AI Quinn caught a fistful of the bloke’s jacket and tore cloth instead of stopping him.
He stumbled, recovered, and shot a look back over his shoulder. His eyes widened when he saw her badge chain flash at her belt. Then he ran harder, boots slapping puddles and sending filthy water up her trousers.
“Police. Stop.”
He ignored her and cut across the mouth of the alley beside the Raven’s Nest. The bar’s green neon sign buzzed and flickered above the door, casting sickly light onto wet brick. A couple under the awning recoiled as the runner barged past them. Quinn drove a shoulder through the gap, her sharp jaw clenched , her breath controlled the way the training never left you. Eighteen years in, and her body still obeyed commands before her mind finished speaking them.
He hit Old Compton Street at speed. Cars crawled, wipers ticking, horns blaring at the sudden sprinting figure. The runner darted between bumpers, palms skimming bonnets for balance. Quinn followed, boots skidding as she cleared a puddle that hid a kerb. Pain flared up her ankle. She swallowed it down and kept moving.
A taxi lurched to a stop, inches from her knees.
“Watch it.”
Quinn slapped the bonnet.
“Met Police. Move.”
The driver’s mouth opened, shut again. Quinn didn’t spare him another glance. She tracked her suspect by the flick of his dark jacket as he shoved through a knot of smokers outside a late-night café. Steam from a coffee machine rolled out with the scent of burnt milk and sugary pastries. People turned, saw Quinn’s expression, and stepped aside.
The runner clipped a woman’s shoulder. Her shopping bag split, oranges rolling into the gutter. She shouted after him, then at Quinn, then at the street itself. Quinn didn’t stop.
He headed north, away from the tourist crush, towards streets that sloped into service lanes and delivery bays. He knew where he was going. That mattered more than his speed. Quinn matched it, the worn leather watch on her left wrist slick with water, the second hand ticking like a dare.
He tried to lose her at a junction, feinting right, then snapping left into a narrow passage between buildings. Quinn went left with him, no hesitation. She’d watched him inside the Raven’s Nest, watched him pass a folded scrap of paper to a man with a ringed hand, watched him clock her reflection in the bar mirror. He had bolted the moment she stood.
The passage funneled them into a yard full of bins. The runner sprang onto a low wall, scraped up and over, and dropped into the next lane with a wet thud.
Quinn vaulted after him. Her palms hit stone, cold and slick. Her boots cleared the edge. She landed hard, knees bending, and pushed on.
The runner glanced back again, and that glance cost him. His heel slid on a metal utility cover, and he windmilled, arms flailing. A small object bounced from his pocket and skittered across the pavement.
A token, pale and matte, shaped like a flattened coin but uneven, like it had been carved from old bone.
Quinn registered it in the same instant the runner realised he’d dropped it.
He lunged for it.
Quinn did too.
Her hand closed over the token first. It felt warm, as if it had been held against skin for hours. Fine scratches etched one side, the lines forming a symbol that meant nothing to her and everything to him.
“Give it back.”
His voice cracked on the words. Young. Not as hard as he wanted to sound.
Quinn rose, holding the bone token between finger and thumb.
“Tell me where you’re going.”
He didn’t answer. He turned and ran again, swearing under his breath.
Quinn shoved the token into her pocket and went after him.
He burst onto a wider street and angled towards a bus stop. A night bus hissed at the kerb, doors yawning open, passengers hunched inside with phones glowing. The runner leapt in.
Quinn sprinted, arm out.
“Hold that bus.”
The driver glanced up, saw her, and shut the doors out of spite or fear, then pulled off. The runner stood by the rear window, chest heaving, and lifted two fingers in a crude salute.
Quinn’s mouth tightened. She paced the bus for a few steps, then stopped and scanned .
Her eyes picked up a line of parked e-scooters chained near a bike rack. She snapped the lock with a baton strike, yanked one free, and shoved off.
London blurred into wet lights and close calls. She slalomed past stalled traffic, tyres whispering over slick tarmac. A lorry threw up a sheet of water that slapped her coat. She didn’t blink. Her cropped hair plastered to her scalp. Her grip stayed steady.
The bus took a route that skirted the centre, cutting north. Quinn followed the red tail lights, darting down side roads when traffic thickened, then rejoining when she could. Twice she nearly lost it at intersections, but the bus’s bulk made it easier to track than one man on foot.
Near Camden, the bus slowed for a stop. The runner shoved through the aisle and dropped off before the doors fully opened.
Quinn abandoned the scooter against a railing and sprinted again, boots splashing through shallow puddles. The runner shot across the pavement and down a flight of steps beside a shuttered shop. A sign above the shop, half-lit, advertised phone repairs. A cheap plastic mannequin stared from behind a grilled window.
He disappeared into the stairwell.
Quinn took the steps two at a time. The concrete walls trapped sound, turning the city’s noise into a dull roar. The runner’s footsteps echoed below, quick and panicked.
At the bottom, a corridor stretched ahead, lined with peeling posters for gigs long past. The air smelled of damp and old electricity. A service door stood ajar, a sliver of darkness beyond.
Quinn pushed through.
The corridor widened into what used to be a ticket hall. Old turnstiles sat crooked like broken teeth. Someone had daubed symbols on the tiles, neat and deliberate. Battery lanterns dotted the floor, their light trembling as people moved past them.
People. Not commuters.
A woman in a long coat bartered with a man whose eyes shone a wrong shade of yellow. A boy carried a tray of small glass vials that smoked faintly. A stall made from a folding table displayed rings that looked wet, though no water touched them.
Quinn slowed. Her heart rate stayed high, but her instincts shifted. The runner had not fled into an ordinary underpass.
He shoved through a gap between stalls, knocking shoulders, drawing curses. Nobody reached for him. Nobody stopped him. Several heads turned towards Quinn instead, and their attention had weight .
A thick-necked man stepped into her path. His coat hung open to show a scarred chest. His smile held no warmth .
“Market’s closed to you.”
Quinn flashed her warrant card without thinking. The gesture looked ridiculous in this place.
“I’m police. Move.”
The man’s smile widened as if she’d told a joke.
“Police can shop like everyone else.”
A laugh rippled nearby. It didn’t sound human enough.
Quinn shifted her stance, her body angling to keep her balance and her options. Her hand hovered near her radio, then paused. The signal would die down here. She felt it already, the device useless in her palm.
A voice came from her left, low and familiar , carrying an accent softened by London but not erased.
“Detective Quinn.”
She turned.
Tomás Herrera stood behind a stall stacked with medical supplies that looked half stolen, half antique. Bandages. Needles in sterile packs. A small, purposeful kit of tools laid out with care. His olive skin looked tired under the harsh lantern light. A Saint Christopher medallion rested against his throat, catching the glow when he moved.
He gave her a look that held warning without begging.
“You lost?”
Quinn kept her face still.
“I’m chasing a suspect.”
Tomás’s gaze flicked to her pocket, to where the bone token made a hard edge under her coat.
“You brought the right key for the wrong door.”
The thick-necked man shifted, blocked her view of the path the runner took.
“Token first.”
Quinn didn’t move. She took in the crowd again, the stalls, the exits she could see. Two corridors led away, both swallowed by shadow. The old ticket booths had been converted into cages of goods, jars and boxes with labels in languages she didn’t read. A few people wore masks, not for disease, but for anonymity . One mask looked like polished wood, smooth and expressionless.
The runner’s head popped into view above the crowd for a second as he looked back. He met Quinn’s eyes, then vanished behind hanging tarps.
Quinn pushed past the thick-necked man.
He grabbed her sleeve.
She twisted, locked his wrist, and drove him into the nearest pillar. The move came clean, military precision. His breath whooshed out. She didn’t break the lock until she felt the tendons strain.
The crowd reacted at once. Bodies shifted. Hands slid into pockets. Metal flashed.
Tomás moved too, stepping out from his stall with both palms open.
“Don’t.”
The thick-necked man straightened, rubbing his wrist, eyes hard.
“This isn’t a playground, detective.”
Quinn’s voice stayed even.
“Where’s the exit?”
A woman with a shaved head and a fur-lined collar leaned close, sniffed the air near Quinn’s shoulder like she tasted her.
“Exit costs extra.”
Quinn held her ground. She counted faces. She counted hands. She saw a blade shaped like a surgeon’s scalpel. She saw a pistol that didn’t look like any model she’d trained against, its barrel etched with the same kind of scratches as the bone token.
Tomás spoke again, softer.
“He’ll go to the back. He’ll trade whatever he stole, then he’ll disappear.”
“What did he steal?” Quinn asked.
Tomás didn’t answer that. His eyes tightened. His left forearm scar showed when his sleeve rode up, a pale line against skin.
“People here don’t like police,” he said. “They like money. They like favours. And they like quiet.”
Quinn’s jaw flexed.
“I don’t need their permission.”
“That’s the mistake,” Tomás said. “You think rules follow you.”
Quinn reached into her pocket and brought out the bone token. The thick-necked man’s gaze locked onto it. So did several others. The token looked dull in her hand, but the symbol on it seemed to pull the light.
She didn’t give it to anyone. She slid it into her palm and closed her fist.
“Tell me what this opens.”
Tomás watched her hand.
“It opens the Veil Market.”
Quinn let the name settle. She’d heard whispers in reports that went nowhere, statements that got retracted , witnesses who forgot details that mattered. She’d filed them all under nonsense and desperation. Yet here it was, tucked under Camden like a parasite with a heartbeat.
The runner’s shout cut through the noise, far ahead, sharp with fear.
A second shout answered it, deeper, amused.
The crowd surged towards the sound. Stalls rattled. Lanterns swung, throwing wild shadows over faces that suddenly looked hungry.
Tomás grabbed Quinn’s sleeve, his grip firm.
“Leave.”
Quinn yanked free.
“He’s my suspect.”
“He’s someone’s property down here,” Tomás said. “That’s worse.”
Quinn moved into the flow, forcing her way through bodies that resisted just enough to slow her. A shoulder slammed into her ribs. An elbow dug her side. She tasted copper, not blood, but the tang of old fear, the same flavour she’d swallowed the night DS Morris died and the world refused to explain itself.
She reached a narrower corridor where the market thinned. The walls tightened in, tiled in soot-stained white. The sound ahead grew clearer, a scuffle, a thud against metal.
Quinn rounded the corner and saw a gate made from iron bars set into the old station architecture. Someone had bolted it open, but a mechanism sat beside it, a slot carved into stone, bone token sized.
The runner backed away from the gate, hands up, eyes wide. He stood before a figure in a long, dark coat that swallowed light. The figure’s face remained hidden, but a hand emerged, pale and elegant, holding a small knife that shone like glass.
The runner saw Quinn and screamed.
“They’ll kill me. They’ll kill you.”
The figure turned its head towards Quinn. The movement looked slow, controlled. Intentional.
Behind Quinn, the crowd’s footsteps hammered closer.
Tomás’s voice rang from back down the corridor.
“Harlow, don’t.”
Quinn lifted the bone token.
The figure’s knife tilted, inviting.
Quinn slammed the token into the slot.
The gate clanged shut behind her with a force that shook dust from the tiles, cutting her off from the corridor and the oncoming crowd as the mechanism locked with a heavy, final click.