AI The yellow tape fluttered against the rusted iron gates of the Primrose Hill deep-level shelter, snapping like a whip in the tunnel's draft. Detective Harlow Quinn didn't wait for the uniformed officer to lift the line; she ducked under it with a fluid, practiced motion that didn't disturb a single hair of her salt-and-pepper crop.
"Don't tell me it's another jumper, Miller," Quinn said, her voice echoing off the damp ceramic tiles of the forgotten spiral staircase.
"Worse, Ma'am," Sergeant Miller replied, his boots clomping heavily two steps behind. "CCTV caught some kids breaking the padlock. They didn't even make it to the main chamber before they went sprinting back out. One of them puked on a PCSO's shoes."
They descended into the belly of the Camden underworld, leaving the hum of North London far above. The air grew thick, tasting of iron and ancient, stagnant humidity. This part of the Tube had been closed since the fifties, a graveyard of soot and failed civil engineering. Quinn's nostrils flared. The scent hit her before the sight did—not just the copper tang of blood, but something cloying and sweet, like rotting lilies.
"Forensics is still ten minutes out," Miller said, flicking his torch beam over a wall of vintage posters peeling like sunburnt skin. "But the first responders found him. It's a mess. Looks like a mugging gone wrong, maybe some gang initiation. They took the eyes, Quinn. Clean out."
Quinn stopped at the threshold of the lower maintenance corridor. A single work light hummed on a tripod, casting long, jagged shadows across the scene.
"Muggings happen in alleys, Miller. Not behind three sets of bolted steel doors in a decommissioned bunker."
She stepped into the light. The victim sat propped against a humped green electrical transformer. He was young, dressed in a bespoke Italian wool coat that cost more than Miller’s car, but the fabric was shredded . Not by a knife. The edges of the tears were crinkled , darkened, as if the cloth had been flashed with intense heat.
Quinn knelt, her joints silent. She didn't look at the gory cavities where the eyes had been. Instead, her gaze fixed on the man's hands. They were locked in a rigid, claw-like grip around nothing.
"Found a wallet?"
"Empty," Miller said, gesturing to a leather square tossed three metres away. "Watch is gone too. Classic robbery. Probable struggle, he catches a blade, they finish him off and harvest whatever they can sell."
"Look at his feet, Miller."
The Sergeant leaned over, his torch beam shaking slightly . The victim’s shoes were missing , but his silk socks were pristine . No scuff marks. No dirt from the trek down the staircase.
"They carried him?" Miller suggested.
"Through three hundred yards of narrow tunnels? Without dragging a heel?" Quinn reached out, her fingers hovering an inch above the man’s chest . "There’s no blood on the floor."
Miller frowned, scanning the concrete. "Internal bleeding? Maybe they killed him elsewhere and dumped him."
"There’s no blood on the floor because there’s no blood in the body, Miller." Quinn stood up, her sharp jaw set. "Look at the skin. It’s parchment. He hasn’t just been killed; he’s been harvested. Completely."
She turned away from the corpse, her brown eyes scanning the ceiling. The heavy Victorian brickwork was stained with the soot of a century, but directly above the body, there was a patch of absolute, shimmering cleanliness. A perfect circle of white brick, as if it had been scrubbed with bleach.
"He didn't walk in. He didn't get carried in." Quinn’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous register. "He was placed. Like a centerpiece."
"You're overcomplicating it, Harlow. It's Camden. We get weirdos."
Quinn ignored him, her hand drifting to the worn leather strap of the watch on her left wrist. It wasn't ticking . It hadn't ticked for three years, not since the night DS Morris vanished into a London fog that smelled exactly like these rotting lilies.
She moved toward the shadows at the edge of the corridor, where the light of the tripod failed. Her boot hit something metallic. A small, heavy object skittered across the grit.
"Don't touch that!" Miller barked. "Evidence."
Quinn ignored him, pulling a pair of latex gloves from her pocket with a snap. She picked up the item. It was a brass compass, the casing thick with a crust of verdigris. It felt uncomfortably warm through the latex.
"A compass?" Miller scoffed, stepping closer. "Likely belonged to the victim. Wealthy kid, probably into vintage trinkets."
"Look at the face."
Quinn held it up. There were no cardinal directions. No North, South, East, or West. Instead, the face was etched with jagged, interlocking sigils that seemed to vibrate if you looked at them too long . The needle wasn't pointing toward the magnetic pole. It was spinning , a frantic, silver blur that hummed with a low-frequency vibration.
"Broken," Miller muttered.
"No," Quinn whispered. "It's tracking."
She followed the needle’s pull, moving deeper into the dark. The maintenance corridor ended in a dead end—a wall of corrugated iron blocking off a disused ventilation shaft. The hum from the compass grew louder, a thrumming that she felt in her teeth.
"Quinn, wait for the team. We don't have backup."
"Stay there, Miller. Watch the body."
She pressed her gloved hand against the corrugated iron. It wasn't cold. It felt like living skin. She pushed, expecting the resistance of rusted metal, but the sheet vibrated and slid aside with a sound like a silk dress tearing.
Behind it lay not a ventilation shaft, but a staircase that didn't appear on any municipal map. The stones were black, slick with a moisture that smelled of salt and burnt sugar. At the bottom of the stairs, a faint, flickering violet light pulsed in rhythm with the compass in her hand.
"Harlow? What is it?" Miller’s voice sounded miles away, muffled by a sudden, heavy pressure in the air.
Quinn looked down at the compass. The needle had stopped spinning. It pointed straight down into the violet glow.
"A market," she murmured, the words tasting like copper.
She remembered the confidential files she’d skimmed in the wake of Morris’s disappearance—the whispers of "The Veil Market," a nomadic bazaar of the damned that moved with the lunar cycle. The full moon was tonight.
She took the first step down. The air shifted. The sound of the police radio behind her vanished, replaced by a distant, cacophonous roar of a hundred voices haggling in languages that hadn't been spoken on the surface for millennia. The smell of the lilies became overwhelming.
"Detective?"
The voice didn't come from Miller. It was feminine, soft, and carried a distinct Polish lilt .
Quinn spun around, her hand flying to her holster. A woman stood in the shadows of the staircase, halfway between the light of the crime scene and the darkness of the pit. She was short, wearing a heavy tweed coat and a worn leather satchel that looked fit to burst with yellowing scrolls. Her curly red hair was a frantic halo around her head, and her green eyes wide behind round glasses.
"You shouldn't be here," the woman said, tucking a stray curl behind her left ear. "The bone tokens were accounted for. You don't have one."
"Police," Quinn snapped, though the badge felt light and useless in this place . "Who are you?"
"Eva," the woman said, her voice trembling but her gaze fixed on the compass in Quinn’s hand. "And that belongs to a Shade artisan. If they find you with it, they won't just take your eyes, Detective."
"The man upstairs. Was that your doing?"
Eva Kowalski shook her head, her freckled face pale in the violet gloom . "He tried to trade a counterfeit soul. The Market doesn't appreciate fraud. They... liquidated his assets."
"Liquidated his blood, you mean."
"In a manner of speaking." Eva took a step closer, her hand reaching toward the satchel. "Please. Give me the compass and go. Before the guards realize the perimeter has been breached. They don't recognize the King's peace down here."
Quinn felt the weight of the brass tool. It was the first solid lead she’d had in three years. A physical bridge to the world that had swallowed her partner.
"I'm not going anywhere," Quinn said, her voice like grinding stone. "Not until I see what's at the bottom of these stairs."
"You don't understand," Eva whispered, her eyes darting toward the violet light below . "You're looking for a man who isn't a man anymore. If you go down there, you won't find Morris. You'll just find more things to lose."
Quinn froze. "How do you know that name?"
The violet light flared. A sound like a massive, rusted gate swinging open groaned through the earth. From the depths , a cold wind surged up, carrying the scent of old parchment and fresh slaughter.
Eva’s face tightened. She didn't answer. instead, she looked past Quinn, her expression twisting into one of pure terror.
"The Merchant," Eva breathed.
Quinn turned. A figure stood at the base of the stairs. It was ten feet tall, draped in tatters of black silk that billowed even though the wind had died. It had no face, only a vertical slit of pulsing white light where a mouth should be. In its elongated, many-jointed fingers, it held a silver tray.
On the tray sat two human eyes, still wet, blinking in the violet dark.
"Fresh stock," the thing hissed, the sound vibrating inside Quinn’s skull . "But we require... a contemporary soul for the entry fee."
The Merchant began to climb, its movements jerky and unnatural, like a film skipping frames.
Quinn drew her Glock, the metal cold and reassuring, but as she aimed, the brass compass in her other hand began to glow white-hot. The sigils on the face liquified, dripping onto her glove like molten gold.
"Run, Detective!" Eva screamed, but she wasn't running . She was pulling a jagged piece of obsidian from her satchel.
The creature reached the middle of the stairs in a single, blurred leap. It didn't strike. It simply opened the slit in its face, and the sound that emerged wasn't a voice. It was the sound of a thousand people screaming Quinn’s name at once.
The light from the crime scene behind them flickered and died. Total darkness swallowed them, save for the predatory violet glow and the burning brass in Quinn's hand.
The Merchant reached out a spindly, grey hand, its clawed finger pointing directly at the leather watch on Quinn’s wrist.
"That," the thing rasped. "That is the collateral we seek."