AI The suspect’s shoulder slammed into a stack of empty crates outside a kebab shop, sending them clattering across the wet pavement. Detective Harlow Quinn vaulted the mess, her worn leather watch slapping against her wrist with each pumping stride. The rain wasn't helping . It sheeted down, turning the neon signs of Soho into bleeding watercolours and making the cobbles slick.
He was fast, but she was relentless. Eighteen years of chasing shadows through this city had honed her into a weapon of military precision. She kept her eyes locked on the dark shape of his hoodie as he ducked into a narrow alleyway, a classic mistake. Alleys in Soho were a gamble; some opened onto bustling streets, others dead-ended. This one looked like a loser.
She skidded into the mouth of the passage, one hand going to the service weapon holstered under her jacket. The alley was a dank corridor of dripping brick and overflowing bins. And it was empty. No doors, no fire escapes low enough. He’d vanished.
Then she saw it. A faint, greenish glow emanating from a grate in the ground, partially obscured by a soggy cardboard box. The iron bars were askew, recently moved. A maintenance hatch? Too small. A sewer access? Possibly. But the glow was wrong—too clean, too electric . It was the distinctive green of a neon sign, but from below.
Her radio crackled. "Quinn? Status. We lost visual." It was the surveillance team from two streets over.
She keyed the mic, her voice low, her breath misting in the cold, damp air. "Suspect went to ground. Alley off Berwick Street. Checking a possible access point."
"Stand by for backup."
"Negative. He'll be gone." Her sharp jaw tightened . This was her case, her obsession. The patterns of this group, their movements, the strange gaps in their histories—it all echoed that unresolved ache from three years ago. The night she lost Morris. The night things stopped making sense. "Maintain perimeter. I'm going in."
She holstered the radio. This was a terrible idea. Protocol screamed against it. But protocol hadn't caught them yet. Protocol didn't understand what she was chasing . She hooked her fingers through the cold, wet iron and heaved the grate aside. A set of rusted iron rungs descended into the gloom , the green light pulsing faintly from below. It smelled of damp earth, ozone, and something else… something metallic and strange.
She descended, the sounds of the city fading above her, replaced by the drip of water and the hum of distant machinery. The ladder led not to a sewer tunnel, but to a disused service passage, its walls lined with thick, old electrical cables. The green light was stronger here, casting long, distorted shadows. At the end of the passage, a heavy, industrial door stood slightly ajar.
Pushing it open, Harlow Quinn stepped into another world.
The air changed. It was thick, warm, and carried a cacophony of scents: exotic spices, hot metal, decayed flowers, and that coppery tang again. She found herself on a metal gantry high above a vast, cavernous space. Below, stretching out into the darkness, was a market. But not any market she had ever seen.
It was housed in what had clearly been an abandoned Tube station, the old platform edges still visible, now crowded with stalls. The curved, tiled arch of the tunnel ceiling soared overhead, lost in shadows. The place was a hive of activity, a chattering, clattering, shadowy inversion of the city above. The green glow came from a massive, intricate neon sign depicting a raven in flight, hanging over the central concourse.
Stalls sold things that made her training seem laughably inadequate. One displayed rows of glistening , bottled things that moved. Another had what looked like weapons carved from bone and dark wood. A vendor argued with a customer over the price of a small, twitching creature in a cage. The crowd was a mosaic of the bizarre and the ordinary: men in long coats with too many pockets, women with eyes that seemed to catch the light wrong, alongside people in cheap anoraks and trainers who looked like they’d just popped out for a pint of milk .
And there, weaving through the throng with the ease of a local, was her suspect. He glanced back once, up towards the gantry, and she knew he’d seen her. He didn't run; he just melted into the crowd, heading deeper into the market.
She took the metal stairs down, her hand never straying far from her weapon. The noise swallowed her. A dozen different languages, the clink of strange glassware, the hiss of something being sold under breath. The rules here were not her rules. She was a foreign body, an infection, and the immune system of this place was starting to take notice. Eyes followed her. Conversations hushed as she passed.
She kept moving, her own salt-and-pepper hair and practical coat making her stand out like a searchlight. She spotted him again, ducking into a stall that seemed to sell nothing but old books and jars of coloured dust .
She approached, the crowd parting slightly . The stall was manned by an elderly woman with skin like wrinkled parchment and fingers stained a deep blue. She looked up as Quinn arrived, her eyes milky and unseeing, yet somehow sharply focused.
"He's not here, dearie," the woman said, her voice a dry rustle .
"I saw him come this way."
"Many things are seen down here. Few are true." The woman gestured with a blue-stained hand towards her wares. "Looking for something? A truth, perhaps? I have many. They come expensive."
"I'm looking for a man. In a grey hoodie. Where did he go?"
The old woman smiled, a thin, bloodless line. "The Veil Market has many exits. And many entrances. But you… you need a token to use them." She tapped a small bowl on her counter filled with what looked like animal teeth and small, carved bones. "A bone for a passage. The price of entry. You paid none. How did you get in?"
Quinn ignored her, scanning the back of the stall. There was no other way out. He had to be here. Then she saw it: a section of the overflowing bookshelf behind the old woman wasn't quite flush with the wall . A hidden door.
She moved to step around the counter. The old woman's hand, surprisingly strong, shot out and gripped her wrist. The grip was cold, final.
"You don't belong here, surface-dweller. This is not your hunt. Leave. Now."
The hum of the market seemed to drop away. The surrounding chatter died. Every eye was on them. Quinn felt the weight of the place pressing down on her, a physical force. She could pull her arm back, show her badge, assert her authority. But her authority felt like tissue paper down here .
This was the decision point. Back up, call it in, let the bizarre world beneath Camden swallow another lead. Or push forward, into the unknown, where the rules were written in a language she didn't understand.
She met the woman's milky gaze, her own brown eyes hard.
"Let go."
The old woman’s smile widened, showing sharp, tiny teeth.
"Or what?"
From behind the bookshelf, a voice cut through the tension , calm and accented.
"Abuela. Release the detective. She's with me."
A man stepped into the light. He had warm brown eyes, short curly dark brown hair, and olive skin. A scar ran along his left forearm. A Saint Christopher medallion hung around his neck. He gave Quinn a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. A warning.
The old woman released Quinn's wrist instantly, her manner shifting to one of deference.
"Tomás. You vouching for this one?"
"She's lost," Tomás Herrera said, his voice even, a former paramedic's calm in a crisis. "I'll see her out."
He gestured for Quinn to follow him away from the stall. The market's noise slowly returned to its previous level, the immediate threat dissipating. He led her a short distance to a slightly quieter corner near a stall selling what smelled like strong, bitter coffee .
"That was a stupid thing to do," he said, his tone low and urgent . "You don't come down here without a token. And you certainly don't come down here flashing that." He nodded towards the slight bulge of her holster.
"Police business," Quinn stated, her voice tight . "I'm pursuing a suspect."
"This isn't a police place. Your business isn't welcome here. That man you're chasing? He's gone. Through a door you'll never find. You just announced yourself to everyone who matters."
"I know what I'm doing."
"Do you?" His warm eyes held hers, and she saw no malice in them, only a weary frustration. "I've seen what happens to people who don't know the rules down here. They end up on my table. And I can't always put them back together."
He was trying to protect her. The realisation was as unsettling as the market itself.
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because I patch people up, Detective. I don't like watching them walk into a meat grinder." He glanced over her shoulder, his body tensing. "And because your arrival has attracted the wrong kind of attention. We need to leave. Now."
He was looking past her, towards the gantry she had descended from. Two large figures were moving down the stairs with a purpose that had nothing to do with shopping. They wore long, dark coats, and their faces were set in neutral, professional masks. Security. And they were looking right at her.
Tomás gripped her elbow, his touch firm. "Don't run. Don't speak. Just walk with me. Quickly."
He steered her through the crowd, away from the approaching men, towards the darker, older part of the station where the stalls thinned out and the shadows grew longer. The two figures quickened their pace, cutting through the crowd with an authority that made people scramble out of their way.
"Who are they?" Quinn asked, her training kicking in, assessing threats, looking for exits.
"The management," Tomas replied, pulling her into a narrow archway that led to a disused platform. "They don't ask questions first."
The platform was dark, littered with forgotten debris and smelling of stale water. The only light came from a single emergency bulb flickering at the far end. It was a dead end.
Footsteps echoed behind them, steady and unhurried, blocking the only way out. The two men stepped into the archway, silhouetted against the market's glow. They were bigger up close, their silence more threatening than any shouted command.
Tomás stepped slightly in front of Quinn, a futile but instinctive gesture of protection.
One of the men spoke, his voice a low rumble.
"The token."
"I can vouch for her," Tomás said, his voice steady but she could feel the tension in the arm pressed against hers. "She was leaving."
"The token," the man repeated, flat and final. "Or the price."
The second man reached inside his coat. Quinn’s hand went to her weapon, her heart hammering against her ribs. This was it. This was the fan. And the shit was