AI Rain lashed against the asphalt of Camden High Street, turning the neon reflections of the shops into smeared, bleeding watercolors. Detective Harlow Quinn didn't feel the cold. The burn in her lungs provided all the heat she needed. Her boots hammered the pavement, splashing through puddles deep enough to soak her socks, eyes locked on the grey hoodie weaving through the late-night throngs.
The suspect, a wiry kid who moved with the frantic energy of a cornered rat, shoved a pair of tourists aside. They sprawled onto the wet concrete, shouting obscenities that were instantly swallowed by the roar of a passing double-decker bus.
Quinn didn't slow down. She hurdled a dropped umbrella, her movement precise, economized by eighteen years on the force. The leather watch on her left wrist felt heavy, a grounding weight against the chaotic pulse jumping in her neck.
"Police! Stop!"
Her voice cracked like a whip over the din of traffic.
The kid didn't look back. He vaulted a low brick wall separating the sidewalk from a construction site, his sneakers slipping on the mossy top before he recovered and vanished into the shadows of the scaffolding.
Quinn cursed, her breath pluming in the frigid air. She hit the wall a second later, planting a hand on the rough brick to vault over. She landed in mud, the suction tugging at her boots. The construction site was a maze of steel beams and stacked pallets, illuminated only by the strobe-light flicker of lightning tearing through the clouds above.
She drew her service weapon, leveling it at the darkness.
"Nowhere to go, kid. Hands where I can see them."
Something clattered to her left. A loose pipe rolling over stone.
Quinn pivoted, twisting her torso with the rigid discipline of a soldier. A shadow detached itself from a pile of cinder blocks and sprinted toward the far end of the lot, toward the rusted corrugated fence that boarded up the old access tunnels.
She holstered the gun and broke into a sprint. The mud slicked underfoot, threatening to send her sprawling, but she kept her center of gravity low. The suspect reached the fence, fingers scrabbling against the metal. There was no gate. No gap. Just a solid wall of iron and rust.
"End of the line." Quinn slowed, closing the distance with measured steps, chest heaving. "Turn around."
The kid ignored her. He jammed a hand into his pocket, trembling fingers retrieving something small and white. He pressed the object against the corrugated steel.
Quinn stopped ten feet away, rain dripping from her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair into her eyes. She blinked the water away, certain the darkness was playing tricks on her.
Where the object touched the metal, the rust didn't just flake away. It rippled. The steel groaned, a sound like a dying animal, and the solid surface warped, twisting inward as if sucked by a vacuum.
"What the hell..."
The kid shoved his body through the impossible opening, the metal stretching like taffy around him.
Quinn lunged. She hit the wet ground, sliding the last few feet, her hand shooting out to grab the heel of his sneaker. Her fingers brushed wet canvas. He kicked back, a sharp, desperate blow that connected with her shoulder.
She grunted, grip slipping. The kid wriggled free, tumbling into the darkness beyond the fence.
The metal began to snap back into place, the hole stitching itself shut with unnatural speed.
Quinn scrambled upright, throwing her weight against the fence. Solid. Cold. Unyielding. She pounded a fist against it, the vibration jarring her arm all the way to the socket.
"Open up!"
Silence answered her, save for the relentless drumming of the rain.
She looked down. In the mud, half-buried by her own boot print, lay the object the kid had used.
She crouched, retrieving it. It was a piece of bone, yellowed with age, carved into a rough circular token. Intricate symbols were etched into the surface, dark with dirt and grease. It felt warm, throbbing with a faint, rhythmic pulse that matched her own heartbeat.
*Supernatural origins.* The phrase from the internal report on DS Morris’s death flashed in her mind. Unexplained circumstances.
Quinn stood, clutching the bone token. The rain plastered her coat to her frame. She looked back toward the street. Backup was minutes away. Protocol dictated she secure the perimeter, call it in, wait for a tactical team. A tactical team that would see a rusted fence and laugh at her report of a melting wall.
She looked back at the metal barrier. Morris hadn't waited for backup three years ago. He’d chased a lead into a warehouse in East London and came out in a body bag, his face frozen in a scream caused by something the coroner couldn't identify.
Quinn clenched her jaw . She pressed the bone token against the wet steel, right where the kid had.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, the warmth in the bone spiked, searing her palm. The metal beneath it shuddered. The groan of bending steel returned, louder this time, vibrating through her chest. The barrier softened, the atoms seemingly unbinding, creating a swirling vortex of grey and rust.
She didn't hesitate. She stepped through.
The sensation was akin to walking through a waterfall of ice water. The air pressure dropped instantly, popping her ears. The noise of the storm—the thunder, the traffic, the rain—vanished, severed as if by a knife.
Quinn stumbled forward, nearly losing her footing on tiled flooring heavily layered with dust.
The metal wall sealed behind her with a final, wet slap.
She stood in darkness, the only light coming from the faint bioluminescent moss growing in patches along the curved ceiling. She recognized the architecture immediately. The curved tiled walls, the stagnant air, the distinct smell of ozone and old dust. An abandoned Tube station.
She pulled her flashlight from her belt, the beam cutting a stark white cone through the gloom . Dust motes danced in the light. Advertising posters from the nineties peeled from the walls, faces of long-forgotten models smiling grotesquely in the decay.
"Focus, Quinn." Her voice sounded too loud in the confined space.
She swept the beam across the floor. Wet footprints, smaller than hers, led toward the escalators. The machinery was still, rusted solid, descending into a black throat of the earth.
She moved toward them, gun drawn again. The silence down here was heavy, oppressive . It felt like the air itself was watching her.
She descended the stationary escalator steps, each footfall crunching on grit and broken glass. As she went deeper, the temperature rose. The damp chill of the London rain was replaced by a humid, cloying warmth , smelling of sulfur, exotic spices, and something coppery like blood.
At the bottom of the escalator, a gated entrance awaited. The heavy iron shutters were rolled up. Beyond them, the platform opened up, but it wasn't empty.
The station shouldn't have been active. It was supposed to be a tomb of concrete and rats. Instead, lanterns strung along the old power lines bathed the platform in a hazy, amber glow.
Quinn killed her flashlight and hugged the wall, peering around the corner.
The platform had been transformed . Makeshift stalls constructed from scavenged wood and metal lined the edge where eager commuters would once have waited for the Northern Line. The yellow line on the floor was barely visible beneath rugs and crates.
Creatures moved between the stalls.
She blinked, wiping her eyes with her free hand, certain the stress was inducing hallucinations.
A figure taller than any human, wrapped in voluminous grey rags, bartered with a woman whose skin shimmered with iridescent scales. Another vendor, a man with too many joints in his fingers, arranged jars of glowing liquid on a folding table.
The Veil Market.
The name surfaced from the ramblings of a snitch she’d interviewed months ago, a junkie she’d dismissed as high on hallucinogens. He’d talked about a place that moved with the moon, where you needed a piece of death to enter.
She gripped the bone token in her pocket. A piece of death.
Movement near a stall selling dried herbs caught her eye. The grey hoodie. The kid was arguing with a vendor, gesturing wildly back toward the escalator, toward her.
Quinn stepped out from the cover of the tiled archway, the military precision returning to her posture. She raised her weapon, the matte black steel stark against the warm, flickering lantern light.
The crowd went silent. The hum of conversation, the clinking of glass, the shuffling of feet—it all died instantly. Dozens of eyes turned toward her. Some were human. Some were vertical slits of gold. Some were hollow pits of shadow.
The kid spun around, his face draining of color.
"Badge," a voice rasped from her left.
Quinn pivoted slightly , keeping the gun trained on the general mass but checking her flank. A massive figure hulked by the entrance, skin like granite, leaning on a club made from a rebar-reinforced concrete pillar.
"You don't belong here, Lawkeeper." The granite man didn't move his lips, the sound grinding out from his chest.
"Police," Quinn projected, her voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding her system . "I'm here for the suspect. Nobody else needs to get involved."
A low, chittering laughter rippled through the market.
The kid backed away, bumping into a table of amulets. "She followed me! I locked the gate, I swear!"
"You led a wolf to the flock, boy," the vendor with the extra joints hissed, sweeping the glowing jars into a protectively lined box.
Quinn took a step forward, the leather of her jacket creaking. "I am walking out of here with him. Either in handcuffs or in a bag. Your choice."
She locked eyes with the kid. He looked ready to bolt again, aiming for the dark tunnel where the train tracks ran deeper into the underground network.
"Don't even think about it," she warned him, shifting her aim to center mass.
"Detective Quinn," a smooth, melodic voice drifted from the shadows of the platform edge.
Quinn froze. The name hung in the air , heavy and intimate.
A woman stepped into the amber light. She wore a tailored suit that cost more than Quinn made in a year, her eyes entirely black, no whites, no irises. She held a cigarette in a long holder, the smoke curling in shapes that defied physics.
"We rarely see the Metropolitan Police this deep," the woman said, smiling to reveal teeth that were slightly too sharp. "Especially not the famous Harlow Quinn. We heard you were looking into... specialized matters."
"You know me." Quinn didn't lower the gun. "That puts you at a disadvantage."
"Does it?" The woman took a drag, the smoke forming a skull before dissipating. "You stand in the belly of the beast, Detective. Your radio waves don't reach here. Your laws are ink on paper, dissolving in the damp."
"I have a gun," Quinn said flatly.
"And we have magic," the woman countered, gesturing to the silent, watching crowd. "But please, let’s not be uncivilized. You want the boy. We want to know how a mundane detective opened a sealed Veil Gate without being vaporized."
The granite bouncer took a heavy step forward. The floor cracked under his weight .
Quinn calculated the distance to the escalator. Twenty yards. Uphill. Against a crowd of freaks and monsters.
She tightened her grip on the pistol. This was for Morris. Every dead end, every redacted report, every sleepless night led to this platform.
"Legally," Quinn said, her finger resting on the trigger guard, "I'm arresting him for obstruction of justice and fleeing a crime scene. But seeing as we're off the map..."
She shifted her stance, widening her feet.
"I'm keeping the suspect. And I'm asking the questions."
The woman with the black eyes laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "Ambition. I like it. But the Veil Market extracts a high tax on curiosity, Detective."
The kid took his chance. He bolted for the tracks, jumping off the platform edge into the darkness of the tunnel.
Quinn swore and broke into a run, ignoring the devastating array of threats flanking her. She shoved past the granite guard, ducking under the swing of his club—the wind of it ruffling her hair—and sprinted to the edge of the platform.
"Get her!" the woman commanded.
The market erupted.
Quinn vaulted off the platform, landing in the gravel of the track bed. She didn't look back at the chaos descending from the station lights. She ran into the dark, following the echoes of the terrified footsteps ahead.