AI Quinn's leather boots slapped against wet pavement as she pursued the figure ahead, rain streaming down her face and blurring the streetlights into amber halos. The suspect—male, approximately five-ten, dark jacket—had bolted from The Raven's Nest the moment she'd flashed her warrant card. That alone told her plenty.
She pushed harder, her breath misting in the October chill . The worn leather of her watch caught on her jacket cuff as she pumped her arms, but she ignored it. Eighteen years on the force had taught her to compartmentalize discomfort. The suspect veered left down a narrow alley between two Georgian townhouses, and Quinn followed without hesitation.
"Metropolitan Police! Stop where you are!"
The figure didn't slow. If anything, he accelerated, vaulting over a cluster of bins with surprising agility. Quinn grimaced and took the obstacle at speed, clearing it cleanly despite the slick conditions. Military training never truly left you.
They emerged onto Camden High Street, the late-night crowd of drunks and night workers scattering as the chase barreled through. Quinn's suspect—she could see him more clearly now under the shop lights, olive skin and dark curly hair—cut across traffic, causing a black cab to slam its brakes. The driver leaned on his horn and shouted something anatomically improbable.
Quinn waited for a gap in the traffic, losing precious seconds. When she made it across, the suspect was already disappearing down a side street she didn't recognize. She followed, her sharp jaw set with determination.
The street narrowed, Victorian brick pressing close on either side. Her quarry was pulling ahead—younger legs, familiar territory. But Quinn had persistence on her side. She'd run down suspects through Birmingham estates and Thames-side warehouses. One more wouldn't break her streak.
Then the suspect did something that made her stumble.
He leaped over a construction barrier and dropped through a hole in the pavement—except it wasn't a hole. As Quinn approached, she saw stone steps descending into darkness. An old Tube entrance, but wrong somehow. The metalwork was too ornate, too old. No London Underground signage, just strange symbols carved into the archway.
She hesitated at the top, rain pattering on her shoulders. Every instinct screamed danger. In eighteen years of policing, she'd learned to trust her gut, and right now her gut was doing somersaults.
But she thought of Morris. Three years gone, and she still didn't have answers. Just fragments—witness statements that didn't add up, evidence that vanished from lockup, and her partner's body found in a locked room with wounds no weapon could have made. The brass had buried it, called it a gang killing, case closed. But Quinn knew better.
The same feeling she'd had that night prickled along her spine now. That sense of standing at the edge of something vast and hidden, something that operated by different rules.
She checked her radio. Static, despite being in central London. Her mobile showed no signal. Of course.
Quinn descended.
The stairs were worn smooth by countless feet, but dust-free. Someone maintained this place. Emergency lighting—if that's what the pale blue glow was—cast strange shadows on the walls. The sound of rain faded above, replaced by something else. Voices. Music. The distant ring of metal on metal.
Twenty steps down, the passage opened into a vast space that shouldn't exist.
Quinn stopped, her brown eyes widening. The abandoned platform stretched before her, but abandoned was the wrong word. Transformed, maybe. Where tracks should have been, market stalls crowded in impossible configurations. Vendors in clothing from a dozen different eras hawked wares that hurt to look at directly. The curved ceiling, which should have shown advertising posters and tube maps, rippled with what looked like living darkness .
The suspect—she could see him clearly now, the Saint Christopher medallion glinting at his throat—was moving through the crowd with practiced ease . But it wasn't just any crowd. Quinn's trained eye catalogued details that didn't fit: a woman whose shadow moved independently of her body, a man with too many joints in his fingers, a child whose eyes reflected light like a cat's.
"First time, Detective?"
Quinn spun, hand moving to her ASP baton. A vendor, elderly and somehow both there and not there, smiled at her from behind a stall of bottles filled with swirling mist.
"I'm not—"
"Oh, but you are. Can smell the law on you, can't we?" The vendor's grin widened, showing too many teeth. "Need a token to be here proper-like. Bone token. But you're chasing our Tomás, aren't you? The healer."
Healer. Quinn filed that away. She kept one eye on the vendor while tracking Tomás through the crowd. He'd stopped at a stall deeper in the market, engaged in rapid conversation with someone wrapped in layers of dark fabric.
"He's wanted for questioning in connection with—"
The vendor cackled. "Your laws don't reach here, Detective. This is the Veil Market. Older than your Scotland Yard, older than your London above. We trade in different currencies here."
Quinn's jaw tightened. She took a step toward the market proper and immediately felt resistance, like walking through thick honey. Her vision swam.
"Need a token," the vendor repeated, almost kindly. "Or an invitation. Or..." They leaned forward conspiratorially . "A trade. Information, perhaps? You smell of grief, Detective Quinn. Old grief. Partner-shaped grief."
The words hit like a physical blow. Quinn's hand tightened on her baton. "How do you—"
"DS Morris, wasn't it? Three years, two months, sixteen days. Still dream about that room, don't you? The blood that wasn't quite blood. The wounds that weren't quite wounds."
Rage and desperate hope warred in Quinn's chest. She forced her voice steady. "What do you know about Morris?"
"Everything has a price at the Veil Market." The vendor produced a small bone disc from seemingly nowhere, holding it between translucent fingers. "This will let you walk freely, ask your questions. Even our Tomás can't refuse a token-holder's query. But the price..."
"Name it."
"One hour of your memory. Just one. I'm not greedy. The hour you realized you loved your partner. Not romantically—no, no. The hour you realized they were family."
Quinn's throat constricted. That hour was precious, one of the few untainted memories she had left of Morris. They'd been working a child abduction case, forty hours straight, and Morris had shown up at her flat with Thai food and terrible coffee, refusing to let her work alone. They'd cracked the case by dawn, found the kid alive.
But if this market held answers about Morris's death...
"How do I know you'll keep your word?"
The vendor looked genuinely offended. "The Market has rules, Detective. Older than your laws, but twice as binding. You'll get your token, your access, your chance to question the healer. I'll get my memory. Fair trade."
Quinn looked across the market again. Tomás was moving, heading deeper into the impossible space. In a moment, she'd lose him entirely. And even if she came back with backup, she suspected this place wouldn't be here. The vendor had said it moved every full moon.
"Fine." The word tasted like ash. "Take it."
The vendor's grin widened impossibly. They reached out, fingers passing through Quinn's forehead like cold water. For a moment, she felt the memory sharpen—Morris's laughter, the smell of pad thai, the weight of exhaustion transformed into determination—and then it was gone . Not forgotten, exactly, but distant . Faded. Like looking at a photograph through frosted glass.
The bone token dropped into her palm, warm as living flesh.
"Welcome to the Veil Market, Detective Quinn. Mind the shadows—they bite."
Quinn pushed into the crowd, the resistance gone. The token pulsed in her grip as she wove between stalls selling impossible things: bottled moonlight, maps of places that didn't exist, photographs of events that hadn't happened yet. The sensory assault was overwhelming, but she forced herself to focus. Track the target. Get answers. Get out.
She found Tomás at a stall near what might have been the platform's original edge. He was examining a leather satchel while the proprietor—a woman whose age seemed to shift with each blink—watched with predatory patience.
"Tomás Herrera," Quinn said, her voice carrying despite the market's cacophony .
He turned slowly , no surprise on his face. Up close, she could see the scar along his left forearm, pale against olive skin. His warm brown eyes held a weariness that seemed too heavy for his twenty-nine years.
"Detective Quinn." His accent carried traces of Seville. "I wondered when you'd find your way down here."
"You ran from a lawful police inquiry."
"I ran from questions you're not ready to hear the answers to." He touched the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat—a nervous gesture. "But you have a token. So ask."
Quinn's training warred with the unreality of the situation. But she'd paid for this chance. "Three nights ago, a woman named Sarah Chen was admitted to St. Mary's with wounds consistent with ritual torture. She died within hours, but not before mentioning The Raven's Nest. And you."
"I tried to save her." No deception in his voice, just regret. "She'd been touched by something from... beyond the Veil. Normal medicine couldn't help her, but I tried anyway."
"Beyond the Veil?"
Tomás gestured at the market around them. "This is where your world and others meet, Detective. Sometimes things cross over that shouldn't. Sometimes people like me try to help the victims. Sometimes people like you try to understand what can't be understood with warrant cards and evidence bags."
"And sometimes," Quinn said carefully , "detectives die in locked rooms with impossible wounds."
Tomás went very still. The market noise seemed to fade, creating a bubble of silence around them.
"You're talking about DS Morris."
"You know about that?"
"Everyone in the shadow community knows about that. It was... unfortunate. Your partner stumbled onto something they shouldn't have. A trafficking ring moving creatures across the Veil. Morris tried to stop them alone." He paused. "I treated them, you know. After. Tried to stabilize the wounds, but it was too late. The kind of claws that made those marks—"
"Claws." Quinn's voice was flat.
"You have a token. You're in the Veil Market. You've already accepted that impossible things are possible, or you wouldn't be here." Tomás pulled a small journal from his jacket. "I kept notes from that night. Standard procedure when treating supernatural injuries. The police took the official records, but these..."
He offered the journal. Quinn took it with hands that barely trembled .
"Why help me now?"
"Because the same ring that killed your partner is still operating. Sarah Chen was their latest victim—a test subject for moving humans across the Veil. And because..." He hesitated. "Because I took an oath once. First, do no harm. I couldn't save Morris, but maybe I can help you stop their killers."
Quinn flipped through the journal, medical terminology mixed with words that belonged in fantasy novels. But the anatomical drawings were precise, clinical. Professional.
"If I wanted to find this trafficking ring," she said slowly , "where would I start?"
"You've already started." Tomás nodded toward The Raven's Nest direction. "The bar's owner, Silas Ashford. He's connected, though careful. Never directly involved, always three steps removed. But his back room... people meet there. Plans are made."
"And you know this how?"
"Because I patch up the survivors when plans go wrong." His hand touched the scar on his forearm unconsciously. "This was a warning, two years ago. Stop healing their victims or join them."
"Yet you're still practicing."
"Some oaths are harder to break than others, Detective."
The market around them pulsed with activity, oblivious to their conversation. Quinn made her decision.
"The token—how long does it last?"
"Until sunrise or until you leave the Market, whichever comes first. But Detective..." Tomás stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Be careful how deep you dig. Your world has laws, procedures, backup. This world? It has teeth."
Quinn thought of Morris, of three years of unanswered questions, of Sarah Chen dead on a hospital gurney. "I've faced teeth before."
"Not like these." But he smiled slightly, sadly . "There's a gathering tomorrow night. Midnight, at the Nest. Back room. I'll be there—they need medical support for a major crossing. Could use someone watching my back."
"You're offering to be an informant?"
"I'm offering to help you find your partner's killers. What you do with that information..." He shrugged. "That's between you and whatever conscience guides you in the dark."
A bell rang somewhere in the market—deep, resonant, wrong. Vendors began covering their wares.
"Market's closing," Tomás said. "Dawn comes early below. You should go, Detective. Leave the way you came, don't look back, and whatever you do, don't accept any gifts on the way out."
Quinn pocketed the journal. "Tomorrow night."
"Midnight." He turned to go, then paused. "Your partner—Morris. They fought. The wounds, the pattern of injuries... they didn't go quietly. Thought you should know."
Then he was gone, melting into the crowd of impossible figures packing up impossible wares. Quinn made her way back through the market, the bone token growing cold in her hand. The vendor who'd traded for her memory was gone , stall and all, as if they'd never existed.
She climbed the stairs on legs that shook only slightly . The rain had stopped, leaving Camden washed clean and gleaming under streetlights that seemed pale and ordinary after the market's alien glow . Her radio crackled back to life, full of routine chatter. Her mobile showed seventeen missed calls.
Quinn looked back once at the entrance. Already it was fading, solid pavement replacing ancient steps. By dawn, she suspected, there would be no sign it had ever existed.
But the journal in her pocket was real. The knowledge in her head was real. And tomorrow at midnight, she had an appointment at The Raven's Nest.
As she walked back to where she'd left her car, Quinn touched the place where the memory of Morris had been diminished . The sacrifice ached, but beneath the ache was something harder. Purpose.
Three years she'd been searching for the truth. Now, finally, she had a thread to pull.
Even if it led her into darkness with different rules and terrible teeth.
Even if it cost her more memories, more certainties, more pieces of the world she thought she knew.
Morris had fought. The least she could do was finish what her partner had started.
Detective Harlow Quinn had built her career on evidence and procedure, on the solid ground of law and logic. But as she drove through the pre-dawn streets of London, the city looked different. Shadows seemed deeper. Lights seemed less certain. And somewhere beneath the ordinary streets, a market that shouldn't exist sold impossible things to impossible people.
She'd crossed a threshold tonight, paid a price in memory for a chance at truth.
There was no going back now.
Only forward, into the dark.