discovered it five years ago. Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be the
smallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.”
Matter is energy? Langdon cocked his head. Sounds pretty Zen. He gazed at the tiny streak in the
photograph and wondered what his buddies in the Harvard physics department would say when he told
them he’d spent the weekend hanging out in a Large Hadron Collider admiring Z-particles.
“Vittoria,” Kohler said, as they approached the lab’s imposing steel door, “I should mention that I
came down here this morning looking for your father.”