AI Rain hammered Soho, flattening cigarette butts into floating pulp along the kerb and glossing the slick pavement with reflections from neon. Detective Harlow Quinn’s boots gripped the wet ground, the muted slap of her soles barely audible beneath the throbbing drench. Her coat clung to her shoulders, weight doubled by rainwater. Every line in her face fixed into a scowl, sharp jaw clenched as she threaded between parked cars, mind locked tight on the darting, wiry shape vanishing down an alley.
She clocked the runner's outline—slight, yet quick. He vaulted a stack of crates, almost losing his trainers on a copper-tinged puddle. Quinn ducked around an overflowing skip, close enough to catch the edge of his fading cologne. Something sweet, out of place amid the diesel and gutters. He shot a glance over his shoulder. For a flash, streetlight caught the Saint Christopher medallion swinging at his throat.
Herrera. She knew him—his criminal history was thin, but something about his name tugged warnings in her gut. Ex-paramedic, plenty of secrets. Always showed up near trouble, like now.
He veered left, shoes pelting up worn concrete steps to a service entrance. Quinn’s breathing slowed; she’d trained for this. Even soaked, muscles ached for the pursuit. She counted her strides and pushed her shoulder through a battered door before it swung shut and locked her out.
Inside, her eyes adjusted to sour yellow light. The corridors reeked of disinfectant struggling to mask damp. She moved in silence, her training stripping every movement to purpose—the way her hip nudged aside a mop bucket, the way she ducked beneath caution tape someone had torn from a fire extinguisher.
The fluorescent flickers led her down a tight spiral stairwell, the footsteps echoing ahead, too fast, too light for anyone but him.
"Herrera." She didn’t bother to shout, just pressed the name into the stairwell, soft like a warning, not a demand.
His feet hit the last step with a hollow clack and she heard the brief choke of a breath, the pause of indecision. A steel door banged open before he disappeared into the shadows below street level.
Quinn set her jaw, trailing him down to a corridor poured from old, soot-stained brick. The electric buzz of the city overhead faded. Rain drummed somewhere above her head, but here, under the bones of the city, it barely registered. Her fingers brushed her leather watch , counting her pulse , grounding her to the moment.
Herrera kept ahead, but now the soundscape changed. Voices drifted through cracks in the brick. Against logic, warmth pulsed from below, carrying the clatter of trade: laughter, the metallic clang of coins, a woman’s laughter sounding stitched with challenge.
She found him pausing at the end of the tunnel, one hand braced on a rusted gate, the other pressed to his side. Something glinted red on his sleeve—blood, maybe, even through rain and grime. He reached into his pocket and pulled something bone-white and oval, rolling it across his knuckles.
She slipped behind a pillar while he pressed the bone token into a waiting palm—a trembling old man with milky eyes, perched on a stool like a gatekeeper of myths. The old man bit into the token. His gums blackened where they met the bone, lips twisting in an ancient smile. He lifted the gate.
"You’re late, Tommy," the old man rasped, voice like stones scraping glass.
Herrera ducked inside, eyes flicking back without seeing her.
Inside, coloured lights flickered through grates set in the ceiling. Quinn edged closer, keeping to the shadows, stifling a curse as her phone buzzed—a colleague checking in. She thumbed the screen to silent and weighed her options.
Every protocol in her head screamed for backup. But a clock ticked in her mind, the memory of DS Morris two years dead in a situation they should have controlled. She would not let Herrera slip away, not into this... whatever unsanctioned den lay past that gate.
Her hand dropped to her radio, but she left it hanging. The only way forward led through the gate. She waited until the old man's head lolled back, milky gaze unfocused. Quinn crouched and crawled through as the gate swung with the sigh of ancient hinges.
Inside, the world changed. Light bent here, colours crawling up the walls from lamps fuelled by unnatural fire. Market stalls sprawled in shifting constellations. Shrines made from animal skulls vied for space with sellers hawking glass vials and talismans. The air tangled with burnt sage, hot metal, ozone, and a tremor of power Quinn felt coil up her calf, tickle at her scalp.
Herrera’s trail spilled crimson on the flagstones, sporadic but fresh. He moved through the crowd with a limp now, passing between a witch offering rune-etched silver and a man cradling a sack full of squirming, squealing rats. Bartering language sang from tongues she didn’t recognise, interspersed with the clipped cockney of London’s underbelly.
A stallholder with plaited hair tugged on Quinn’s sleeve, pale eyes expectant.
"First-timer, love? Careful with that look. Someone’ll buy your memories before you blink."
Quinn let her hand linger by her hilt, cold gaze locking with the vendor’s, not breaking stride.
Herrera’s pace flagged as he neared an arched opening lined with jagged bone. Quinn pressed closer, using shoppers as cover. Her eyes never left his frame—olive skin pale, blood still seeping between his fingers. He bumped a shelf, tipping vials that fizzed and spat. The merchant lunged for him, but Herrera flashed a pained grin.
"Later, sì?"
He ducked through the bony archway, staggering now.
Quinn eased through the press. At the arch, a hand landed flat on her chest. A woman, twice her size, hennaed with swirling ink, feathers tangled in her dreadlocks, blocked her path.
"You have no token. What makes you think you can walk past?"
Quinn edged round, eyes narrowed . "He’s running from more than you. Let me through, or he’ll bleed out on your rug. That’ll cost your stall dearly."
The woman’s expression split in a way that was almost a smile, but her eyes stayed humourless.
"You bring the coppers to Veil Market, you bring ruin, Quinn. Heard of you—but not in the way you like."
Quinn’s jaw worked. "I’m not here for your secrets. He’s the only thing between me and a murder inquiry."
"You sure about the order of that?" The woman stepped aside, heavy necklaces clinking.
Quinn slid through, boots hitting uneven flagstones. The arch closed in behind her with a crack of air; it felt like a threshold crossed only once .
The next chamber rolled out in shadow and saffron light, nothing like the Soho she’d left. Herrera’s body hunched at the far end, weight balanced poorly. The Saint Christopher medallion gleamed against his chest. He slid to a stop and fumbled at a table draped in velvet , the merchant behind it drawing back at the scent of blood.
Quinn closed, slow now. Rainwater dripped from her cuffs, her watch ticking out the echo of her approach.
Herrera braced to run, eyes wild. "Quinn, listen, you don’t understand what’s—"
She angled to cut him off, gaze flicking to his arm. "You’re leaking all over their floor. Not a bright move."
He clutched his side, forced a lopsided smile. "Better than what waits upstairs."
"You don’t want me to call this in. But you’re fresh out of time—same as me."
His hand hovered near a jagged bottle on the velvet , desperation flickering. "You should go back up. The rest of them—"
Another merchant called out in a foreign tongue, sharp with warning. Shadows pressed closer, drawn by the confrontation and fresh blood.
Quinn advanced—boot scuffing, every muscle wired and poised between command and concession. "We’re taking this above ground, now. Or you’ll be explaining yourself to more than just me."
Herrera weighed his chances. He gripped the Saint Christopher, knuckles white, breath raw.
"You’ll regret it, Quinn. They won’t let you leave here clean," voice trembling, not from fear, but something older .
Their standoff gathered weight . At their backs, Veil Market thrummed and waited, each onlooker invested in whatever happened next.