AI Quinn clipped her shoulder on the doorframe and kept moving, boots skidding on wet tiles as the man in the black hoodie vaulted the last three steps and hit the pavement hard enough to splash a fan of dirty water up her trousers.
“Stop. Police.”
He glanced back, face half-lit by the Raven’s Nest’s distinctive green neon sign, then tore into the knot of bodies outside the bar like he had memorised the gaps. Quinn drove after him with military precision, elbows tucked, chin down. Her worn leather watch slapped her wrist as she shoved past a tourist couple and caught a whiff of gin, damp wool, and old cigarettes.
The Raven’s Nest sat behind her in her peripheral vision, dim windows, walls inside covered in maps and black-and-white photos, a place that pretended it was nostalgia and tasted like secrets . She had spent a week clocking its door, counting faces, building a picture. She had not expected her picture to run.
The man cut left into a narrow service lane. Quinn followed and felt rain needle the back of her cropped salt-and-pepper hair, cold lines across her scalp. Water ran off the brim of his hood. It ran off the bricks. It ran off everything London pretended it could keep clean.
He knocked a stack of plastic crates over behind him. They clattered, a deliberate tripwire. Quinn hurdled the first, planted a palm on the second, and pushed. The crates slid aside with a squeal. He had gained six metres and a corner.
“Quinn, where are you?” crackled her radio.
“Foot pursuit,” she snapped. “Male. Dark hoodie. Heading east off Dean Street.”
A burst of static.
“Repeat.”
She ignored it and turned the corner hard. The lane spilled onto a brighter street. Headlights smeared in the wet. Someone leaned on a horn like they meant to bend it into a new shape. The man darted between cars, palms slapping bonnets for balance. A taxi missed him by a breath and swore at the sky.
Quinn stepped into traffic without hesitation. A driver braked, tyres screaming. She cleared the car’s nose, came down, and drove on. Her sharp jaw clenched . Pain, lungs, distance, all of it filed under irrelevant. If she lost him here, he would sink back into the city and become another rumour that lived in her casework.
He hit the far pavement and took the stairs down into the Tube entrance.
Quinn swore once, low, and followed.
The station swallowed sound in layers, street noise fading into the metallic clang of gates and the damp stink of old concrete. Commuters and late-night drifters moved in blurs, umbrellas dripping, headphones in, faces set in that London way of refusing to see. The man shoved through the ticket barriers with a quick twist of his body and a beep that sounded too clean.
Quinn’s warrant card flashed. The attendant looked up, started to say something, and Quinn’s eyes cut him off.
“Open it.”
He slapped the button. The gate clicked and parted. Quinn drove through, shoes slapping on wet rubber flooring, and caught sight of her suspect’s left forearm as he lifted it to vault the last set of stairs. A scar ran along it, pale against olive skin, long and thin like a lesson. The glimpse landed in her mind with an edge.
Not a street kid. Not a tourist.
He slid into the escalator crowd and rode down on the right, then cut across, pushing past a woman with a pram. The woman cursed. The pram rocked. Quinn felt her temper rise, contained, a blade inside its sheath.
“Move,” Quinn said.
A man stepped into her path, indignant. Quinn’s hand came up to his chest and shoved him aside without breaking stride. The man stumbled back into a pillar, shocked more than hurt.
At the bottom, the suspect broke into a run again and took a corridor marked for the Northern line. Quinn’s legs burned. Her breath came sharp. The drip-drip of water from the ceiling marked time better than any clock.
He reached the platform as a train’s doors chimed. He slipped inside.
Quinn ran for the nearest door and punched her palm at the button, but the doors had already started to close. She caught a flash of his eyes through the glass, warm brown and fixed on her with something that was not triumph. It looked closer to apology.
The doors sealed. The train lurched .
Quinn paced the platform edge, jaw set, and watched the carriage slide away into the tunnel. The air it left behind tasted of brake dust and damp. Her radio spat again.
“Quinn, you’re breaking up. You’ve got armed response en route to the Nest.”
“I’m not at the Nest.”
“Where are you?”
“In the Northern line. I’ve got him.”
A pause, then, “You’re alone.”
Quinn’s fingers tightened around the radio until the plastic creaked.
“Keep the line open.”
The next train arrived with a rush and a gust. Quinn stepped in, shoulders squared, and moved down the carriage, scanning faces reflected in the black glass. Her suspect would not sit. People who sat wanted to look normal.
She spotted him two carriages down, standing by the inter-carriage door, one hand braced on the pole. He had his hood down now, curls plastered to his forehead, rainwater tracking along his cheekbones. A Saint Christopher medallion lay against his throat, the silver catching the carriage light.
That wasn’t the jewellery of a mugger. That was the kind someone touched when they thought the world had teeth.
He looked up, saw her, and his mouth tightened. He pushed through into the next carriage as the train rocked.
Quinn followed, shoving through bodies, ignoring tutting and muttered complaints.
“Police,” she said to no one in particular. “Move.”
The inter-carriage door resisted for a second. She forced it and stepped through. The rubber floor flexed. The smell changed, more sweat, less perfume. He was halfway down the next carriage, shoulder hunched, one hand pressed to his side as if he held something in place under his jacket.
The train screeched into the next station. Doors opened. He bolted.
Quinn surged after him and hit the platform at speed, shoes sliding on the wet edge. He ran up the stairs and disappeared into another corridor. She took them two at a time, breathing hard, mind cold.
He knew where he was going .
Camden Town swallowed him in its belly.
The station here felt older, narrower, the kind of place that forced strangers to press together. Quinn pushed out into the ticket hall and caught a glimpse of him disappearing through a door marked STAFF ONLY, held for a second by a hand that came out of the shadows to let him through.
Not staff. An accomplice.
Quinn reached the door and slammed her palm against it. Locked.
“Open it,” she shouted.
No answer.
She drew her baton, jammed it into the gap near the latch, and levered. The wood groaned, the metal plate around the lock bending. A second shove and the latch snapped. The door flew inward.
A narrow maintenance corridor lay beyond, unlit except for a single emergency strip along the floor. The air tasted stale, coppery, like old pipes and old secrets. Footsteps echoed ahead, rapid, controlled.
Quinn moved in and let the door swing shut behind her.
The corridor turned, tightened, then opened into a service stairwell descending into deeper dark. Wet footprints stamped the steps. The suspect’s, and at least one other set.
Her radio crackled again, but the signal sounded thin down here.
“Quinn, you’re-”
Static ate the rest.
Quinn descended.
The walls changed as she went down, from clean station paint to exposed brick, then to old tile, the kind you saw in photographs from when the Underground still wore its early glamour like a mask. A faint hum vibrated through the handrail under her palm, not electrical exactly, more like something alive and bored.
At the bottom, a heavy door sat in a tiled archway. No signage. No warning. Just a round metal plate at chest height with a shallow depression in it, like a palm print.
The suspect stood there, shoulders heaving. He held something in his left hand, small and pale.
A bone.
Quinn slowed, baton up, eyes fixed on his hands.
“Hands where I can see them.”
He turned. The medallion swung. His face looked younger up close, late twenties, and tired in a way sleep did not fix.
“Detective Quinn,” he said. His voice carried a Spanish edge, vowels warmer than the air deserved. “You should not be here.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed .
“You know my name.”
He glanced at her baton, then her face, then past her, as if listening for more footsteps .
“London’s small,” he said. “People talk.”
“People at the Raven’s Nest talk.”
His jaw tightened at the name. That reaction landed like a stamp on paper.
“Step away from the door,” Quinn said. “Slowly. Tell me what you took.”
“I didn’t take anything.” He kept the bone token between finger and thumb. It looked old, polished smooth by use. “I’m not your thief.”
“Then you’re my runner.”
His gaze flicked to her left wrist, to the worn leather watch .
“Your partner wore the same style,” he said.
Quinn’s throat tightened, quick and hard, like a fist closing.
“Don’t,” she said.
The man lifted his free hand, palm out, not surrender, more a warning.
“They don’t like police.”
Quinn stepped closer.
“Who’s they?”
He pushed the bone token into the depression on the metal plate. The tile around the archway seemed to drink in the sound. A click came from inside the wall, followed by a low grind. The door shifted inward without visible hinges.
Air spilled out, thick with spice, smoke, and something sharper, like singed hair.
Quinn stared through the widening gap. The darkness beyond pulsed with movement and low voices, a crowd breathing as one organism. Lights winked in colours that did not belong in a station, green and violet and bruised gold.
The man took a half-step back from the opening, eyes on Quinn.
“You can turn around,” he said. “You can pretend this door never opened.”
Quinn raised her baton a fraction.
“Or I can arrest you.”
His lips pressed together, then he spoke like he had rehearsed it.
“I’m Tomás Herrera.”
The name struck a note. Quinn’s mind flicked through files, whispers, the off-the-books medic the clique used, the one who patched people up without questions and without paperwork. The one she had never pinned to a location.
“You ran,” Quinn said.
Tomás’s gaze slid to the open door again.
“I don’t have the luxury of courts,” he said. “You think you do.”
He turned to go.
Quinn lunged, grabbed his jacket with her left hand, and yanked him back. The fabric tore at the seam. Tomás twisted, quick, and drove his elbow towards her ribs. Quinn caught it on her forearm, pain blooming, and brought her baton up between them.
“Don’t,” she said, low .
Tomás froze for a heartbeat, eyes locked with hers. In that moment, Quinn saw it, not fear for himself. Fear for her.
Behind him, the market noise swelled, a murmur broken by the clink of metal and the low chant of someone selling something they did not want to name.
Tomás’s fingers flicked . The bone token slipped from the plate and dropped.
Quinn’s boot pinned it to the tile before it could roll into the doorway.
Tomás’s eyes widened .
“Detective,” he said, and the word held strain now, “leave it.”
Quinn bent, kept her baton up, and snatched the token from under her sole. It felt warm, like it had sat in a pocket against skin for hours. It also felt wrong, like holding a tooth that still remembered biting.
She stepped closer to the open doorway. The air that came out tasted of cloves and rust. Voices inside shifted, some laughter, some hissing argument. A bell rang once, slow.
Tomás backed away from her, hands up now, palms open.
“If you walk in there,” he said, “you walk in as prey.”
Quinn’s grip tightened on the token.
“Then you’d better run,” she said.
She pushed past him and crossed the threshold.
The Veil Market hit her like a body. Sound, smell, heat, pressure. The old station had been hollowed out into a warren of stalls and makeshift counters. Tarps hung like low ceilings. Strings of lights ran along cables that did not connect to any obvious power. People crowded the concourse, but not all of them moved like people.
A woman with a scarf over her mouth held a tray of small glass vials that smoked faintly. A man with too-long fingers arranged knives that shimmered as if they held oil on the blade. Further in, a boy no older than ten offered a bundle of feathers and watched Quinn with eyes that flashed pale, then dark again.
Quinn kept moving, baton in one hand, token in the other. Her badge felt heavy in her pocket, absurd, like a paper shield.
Tomás darted into the crowd, shoulder-slipping through gaps. He knew the rhythm here. He vanished behind a stall stacked with old books and cracked leather satchels.
Quinn followed, shoving past a thick-set man who smelled of smoke and sweet rot. The man’s head turned too far, neck bending with a wet click.
“No running,” he said.
Quinn met his gaze and did not slow.
“I’m police,” she said. “Move.”
The man smiled. His teeth looked filed.
“Not here.”
A hand clamped on Quinn’s shoulder, hard enough to bite into muscle. She spun, baton up, and found herself facing a tall figure in a long, purpose-made dark coat that did not belong to any high-street shop. A mask covered the lower half of the figure’s face, stitched from pale material that looked disturbingly like skin. The eyes above it watched Quinn with bored interest.
The grip did not shift. It anchored her in place.
“Token,” the masked figure said.
Quinn lifted the bone token.
“Where did he go?”
The masked figure tilted their head, listening, then spoke to someone behind Quinn.
“Bell,” they said.
A second later, another bell rang, closer, sharper, then another answered it from further down the concourse. The crowd’s murmur changed, tightening. Stalls began to close, tarps yanked down, boxes slammed shut. People flowed away from Quinn in a widening circle.
Tomás’s head appeared above the crowd for a split second, eyes wide, mouth forming her name as if he meant to shout it . Then a shoulder blocked him. He disappeared again.
Quinn wrenched her shoulder, but the masked figure held fast. The bone token in Quinn’s hand heated, a sting that ran up her palm.
“Last chance,” the masked figure said. “You walked in with his token. You pay his price.”
Quinn’s baton snapped up towards the figure’s wrist. The figure shifted, too fast, and caught the baton with their free hand. Quinn felt something like a vibration run up the metal , making her teeth ache.
The masked figure leaned close enough that Quinn smelled antiseptic and old pennies.
“Detective Harlow Quinn,” they said, as if tasting the name . “Still chasing ghosts.”
The token burned hot enough that Quinn’s fingers started to shake. The figure’s grip tightened. The market’s crowd fell silent in a ring around them.
Then the lights along the concourse flickered , once, twice, and went out.