AI Quinn clipped the corner of a parked car, shoulder slamming metal, and kept running without breaking stride.
“Stop!” Her voice cut through the traffic noise, through the hiss of tyres, through the slap of feet on wet tarmac.
The suspect didn’t even glance back. A dark jacket, hood up, lean build, fast. He moved like he knew every kerb and bollard in Camden, like the city belonged to him and the law merely rented space.
Quinn drove her legs harder. Her worn leather watch scraped her wrist as she pumped her arms. The strap had loosened over years of raids, doors, cuffs, blood. It held on.
He darted between two taxis that braked with angry horns. Quinn followed, palm out, forcing a gap, the shoulder radio crackling against her collarbone.
“Control, I’m in foot pursuit. Male, average height, dark hoodie. Heading south off Camden High Street. I need units to cut him off.”
Static, then a strained reply.
“Quinn, say again, you’re breaking up.”
“Foot pursuit,” she snapped, and vaulted a low barrier into a narrower side street.
The air tasted like diesel and damp brick. Water ran in small rivers along the gutter, carrying cigarette ends and torn flyers. Neon from a kebab shop bled colour across puddles. Somewhere behind her, someone shouted about a dropped phone. Nobody stepped in. London watched and moved on.
The suspect hooked left, skidding, and nearly went down. He recovered with a dancer’s balance and sprang forward again. Quinn saw his right hand clamp something to his chest, protective. A bag. Small. Not a laptop bag, not a courier box. More like a parcel wrapped tight.
She had him in reach, another ten metres.
He looked back then. Just long enough to show her a pale jaw and eyes that caught the streetlight, flat and bright. He saw her sharp jaw, her set mouth, her bearing that never softened. He saw the badge clipped to her belt and he made a choice.
He cut straight towards the Underground entrance.
“Don’t,” Quinn breathed, and forced the word through clenched teeth as she ran.
He didn’t go for the main stairs with the cameras and the commuters. He veered towards a service gate set in a soot-black wall, half-hidden behind a billboard for a West End show. The gate stood ajar, chained but loose, like someone had opened it for deliveries and forgotten to close it again.
He slipped through.
Quinn followed without slowing. The gap caught her hip. Metal teeth tore at her coat. She ignored it, shoved through, and the city’s noise dulled at once, as if the wall absorbed it.
A narrow service alley stretched ahead, strewn with pallets and broken crates. Water dripped off fire escapes. Rats flashed in the corners, bold in the dark. The suspect’s trainers slapped puddles. He didn’t hesitate. He knew where he was going.
Quinn’s torch bounced in her fist. The beam caught warning signs and graffiti tags, then the glint of a padlock hanging open. Someone had prepared a route. That thought sharpened her focus.
She didn’t chase men for sport. She chased because people like him left others damaged behind them. Her mind held the file she’d started that afternoon , photographs printed on cheap paper, a young woman’s face too grey, too still, and symbols drawn in something darker than ink. The path led here. It always led somewhere foul.
The suspect reached a steel door at the alley’s end, shouldered it, and vanished inside.
Quinn hit it a heartbeat later. The door gave under her weight with a groan. Cold air rolled out, thick with mildew and old electricity. Her shoes found stairs, steep and slick. Her torch beam skittered over chipped tiles and old adverts plastered under grime.
Underground.
The footsteps ahead changed sound, from open slap to hollow thump. He was descending fast. Quinn took the stairs two at a time, hand on the rail, boots sliding. Her chest burned. The radio on her shoulder went useless, swallowed by concrete.
At the bottom, the corridor widened into a disused passage, its walls tiled in dirty cream. A dark shape lurched around a corner. Quinn surged after it, torch beam stabbing forward.
“Police!” she shouted. “On the ground!”
The suspect didn’t comply. He sprinted into a larger space, and Quinn caught sight of the old platform beyond, its edge marked by a faded yellow line.
Then she saw the movement.
People stood in the shadows, not commuters, not staff. They wore coats and scarves, hoods and masks, faces turned away. A circle of bodies shifted as if they had been waiting for a signal. Stalls lined the platform where trains no longer ran. Lanterns hung from exposed girders. Glass jars gleamed. Metal trinkets caught the light. A low murmur moved through the crowd, the sound of bargaining.
Quinn slowed. Not from fear, from calculation.
The suspect threaded into the bodies as if they opened for him. For a moment, he became a smear of dark cloth and fast intent. Then he was gone .
Quinn stepped onto the platform with her torch held steady, beam cutting through haze that smelled of incense and damp wool. She kept her shoulders square, her stance balanced. She didn’t draw her firearm. The sight of it would escalate this, and she didn’t know what “this” was yet.
A man at the nearest stall lifted his chin. His eyes were wrong, too reflective, catching the torch like a cat’s. He ran his fingers across a row of small objects laid on black velvet : rings, teeth, coins stamped with unfamiliar faces.
“No filming,” he said, voice casual, as if she was a tourist.
“I’m not filming.” Quinn swept her light to the left, then right. She saw more stalls. Bottles filled with cloudy liquids. Bundles of dried herbs tied with twine. A cage with a dark shape inside that shifted and clicked.
A woman in a long, purposeful coat moved into Quinn’s path. She stood tall, solid. Her hair sat close to her scalp, salt-and-pepper, and her gaze measured Quinn with professional interest.
Quinn recognised her own reflection in that gaze and felt her stomach tighten. Then she realised it wasn’t a mirror. It was a challenge.
The woman tapped her left wrist, where a worn leather watch sat against skin.
“You’re off your map,” she said. “That’s a habit.”
Quinn didn’t respond. Her eyes tracked past the woman’s shoulder, searching the crowd for the suspect’s hood.
A bulky figure stepped up beside the woman, face covered by a scarf. He held out a hand.
“Token.”
Quinn’s torch stayed on his knuckles. They were scarred . The nails were blackened , as if from metalwork.
“I’m police,” Quinn said.
The woman’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, but it didn’t soften her.
“And I’m the Queen,” she replied. “Token.”
Quinn kept her voice level. “This is a public space.”
The woman let out a slow breath through her nose.
“Not anymore. You want to walk our floor, you pay the door. Simple.”
Quinn glanced at the entrance behind her. The steel door hung open. Two more figures had drifted closer to it, not blocking, but present . The crowd kept moving, kept trading, yet the platform’s air felt charged , as if everyone listened while pretending not to.
Quinn shifted her weight . She could push back to the stairs, call for units from the surface, come down with warrants and numbers. She pictured the suspect already slipping away through some side tunnel, parcel clutched tight.
Her chance narrowed by the second.
“What’s the token?” Quinn asked.
The bulky figure raised his hand again, fingers still. Patient. Expectant.
The woman leaned closer, voice lower.
“Bone. Real. Not plastic. Not some charity shop trinket. You show it, you walk in. You don’t, you walk out.”
Quinn’s gaze flicked to a stall on her right. A tray of white fragments lay arranged like jewellery. Teeth. Knuckles. Something longer, polished smooth. A price list written in tidy block letters, symbols instead of pounds.
She kept her expression blank. “You’re selling human remains.”
The vendor shrugged, as if she’d commented on tomatoes.
“Everything’s got a use.”
Quinn took a step sideways, as if to examine the tray, keeping her movement controlled, non-threatening. The guard followed her with his eyes. The woman’s posture remained loose, but her stance anchored the space.
Quinn leaned in and picked up a small object between thumb and forefinger. A delicate, pale thing, drilled with a hole. It could have been from an animal. It could have been from anything.
“How much?” Quinn asked.
The vendor’s lips parted in a grin that showed gold at the back of her mouth.
“Depends who you are.”
Quinn put the bone piece down and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a folded note, held it where the vendor could see, then slid it onto the stall. The vendor’s hand snatched it fast, and for a moment Quinn saw a flash of ink on the inside of her wrist, a mark like a tiny stitched mouth.
The vendor pushed the bone token across the velvet with two fingers.
“Don’t lose it,” she said. “They’ll take something else.”
Quinn closed her fist around the token. It felt too light for what it implied.
She returned to the guard. He watched her palm.
Quinn held the token up.
He leaned in, sniffed it, as if smell proved authenticity. Then he moved aside with a shallow bow, mocking.
“Welcome to the Veil Market,” he said.
The words landed like a lock turning.
The entrance door behind Quinn clanged shut. Not slammed, not forced, just closed with purpose. The two figures by it turned their backs, as if their job had ended.
Quinn didn’t look back. She pocketed the token and stepped forward, torch angled down to avoid blinding anyone. She used her ears now. The murmur of trade. The clink of glass. A faint chime that sounded like coins but didn’t match any coin she’d heard.
She moved between stalls, eyes scanning . She caught fragments of conversation.
“Two drops, no more, unless you want your gums bleeding.”
“Map’s wrong, love, it’s always wrong, that’s the point.”
“Tell Silas the debt stands.”
Silas. The name hit her like a prickle. The Raven’s Nest. Soho. Green neon sign. A bar that never showed up on the right CCTV angles.
She pushed on.
A narrow passage led away from the platform into what used to be a service corridor. Stalls squeezed in close here, lit by candles jammed into bottles. The smell changed. Less damp. More copper, sharp at the back of her throat. Blood, recent.
A man stumbled out of a doorway on the left and almost collided with her. He clutched his forearm, and his fingers leaked red through the gaps.
Quinn grabbed his jacket and pinned him to the wall before he could fall.
“Who did that?” she demanded.
He stared at her torch, pupils blown wide , then his gaze snapped to her face.
“Not here,” he hissed. “Not here, police.”
“You’ve got a knife wound.” Quinn tightened her grip. “Who cut you?”
He tried to pull free. Quinn held him with a firm forearm across his chest, careful not to crush his injury.
A voice came from the doorway, sharp with impatience.
“Let him go. He’s the idiot, but he’s mine.”
A man stepped into view, late twenties, olive skin, short curly dark hair plastered damp against his forehead. A Saint Christopher medallion swung on his chest as he moved, the silver catching candlelight. His left forearm bore a long scar, pale and raised, a story carved into skin. He held a medical bag in one hand, battered and well-used.
He looked from Quinn’s badge to the bleeding man with a flick of his eyes that made the decision plain.
“You dragged trouble in,” he said, Spanish edge under London grit. “Again.”
Quinn released the injured man just enough for him to breathe.
“You’re a medic?” she asked.
The man’s mouth twisted.
“I was. Now I make people stop dying.” He jerked his chin at the corridor behind Quinn. “You’re not meant to be here.”
“And yet,” Quinn said, “here I am.”
He took the bleeding man by the shoulder and hauled him towards the doorway.
“Inside,” he ordered.
The man stumbled in, leaving a smear on the tile.
Quinn stepped after them, but the medic shifted to block her with his body. He didn’t square up like a brawler. He stood like someone used to keeping bodies apart, used to hands and pain and shouting.
“No,” he said.
Quinn held his gaze. “I’m looking for a suspect. Hooded. Carrying a parcel.”
The medic’s face stayed still, but his fingers tightened on his bag handle.
“Lots of people wear hoods. Lots of parcels.”
“He ran down here from the street,” Quinn said. “He’s frightened.”
The medic’s laugh came without humour.
“Everyone’s frightened down here. That’s why we pay the door.”
Quinn lowered her voice. “You know who I mean.”
The medic’s eyes flicked past her shoulder, towards the market’s deeper dark.
“Someone will sell you the answer,” he said. “It’ll cost more than cash.”
Quinn stepped closer. “What’s your name?”
The medic hesitated, and in that pause Quinn saw a man who’d watched too much blood spill for rules to matter.
“Tomás,” he said, as if giving it away annoyed him . “Herrera.”
Quinn filed it away. “Herrera. If my suspect hurts someone down here, that blood sits on whoever shelters him.”
Herrera’s jaw worked. “You think people come to me because they’re innocent?”
“I think they come to you because they can’t go to A&E,” Quinn replied. “Which means someone, somewhere, wants them hidden.”
Herrera leaned in, voice low enough to vanish into the market’s murmur.
“You don’t understand this place.”
Quinn’s eyes hardened. “Then teach me.”
A shout erupted further down the corridor. A sudden surge of bodies shoved past, stallholders grabbing jars, candles blown out by frantic hands. The market’s murmur snapped into something sharper, alarmed.
Herrera’s head jerked towards the sound.
“That’s not business,” he said. “That’s a warning.”
Quinn pushed past him before he could stop her, boots splashing through a fresh puddle of spilled liquid that stank of rot and cloves.
She rounded the corner and saw a ring of people pulled back from an open space where old station signage hung crooked. In the centre stood her suspect, hood down now, face pale and slick with sweat. He held the parcel in both hands like a relic.
Opposite him, three figures blocked the only clear path forward. Their clothing looked ordinary until Quinn’s torch beam struck their hands. Each wore a thin cord wrapped around the wrist, threaded with small bone beads. Their faces stayed half-hidden, but the way they stood said they owned this corridor.
The suspect’s voice cracked as he spoke, words tumbling out.
“I paid. I paid last month. I brought what you wanted.”
One of the figures stepped forward and held out a hand.
“Give it.”
The suspect clutched the parcel tighter. His gaze flicked to the crowd, then to Quinn, and for a moment relief flared. He saw a uniform, a badge, a rulebook he could hide behind.
“Help me,” he pleaded.
Quinn stepped into the open, torch steady, shoulders square.
“Metropolitan Police,” she said. “Step away from him.”
The nearest figure turned towards her. The scarf over his face didn’t hide the smile in his voice.
“Oh,” he said. “The door let you in.”
The crowd shifted again, not away this time, but closer, a slow tightening ring . Someone behind Quinn coughed, and the sound turned into a chant, low and rhythmic , as if the market itself began to hum.
Herrera appeared at Quinn’s shoulder, breath hard.
“Detective,” he said. “If you draw that badge like a sword, they’ll feed you to the tracks.”
Quinn kept her eyes on the suspect. “He’s coming with me.”
The suspect took one step towards her, hope desperate on his face.
Then the parcel in his hands twitched.
Not from his grip, but from inside .
The paper bulged as if something pressed against it, and a wet cracking sound came from within, like knuckles breaking one by one.
The three figures with bone cords lifted their hands in unison, palms up, and the crowd’s chant surged, louder, hungry.
The parcel split open down the middle. Something black and slick pushed through the tear, unfolding like a fist opening, and Quinn’s torch beam caught an eye that wasn’t human, round and milky, rolling to fix on her as the corridor lights flickered and died.