AI Rain hammered Soho into a smear of green neon and slick black pavement. The Raven’s Nest sign buzzed over the door like an insect trapped in glass, its glow cutting across puddles and the hunched shoulders of smokers sheltering beneath the eaves.
Harlow Quinn stood half a step back from the crowd, collar up, jaw set. Water slid off her closely cropped hair and tracked down the sharp line of her cheek. Her left wrist stayed bare of ornament except for a worn leather watch that took the rain without complaint. She checked it, then lifted her eyes.
A man slipped out of the Nest with the careful speed of someone who didn’t want attention. Dark hood. Canvas satchel. He avoided the smokers, kept to the edge of the pavement, and aimed for the side street without looking back.
Quinn moved. No rush, no stumble. Boots found grip where the stones went glassy.
“Evening,” one of the smokers called at her, voice blurred by drink.
Quinn didn’t turn. The hooded man turned the corner.
She followed, distance held like a line between them. The side street narrowed into a corridor of shut shops and wet brick. Her steps stayed quiet in the rain noise. The hooded man’s pace picked up. He glanced over his shoulder once—quick, sharp—and the glance caught her face.
He bolted.
Quinn chased without a sound from her mouth. She drove forward, arms tight, shoulders square. The suspect’s shoes slapped water out of potholes, leaving a spray that glittered under a streetlamp before the rain swallowed it.
He cut left into an alley that smelled of bins and old grease. Quinn followed and caught a flash of his satchel swinging like a pendulum. He threw his weight into a fire door—metal shrieked—and vanished into a service corridor.
Quinn hit the door and shoved through, shoulder first.
Inside, the corridor ran long and dim, lit by emergency strips that turned skin the colour of old paper. Pipes ran along the ceiling like veins. The suspect’s footsteps clattered ahead.
“Stop,” Quinn’s voice bounced off concrete.
The suspect didn’t answer. He kicked open a second door and burst back out into the rain.
Quinn emerged behind him into a different street, wider, busier, with taxis sliding past and pedestrians clustering under awnings. The suspect shoved through two tourists, didn’t apologise, and vaulted a low chain that blocked a car park entrance.
Quinn cleared it with a single step, coat catching on the wet metal for half a heartbeat. She tore free and kept moving.
The suspect sprinted across the car park, heading for a gap between buildings where scaffolding framed the dark like a mouth. He slipped through. Quinn followed and felt the world tighten.
The passage narrowed, then opened onto a back street where a delivery lorry idled, exhaust steaming in the rain. The suspect darted around its tail. Quinn cut the corner and almost collided with a man stepping down from the cab.
Olive skin. Short curly dark hair plastered to his forehead. A Saint Christopher medallion swung on his chest as he shifted a crate in his arms. A scar ran along his left forearm, pale against wet skin.
His eyes met Quinn’s for a beat—warm brown, alert, too calm for the weather. His gaze slid past her to the running figure.
“Move,” Quinn snapped, already pushing around him.
His grip tightened on the crate.
“That one’s not your sort of work,” he threw after her, voice carrying through rain.
Quinn didn’t slow. “Out of my way.”
He stepped sideways, blocking the narrowest part of the pavement without lifting his feet, crate held like a shield.
“Police?” His chin lifted a fraction .
Quinn flashed her warrant card without stopping, a flicker of plastic and crest. “Met. Shift.”
The man’s mouth tightened. Rain beaded on his lashes.
“Then keep your badge in your pocket. You run down there with it waving, you’ll lose more than your breath.”
Quinn moved to shoulder past him. He shifted again, still in front, as if the crate weighed nothing.
“Name,” Quinn demanded, close enough to smell antiseptic on him under the diesel.
He hesitated, then gave it like he couldn’t stop himself.
“Tomás Herrera.”
Quinn’s eyes cut to the medallion, then back up. “Herrera. Move.”
Herrera’s attention flicked to the suspect, now a darker blur farther down the street, heading north where the lights thinned.
“You’re chasing someone from the Nest,” Herrera pushed, rain sliding down his face. “That doesn’t end in court.”
Quinn leaned in, voice low and hard. “Everything ends in court if I drag it there.”
Herrera’s laugh held no humour. He stepped aside at last. The crate thumped onto the pavement. His hands rose, palms open.
“Then don’t bleed on my doorstep.”
Quinn didn’t answer. She tore forward.
The chase pulled her out of Soho’s neon into streets that grew rougher, buildings squatting lower, shutters tagged with paint. The rain thickened, driven sideways by gusts that shoved it into her eyes. She blinked it away and kept the suspect in sight, a black stitch threading through streetlamps.
He cut through a row of parked cars, clipped a wing mirror with his hip. The mirror snapped back and forth, blinking reflections like a frantic eye. He stumbled once, caught himself, and kept going.
Quinn gained ground. Her breath stayed steady. Her boots took the puddles without sliding.
“Stop!” The word tore out again, sharper.
The suspect glanced back. His hood shifted and she saw a sliver of cheek, a pale mouth set tight. He reached into his satchel while running.
Quinn’s hand went to her belt. No firearm—policy and politics, even after eighteen years. She had a baton, cuffs, a radio that crackled in the rain.
The suspect flung something behind him.
It skittered across the road, hit a puddle, and rolled. Quinn’s feet adjusted without thought. She jumped it and felt it bump her ankle as she passed.
Bone.
A small object, pale in the streetlight, carved and polished, shaped like a token. It spun in a puddle, then settled with a wet click.
Quinn’s eyes locked on it for half a second. She didn’t stop. She kept running, but she shifted her line and hooked her boot under it. The token flipped up. She snatched it out of the air with gloved fingers.
It felt warm despite the rain.
Ahead, the suspect swung into Camden’s fringes where the night wore a different face—market stalls shuttered, cheap signs dark, and the occasional late drinker hunched under a bus shelter with a paper bag and nowhere else to go. The smell changed too: damp wood, fried grease gone cold, the metallic tang of wet railings.
The suspect veered toward a stairwell cut into the pavement beside a locked-up storefront. It looked like a service entrance—concrete steps descending into darkness, metal handrails slick with rain. A faded sign clung to the wall: NO ACCESS. The letters peeled and bubbled.
He didn’t hesitate. He ran down.
Quinn hit the top step and stopped so fast her boots squealed on wet concrete. The stairwell swallowed light. Below, a thin strip of illumination glowed, not white like a maintenance bulb but amber, like lamplight through old whisky .
She listened. The city above roared with rain and tyres. Below, something moved—muffled voices, a murmur that didn’t match an empty station.
Quinn’s fingers closed around the bone token in her pocket. It pressed against her palm through the fabric, smooth and blunt.
Her radio hissed at her shoulder. She tapped it.
“Control, this is Detective Quinn. I’m in pursuit, Camden area, suspect just entered—” The words cut out as static surged. She tapped again. “Control?”
Static answered, then a faint warble, like distant singing through a wall. No human voice came back.
Quinn lowered the radio and stared into the stairwell.
Footsteps sounded behind her on the pavement above. Herrera’s voice carried down, breathless from the run.
“You picked it up.”
Quinn didn’t turn. “You followed me.”
A wet shoe scraped on the top step. Herrera hovered at the edge of the dark, rain dripping from his hair.
“You don’t know what that is.”
Quinn’s shoulders stayed squared to the stairs. “I know he wanted me to step on it.”
“He wanted you to hesitate.” Herrera’s tone sharpened. “That token opens a door you can’t un-open.”
Quinn pulled the bone token out and held it up. Rain slid over it without soaking in.
“Looks like bone. Smells like a trick.”
Herrera came down one step, then stopped as if the air changed.
“It came from the Market,” he said. “Veil Market. It moves. Full moon pulls it like a tide. Tonight it sits under Camden, in the old station.”
Quinn kept her face still. “Underground market. Cute name.”
Herrera’s eyes stayed on the darkness below. “Not cute.”
A voice drifted up from somewhere down the stairwell, faint and sharp.
“Token out. Don’t waste my time.”
Quinn’s gaze narrowed. The words didn’t carry an accent she could place. The tone carried impatience like a blade edge.
Herrera’s hands lifted again, palms open, as if he stood in front of a wild animal.
“Listen,” he pushed, close now. “You walk in there with a police badge and a hard stare, you’ll light yourself up. They’ll smell it.”
Quinn finally turned her head enough to look at him. Rain traced the lines beside her mouth, made her eyes darker.
“They,” she echoed . “You talk like you’ve been.”
Herrera’s jaw clenched . The Saint Christopher medallion knocked against his sternum when he breathed.
“I patched people up after they came back out. That counted as ‘been.’”
Quinn watched him for a beat, weighing his wet clothes, the crate he’d carried, the way he’d stepped into her path without flinching.
“You worked off the books,” Quinn said, letting it land like a charge.
Herrera’s mouth twisted. “You don’t have time for your file.”
The voice below rose again, louder, closer.
“Token. Now. Or go back up and drown with the rest.”
Quinn faced the stairwell. The amber glow shifted as if someone carried a lantern across a corridor down there. Shadows moved against the walls, too tall to belong to a single person, then snapped away.
Her left wrist ticked under her sleeve. She pulled it back enough to check the watch face. Water pooled in the crease at her elbow. Time kept moving, indifferent.
Herrera leaned nearer, voice dropping.
“Your mate that died—Morris, yeah?—you don’t want answers from that place.”
Quinn’s head snapped toward him. The rain seemed to pause on her lashes.
“You knew Morris?”
Herrera swallowed. “Not personally.”
Quinn stepped closer, closing the gap until Herrera had to lift his chin to keep eye contact.
“Who told you his name.”
Herrera held her stare for a second, then looked down the stairs again, as if the darkness pulled his focus.
“People talk,” he muttered. “And the Market listens.”
Quinn’s fingers tightened around the bone token. The suspect had already gone down. If he reached whoever waited below, he would vanish into whatever rules ran under the city. Quinn pictured evidence bags, interview rooms, the thin comfort of procedure. She pictured DS Morris’s empty chair and the polite silence that followed his name in the station.
The voice below clicked its tongue.
“Last chance.”
Quinn moved her foot to the first step. Water ran off the edge and fell into the dark.
Herrera’s hand shot out and caught her sleeve.
“Don’t.”
Quinn didn’t look at his hand. “Let go.”
Herrera’s grip held for a beat, then released. His fingers stayed lifted, trembling from cold or something else.
Quinn took the token and held it out over the stairwell as if offering it to the air .
Down below, a shape shifted into the light. Not a person fully—more a silhouette with a hunched shoulder and a head that didn’t sit right on the neck. A glint flashed where eyes should have been.
“Bring it,” the voice called up. “One at a time.”
Quinn took another step down. The air changed at once—warmer, thick with spice and rust, carrying a distant chorus of bargaining voices. The rain noise faded behind her as if a door closed without moving.
She paused on the second step, token still in her fist, and looked back at Herrera.
“You coming?” Her tone stayed flat, a test.
Herrera’s breath puffed out. He didn’t step down. He didn’t step away.
“You follow him. You keep your mouth shut. You don’t touch anything you don’t understand.”
Quinn’s eyes stayed on him for a beat longer, then she turned back to the dark and started down, boot soles scraping wet concrete as the amber light climbed up to meet her.