AI Glass shattered against brick. Detective Harlow Quinn ducked as another bottle sailed past her shoulder, the sharp tang of cheap whiskey mixing with rain and diesel fumes.
"Stop! Metropolitan Police!"
The figure ahead vaulted over a chain-link fence with practised ease. Quinn cursed, her leather watch catching on the wire as she followed. Three years at a desk had dulled her edge. Morris would've cleared it clean.
Camden High Street blurred past in streaks of neon and headlights. The suspect, hood up, trainers slapping wet pavement, weaved between late-night revellers spilling from pubs. Quinn's radio crackled static, useless in the downpour.
"Move!" She shouldered past a group of tourists gawping at street art. The suspect glanced back, face hidden, then darted left into an alley.
Quinn followed. Mistake.
The alley dead-ended at a graffitied wall. No fire escapes. No doors. Just overflowing bins and the reek of rotting vegetables. She drew her torch, sweeping the beam across sodden cardboard and broken glass.
"Come on out. Let's make this easy."
Movement behind the bins. Not running this time. Calculated. The suspect emerged slowly, hands visible but not raised. Male, she guessed from the build. Young. The hood still obscured his face.
"Wallet. Keys. Phone. Whatever you lifted from the Nest."
"Don't know what you mean."
Spanish accent. Slight. Quinn's torch caught the edge of something metallic at his throat. A chain.
"Turn around. Hands on the wall."
"You don't understand." He shifted weight, trainers squelching . "I didn't take anything. I left something."
"Save it for the station."
"You're investigating the Raven's Nest?" His voice carried an edge now. Urgency. "Then you need to listen. There's—"
The ground beneath them groaned.
Quinn's torch beam wavered as the alley floor buckled. Ancient brickwork, weakened by decades of London rain, gave way. The suspect lunged forward, not at her but past her, as the world tilted .
"Run!"
Too late. The ground collapsed inward like a sinkhole, swallowing bins, debris, and both of them in a cascade of rubble and rushing water. Quinn's world became darkness and the taste of copper.
She hit stone hard, shoulder first. Pain flared white-hot. Water, knee-deep and moving fast, threatened to drag her under. Her torch was gone . Emergency lighting flickered overhead, casting everything in a sickly green glow.
"Detective?"
The suspect crouched nearby, hood thrown back. Young, as she'd guessed. Olive skin. Concerned brown eyes. Blood trickled from a gash on his forehead.
"You alright?"
Quinn tested her shoulder. Bruised, not broken. "Where are we?"
"Storm drain. Old Victorian system." He helped her stand, his grip steady despite the current tugging at their legs. "We need to move. This fills fast when it rains."
"And you know this how?"
A ghost of a smile. "I've had to patch up people who got lost down here. Name's Tomás."
Quinn's hand went to her radio. Dead. Of course. "You're coming with me once we're out."
"Fair enough. But first..." He pointed downstream where the tunnel curved. Strange lights danced on the water's surface. Blue. Purple. Definitely not emergency lighting. "We're near the old Camden Deep station. If we can reach it, there's access to street level."
"Camden Deep's been sealed since the war."
"To the public, yes." Tomás waded forward, one hand on the slime-covered wall for balance. "Coming?"
Quinn had two choices: follow a suspect deeper into the tunnels or wait for the water to rise. The current was already stronger, debris floating past like miniature barges. She thought of Morris, of the case file that made no sense, of the leads that led nowhere.
"Move."
They pushed through the rising water, following the curve of the tunnel. The strange lights grew brighter, accompanied by sounds that didn't belong in a storm drain. Voices. Music. The clink of glass and metal.
"What is that?"
Tomás paused at a junction where three tunnels met. Ancient signs, barely visible under decades of grime, pointed in different directions. He studied them like a man reading scripture.
"Thursday." He checked his watch . "Full moon last week. They're here."
"Who's here?"
"The Market." He turned to face her fully, and she saw the scar along his forearm catch the weird light. "Detective, I need you to listen carefully . The Raven's Nest, whatever you think you're investigating there, it's bigger than theft. It's bigger than murder. And if we go through there," he nodded toward the tunnel with the lights, "you're going to see things that'll change how you see this city."
"Enough riddles."
"No riddle. Truth." Water swirled around their thighs now. Time running out. "I was at the Nest tonight to warn them. Someone's hunting the clientele. Someone who knows exactly what they're hunting."
Quinn's jaw tightened. Three years ago, Morris had said something similar. Right before he'd walked into that warehouse alone.
"The access tunnel?"
"Through the Market. Only way now." Tomás pulled something from his pocket. Small. Pale in the strange light. "You'll need this."
A token. Carved bone. The surface was warm despite the cold water.
"What kind of market needs a password?"
"The kind that's been here longer than the city above." The music grew louder. Pipes and drums and something that might have been singing if singing could sound like silver bells drowning. "The kind that serves customers Scotland Yard pretends don't exist."
Quinn turned the token over. Symbols etched deep. Not quite Greek. Not quite anything.
"I'm arresting you. Soon as we're out."
"Understood." Tomás waded toward the lights. "But Detective? When we get in there, don't stare. Don't accept any food or drink. And whatever you do, don't make any deals."
"Deals?"
"Information costs at the Veil. Always has." He glanced back, eyes serious . "What are you willing to pay to know what happened to your partner?"
Quinn's hand found her service weapon, instinct overriding the impossibility of the question. "How do you—"
"Same way I know you've been wearing his watch ." Tomás nodded to her left wrist where Morris's leather band sat next to her own. "The Market knows all debts, Detective. All losses. All hungers."
The tunnel opened into a vast chamber. Quinn's breath caught. Impossible architecture stretched before them, a cathedral of brick and iron that shouldn't exist beneath Camden. Gas lamps lined stone walkways that spiralled down into depths the eye couldn't follow. And everywhere, stalls. Vendors. Customers.
Not all of them human.
"Welcome," Tomás said softly , "to the Veil Market."
A figure at the entrance, seven feet tall with too many joints in all the wrong places, extended a palm. Tomás placed his token there. The hand closed, opened. Two tokens now.
"The lady's with me."
The guardian's head tilted at an angle that would have snapped a human neck. It studied Quinn with eyes like oil slicks, then stepped aside.
The Market rushed up to meet them. Scents of cinnamon and copper, leather and lightning. Stalls selling bottles of liquid starlight. Vendors hawking memories in glass spheres. A butcher's shop with cuts of meat Quinn didn't want to identify.
"Stay close." Tomás navigated the crowd with practiced ease . "The medical quarter's this way. If your suspect came through, someone saw."
"This is insane."
"Tuesday, actually." He sidestepped a customer whose shadow moved independently of its body. "Insane is Saturdays."
Quinn's mind reeled, cataloguing impossibilities. The woman selling flowers that bloomed and died in seconds. The card game where the stakes appeared to be years of life. The child, no more than ten, whose eyes were older than London itself.
"Here." Tomás stopped at a stall draped in surgical green cloth. The vendor, human enough except for fingers that bent in too many places, looked up from sorting herbs that glowed softly .
"Tomás. Twice in one week?"
"Evening, Merchant Zhao. Need information."
"Don't we all." Zhao's impossible fingers stilled. "Who's your friend?"
"Someone looking for answers."
Quinn stepped forward. "Metropolitan Police. There was a man, came through here maybe twenty minutes ago. Hood up. Running."
Zhao laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a morgue. "Police? Here? Oh, Tomás. What have you done?"
"She fell through. Act of chaos. Market law protects her."
"Market law." Zhao's attention fixed on Quinn with uncomfortable intensity . "Yes. But information isn't free, Detective. What do you offer?"
"I don't—"
"She offers nothing." Tomás interrupted. "I'll pay."
"Interesting." Zhao leaned back. "And what does the disgraced healer have that I want?"
Tomás pulled up his sleeve. The scar along his forearm seemed to pulse in the Market's strange light. "The memory of how I got this."
"Tomás, no." Zhao's voice carried something like concern . "That's worth more than simple information."
"Then give her more than simple answers."
Quinn watched the negotiation with growing unease. Whatever this place was, whatever these people were, Tomás was about to trade something precious for her case.
"Why?"
He met her eyes. "Because three years ago, I could have saved your partner. I was there. In the warehouse. Too late, but there." His hand went to the medallion at his throat. "This is my penance."
Zhao produced a silver blade no longer than a finger. "Your arm, healer."
Tomás extended his scarred forearm. The blade touched skin, and Quinn gasped. Images flooded the air above the wound. A younger Tomás in paramedic uniform. A woman convulsing on a gurney. Something with too many teeth erupting from her chest. Blood. Screaming. The knife that carved hero into victim.
The images faded. Zhao bottled them in crystal no bigger than a thimble.
"Your runner came through forty minutes ago." The merchant's voice was businesslike now. "Young man. Spanish. Bought passage to the Spine quarter. Paid with this."
Zhao placed something on the counter. A wallet. Expensive leather. The kind bankers carried.
"But that's not what's interesting." Another item. A photograph. "He was looking for someone. Asking everyone."
Quinn picked up the photo. Her blood froze.
Morris. Three years younger. Standing outside the Raven's Nest with someone she recognized.
Silas Thorne. The bar's owner.
"Tomás." Her voice came out steady despite the earthquake in her chest. "Your friend at the Nest. How long has he known?"
"Detective—"
"How. Long."
Tomás closed his eyes. "Since the night Morris died. Silas was there too. They were... investigating something. Together."
The Market spun around her. Three years of dead ends. Three years of being told Morris was dirty, that he'd been taking bribes, that his death was a deal gone wrong. Three years of lies.
"The runner." Her hands shook. "Where in the Spine quarter?"
Zhao smiled, too many teeth in a human face. "That information costs extra."
"Fine." Quinn reached for her wallet, then stopped. Normal currency probably wasn't accepted here. "What do you want?"
"A memory. Fresh. The moment you realized your partner kept secrets."
"Done."
"Detective, wait." Tomás grabbed her arm. "You don't understand. Once given, memories here are gone. Completely. You'll never get them back."
"Good." She shrugged him off. "Some things are better forgotten."
Zhao produced the silver blade again. This time, when it touched her skin, Quinn felt the pull. A specific moment crystallizing, then vanishing. The night Morris hadn't come home. The call. The crime scene. The moment she'd seen his body and known, somehow, that the official story was wrong.
Gone now. Just facts without the emotional weight .
"Spine quarter. Third level down. Look for the bonedoctor's shop." Zhao corked another crystal vial. "Your runner's hunting someone called the Magpie. Same person your partner was hunting ."
"The Magpie?"
"Steals impossible things. Sells them to impossible people." The merchant's fingers drummed patterns that hurt to follow. "Bad for business, you understand. Even we have rules."
Water dripped somewhere in the distance. The storm drains. Quinn had almost forgotten the rising flood that brought them here.
"We need to go." Tomás checked his watch . "The Market moves at midnight. Anyone still here when it does..."
"Stays until next full moon." Zhao waved them off. "Go. Find your answers, Detective. Find your runner. But remember - the Market always collects its debts."
They pushed through the crowd, heading deeper into the impossible space. The Spine quarter announced itself with architecture that defied physics. Stairs that climbed down. Doors that opened onto themselves. A fountain that flowed upward, defying gravity with casual indifference .
"There." Tomás pointed to a shop sign made of vertebrae. "Bonedoctor Clemence. She'll know if anyone came asking questions."
The shop front was medical museum meets butcher shop. Things in jars that might have been human once. Might have been something else. Quinn pushed through the door, hand on her weapon despite its uselessness here.
"Closed!" A voice from the back, sharp as surgical steel. "Come back next—Oh. Tomás."
The woman who emerged looked like a Victorian photograph come to life. High collar. Severe bun. Hands that had taken apart more bodies than Quinn wanted to contemplate.
"Clemence." Tomás nodded. "We're looking for someone."
"Aren't we all." Her eyes, colorless as old glass, fixed on Quinn. "Police. How novel. What's the Metropolitan doing in my shop?"
"Looking for a man who came asking about the Magpie."
Clemence's hands stilled on the bone she'd been polishing. "That's a dangerous question."
"I'm used to danger."
"Are you?" The bonedoctor set down her work. "Your partner wasn't. Oh yes, I know about him. Everyone here does. The policeman who thought he could catch the uncatchable."
"Where's the runner?"
"Gone. Ten minutes ago. Very upset when I wouldn't help." Clemence tilted her head. "But you... you're different. You're not here for justice. You're here for truth."
"Same thing."
"Oh, my dear. Not in the Veil." She moved to a cabinet, withdrawing something wrapped in black silk . "Your partner came here too. Many times. Building a case he said. Learning our ways."
"And?"
"And the Magpie learned his." Clemence unwrapped the silk . Inside, a bone compass. The needle spun wildly, pointing everywhere and nowhere. "Morris bought this. Said it would lead him to stolen impossibilities. It led him to his death instead."
Quinn stared at the compass. Another piece of the puzzle that was her partner's last case.
"The runner. Where did he go?"
"Up." Clemence pointed to the ceiling, which was also the floor, which was also a wall. "The Magpie has a nest in the between spaces. Your friend went to find it."
"He's not my friend. He's a suspect."
"In what crime?"
Quinn opened her mouth. Closed it. What crime indeed? Breaking into a bar that served impossible clients? Warning people about danger that shouldn't exist?
"Tomás." She turned to find him studying a shelf of medical instruments that belonged in no earthly hospital. "You said someone's hunting the Nest's clientele."
"Three dead this month. All regular customers. All found with their hearts cut out. Surgically." He glanced at Clemence. "Professionally."
"Not my work." The bonedoctor sounded offended. "I only take from the willing dead."
"The Magpie then?"
"The Magpie steals. Doesn't kill." Clemence rewrapped the compass. "But there are others in the Market who've noticed the pattern. Others who think maybe the police are finally making good on old threats."
Quinn felt the accusation hit. "We're not—I'm not—"
"Aren't you? A detective in the Veil. Asking questions. Following trails." The bonedoctor smiled, and it was neither kind nor cruel. "What will you do when you find your answers, Detective Quinn? Arrest the darkness? Put handcuffs on shadow?"
A bell tolled somewhere. Deep. Resonant. Wrong.
"Midnight." Tomás grabbed Quinn's arm. "We need to leave. Now."
"The runner—"
"Will be trapped here for a month if he hasn't left." He pulled her toward the door. "Move!"
The Market was shifting . Quinn felt it in her bones. Stalls folding in on themselves. Architecture rearranging. The impossible becoming impossibly more so.
They ran. Through corridors that shortened and lengthened with each step. Past vendors packing away wares that screamed. Around customers who were becoming less human by the second.
"There!" Tomás pointed to a service tunnel. Mundane concrete and rust. Beautiful in its normalcy .
They dove through as the Market completed its transformation. Quinn looked back once and saw nothing but solid brick wall. As if the impossible cathedral had never been.
"Jesus Christ." She leaned against the tunnel wall, breathing hard. "What was that?"
"Thursday." Tomás checked his watch . Both their clothes were dry. The flood they'd fled seemed like a dream. "Like I said."
Above them, a grate showed glimpses of streetlight. Real London. The London where physics worked and people stayed human-shaped. Tomás boosted her up, then followed. They emerged behind a Costa, the normal world rushing back like a slap.
Quinn's radio crackled to life. "DI Quinn, report position. You've been dark for two hours."
Two hours. It had felt like minutes. Like years.
"Costa on Camden High Street." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. "In pursuit of suspect."
"Negative. Return to station. DCI wants a word."
Of course he did. Quinn looked at Tomás, who was watching her with those calm brown eyes.
"I should arrest you."
"Probably." He touched the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat. "But you won't."
"Why?"
"Because now you know Morris wasn't dirty. Wasn't mad. Was just trying to protect this city from things it doesn't want to believe in." He turned to go. "The runner, your suspect? He's trying to find the Magpie for the same reason Morris was. Someone's using the Market to hunt humans. Someone who knows both worlds."
"Wait." Quinn caught his sleeve. "You said you were there. The night Morris died."
"I was." Pain flickered across his features. "Too late. Always too late. But I saw who killed him."
"Who?"
"The same person who's killing Silas's customers." He met her gaze. "The same person Morris trusted until the very end."
Quinn's radio squawked again. More urgent. She ignored it. "Tell me."
"Can't. Market law. I traded that memory tonight, remember?" Tomás smiled sadly . "But the runner knows. Find him before the killer does."
He melted into the crowd before she could stop him. London swallowed him like the Market swallowed impossibilities. Quinn stood in the drizzle, watching the space where answers had been.
Her radio wouldn't shut up. The DCI would want explanations. Reports. Nice normal police words for a night that had torn normal to shreds.
Quinn turned it off. Pulled out her mobile instead. Dead. Of course. The Market didn't like technology. But there was a payphone on the corner, ancient and somehow still functional.
She fed it coins. Dialed from memory.
"Raven's Nest." Silas Thorne's voice. Carefully neutral.
"It's Quinn. We need to talk."
Silence. Then: "I wondered when you'd call. Morris said you would. Eventually."
"He's dead."
"I know." Something glass clinked in the background. "Drink?"
"I'll be there in twenty."
"Detective?" Silas's voice carried weight now. "Come alone. And come ready to believe impossible things."
The line died. Quinn hung up. Somewhere in Camden, a Spanish runner was hunting a thief who might be a killer. Somewhere else, the real killer was cutting hearts from bodies. And somewhere in her memory, a traded moment left a hole where grief used to live.
She hailed a taxi. "Soho. The Raven's Nest."
London blurred past the window. The normal city. The lie everyone agreed to believe. But underneath, in the tunnels and the spaces between, another London pulsed with impossible life.
Morris had known. Had tried to protect both worlds. Had died for it.
Quinn touched her shoulder where the bruise was already forming. Real pain from an unreal night. In three years of searching, she'd never come this close to the truth. Never wanted to.
The taxi pulled up outside the Nest. That green neon sign buzzed like angry wasps. Through the window, shadows moved that didn't match their owners.
She paid the driver. Stood in the rain that was just rain, outside a bar that was just a bar.
Except it wasn't.
Nothing was just anything anymore.
Quinn pushed through the door as somewhere beneath the city, the Veil Market settled into its new location, carrying secrets and impossibilities and one trapped runner who might hold all the answers.
If he lived through the night.
If any of them did.