Angelopolis(100)

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,