Angelopolis A Novel

The Eighth Circle

FRAUD

I

Dr. Merlin Godwin pressed his thumb against the screen, and the thick, iron doors opened. He made his way into a dark concrete tube, neon bulbs lighting his path. Each morning he entered the tunnel via the south entrance, walking the thirteen hundred feet leading from the exterior to the interior chamber, his briefcase in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. It was a dark and solitary commute. And while it lasted less than ten minutes, walking through the corridor gave him a few moments of total peace and isolation, allowing him to leave the normal world, where people lived without the slightest knowledge of the truth, and enter a place that seemed to him, even after twenty-five years, a place of nightmares.

In truth, he was only traveling one hundred thirty feet below the ground to a space carved into the soft rock below the Siberian permafrost. It was something of a miracle that the facility even existed. Although the society had a long and well-documented history of observing and studying live specimens—their first contact with an angel had been in the twelfth century, when the Venerable Clematis had breached the Watchers’ prison—the angel storage facility in western Siberia was the largest angelic incarceration project in the history of angelology. It contained holding cells, examination rooms, laboratories, a complete medical center, and solitary confinement chambers for angelic life-forms and, when necessary, human beings who obstructed their work. There were facilities for intake procedures and facilities for disposing of dead creatures. There was a crematorium. As the scientist in charge of this massive operation, every possible technological advantage for the containment of the enemy was at his disposal.

The prison had been in various stages of planning since the 1950s, when the Russian Angelological Society had begun searching for a site that could accommodate the masses of creatures they had taken into custody. After two decades of fruitless attempts the society made a deal with the Kremlin to occupy the space directly below Russia’s largest nuclear facility in Chelyabinsk. The agreement was controversial among the angelologists—especially Western angelologists, who objected to any alignment with the Russian government, which had blocked their efforts in Eastern Europe—but, after negotiations, a deal was struck: Below the frozen fields, molded out of the concrete foundation of the plutonium nuclear reactor, there would exist an immense secret observatory and prison facility.

While similar observatories existed elsewhere—Godwin had personally visited a structure in the American state of Indiana and another in China—there was nothing that could compare with the magnitude of the Siberian panopticon. The storage capacity of the facility was enormous, with thousands of cells below the earth. The prison could hold up to twenty thousand angelic beings, from the lower angelic life-forms to the highest. At present, it was filled to capacity.

Access to the panopticon could be gained only with security clearance, and only via specialized tunnels. Godwin always traversed the south tunnel, but passageways opened through each quadrant, each one equidistant from the central cavity, where the glass-and-steel holding cells stretched in a seemingly endless curve, each one lit by a neon light, and each—when the prison was full—containing an angelic being. The prison had three levels. The ground floor held the lowest angelic life-forms. The next ring of cells contained the more dangerous breeds—Raiphim, Gibborim, Emim. Level 1 held the Nephilim, and it required the highest level of security. The three levels formed an elegant and intricate ovoid structure that, when one first encountered it, seemed like a glass honeycomb, each cell crawling with an angry wasp.

In the very center of the rings of cells, separated from the creatures by a vast expanse of blue-lit space, stood an observatory tower, a large glass capsule that rose from a concrete floor like a spaceship. The observatory tower was constructed entirely of tinted panels, and it remained darkened, so that the glowing holding cells seemed like rings of fire around a dark center. Inside the capsule, scientists worked night and day, monitoring the creatures.

It was an ingenious structure, modeled on a classic panopticon prison of the variety developed by Jeremy Bentham in the nineteenth century. A team of engineers had adapted this original concept, reinventing it to suit the particular purposes of angelology. The original intention of a panopticon had been to enforce a psychological control over the prisoners. A central tower was equipped with blinds so that the prisoners could not be sure when they were being observed by prison guards. When the blinds were closed, the prisoners behaved as if they were being watched. Angelologists hoped to employ the same principle. An observer standing inside the tower had the power to watch each and every cell. When they changed the opacity of the Plexiglas, the angels could no longer see the scientists standing behind it. The creatures did not know when they were being watched and when they were not. The effect was the illusion of continual surveillance. The angels were severely punished for any infraction of the rules and in time became obedient and docile.

The angels had nowhere to hide. The cells were ten feet by ten feet, cold, and gray, as if the harsh Siberian climate had been translated into the interior realms of the compound. There were no blankets, beds, or toilets, nothing more than what was absolutely necessary to sustain the creatures. Some of the imprisoned angels had been held in these conditions for decades, and would continue to live out their lives under the observation of angelologists. These creatures were listless and resigned. Recently captured creatures, the hope of release still burning in their eyes, stood whenever Godwin came into view. The gesture was so pointless, so pathetic, that Godwin had to stifle an urge to laugh.

As he walked toward the tower he passed through a wash of grainy blue that fell over the concrete floor, over the metallic steps leading up to the rings of cells, over the thick glass of the cells themselves, giving the space the texture of an aquarium filled with exotic fish. Whenever the creatures stood at the glass, pressing their incandescent hands against it, it seemed to Godwin as if thousands of white starfish floated in a murky sea. At so many feet below the earth, there was no natural sunlight, and so the creatures were suspended in a perpetual bath of neon. The absence of the rhythms of night and day proved useful—the captured angels existed in a zone of timelessness, floating in a state of suspension, where—Dr. Godwin imagined—a creature must mark the passing time by the slow, shallow beating of its inhuman heart.

For the most part, his prisoners were unusable creatures, undesirables picked out and captured by the Russian angelologists. Many were Nephilim affected by the virus that Angela Valko had introduced into the angel population decades earlier; others had strong human characteristics, physical and behavioral, that set them apart from the Nephilim ideal; others had betrayed their clans by marrying a human being.

The irony of his position wasn’t lost on him. Godwin was working for the enemy, plain and simple. There were Russian agents who had sold out to the Nephilim—he wasn’t unique by any stretch of the imagination—but the extent of his betrayal was unprecedented. He blamed the baser elements of human nature, of course. He was greedy, vain, and power hungry. He had helped to create an angelic containment program far superior to anything the angelologists could have made alone, and he offered its use to the enemy. When he was feeling self-analytical, he wondered if he weren’t rebelling against his parents, dedicated British angelologists who had insisted that he follow their calling. Once he had tried to please them. He had been an earnest young angelologist whose work was used as a weapon against the Nephilim. He had assisted Angela Valko in exploring the genetic codes of the creatures so that angelologists could destroy them. And now, years later, he’d built upon this research to assist the Grigori family, performing the experiments that Angela had only fantasized about. If he succeeded in creating the population density they required, he would be the most powerful human being in the new world.

Even after all these years, he marveled at the irony of his apprenticeship to Angela Valko. She had been the society’s most devoted soldier when it came to overcoming the Nephilim. And she had nearly succeeded in doing so. Developing an avian flu designed to attack their wings was the act of a thoughtful scientist; releasing it into the angelic population through the Grigori family was the act of a genius. Percival Grigori spread the virus to all the major Nephilim families, ensuring that many of the elite died. For decades Godwin admired and cursed Angela for it. The virus eluded every cure he had attempted to develop. Even now he’d only found a way to halt its progress, to alleviate the symptoms, and to contain it.

After his recruitment, when the Russians brought Godwin to Siberia to survey the site, he’d stood at the edge of a vast field, an eternity of ice stretching before him, and he understood the incredible potential of the prison that existed below his feet. But the true, secret goal of his work was far more exacting, and momentous, than to re-create the strength of the original Nephilim—to elevate their race, as Arthur Grigori had liked to say, with the qualities of the angels that they had lost over the millennia. For several years he had been riding on the promise of his first and only triumph: The twins were an impressive feat of breeding, genetic manipulation, and luck. The successful cloning—twice over—of the late Percival Grigori—using frozen cells harvested from Percival during his lifetime—had bought him carte blanche with the Grigori money. Godwin had been left in peace, working without interference.

Godwin looked up, taking in the full height of the observation tower, an edifice bound by impenetrable panes of glass. Inside, along the spiraling floors, were angelologists on duty, some busy at computers, others at observation posts, watching, making notes, updating inmate files. The night shift would go home and the day shift would arrive, a routine that ensured the perpetual motion machine of the panopticon.

Godwin always felt an odd, phantasmagoric sensation when he traversed the moat of concrete surrounding the observation tower. Thousands of eyes trailed his movements, and he couldn’t help but feel the unnerving power of their gaze. Sometimes it seemed to him that their positions were reversed, and that he had become a prisoner, a spectacle paraded out for the pleasure of the Nephilim. Each day he had to remind himself that he was the master, and they, these beautiful beasts whose bodies were stronger than his own, were his prisoners.


II

Under normal circumstances, Yana wouldn’t go to the entrance to the panopticon for any amount of money. It had been more than two decades since she had last set foot at the nuclear waste facility known as Chelyabinsk-40, and yet the structure still had the power to fill her with dread. While her family had always been angelologists, tracing their first efforts to the time of Catherine the Great, she had an uncle who had been imprisoned in the panopticon as a spy in the 1950s. Stripped of his rights, he was thrown into an isolated holding cell. He worked both in the reactor and at cleaning up the nuclear waste that leaked from the facility. The lakes and forests were saturated with radioactivity, although the citizens of nearby villages were never informed. Yana’s uncle had wasted away with cancer and been buried at the site. Now most of the trees around the facility were dead, leaving a wasteland of ashy soil behind. The Russian government had only recently admitted to the nuclear contamination—for decades it had denied that the reactor existed at all—and newly posted signs warned of radioactivity. Yana wasn’t prone to doomsday scenarios, but she had the feeling that if the world were going to end, then the disaster would emerge from that desolate, godforsaken place in Chelyabinsk.

She halted abruptly before a fence ringed with barbed wire. Making her way into a corrugated steel outbuilding—a rusted-out shack that served as an entrance to the east tunnel—she pulled out her wallet and fingered her Russian Angelological Society identity card. At least she could identify herself, which was more than she could say for the others, whose French identity cards would mean nothing to these security goons. Getting them in would be difficult. For that she was going to need to call in a favor or two.

A pair of burly, stupid-looking guards—Russian military flunkies hired by the society in Moscow—greeted them.

“I have an appointment with Dmitri Melachev,” Yana said, imperiously, daring them to turn her away.

A guard with bloodshot eyes and the smell of vodka on his breath looked her over, sneered, and said, “You’re a bit old for Dmitri, honey.”

Another guard said, “His girls always come in the West entrance.”

“Tell him Yana Demidova is here.”

Yana crossed her arms and waited for the guard to place a call to Dmitri’s office. He relayed her name to another functionary at the other end of the line and then waved them toward some plastic chairs near an elevator. “Wait there. He’s sending someone up for you.”

Yana closed her eyes and took a deep breath, praying that Dmitri would give her a break. Before she’d been assigned to angel hunting in Siberia, she and Dmitri had been childhood sweethearts in Moscow. They had been deeply in love in the way that only teenagers can be—madly, blindly—and had been engaged until Yana broke things off. Yana had helped Dmitri get his first job as a bodyguard to one of the high-level angelologists. His career took off from there. Now he was the chief of security in the panopticon, a man with clout over everyone and everything barring their path, and if she had to put herself on the line a little to get them inside, then so be it. Besides, Dmitri owed her.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, the elevator doors parted and Dmitri himself emerged. Yana hadn’t seen him for twenty years, but he hadn’t changed much. He was short and muscular, with sharp blue eyes and streaks of gray in his hair. She could see that she had surprised him.

“Bring us to your office, Dmitri, and I’ll explain everything,” Yana said, meeting his eye, hoping that he was still her friend after so many years.

Dmitri nodded and the security guards went to work. They searched the angelologists’ bags and clothes, examined their weapons, and then allowed them to go into the lift. Dmitri pushed 31, and the elevator began to descend, moving slowly deeper and deeper into the earth. Yana couldn’t say if it were her imagination, but she felt as if the pressure of the earth were pushing into her, as if she had to struggle to breathe.

Finally the doors parted, and they stepped into the east tunnel. Cool air blew through the shaft, sending a shiver of freezing air over her. She’d forgotten about the descriptions she had heard of the prison—it was cold, bereft of light, as if one would wither in its sterile darkness. They would walk for a few minutes through a narrow tunnel, the neon lights playing above, and emerge at the other end. It was a short walk, and yet Yana felt as though they were making a journey to another universe. She had always found it eerie that people aboveground knew nothing about the space. It could cave in, killing thousands of living beings, and nobody would know the difference.

When they reached the core of the panopticon, the immensity of the space pulled her eye up, and then, just as her vision adjusted to the scale and grandiosity of the structure, closed in on the rows and rows of creatures locked in their glass-and-metal cells, each angel back-lit by harsh neon.

Yana glanced at Bruno and then Verlaine, wondering what they would think of the state of their underground prison. Unlike other facilities she’d visited, where the ambiance was sleek and clean, orderly and antiseptic as a hospital, the panopticon was a dungeon of the classic medieval variety. The floors were concrete and stained with blood. Dim lights shone overhead, creating pools of murky light. There was, somewhere in the mass of cells, a lab where countless men and women labored over biological samples of angelic creatures. Every living being could be opened, studied, and classified. There was a pretension toward research and scientific progress, of course, but in the end they were there to exploit the prisoners for their own benefit. Every creature, Yana knew from her own experience, belonged to its captor.

“The security offices are this way,” Dmitri said, walking toward an alcove off the panopticon.

Yana slowed her pace to match Verlaine’s and, speaking quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear her, said, “If your Evangeline is here, she’s in one of these cells.”

Verlaine gave her a grateful look. She squeezed his arm and gestured for him to come closer before she pulled a wad of material from under her sweater and pushed it into his hands. He looked at it, puzzled, and then smiled: It was the drunk security guard’s jacket. She’d lifted it off his chair as they passed through the elevator doors with Dmitri.


III


This is one of the only spots in the facility without security cameras,” Dmitri said, bringing them into an office and locking the door. “It’s safe to talk here.”

Verlaine paced the room. “There isn’t much to talk about,” he said. “We just need to know where Godwin is holding Evangeline.”

Bruno didn’t know if he should admire Verlaine’s obsessive pursuit or if he should tell him to back off and let Dmitri guide them. It was Verlaine’s nature to push harder the closer he came to his target: He always wanted to go in shooting, no matter what risk was involved. It was an admirable quality when they were on familiar terrain, with plenty of backup and weapons at their disposal. Being a million miles underneath a Siberian nuclear wasteland, in a security office loaded with plasma screens displaying hundreds of Russian angelologists and thousands of creatures in their cell pods—that was another story. Yana had assured them that Dmitri would be safe, but he couldn’t help but be wary of a man who had spent most of his career in the frozen tundra.

Bruno searched the video monitors for Godwin, but all he could make out were various office spaces filled with people in lab coats. “You ever get Godwin on one of these things?”

“I have been monitoring Merlin Godwin for fifteen years,” Dmitri said, waving a hand dismissively at the plasma screens. “Believe me, it would be a pleasure to nail him. But I can tell you that Godwin and his crew would never be stupid enough to let me see anything too important.” Dmitri leaned against his desk and crossed his arms across his chest. “My surveillance only goes so far.”

Bruno tried to imagine Dmitri spying on Godwin—eavesdropping on phone calls, monitoring his electronic correspondence. He was beginning to understand how frustrating it might be. “Let’s hear what you’ve got on Godwin first.”

“I should start by making one thing clear,” Dmitri said. “I’m not easily impressed by criminal behavior. Russia is full of thieves. But most of them want money and power and prestige. Not Godwin. He’s after another thing entirely.”

“Such as?” Verlaine asked.

Dmitri said, “Godwin has been working with the Grigori family to remove weak Nephilim from the general population, testing them for certain genetic qualities, and then disposing of or incarcerating them if they fail to yield the desired results.”

“Sounds like the bastard has been doing us a favor,” Yana said.

“He might have been helpful if he’d just continued on his genocidal path,” Dmitri said. “Unfortunately, his ultimate goal seems to be to repopulate the world with creatures superior to the Grigori—a master race of angels, if you will. For this he needs a superior angelic specimen.”

“We have reason to believe he acquired a creature he has been pursuing for a very long time,” Bruno said.

Dmitri glanced at Verlaine. “This is the Evangeline you mentioned?”

“The very one,” he replied, his manner measured. He turned back to the bank of plasma screens. “Could she be here?”

“On paper there isn’t anyone in the panopticon that I don’t know about,” Dmitri said. “All prisoners are checked by security before intake.”

“And in reality?” Yana asked.

“In reality, Godwin can do what he wants,” Dmitri admitted. “He has ways of getting around the regulations. He could have Evangeline here and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

“The question, then,” Verlaine said, scrutinizing the screens, “is where.”

“What about the nuclear plant?” Yana asked.

“Security at the plant is extreme,” Dmitri said.

“Godwin could get around it,” Yana said. “He could access the panopticon via the nuclear reactor itself.”

“That would be a suicide mission in the extreme, even for a psychopath like Godwin, but not beyond the realm of possibility.” Dmitri stepped to a screen and, releasing a catch, pushed the screen up, revealing a vast interior garage stacked with long white bricks of plastic explosives, blue and red wires twisting around them. “This belonged to Godwin.”

“PVV5A,” Yana said, astonished.

“I intercepted a shipment in January,” Dmitri said.

“You’ve got enough of this stuff to bring down the whole prison,” Bruno said.

“Considering the fact that we’re below a nuclear reactor, that’s what we don’t want to happen,” Dmitri said, taking one of the white bricks and placing it on his desk. “Godwin, on the other hand, has planted this stuff in every nook and cranny of the prison. After I intercepted the PVV5A, I knew he was up to something, and so I used dogs to find the rest of the explosives. What you see here is a collection of what was found in the panopticon itself. I can’t guarantee he hasn’t rigged his private research center or the nuclear reactor, and I can’t promise he hasn’t planted other kinds of devices.”

Bruno was surprised to see sweat dripping down Dmitri’s face. His voice cracked as he spoke. “So he likes to play with fireworks,” he said. “But to what end?”

“Godwin knows that explosions in the cells would trigger the panopticon’s security system,” Dmitri said. “A series of mechanisms are in place that, once activated, cause a large-scale self-detonation. The structure will continue to destroy itself over the course of several hours, tunnel by tunnel, level by level, until the entire prison is incinerated.”

“Melt down to what extent?” Yana asked.

“To the extent that everyone and everything—including the caged angels, the laboratories, and all the data collected in the past four decades—will be destroyed. It’s a protective mechanism,” Dmitri said, “like torching fields and villages to deprive the enemy of food. The tower will go first. Then the labs. When the various pieces of the facility have been destroyed, a gas will be released into the panopticon, and every living thing—human being or monster—left inside will be poisoned. The system was meant to cover all traces of our presence here. The panopticon was built underground for this very reason: If they need to destroy it, the ruins will be hidden below the earth, a tomb containing thousands of dead angels.”

“Makes sense to have a safety measure in place,” Bruno said. “But why would Godwin want to trigger it?”

“That I don’t know,” Dmitri said, quietly. “I can only guess that he has no intention of leaving his work unfinished. If he’s under threat, he’ll bring the whole thing down.”

“Then we have to get to Evangeline before Godwin has a chance to self-destruct,” Verlaine said.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of guards patrolling this compound,” Dmitri said, reaching into the recesses of the crawlspace and pulling out three canisters of gas, face masks, two semiautomatic weapons with ammo, two stun guns, and three bulletproof vests. “Godwin’s movements are like clockwork. He got here this morning, entered through the south tunnel, and went to his lab. He’ll leave for an hour at lunch. I estimate that you’ll have half an hour to get in, look around, get the angel, if you find her, and get back out. All of this depends, of course, on your ability to get to his lab without being detected. I can take care of the security cameras in the panopticon itself, but that’s as far as I go. You can leave Russia when this is over. I have to continue my career here.”

As Bruno slid into a bulletproof vest, he couldn’t help but wonder if what they were doing was worth the risk. Gabriella would have wanted him to go after Evangeline at any cost—he knew this in his heart, but he also knew that more was at stake than recovering a half-human half-angel traitor who may or may not turn against them. Yet Evangeline had touched him. He could almost see her as a little girl running through the courtyard outside the academy, a wild and happy child. It was impossible for him to imagine then that, one day, he might not be able to save her.

IV

Verlaine had waited long enough; he couldn’t listen to any more talking. Bruno had his method—he would gather information, divide the hunt, and move out with a deliberate plan of attack—but Verlaine couldn’t follow him now. Evangeline was here, somewhere, and there was nothing on earth that would keep him from finding her. Tagging along behind Bruno wasn’t going to happen. His time for simply taking orders was over. He was going after Evangeline alone.

He slipped on the security guard’s jacket, left Dmitri’s office, and began walking the pathway alongside the cells, searching for Evangeline. The lower levels were filled to capacity with ragged, emaciated creatures. Never had he been so close to so many varieties of angelic beings. It was as though he had stepped into a museum packed with specimens.

Verlaine stopped and gripped the metal railing as he looked over the vast prison, the observation tower rising at the center. Suddenly the screens shifted and slats of light sliced across the walls of the panopticon. Verlaine saw the enormous sweep of the space, the chambers stretching away in a path of diminishing visibility. He turned once more to the honeycomb of cells, each one filled with an angel, many with unfurled wings. The cells were deep but narrow, leaving no room for full expansion of the wings, and, as a result, the creatures had pressed their wings against the glass until they curled with pressure, so that the details of feathers were imprinted upon the panes. Angelologists sat behind the glass of the observatory tower studying the creatures’ movements, their manner clinical. Suddenly the panels turned opaque, obscuring the observers behind a shield of smoky glass. It gave Verlaine the creeps to think that they were there, behind the glass, watching him. He didn’t want to be part of their experiment.

Heading up a set of metal steps, he climbed to the top level. If they had Evangeline in custody, she would probably be there, among the Nephilim. The lights were dim, enhancing the effect of the neon bulbs in the creatures’ cells. As he walked along the cells, he glanced inside. The prisoners were large, powerful Nephilim who scowled and hissed as he went by, thrashing their wings, spitting, and cursing at him. One of the creatures scratched at the glass, leaving streaks of blue blood behind. The conditions were horrendous and must have ensured that a steady number of the creatures died each year, perhaps making way for new ones. Over the years he’d lost all ability to feel empathy for the Nephilim, and yet, when he looked at the tortured state of the prisoners, he wondered if the Russian angelologists weren’t being too harsh in their methods.

The sound of footsteps broke his thoughts. Looking into the reflective glass of the window, he saw that a security guard was walking in his direction. He glanced over his shoulder and saw another guard, on the opposite side of the panopticon, staring at him. He turned up the collar of his jacket and walked away, realizing that the curve of the complex offered no escape. It was clear that if they caught him, he wasn’t going to be able to fool anyone with his disguise. He didn’t speak Russian, his face didn’t match the security badge pinned to his pocket, and he was wearing street shoes and jeans. He was an angelologist, and could prove his identity, but they would still take him into custody for questioning until someone in Paris came to the rescue. If these guards stopped him, it was all over.

The guard behind Verlaine called something to him in Russian. Verlaine walked faster, scanning the cells, as if the glass doors might magically open and reveal an escape route. The guard began to run—Verlaine heard the heavy clomping of shoes on the cement—and the second guard, taking his cue, came at Verlaine from the other direction. Looking ahead and behind, he saw that there was nowhere to go but over the railing. In a burst of movement, he leaped over the bar, holding tight as he swung onto the second level. He landed hard next to a cell packed with Mara angels.

He ran, pushing himself faster, his heart racing as he passed the cells, each one filled with a creature in various states of unrest. Verlaine increased his pace, the soles of his shoes hitting the concrete in a hard rhythm. Finally he came to a metal door at the far end of Level 2. Hearing the sound of more and more guards shouting behind him, he tried the knob.

The door was locked. Swearing under his breath, he rattled the lock, pushing against it, as if his weight might force the mechanism to spring open. The voices of guards ricocheted through the panopticon. Bruno and the others would be wondering what in the hell had happened.

Verlaine grabbed his gun and shot the lock. The report made a tremendous amount of noise, and the guards would now be able to follow the sound to his location, but there was a chance that he could escape through the door, and that was all he needed. He kicked it in and looked inside, unsure of what to expect. It looked like an empty closet, just big enough to hide in. Whatever it was, he didn’t have any choice but to take cover. He stepped into the space, slammed the door closed behind him, and flicked on a light.

The closet opened into a number of metal airshafts, huge aluminum tubes that distributed air to distant parts of the prison. Hearing the guards in the distance, Verlaine pulled away the grating of the nearest one and crawled inside. Distributing his weight, he inched forward. If he moved too fast, the thin metal would begin to buckle under him. After thirty feet or so, a metal grating opened up below, and he could see that he was traversing the very top of the structure, crawling high above the concrete floor. His stomach lurched. He felt as if he’d found himself on a wire high above the world, looking down into a fathomless canyon. As he glanced down into the depths, he couldn’t help but imagine falling to the concrete below. In his mind, he plummeted into the space, gravity taking hold as he fell past the caged angels.

He swallowed and crawled ahead, listening to the guards shouting below. Metal gratings appeared at regular intervals, and he was able to glimpse what was happening in the panopticon. He saw the gray concrete of the pillars, the metal walls, the central tower, each part of the structure coming to him in fractured pieces that he reassembled in his mind. He saw the chaos of security guards running past the cells; he saw the caged creatures behind the glass. For ten minutes he moved onward, following the curve of the air pipe until the shaft abruptly tipped, and he found himself pulled downward. Catching himself as best he could, he struggled against gravity until, unable to resist, he let go.

• • •

Verlaine landed heavily at the bottom of the shaft, breaking through a metal grating and tumbling onto the hard concrete floor. For a moment he lay stunned, struggling to breathe, trying to discern if he’d broken any bones. In the past forty-eight hours he’d been beaten and burned and frozen. His muscles hurt, and he was bruised and broken. It was a miracle that he was still alive and, in reaction to the absurdity of his situation, he began to laugh. He drummed the opening beats to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” with his fingers on the concrete. He wiggled his toes, feeling his muscles flex, and had the strangest feeling of joy as his body reacted to his will. One of these days his luck would run out. But for now, he’d made it.

He pulled himself up and began examining his new surroundings. It was clear that he’d fallen into an entirely different quadrant from the rest of the prison. At first glance it seemed that he’d landed in some kind of exterior hallway, perhaps an access route around the facility. There were doors on either side of the hallway. He tried one, found it locked, and continued walking until he heard voices coming through a wall. Checking over his shoulder to be certain he was alone, Verlaine pressed his ear close, straining to understand the muffled words.

“I’ve done my part,” a female voice said. “You can’t expect me to wait.”

Verlaine recognized the voice as belonging to the Emim angel he’d chased through St. Petersburg. Verlaine felt his entire being concentrate to a single point of attention. If Eno was there, Evangeline must be close by.

“And you cannot expect that I can work on her in her present condition,” a man replied. Verlaine assumed it to be Godwin. “The blood is still filled with sedatives.” Godwin’s voice softened. “Look, we’ve waited a long time for this. We can wait a few more hours.”

Verlaine heard footsteps as Godwin walked closer to the wall.

“In the meantime, I’ll tell you how the procedure will work. It’s a bit of a departure.”

Verlaine heard Eno grunt her approval, and Godwin’s voice grew still louder. He had walked closer to the wall.

“This machine,” Godwin said, “will extract the angel’s blood and filter it. We are interested in the blue cells, as you know, and this machine over here will separate the blue from the red and white blood cells. Evangeline is interesting to us, just as her father was interesting to the Romanovs one hundred years ago, because of the rare quality of her blood. Hers is red blood, not blue blood, but it contains an abundance of blue blood cells, which, if one were to get technical, contain stem cells of an extremely adaptable and creative variety, far superior in their generative power to human stem cells. The precision of this equipment gives us great advantage over blood used in the past. Rasputin, for example, used blood that had been withdrawn from an angel, but he could not filter it. It was an inseparable conglomeration of white, red, and blue cells. He must have fed it to the tsarevitch whole, which would have made the child desperately sick before he began to improve. Not us. We will use just the cells we need. And with these cells, we will continue the project I began with your masters. Soon we will see the results of our labors.”

“This should be ten times more fun than what you did for my masters,” Eno said. “If you can pull it off.”

“No creator since God has been as successful in fashioning a living being as I have been,” Godwin said.

“That may be true,” Eno said. “But can you do it again or are you going to disappoint my masters?”

“The panopticon cannot possibly disappoint,” Godwin said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Eno said. “The Grigori capacity for disappointment is very high. They have me here to make sure you don’t f*ck this up.”

Suddenly the door flew open, and he stood face-to-face with a man with a deathly white face topped by a shock of carrot-orange hair. Verlaine stepped back in surprise and grabbed for his gun, but Godwin took hold of his jacket and pulled him violently into the room. Eno glared at him, her eyes narrowed, her whole manner that of a predator. Verlaine couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. Godwin had sensed that he was behind the door, waited until the optimal moment, and jumped him. Before he could fight back, Godwin pushed him into a restraining cage and slammed the door closed.

In his ten years as an angel hunter, Verlaine had been exposed to almost everything he could imagine. He had seen every variety of creature, he understood the physical conditions in which the angels lived, and he accepted the level of violence necessary to bring the Nephilim in. But in all his time in the service of angelology, he had never witnessed anything quite like the scene before him. It took him a few seconds to fully process what he was seeing.

At the center of the room, strapped to two examining tables near Godwin and Eno, were the Grigori twins. Verlaine couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead: They’d been stripped and laid out like corpses. Their golden wings were wrapped around their bodies, covering them from chest to ankle in scintillating plumage. Their skin was bluish gray, the color of ash. Surely they must be dead, Verlaine thought, but then he saw one of them blink his eyes, and he knew that they were somehow part of Eno and Godwin’s experiment.

Verlaine heard a voice behind him.

“I knew you’d come,” Evangeline said.

Verlaine turned and found her sitting cross-legged in the far corner of the cage, her wings folded over her and her body subsumed by shadow.

“I felt you standing outside the door. I wanted to warn you, but Godwin got to you first.”

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Verlaine said at last, lacking the words to describe his relief and joy at finding her.

“Hard to believe, I know,” she said, smiling slightly.

As Evangeline spoke to him, Verlaine felt as if the order of the universe were changing shape. Somehow when he was near her, he understood everything perfectly. He knew why he had thought of her so often; he understood why he’d followed her halfway around the world. Verlaine’s heart was beating too hard, sweat falling from his forehead and dripping down his neck. This woman had changed everything. He couldn’t go forward without her.

“We have to get out of here,” he whispered, sliding his hand over her hand and squeezing it. He looked from one end of the laboratory to the other, trying to find a way out. Their prospects didn’t look good. He pushed against the wall. The Plexiglas was impenetrable. “We’re going to have to perform some serious Houdini to get out of this.”

• • •

It was only a matter of minutes before Verlaine heard a commotion at the door—Bruno and Yana had broken into the lab. Verlaine strained to see what was happening, but his view was blocked as Godwin unfurled a white sheet and threw it over the Grigori twins, as if to protect them. Bruno went after Godwin as Yana snatched a set of keys and ran to the cage. As she unlocked it, Verlaine grabbed Evangeline and pulled her free, leaving the others to fight.

They were in the hallway when a great explosion shook the air. Within seconds, smoke and ash billowed from the lab. An alarm began to sound; it rang through the panopticon, echoing and distorting. The toxic smell of burning plastic, mixed with the syrupy sweet scent of scorched flesh, created a noxious and sickening aroma. Verlaine tried to navigate his way through the smoke, desperate to find a way out. As a second series of explosions went off in the distance—the blasts stronger, more pronounced than the first—Verlaine knew that they were in danger.

Suddenly, he made out Godwin ahead, running into the fire. He tried to follow, but felt Evangeline resist.

“We’re going in the wrong direction,” she said, pulling him back.

“How do you know?”

“I can’t feel the presence of angelic creatures any longer,” she said. “I don’t know why, but it’s as if I’m wired to sense them. There are definitely no Nephilim this way. The panopticon must be in the other direction.”

They turned around and ran in the opposite direction. Soon the floor began to shake, as if something nearby were being detonated. As the sound of explosions grew louder, he realized that they were approaching the very center of the destruction. The hallway opened into the panopticon and, as they sped past the wide arc of the Level 1 cells, Verlaine found nothing but deserted chambers, many of them encrusted in dried plasma, its golden hue charred to gray. Verlaine could see creatures across the panopticon, running toward the tunnels, trying to escape. The prisoners were disoriented and stunned, assessing their surroundings with wariness, as if they suspected that they had fallen prey to a cruel test. At the tower, a group of Raiphim formed a mob. They screamed and struck at the tower with whatever was at hand—metal folding chairs and rods broken from the cots in their cells. A pair of Gibborim leaped from the railing and swooped down over the scattering humans below, snatching them up, lifting them into the air, and dropping them to the ground. Men and women lay bloody on the concrete floor of the moat, some screaming in agony, others unconscious or dead.

Pushing through the smoke, he and Evangeline found a metal staircase that brought them down past the second- and third-level cells. The smoke grew thicker as they descended; the chaos Verlaine had witnessed from above grew harder to navigate as he moved into it. Evangeline’s hand was small and cold in his. He held it tight, as if she might disappear into the smoke.

Together they hurried toward the tunnel exit, stepping over creatures that had collapsed, their bodies trampled and broken. Verlaine could feel Evangeline hesitate. Men in uniforms lay in pools of blood on the concrete floor, some with their guns still in hand. The guards had been slaughtered while fighting to keep the creatures from escaping. The great iron security door began to roll closed.

“They are trying to contain the angels,” Evangeline said.

Verlaine held his hand over his mouth and nose, but it was impossible to breathe without taking in the thick chemical fumes. Another explosion sent shards of glass through the air. Within an instant, the panopticon plunged into darkness.

“There go the lights,” Verlaine said. Although he had no way of knowing for sure, he had a terrible feeling that the nuclear reactors were connected to the panopticon’s power source.

Evangeline’s hand slipped from his grasp. He stumbled forward, trying to reach her. “Evangeline,” he called, but the noise had become deafening as thousands of creatures stampeded past.

“I’m here, above you,” she said, and he saw, floating in the darkness, a concentration of brilliant light.

Verlaine blinked, coaxing his eyes to look at her hovering like a hummingbird overhead. The dome of the panopticon filled with a strange, warm light. It seemed to him as if the sun had been captured and concentrated into a single point. Evangeline could not possibly be a Nephil, nor a descendant of a lower order of angel, nor any of the common creatures serving the Nephilim. She was not one of the Anakim, Mara, Golobians, or Gibborim. It was such a simple truth that he was astonished he hadn’t understood it before: No angelologist could possibly gauge how far the Nephilim had fallen from grace until beholding the beauty of a pure angel.

“We need to find an exit tunnel that hasn’t been blocked,” Verlaine called up to her. “If the nuclear reactor is affected, this is going to be a death trap. If we don’t find an open tunnel, we’ll die here.”

“Maybe there’s another way out,” Evangeline said.

Verlaine looked up, trying to imagine her perspective. She was at the top of the structure. “Can you see something from up there?” he shouted.

Evangeline swooped close and Verlaine grabbed hold of her without giving it a moment’s thought. She flew fast and reckless through the panopticon, rising up and falling back, as if she were afloat on a stormy sea. Verlaine clung to her, overwhelmed by the pure adrenaline of losing contact with the ground. The thrill of their ascent made him giddy. He wanted to hold Evangeline closer, to move as her body moved, to fly higher and higher with her. He was sure that all of the thoughts and all of the desires that he’d ever felt had collected in his heart at that moment. It didn’t matter what happened, as long as he was with Evangeline.

Another explosion ruptured through the panopticon, sending a cascade of fire in their path. Evangeline dipped and rose, and Verlaine felt breathless as he lost hold of Evangeline’s body. He fell, reaching for something solid to grasp, his hands flailing in the air. Before he had a chance to call her name, Evangeline appeared, her green eyes sharp, her body as bright as the sun as she swooped underneath and caught him. He never wanted to let her go.

He looked at her in wonder. There was a profound serenity in her features and—despite the fact that she was much stronger than him and had just saved his life—a gentleness he admired.

“Thank you,” he whispered into her ear. “I owe you one.”

“I wouldn’t let you fall,” she said. “Ever.”

They flew to the ground and he stepped away from her, examining her among the ruins of the panopticon. In the smoke, with her wings retracted, she looked almost human.

“Can you see?” he asked, gesturing toward a tunnel. “Can we get out that way?”

Evangeline nodded. “It’s open,” she said. “It’s probably the only one, though.”

Verlaine grasped her ice-cold hand and pulled her toward the tunnel. Thick, toxic smoke obscured his vision. “We have to go now, before it closes.”

Ahead, at the end of a passage, grew a golden light. As he approached, the light grew stronger until, in a burst of brilliance, it consumed the darkness entirely. Verlaine stood in a blaze of illumination. The walls of the panopticon—polished titanium with bolts the size of his head—gave off a wavering reflection. The light seemed to twist through the air, creating a cone so distinctly overpowering he could not make out what was before him. He removed his eyeglasses and the source came into sharp focus. Verlaine found a creature of such marvelous beauty he was certain it had come directly from heaven. He fell to the ground, covering his eyes with his arm, blinking against the light, falling into a painful blindness.

By the time Verlaine recovered his sight, the angel stood with Evangeline. Despite his huge white wings, there was something simple, something almost childlike about him.

He could see Evangeline staring at the archangel, her eyes narrowed, her body tense. “What are you?” she asked at last.

“You know very well what I am,” the angel said, opening his enormous white wings. “And I can sense what you are, too. Nevertheless, I’ll stand on convention and tell you my name. I am Lucien. And although it is merely an exercise, and I know who and what you are, I will ask you to identify yourself.”

Evangeline circled the angel, sidestepping to the left and right. Then, in an elegant flourish, she snapped open her wings, displaying them in the glow of Lucien’s body. The purple and silver feathers seemed electric in comparison to Lucien’s white wings. Verlaine felt his heart beating in his chest as he realized that Evangeline’s beauty, her luminosity and grandeur, were on par with the creature before her. Together, they were the most pure and rare angels he had ever seen.

“You are lovely,” Lucien said, smiling slightly. “And unusual, too.” He stepped forward and bowed to Evangeline. “I have waited many years to see you again.”

Evangeline stared at Lucien a beat too long, and Verlaine knew that something had passed between the two angels, something that he could never understand completely.

“We’ve met before?”

“Once, when you were just a baby, I held you in my arms. Your mother brought you to me.”

“You knew my mother?” Evangeline asked.

“You were so fragile when I held you, so small, so human that I could only bear to keep you in my arms a moment. I was afraid I would hurt you. I could never have imagined what you would become.”

“But why?” Evangeline asked. “Why did my mother bring me to you?”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for many years,” Lucien said.

Verlaine stepped forward. “Evangeline,” he said, holding out his hand. “We have to get out of here.”

“I am here to tell you everything,” Lucien said. “But in your heart you know already that I am your father.”

Evangeline stood in silence for many minutes. Then she looked from Lucien to Verlaine and, before Verlaine could prepare himself, she kissed him, pressing her body against his with passion and tenderness.

“Go,” she said, pushing him gently away. “Get out of here. You have to get aboveground before it’s too late.”