AI Rain hammered the asphalt, turning the Soho streets into a blur of neon and oil. Detective Harlow Quinn’s boots slammed against the wet pavement, jarring her knees with every stride. Ahead, the hooded figure vaulted a stack of empty crates with an irritating, fluid grace. No scramble, no hesitation. Just up and over.
Quinn gritted her teeth, ignoring the stinging rain plastering her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair to her skull. She forced her legs to pump faster, breath tearing at her throat. She hit the crates, hands scrambling for purchase on the slick wood, and hauled herself over. A splinter dug into her palm. She ignored it.
"Police! Stop!"
The shout vanished under the roar of a passing bus. The figure didn't flinch. They hooked a left down a narrow alley, the kind that smelled of piss and stale beer even in a downpour.
Quinn skidded around the corner, one hand steadying herself against the brickwork to check her momentum. Her sharp jaw set like a trap. Eighteen years on the force, decorated, respected, and she was chasing a ghost who moved faster than an Olympic sprinter. The runner wore a heavy canvas jacket that should have weighed him down, yet he danced over the uneven cobblestones of the backstreet.
He reached a chain-link fence at the alley's dead end. The suspect hit the mesh. Metal shrieked. In two seconds, he was at the top, rolling over the barbed wire without a snag.
Quinn reached the fence a beat later. She jammed the toe of her boot into the diamond gap. The metal bit into her sole. She climbed, military precision overriding the burn in her muscles. At the top, she didn't roll; she dropped, landing in a crouch that threw a shockwave up her spine.
The suspect was already halfway down the adjacent street, heading north toward the grit of Camden.
Quinn checked the worn leather watch on her left wrist. Midnight. The witching hour. Fitting for the bizarre cases piling up on her desk since Morris died. She pushed off the wall and resumed the sprint.
The rain intensified, a curtain of gray sleet. Most civilians had fled indoors, leaving the sidewalks to the desperate and the predatory.
The runner ducked into the maw of an underpass near the canal. Quinn followed, the sudden acoustic shift magnifying the slap of their footsteps . Echoes bounced off the concrete, turning the single set of fleeing steps into a phantom stampede.
She reached for the radio clipped to her belt, then stopped. Calling backup meant explaining why she was chasing a vandalism suspect across three boroughs. It meant explaining the impossible physics she'd witnessed back at the Raven's Nest, where this perp had slipped out of a locked back room that had no other exit. Even Quinn couldn't explain how a grown man fit through a bookshelf gap barely an inch wide.
She would finish this herself.
The suspect veered suddenly , jumping a concrete barrier and sliding down a mud embankment. Quinn cursed. She vaulted the concrete, her heels digging into the soft earth. She slid, mud coating her trousers, but kept her balance.
At the bottom, the canal path stretched out, dark and slick. The figure wasn't running anymore. He stood by a rusted iron door set into the brick archway of an old bridge. A heavy padlock hung from the hasp, thick with corrosion.
The suspect placed a hand on the lock. A flash of blue light, sharp as a welding spark, popped in the gloom . The lock clicked open.
Quinn drew her service weapon, leveling the Glock. "Hands where I can see them!"
The figure didn't turn. He pulled the heavy iron door open, revealing a throat of absolute darkness.
"Turn around. Now."
The suspect stepped into the dark. The door began to swing shut.
Quinn lunged. She caught the edge of the iron door with her left hand, the metal cold enough to burn. She wrenched it back. The rusty hinges screamed in protest.
Drafts of stale air hit her face. Not the rot of the canal, but something dry and older. Dust, ozone, and singed herbs. Steps led down, cut from the same stone as the foundation.
She stepped in. The door clanged shut behind her, sealing out the rain and the city noise. Silence pressed against her ears, heavy and thick.
She retrieved a tactical flashlight, clicking it on. The beam cut a cone through the dust motes. Concrete stairs spiraled down, far deeper than the Tube lines usually ran. Graffiti covered the walls, but not the usual tags. These were geometric shapes, sigils drawn in charcoal and chalk that made her eyes water if she stared too long.
Quinn descended. Her grip on the Glock tightened. This felt like the night Morris died . The air had that same static charge, making the hair on her arms stand up.
At the bottom of the stairs, the narrow passage opened into a cavernous space. Tiled walls curved overhead—an abandoned station. The classic oxblood tiles of the frantic Edwardian era, cracked and peeling like dead skin.
She moved to the edge of the platform. The tracks were gone , replaced by a smooth, cobbled floor that stretched into the darkness of the tunnel.
Movement flickered ahead. The runner was fifty yards down the tunnel, walking casually now.
Quinn holstered the light but kept the gun out. She stepped off the platform, the three-foot drop jarring her knees. She moved silently, rolling her steps heel-to-toe, a hunter stalking prey.
A low hum vibrated through the soles of her shoes. Voices.
She rounded a bend in the tunnel and stopped, pressing herself against the curved wall, obscured by the shadow of a support pillar.
The tunnel widened into a vast junction. Makeshift stalls lined the walls, illuminated by lanterns that burned with flames of unnatural colors—violet, sickly green, blood orange.
The Veil Market.
She had heard the whispers from the snitches she leaned on. A place that moved with the moon, a place where the laws of physics were treated as suggestions.
Strange figures moved between the stalls. Some looked human. Others wore heavy cloaks that bulged in the wrong places. A vendor was weighing a shimmering powder onto a brass scale. Another polished a jagged dagger that seemed to absorb the light around it .
The suspect stood before a barrier—a thick velvet rope strung between two heavy stanchions, blocking the path deeper into the market. A massive figure stood guard.
Quinn watched. The runner lowered his hood. A young man, pale, but with eyes that looked entirely too old for his face. He reached into his pocket and produced a small, white object. A knucklebone.
The guard, a brute of a man whose skin possessed a grayish, granite texture, took the bone. He inspected it, sniffed it, then stepped aside.
The runner slipped past.
Quinn’s pulse hammered in her neck. This was it. The source. If the clique was involved in criminal activity, the evidence was down here. But this wasn't her jurisdiction. This wasn't even her reality.
She stepped out of the shadows. The ambient noise of the market—haggling in languages she didn't recognize, the hiss of steam, the clinking of glass—died down as she approached the barrier.
Heads turned. Eyes that reflected the lantern light like cats focused on her.
The granite-skinned guard folded his arms. His biceps were the size of tree trunks.
"Token," he rumbled. His voice sounded like grinding stones .
Quinn stopped three feet from him. She kept her gun at her side, pointed at the ground, but her finger rested on the trigger guard.
"Police," she said, flashing her badge with her left hand. "I'm pursuing a suspect."
The guard didn't even look at the badge. He stared at her neck, then her wrist. "No token. No entry."
"I'm not asking for permission." Quinn took a step forward.
The guard moved with deceptive speed, blocking her path. He loomed over her, easily seven feet tall. "This is neutral ground, Lawkeeper. Your badge has no metal here."
Quinn looked past him. The runner had stopped near a stall selling jars of cloudy liquid. He was watching her, a smug grin plastered on his face. He knew the rules. He knew she was powerless here.
Rage, cold and sharp, spiked in her chest. Morris had died screaming because they hadn't known the rules. Because they had walked blind into a world that ate cops for breakfast.
She wasn't blind anymore.
"Neutral ground implies you don't take sides," Quinn said, her voice dropping to a dangerous calm . "Blocking an investigation is taking a side."
The guard leaned down, his face inches from hers. His breath smelled of wet clay. "The Market protects its own. Go back to the rain, little detective. Before you lose more than just your way."
She saw the threat in his eyes—solid black orbs without whites.
Quinn weighed the Glock in her hand. A 9mm slug might chip him, maybe annoy him. But she saw the way the other patrons watched. They respected strength. They respected currency.
She holstered the gun. A visible ripple of confusion went through the onlookers.
Quinn reached into her coat pocket. She didn't have a bone token. But she had something she had found in Morris's pocket the night he died. A coin, seemingly gold, heavily scarred, stamped with a raven on one side and a skull on the other. She had carried it as a talisman of vengeance for three years.
She held it up. The lantern light caught the raven's eye.
The guard’s stone face shifted. A crack of surprise? Fear?
"I don't have a bone," Quinn said, her voice echoing in the tunnel . "I have this."
Silence stretched, tight as a bowstring. The runner’s smug grin vanished. He looked at the coin, then back to the darkness of the tunnels behind him, considering flight.
The guard straightened up slowly . He looked from the coin to Quinn’s face, re-evaluating the threat level. The salt-and-pepper hair, the military bearing, the eyes that had seen enough death to fill a cemetery.
"Old currency," the guard grunted. He stepped back, unhooking the velvet rope. "Dangerous currency."
"I like living dangerously," Quinn lied. She didn't like it. She endured it.
"The Market is open to you," the guard said, gesturing to the tunnel beyond. "But the Market takes what it is owed."
Quinn stepped past him. The air grew colder on the other side of the rope. She didn't look back at the guard or the gauntlet of staring creatures. Her eyes locked on the runner, who was now scrambling backward, knocking over a stack of cages containing fluttering, winged lizards.
"End of the line," Quinn said.
She entered the Veil Market, the darkness swallowing the last bit of the London detective she used to be. The hunt was still on.