AI Quinn clipped the suspect’s heel with her boot, and he still did not go down.
He stumbled, caught himself on a parking bollard, then shot her a glance that looked more like a dare than panic. Rain slicked his dark hair to his skull and turned the pavement into a mirror for the shopfront lights. He darted between two idling cars, shoulder-checking a cyclist, and vanished into a warren of side streets.
Quinn kept her breathing locked down to a steady four-count. She ran like she worked, efficient , economical, no wasted swing of the arms. The worn leather strap of her watch stuck to her wrist. It ticked on, indifferent.
“Stop. Police.”
The word got eaten by traffic noise and the wet hiss of tyres. No one turned. A couple beneath a bus shelter looked up long enough to see a tall woman in a soaked jacket moving with military precision, then they looked away. London’s gift, the ability to pretend you had not seen anything at all.
The suspect cut left through an alley behind a kebab shop. Quinn followed, boots slapping through puddles that stank of old oil and stale onions. He ducked under a half-rolled shutter and burst into a service corridor lined with bins.
A metal lid clanged. Something small and sharp whistled past her cheek and shattered against brick. A thrown knife. Not a good one, cheap steel, meant to scare more than kill.
Quinn did not flinch. She accelerated.
He hit the far end of the corridor and kicked open a fire door that spat him out onto the main road. Camden direction, if her sense of the city held. He weaved across lanes with the kind of confidence that came from believing the traffic would make room for him.
A horn blared. A cab swerved. Quinn felt the wet tug of her jacket as she followed, then the hard yank of air as a lorry blasted past close enough to steal her breath.
He glanced back again, and this time she caught it, the flash of something pale in his hand, a small object on a string. Bone, polished smooth, carved with a symbol that made her eyes sting, as if she had looked at a bright welding torch.
Her throat tightened. Not from the run.
“Morris,” she muttered, and hated herself for it.
The suspect bolted down a stairwell between two shuttered shops. A sign above it read STAFF ONLY in fading red letters. Quinn reached the top step in time to see him drop two at a time, using the rail more like a gymnast than a man in flight.
She followed him into the stairwell. Damp concrete closed around her. The city noise dulled. Her footfalls took on a hollow echo , loud enough to give away distance.
“Don’t,” a voice snapped from below. “Not your fight.”
The suspect did not stop moving. He laughed, breathless, and the sound carried oddly, as if the stairwell amplified it.
Quinn forced her pace to match. “You don’t get to choose whose fight it is.”
She gained. Two steps. Then three. She could smell him now, sweat and tobacco, and something else underneath, like hot pennies.
He reached a landing and palmed a panel in the wall. It should have been solid concrete. Instead it clicked, and a narrow door swung inward, revealing another set of stairs, older, narrower, the kind that belonged to infrastructure the public never saw.
He slipped through.
Quinn hit the door a second later and rammed it open with her shoulder. The hinges squealed. Her radio crackled at her chest, smothered by fabric.
“Control, this is Detective Quinn. Foot pursuit, suspect entering service access off Camden High Street. I’m going in.”
Static. A broken reply. Something about units. Something about hold position.
She did not hold.
The lower stairwell smelled of iron and damp rope. Water ran down the walls in thin lines, finding cracks and seams like fingers. A faded poster clung to one side, half dissolved, promising cheap theatre tickets from a decade ago. The steps under her boots changed from concrete to old stone, worn in the centre by thousands of feet.
The suspect stayed just ahead, a shadow that kept slipping around corners. He knew the route. He did not glance back anymore. He did not need to.
Quinn’s lungs burned. She pushed past it, locked her jaw, and drove forward. Her sharp jawline ached from keeping her teeth clenched.
A bend, then a long corridor.
Ahead, a circle of light fell across the floor, warmer than the cold fluorescents she had expected. Lantern light. Candlelight. She heard voices too, not the muffled rumble of the Tube, but a low, busy murmur, bartering and laughter, with an undercurrent that raised the hairs on her arms.
The suspect slowed as if he had reached safety. He straightened, rolled his shoulders, and looked almost calm.
Two men stepped out of the shadows beside the light. Not uniformed. Not council workers. Big, broad, wrapped in heavy coats that hung wrong, as if the fabric concealed more than flesh. One had a scar that split his eyebrow . The other wore a necklace of small bones that clacked against his throat.
They blocked the corridor with casual confidence.
“Token,” Scar-Brow said.
The suspect lifted the pale object. “I’ve got one.”
Bone-Necklace tilted his head, watching Quinn approach. “And she hasn’t.”
Quinn slowed to a walk the last few metres. She kept her hands visible, but not empty, her right hovering close to the grip of her pistol beneath her jacket.
“I’m police.”
Scar-Brow’s mouth twitched. “Police doesn’t buy entry.”
“It doesn’t need to.”
Bone-Necklace sniffed, as if he could smell her badge through wet cloth. “That’s funny.”
The suspect turned his back on her as if she had already ceased to exist. He stepped towards the light, token held out.
Quinn’s eyes tracked him, and beyond him the corridor opened into a wide, curved space that could only be an abandoned Tube station. Old tiles lined the walls, some cracked, some painted over with new symbols that looked hand-drawn and wrong, the lines too sharp, too deliberate. Stalls clustered on the platform like a shanty town, lit by lanterns and strings of dim bulbs. People moved between them in coats and hoods and tailored suits, faces half-hidden, voices low. An underground market, busy enough to feel alive.
She caught the edge of a sign, painted onto a sheet of metal, hung above the nearest stall.
VEIL.
The word made her stomach drop, as if some part of her had known it before her mind did.
Scar-Brow held out a thick hand towards her. “No token, no market.”
Quinn’s voice stayed flat. “I’m not here to shop.”
Bone-Necklace shrugged. “Everyone shops. Some buy goods. Some buy information. Some buy time.”
“Move.”
The suspect slipped past them and into the crowd, swallowed quickly by shifting bodies. Quinn stepped forward.
Scar-Brow did not move. He shifted his stance, blocking the corridor with his shoulder. A small, sharp knife glinted at his sleeve cuff.
Bone-Necklace looked bored. “Turn around, detective. Go back to your clean world.”
Quinn’s pulse hammered. She listened. The market noise rose and fell like surf. Somewhere, metal rang, a hammer against a bracket. A woman laughed, high and brittle. Something animal snarled, then went quiet.
She had walked into a place her training did not cover.
She pictured DS Morris, his last day, the file that had gone nowhere, the report that made no sense, the way the scene photos had blurred in the wrong places as if the camera had refused to record what stood in the room. She had called it corruption, then grief, then bad luck. She had never called it this.
Scar-Brow’s eyes flicked to her left wrist. The leather watch . He smiled without warmth . “Nice strap. Real cow.”
Quinn’s hand snapped up, not to her gun but to her badge . She held it out in the dim light. “Detective Harlow Quinn. Metropolitan Police. You’re obstructing an investigation.”
Bone-Necklace leaned in, close enough that Quinn smelled clove and decay on his breath. “Investigation into what?”
“A suspect I witnessed assault a cyclist and throw a knife.”
Scar-Brow snorted. “Cyclist will live.”
Quinn’s eyes did not leave the market beyond them. The suspect moved deeper, and she caught flashes of him between shoulders, his dark head bobbing like a buoy.
“I’m going after him.”
“Not without a token.”
Quinn lowered her badge and raised her pistol instead, level with Scar-Brow’s chest. The corridor tightened, the sound of her own breath suddenly loud.
“Last chance.”
Bone-Necklace’s bored expression shifted into something sharper, a quick flit of interest. He did not reach for a weapon. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small pouch. He shook it, and something inside clicked, hard and dry.
“Guns don’t do what you think they do down there.”
Quinn kept the muzzle steady. “They still put holes in people.”
Scar-Brow smiled wider. “People, yes.”
A movement behind them, soft as a cat.
Quinn did not turn her head, but her peripheral vision caught a figure stepping into the corridor from a side passage, hands up, palms out. He wore a dark jacket with damp shoulders and had olive skin that looked sallow under the lantern glow. A Saint Christopher medallion hung at his throat, swinging slightly .
“Quinn,” he said, accent warm, Spanish threaded through the consonants. “Put that away before you start a war you can’t finish.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed . “Herrera.”
Tomás Herrera offered a tight smile that did not reach his eyes. A scar ran along his left forearm, pale against skin that looked scraped raw by bad memories. “You’ve got mud on your boots and trouble on your face. That’s new.”
“You know these men?”
Scar-Brow looked at Tomás as if he had stepped on a cockroach. “Medic.”
Tomás’s tone stayed mild, but a warning sat behind it. “Bouncer. Both of you. Stop posturing.”
Quinn shifted her pistol a fraction, keeping Scar-Brow covered while she spoke to Tomás. “He’s my suspect. He came through here.”
Tomás followed her gaze into the market. “Lots of people come through here.”
“He threw a knife at my head.”
Tomás’s lips thinned. “Still here though.”
“Don’t play clever.”
Bone-Necklace tipped his chin at Tomás. “She hasn’t got a token.”
Tomás reached into his pocket and pulled out something pale, small, on a string. Bone, polished, carved. He did not offer it. He let Quinn see it.
Quinn’s jaw tightened. “You’re kidding.”
Tomás shook his head once. “You don’t want to go in there with nothing. You’ll get peeled.”
“I don’t take handouts.”
“This isn’t charity.” His eyes flicked to Scar-Brow, then back to Quinn. “It’s a leash. They’ll treat you like you’re on mine.”
Quinn took a half-step closer, lowering her voice. “Why are you here?”
Tomás’s gaze darted towards the market. “Someone bled and they paid in advance.”
Quinn read the subtext in his tight shoulders. Someone important. Someone dangerous.
Scar-Brow’s patience ran thin. “Make your choice, medic. Either she turns around or you sponsor her. Both cost you.”
Tomás exhaled through his nose. He lifted the token towards Quinn.
Quinn did not take it. Her hand remained on her pistol.
The suspect disappeared into a knot of bodies near a stall hung with glass vials that glowed faintly, colours that should not have existed in liquid form. She felt the chase slipping away, not because she could not run, but because the rules had changed under her feet.
Tomás’s voice dropped. “You follow him in there with that gun out, they’ll notice. If they notice, they’ll decide what you are.”
“I’m a detective.”
Tomás’s expression hardened. “Down there, you’re meat with questions.”
Scar-Brow chuckled. “He’s right.”
Quinn’s trigger finger eased. She did not holster the pistol, but she lowered it just enough to speak without pointing it at anyone.
“Give me the token.”
Tomás held it out, hesitating only a beat. “You come back out. You hear me? You don’t go looking for the centre of the market. You don’t go near the auctions.”
“Auctions.”
“You don’t want the list.”
Quinn snatched the token. It felt warm, as if it had been against skin for hours. The carving under her thumb made her fingertips prickle.
Bone-Necklace stepped aside with a flourish. “Welcome to the Veil Market, Detective Quinn.”
Scar-Brow leaned in, voice low. “No filming. No badges. No morals.”
Quinn slipped her pistol back under her jacket and stepped past them into the light.
The station swallowed her.
Lantern smoke and incense coiled together, thick enough to taste, sweet at first then bitter, like burnt sugar. Stalls crowded the platform, patched together from old doors and scaffolding. A man with silver rings displayed teeth in glass jars, labelled in neat handwriting. A woman in a smart suit held a cage with something inside that scratched at the metal with nails too long. A pair of teenagers, faces painted in chalky patterns, argued over a bundle of herbs that smelled of crushed mint and something sour.
Every eye did not turn towards her, but enough did that she felt it, a subtle shift, a pause in the rhythm of bartering. People noticed her in the way prey noticed a new predator , even if the predator did not know the terrain.
Quinn pushed forward, keeping her shoulders squared, her pace measured . She scanned for the suspect.
He moved fast through the crowd, bumping shoulders, slipping between stalls with the ease of someone who belonged. He glanced back once, spotted her, and his mouth curved. He turned towards a stairwell at the far end of the platform, marked by a chain across it and a hand-painted sign that read PRIVATE.
Quinn closed the distance, weaving around a man who sold knives laid out on black velvet , each blade etched with tight, spiralling script. She caught a smell of blood there, fresh enough to raise her heartbeat.
A hand shot out from a stall and grabbed her sleeve.
Quinn spun, her forearm driving down to break the grip.
A girl stared up at her from beneath a hood, eyes too pale to be natural. Her fingers held Quinn’s cuff with surprising strength.
“No police,” the girl hissed.
Quinn tore free and kept moving.
The suspect reached the chain at the private stairwell. He lifted his token to someone standing in shadow, someone taller and broader than Scar-Brow, wearing a long, old, black coat that looked like it had been cut for a different century.
The figure moved, and Quinn caught the glint of something on its face, not jewellery, not metal, but a slick sheen, like wet skin over bone .
The chain dropped.
The suspect darted down the private stairs.
Quinn lunged for the stairwell, but bodies shifted to block her, not by accident. A man stepped into her path, holding out a tray of tiny glass bottles filled with black liquid.
“Luck for sale,” he said, eyes fixed on her . “Bad luck, good luck, borrowed luck. Cheap.”
Quinn shoved past him.
Another hand snagged her elbow. Strong. Male.
She yanked free and looked back.
Tomás stood a few steps behind her, face tight. “Quinn, stop.”
“Move.”
“That stairwell isn’t for you.”
Quinn pointed at the gap the suspect had vanished through. “He’s down there.”
Tomás held his hands out, palms down, calming, but his eyes darted around, tracking the crowd’s attention. “You got your chase. You got him here. That’s enough.”
Quinn stepped towards the private stairwell again.
A bell rang out, a harsh, metallic clang that cut through the market noise. Once. Twice. Three times.
People froze. Heads turned. The lantern smoke seemed to thicken.
The tall figure at the private stairs raised a hand, and the crowd parted like fabric being cut.
A voice rolled across the platform, deep and amused.
“Someone brought a badge to my market.”
Quinn felt the token in her fist heat up, as if it had caught fire.
Tomás grabbed her wrist. His grip locked, and his Saint Christopher medallion swung forward, tapping against her knuckles.
“Now you’ve done it,” he said.
The tall figure stepped into the lantern light, and the skin on its face rippled, as if something beneath it shifted to look out through new angles.
“Detective Harlow Quinn,” it said, pronouncing each syllable like a taste. “You can follow your suspect. Or you can follow the rules.”
The private stairwell yawned open behind it.
From below came a sound that did not belong in any Tube station, a wet, hungry click-click, like something large testing its teeth.
The crowd surged back, giving Quinn a clear path to the stairs, and the tall figure smiled wider, inviting her down.