AI Harlow Quinn vaulted the low brick wall, her boots splashing into a murky puddle that soaked through to her socks. Ahead, a dark shape vanished around the corner of a laundrette, leaving only the echo of clattering bins in its wake. She didn’t shout, *stop, police *. Not here. Not for this one.
She had been watching The Raven's Nest for three nights straight, parked in her unmarked car two streets over, nursing lukewarm coffee and a conviction that grew colder and harder with each passing hour. The green neon sign buzzed like an insect against the wet bricks. Then, just after two AM, he’d slipped out the service door. Not Silas, the owner, but one of his regular runners —a wiry kid with a messenger bag slung crosswise. He’d spotted her, of course. They always did.
The chase was a blur of slick cobblestones and the orange sodium glow of streetlamps painting the rain in oily streaks. Her breath plumed in the cold air, matching pace with her heart. Eighteen years on the force, three since Morris, and her body still answered the call with a furious, practised efficiency. The kid was fast, younger, but Quinn knew these streets. She’d cut him off at the old railway arch.
Except he didn’t head for the arch. He took a hard right, ducking into a narrow alley choked with overflowing wheelie bins. Quinn followed, the smell of rotting vegetables and wet cardboard thick in the air. At the alley’s dead end was a rusted service door for what used to be a pie shop. The kid was already through it.
She shoved the door open. Not a shop. A stairwell, descending into blackness. The air changed instantly, damp and cool, carrying a faint, coppery tang she recognised from evidence lockers and bad dreams. Distant, echoing chatter drifted up, along with the low hum of generators and the smell of ozone and burnt herbs.
*Underground.*
Her left hand went to her radio on instinct. Her right to the worn leather of her watch strap. Morris’s watch . The one they’d found beside him, still ticking.
She paused on the top step, the street sounds muffled behind her. Procedure said call it in. Wait for backup. Contain the perimeter. Procedure hadn’t saved Morris. He’d followed a hunch down a similar set of stairs in Shoreditch. They’d found him two days later in the Thames, his lungs full of clean water and his eyes wide with something the coroner couldn’t name. *Unexplained circumstances *. The file was still on her desk.
The kid’s footsteps faded on the concrete below.
Quinn started down, each step a quiet concession. The stairs spiralled, the walls shifting from modern brick to older, curved tile. An abandoned Tube station. She’d heard the whispers, of course. Coppers' tales over late-night pints. A market that moved. A place where you could buy things that weren’t in any evidence catalogue.
The chatter grew louder, resolving into distinct voices bartering, arguing, whispering. A flickering, sourceless light painted the archway at the bottom of the stairs a sickly green. She slowed, pressing herself against the cold tile.
The cavern opened before her, vast and impossible. The old Camden Town station platform stretched into gloom , but it had been transformed . Stalls constructed from scrap wood and frayed velvet lined the walls, their canopies glowing with witch-light or humming with mismatched electrical cables. The air was a thick soup of smells: incense, hot metal, decaying parchment, and something sweetly rotten. Figures moved through the haze, their shapes indistinct, some cloaked, others in modern streetwear that looked violently out of place.
And there, maybe thirty yards away, weaving through the crowd with the messenger bag hugged tight to his chest, was the kid.
A figure stepped into her path. Tall, hooded, blocking her view.
“Token.” The voice was gravel rubbed on stone.
Quinn’s hand rested on the grip of her extendable baton. “Detective.”
“Not down here, you’re not.” A pale hand emerged from the sleeve, palm up. “Bone token. Or turn around.”
She looked past him, searching for the kid. He was at a stall now, talking to a hunched figure behind a counter littered with small, twinkling bottles. Handing over the bag. Receiving a small, wrapped package.
“I don’t have a token.”
“Then you’re sightseeing.” The hood shifted. She caught a glimpse of a face that was all sharp angles and eyes like chips of obsidian. “And we don’t do tours.”
Morris’s watch felt heavy on her wrist. *He’d gone in without backup. He’d gone in alone.* The official report suggested recklessness. Quinn knew it was trust. Trust in a source. Trust that turned out to be a set-up.
The kid finished his transaction and melted back into the crowd, heading deeper into the market, towards the dark mouth of a disused tunnel.
“Last chance,” the sentinel rumbled.
Procedure was a warm, well-lit room. It was statements and warrants and chain of custody. This place was the opposite. It was the whisper behind the crime scene tape. It was the evidence that went missing from lock-ups. It was Morris’s empty, staring eyes.
Quinn’s fingers tightened on the baton. She could take him. One quick strike to the knee, another to the head. She’d done it before.
But then every eye in the Veil Market would be on her. She’d be the copper who broke the rules, the one who brought the law into their lawless place. She’d never find the kid. She’d never find what was in that package. She’d never know what Morris had been chasing.
She took a step back, raising her hands slightly , palms out. A gesture of retreat.
The sentinel nodded, once, and faded back into the shadows near the wall.
Quinn turned and walked back up the stairs, her footsteps measured , deliberate. At the top, she pushed open the service door and stepped back into the alley. The rain had lessened to a fine mist. She took out her phone, thumb hovering over her supervisor’s number.
She looked at the dark doorway. She thought of the kid’s face, pale and determined . She thought of the wrapped package. She thought of the green neon sign of The Raven's Nest, and the man named Silas who held court behind its bar.
Her thumb moved away from the call button. She opened a notes app instead and began to type, her back against the wet brick wall, her eyes fixed on the door.
*Abandoned Tube access. Camden. Possible black market. Observed transaction: messenger bag for small parcel. Runner connected to The Raven’s Nest. Sentinel demanded ‘bone token’ for entry. No engagement.*
She saved the note. Then she opened her contacts, scrolling past official numbers until she found one saved simply as ‘T’. Tomas Herrera. The paramedic who’d lost his license. The one who patched up people who didn’t go to hospital. The one who might know the price of a bone token.
She hit dial. It rang twice.
“Quinn.” His voice was calm, warm, touched with a Spanish accent. “It’s late. This isn’t about my paperwork again, is it?”
“I need a guide,” she said, her voice low . The rain dripped from the gutter above her head. “Someone who knows the places off the maps.”
A pause on the line. She heard the faint sound of a television in the background, then the click of it being turned off.
“Those places,” Tomas said slowly , “they have rules. Different rules.”
“I know. I just saw the door.”
Another pause, longer this time. “You went in?”
“I looked.”
“And?”
“And I’m still outside.” She glanced at the service door. “For now.”
“Good.” She heard him sigh, the rustle of fabric. “Stay there. Do not go back down. Not tonight.”
“The runner got away with something.”
“Runners always do. That’s their job.” His tone shifted, becoming firm, almost medical. “Listen to me, Harlow. You are a detective. You shine a light. The things down there… they thrive in the dark. A light attracts more than it reveals.”
He was talking about Morris. They never said his name, but he was always there, between the words.
“What’s a bone token, Tomas?”
Silence. Then, “Currency. For passage. Not something you get from a cashpoint.”
“How do I get one?”
“You don’t.” The finality in his voice was absolute. “Not if you want to stay you. A token means you’ve traded something. A piece of yourself. For knowledge. For power. For entry.” She heard the faint chink of metal against metal. His Saint Christopher medal, maybe. “Some doors, Quinn, are better left unopened.”
She looked at the dark doorway, then down at her phone. The kid was gone . The package was gone . But the market was still there. And Silas was still at The Raven's Nest. And Morris was still dead.
“He went in alone,” she said, the words escaping before she could stop them .
Tomas understood. “And you think going in with me is different?”
“It’s not alone.”
“It’s worse.” His voice was soft now. “It’s responsibility. If I take you in there, I answer for what happens to you. My… colleagues… they would have questions.”
Quinn closed her eyes. The images flashed: Morris’s watch . The sentinel ’s obsidian eyes. The green glow of the market. The wrapped package changing hands.
“Meet me,” she said. “Tomorrow. My usual place. Just talk.”
“Just talk,” he repeated, the skepticism clear. “Alright. Ten o’clock. But Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring coffee. And don’t wear your boots. The mud down there… it stains.”
The line went dead. Quinn lowered the phone. The service door stared back at her, a dark mouth in the brickwork. She took one last look, memorising the alley, the position of the bins, the rust patterns on the metal.
Then she turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing on the wet cobbles, leaving the entrance to the Veil Market behind her. For now.