Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,98
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.