AI Rain cut across Camden High Street in hard, slanting sheets that turned everything into smeared light and shadow. The kebab shop signs bled colour. Headlamps broke into white streaks on the wet tarmac. Sirens wailed somewhere distant, swallowed by the city.
Harlow Quinn watched the door of the betting shop through droplets on the brim of her cap. The worn leather strap of her watch dug into her wrist as she checked it. Past midnight. Surveillance log already too long.
The suspect stepped out at last. Grey hoodie, black rucksack, head down. Same build as the CCTV. Same limp on the right side. He paused under the awning, scanned the street, then moved north, toward the canal.
Her shoulders straightened. Boots left the shallow puddle she’d been planted in.
“Control, this is Quinn. I’ve got Eyre exiting the location on Camden High. Heading northbound. Commencing follow on foot.”
Static hissed in her earpiece, the rain kicking off the aerials and brick, then the reply broke through.
“Received, Quinn. Armed response five minutes out. Maintain obs, do not engage.”
“Understood.”
Her mouth flattened. Five minutes never existed on busy streets. People moved in clumps. Cars double-parked. Buses blocked everything.
Harlow kept ten metres back. Her pace matched his. Military habit. No wasted stride.
Eyre reached the junction by the bridge and stopped to adjust his strap. His head turned, just a little, the way people did when they felt a weight behind them.
He glanced back.
Their eyes met for a heartbeat through the smear of streetlight on rain.
“Shit.”
He bolted.
Harlow threw herself forward, her boots slapping through a flooded pothole. Cold water shot up her shins, under her jeans.
“Control, suspect aware. Foot pursuit, heading toward Camden Lock.”
Shouts broke from the crowd as Eyre barged through late drinkers and tourists who still clung to plastic ponchos and half-finished cones.
“Watch it, mate!”
“Oi!”
He ducked past a girl clutching an umbrella. Harlow clipped the same umbrella with her shoulder, spun around it, kept her balance. Her breath rasped in her throat, tasted of exhaust and fried meat.
“Police! James Eyre, stop where you are!”
He didn’t.
He broke across the main road between honking cars. Tyres shrieked. A taxi missed him by inches.
Harlow cut behind a bus and chased his shadow along the canal path. The world narrowed to his back, the pitch of his breath, the beat inside her chest. Brickwork on one side, black water on the other. The air felt colder down here, damp rising off the canal.
Eyre veered left toward the dark underbelly of a railway bridge. He vaulted a low gate that blocked off a service access, then disappeared into a gap in the hoarding beyond.
Harlow reached the gate and planted one hand. Pain flared in her palm as she hauled herself over. Combat training took over where forty-one-year-old muscles complained. She landed, skidded on wet moss, caught herself on a rusted rail.
Ahead, the hoarding ran in a jagged line, smeared with graffiti. A section lay bent where Eyre had forced it back. Yellow paint on the faded wood read: NO ENTRY – DANGEROUS STRUCTURE.
“Of course it is.”
She traced him through the narrow break, plywood scraping across her back. Inside, the noise of Camden died like someone had closed a door on it. The rain cut down to a distant hiss overhead.
The space beyond belonged to an older London. Crumbling brick arches held up blackened beams. A tangle of disused rails vanished into darkness. Old posters peeled away from tiled walls in long, drooping tongues.
Eyre’s footsteps rang off down a stairwell ahead.
Harlow moved after him, weapon still holstered but hand hovering. Her watch caught the weak light, the leather dark with rain.
“Control, Quinn. Suspect entering what looks like disused Underground infrastructure off Camden Lock. I’m in pursuit.”
Static.
“Control, confirm receive.”
More static. Then nothing.
She checked the signal bar on her radio. Dead. The ground swallowed sound and signal both.
“Perfect.”
She took the stairs two at a time. Water dripped from somewhere above in slow, regular beats. The smell changed: away from kebabs and diesel, toward wet dust and rust.
Below, the stairwell opened into an old ticket hall, stripped bare. The ticket windows lay smashed. Glass dust glittered on the floor. An ancient ‘WAY OUT’ sign hung crooked, pointing to a bricked-up doorway.
Another sign, half-fallen, still clung to the tiled wall: CAMDEN ROAD – CLOSED.
Eyre’s footprints smeared across the grime, a dark trail of water and mud. They led through a wide archway that once held turnstiles.
Down another flight of steps, deeper yet.
Harlow’s ribs burned. Her thighs shook. The echo of her own pace chased her down the tunnel. She reached the bottom and pulled up short.
An iron gate blocked the passage ahead. Old, thick bars. Or they had been old. Now the metal gleamed as if someone had stripped the rust off yesterday. A dull, bone-white token hung from a hook beside it.
Beyond the gate, light flowed.
Not the harsh strip light of the modern Tube. A softer, layered glow in blues and sickly greens, as if someone had strung up lanterns filled with sea glass. Shapes moved in that glow, shifting silhouettes, stalls, banners, bodies.
Voices carried down the tunnel. A low, busy murmur, threaded through with individual calls.
“Essence by the dram, no dilution.”
“Fresh charms, no contracts, cash only.”
“Two anchors for the phoenix ash, not a penny less.”
Harlow blinked. Listened again.
Anchors. Phoenix. Her brain tried to translate it into drug deals. Street code. Nothing fit.
Closer, on the other side of the bars, she heard Eyre.
“You’re late, Jimmy.”
“Traffic.”
“You’ve got the token?”
“Of course I’ve got the token, don’t I? Move it.”
“Hold it up.”
Harlow stepped sideways, close enough that the bars hid her. She peered through the narrow gap.
Eyre stood about ten feet inside the gate. Wet hoodie, rucksack, the same as before. He faced a tall figure in a heavy coat whose hood shadowed most of the face.
The hooded figure raised a hand. Long fingers, pale, with dark lines inked into the skin, coiled like vines.
Eyre pulled something from his pocket. Small. Bone-white. Rounded at one end, cut flat at the other. He held it up, thumbnail hooking into a groove.
Light bled out of it. Faint at first, then stronger. It crawled along the surface of the token in fine, crawling lines, then leaped to the bars.
Metal shivered. A faint sound, like ice cracking on a frozen pond, ran down the gate.
Harlow jerked back out of instinct.
The gate unlocked without a visible latch. Bars rippled, space widening in the centre until the iron bent enough to allow a body through.
Eyre grinned.
“You lot never get less creepy, do you?”
The hooded figure’s voice came out flat, with an accent she couldn’t place.
“You’re the one who keeps coming back, Jimmy. Get in before someone notices you’re dripping on the floor.”
Eyre stepped through the widened gap. The bone token in his hand threw one last pulse of light, then dimmed.
He disappeared into the glow inside.
The hooded figure watched until he blended into the crowd beyond, then reached out and tapped one of the bars. Metal straightened under that touch, returning to its original place. The gap vanished.
The token went back on the hook beside the gate. Blank. Lifeless.
Harlow’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Her voice came out low.
“Alright. That’s new.”
The hooded figure stiffened and turned. The face under the hood looked almost human, just a little wrong around the eyes. The left iris spread wider than it should, swallowing most of the white. The right pupil sat narrow and pin-prick small.
The gaze landed on her uniform, the badge on her chest, the grip on her shoulder rig.
“Evening, Officer.”
Harlow set her feet.
“Metropolitan Police. You just assisted a named suspect to evade arrest.”
The figure tilted a head.
“You followed him here by yourself.”
“Door was open.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The voice held no fear. More… bored curiosity.
“Open it again,” Harlow lifted her chin toward the gate, “and let me through.”
“You’ve got a badge, not a token.”
“I don’t need a token. I’ve got powers of entry under PACE.”
A snort came from under the hood.
“You’ve got powers that stop at that gate.”
Her fingers flexed.
“What is this place?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Humour me.”
The hood moved a fraction. The strange eyes studied her face, tracked the twitch in her jaw, the habit-built stance. The worn strap of her watch .
“You lot call it all sorts. Market. Black hole. Mistake. Locals call it the Veil Market.”
“Drugs market?”
That drew a huff.
“Information. Goods. Favors. Contracts. Nothing that fits on your forms.”
“If it takes cash, it sits inside my forms.”
“It doesn’t like your forms.”
Harlow glanced past the bars. The view had shifted as people moved around inside.
Stalls lined the sides of a broad concourse that looked like an old platform, absolved of trains. Sheets of canvas and patched tarpaulin, strings of mismatched lights. She caught glimpses: a table laid out with rows of tiny glass vials, each holding smoke that twisted like trapped fingers; a pile of rough stones that breathed out faint glows; a woman whose eyes flickered between colours as she slid rings onto a customer’s hand.
Her stomach did a slow roll.
“Last chance,” she locked onto the hooded figure again, “open it.”
“Or what?”
“I arrest you for obstruction.”
“Arrest me,” a light smile touched the corner of the hidden mouth, “that’ll work well.”
Her hand dropped to her cuffs.
“Turn around.”
A new voice came from up the tunnel behind her.
“Detective Quinn? That you?”
Harlow spun. Torchlight flared in her face. She raised an arm, blinked spots from her vision.
“Light down.”
The beam dipped to her boots. Behind it, a damp figure in a dark jacket and cargo trousers stood catching his breath. Early thirties maybe, olive skin, curls plastered to his forehead. A battered medical bag hung off one shoulder. A thin chain at his throat flashed dull silver where the torch bounced off it.
He frowned.
“Bloody hell, it is you.”
Her eyes narrowed .
“You know me?”
“Used to see you outside the Raven’s Nest now and then. Watching Silas’ bar like it hurt you personally.”
His accent sat somewhere between London and Andalusia, rounded vowels wrapped around clipped consonants. His gaze jumped to the gate, then to the hooded figure, then back to her warrant card.
“Tomás Herrera,” he tapped his chest with two fingers, “civilian. Off-duty. Not involved in whatever this is.”
“Off-duty where? A&E?”
“Was. Not anymore.”
He shifted his bag and stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“You shouldn’t be down here.”
“You following Eyre as well, Tomás?”
“I’m working.”
“Down a closed Tube station.”
“You say that like hospitals don’t close their doors to people who need help.”
His eyes had a tired sort of sharp in them. He flicked a look past her shoulder again.
“Open for trade tonight, is it?”
The hooded figure shrugged.
“Moon’s right.”
Tomás let out a slow breath.
“Of course it is.”
Harlow followed the exchange, heat crawling up the back of her neck.
“You know what that is?” she jerked her thumb at the bars.
He hesitated. Just long enough to register.
“Yeah.”
“You going inside?”
“Client’s waiting, so… yeah.”
“Then you can take me in with you.”
His brows jumped.
“That gate doesn’t like cops, Detective.”
“It’s metal. It doesn’t like anything.”
He leaned in until she caught the mix of antiseptic and sweat on him.
“That’s not metal.”
The hooded figure’s voice drifted over.
“He’s right. It’s bone.”
She stared at the bars, at the way the light from inside slid over the surface. Under the grey, something porous showed where it chipped. Her throat tightened.
She cleared it.
“Eyre’s wanted in connection with three bodies,” the words came out clipped, “all cut open like butcher’s carcasses. You think I’m walking away because the door looks weird?”
Tomás watched her. His jaw worked, like he chewed something bitter.
“You go in there without a token, you won’t see him, even if he stands in front of you.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
He snorted.
“You think that because you don’t know what you’re looking at.”
A memory flicked across her mind uninvited: Morris on the floor of that Lambeth warehouse, eyes wide and empty, skin gone wrong and thin as tracing paper. The air that had pulsed like a heart around the circle on the concrete, the voices that hadn’t belonged to any living throat.
She’d explained it away. For three years she’d forced it into boxes labelled with words like shock and gas leak and group psychosis.
The glow behind the gate didn’t fit any of those boxes.
Her fingers found the watch on her wrist and tightened around it. The leather pressed into old grooves in her skin.
“Last time I walked away from something I didn’t understand,” her voice scraped low, “my partner didn’t.”
Tomás heard that. His expression shifted. Something softer, then back to worn and wary.
“I’m sorry for that. Truly. But inside there?” He jerked his chin at the Market. “The rules don’t belong to you. They won’t care that you’re Met. They won’t care about PACE. They care about tokens and oaths and debts that don’t pay out in prison time.”
“Eyre killed three people on my watch .”
“You’re not hearing me.”
“I’m hearing fear.”
“And I’m hearing stubborn.”
The hooded figure interrupted, impatience leaking into the words.
“This touching little stand-off is clogging my tunnel. Decide, or take it upstairs.”
Harlow looked through the bars once more. A trader argued with a hunched customer over the price of a delicate box that hummed under the sound of their voices. A creature with long limbs and a face too smooth moved three crates with ease, its shadow bending at an angle that didn’t match the light.
She dragged her gaze back to Tomás.
“You can get me through that gate.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“Both.”
He lifted his bag higher, muscles bunching in his forearm, the long scar on it pale against the damp skin.
“I owe enough down there without dragging a copper in. They’d make me pay for that twice.”
“You’d let him walk.”
“I patch up the ones who stumble out. That’s what I do.”
“Three bodies, Herrera. You patch them up too?”
The question hit its mark. His jaw shifted, throat working. He looked away.
“Sometimes I’m too late.”
The hooded figure heaved out a theatrical breath.
“Quinn, was it? You want in, bring a bone token next time. Or bring someone who owes you a lot more than he owes them.”
“How do I get one?”
“That’s also not my problem.”
She stepped up to the gate until the bars almost touched her nose.
“You let a killer disappear. This? This is obstruction. Accessory. Conspiracy. I’ll drag every uniform in North London down those stairs if I have to.”
The figure laughed once.
“You drag them to the gate, they bounce. This place sits under your city. It doesn’t belong to it.”
Her radio hissed in her ear, a faint, distant crackle, then a voice fought its way through.
“...nn? Quinn, report status. ARV approaching Camden Lock. Quinn, do you copy?”
She lifted a hand to her earpiece but kept her eyes on the Market.
“Control, this is Quinn. I’m in disused Underground infrastructure off Camden Lock. Lost visual on suspect.”
That part flowed out before she finished thinking it. The lie slid into the space where her training lived.
Her other hand tightened around the bar closest to her.
“Signal’s patchy. I’ll… I’ll return to street level and brief units there.”
Tomás watched her form the words, a sort of resigned understanding settling over his features.
“Copy, Quinn. Make your way up. Units will hold the perimeter.”
The transmission cut. The silence after felt heavy.
Tomás spoke first.
“That was the right call.”
She stared through the gate, through the ghost light and the shifting crowd, at a world that had swallowed her suspect without a trace.
Her grip on the bar loosened.
“Open it.”
The hooded figure’s tongue clicked against teeth.
“You don’t listen well.”
Her gaze met the strange eyes head-on.
“I’m not leaving him in there. Open it, or tell me how.”
For a moment, no one moved. Water dripped somewhere down the tunnel in slow, precise ticks. Her watch thrummed against her pulse .
Then Tomás shifted his weight and stepped past her, toward the gate. His hand went to the Saint Christopher at his throat. His fingers curled around the medallion as if it might burn.
He looked back at her.
“You walk in there, Quinn, you’re on your own.”
“I’ve been on my own for three years.”
He swallowed.
“Fine.”
He reached for the bar where Eyre’s token light had traced its lines.
“Remember you asked for this.”
His palm pressed to the bone-cold surface.
The gate began to move.