AI The rain fell in a relentless, cold curtain, turning the neon signs of Soho into smears of colour on the wet pavement. Detective Harlow Quinn leaned against the brick wall in the shadow of a delivery bay, the collar of her trench coat turned up, her eyes fixed on the distinctive green glow of The Raven’s Nest across the street. The worn leather strap of her watch felt tight against her wrist, a familiar pressure marking the passage of empty hours. She’d been here since dusk, waiting for a break in the quiet comings and goings of Silas’ bar. The maps and photographs inside, she knew from a previous reconnaissance, spoke of a curated history, a front for something older and far less savoury.
Movement. The door opened, spilling a wedge of amber light onto the glistening street. A figure emerged, taller than the barman, pulling a hood up against the rain. They moved with a hurried, purposeful stride, turning north. Quinn pushed off the wall, her body falling into motion with the military precision drilled into her over eighteen years of service. Her shoes, sensible and rubber-soled, made little sound as she crossed the street, a ghost in the downpour.
The suspect—she thought of them as ‘the Runner’—kept a brisk pace, cutting through side alleys and across broader avenues where late-night traffic hissed by. Quinn matched it, staying half a block behind, using reflections in shop windows and the cover of other pedestrians. The Runner’s hood stayed up, their face unseen. The rain plastered Quinn’s closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair to her scalp, and she felt a trickle of cold water trace the line of her sharp jaw. Her mind, however, was a dry, focused thing. *Where are you going?*
They moved out of Soho, the character of the streets shifting. The Runner descended into the warren of tunnels at Tottenham Court Road station, but instead of heading for the platforms, they took a service door marked ‘Authorised Personnel Only’, propping it open with a discarded coffee cup before disappearing inside. Quinn hesitated for only a second. The memory of DS Morris, his laughter, the empty space where he should be, pressed against her ribs. Unexplained circumstances. She’d followed procedure then, and it had gotten her nowhere but a desk and a pension recommendation she’d refused. She pushed the door open.
The air was warmer down here, thick with the smell of damp concrete and ozone. Dim emergency lighting cast long shadows. She heard footsteps echoing ahead, a rapid tap-tap-tap on metal stairs. She followed, descending deeper than the public lines, into a realm of maintenance tunnels and forgotten conduits. The sound of the rain was gone , replaced by the hum of distant machinery and the drip of water from unseen pipes. Her hand went to the holster under her arm, the cool grip of her service weapon a small comfort.
The Runner was leading her to Camden. She knew these tunnels, theoretically; part of the old abandoned Northern line extensions. They were a known grey area for the Met, a place where things and people could slip through the cracks. Her breath began to fog in the cooler air. After twenty minutes of silent pursuit, the Runner pushed through a heavy, rusted door onto a disused platform. Quinn hung back in the tunnel mouth, peering out.
The platform was not dark. It was lit by dozens of lanterns, candles, and strings of fairy lights powered by grumbling generators. Stalls made from repurposed shipping containers and moth-eaten drapes lined the space. The air was a complex soup of smells: incense, rotting flowers, ozone, and frying food. People—if they were all people—moved between the stalls. A figure with too-long limbs haggled over a jar of glowing moss. A woman with eyes like polished jet examined a row of intricate blades. This was no ordinary black market. This was the thing whispered about in the most classified briefings, the place Morris had tried to tell her about before he vanished. The Veil Market.
The Runner had stopped at the platform’s edge, near the entrance to the market proper. They turned, and for the first time, the hood fell back. It was a young man, pale, with anxious eyes. He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the archway that served as the market’s gate. A hulking figure stood beside it, clad in leather and iron. The bouncer. The Runner fumbled in his pocket and produced a small, pale object. He handed it over. The bouncer examined it—a bone token, carved with runes—and nodded, stepping aside.
The Runner vanished into the crowd.
Quinn was exposed in the tunnel. She had a choice. Forward, into a world that defied her understanding, a world that had taken Morris. Or back, to the rain-soaked streets and the slow death of her career, chasing shadows that always slipped away.
Her hand went to her own pocket. Not a bone token, but the Saint Christopher medallion she’d taken from Morris’s effects after the inquest. It was warm against her fingers. A stupid superstition. But it was all she had.
She stepped onto the platform. The sounds of the market enveloped her: muttered conversations in languages she didn’t recognise, the clink of glass, a low, melodic humming from a nearby stall selling wind chimes made of bird skulls. She approached the archway, her bearing straight, her face a mask of authority she no longer felt.
The bouncer looked down at her. He was well over six and a half feet tall, his nose a flattened ruin. “Token,” he grunted, his voice like gravel in a drum.
“I don’t have one,” Quinn said, her voice steady . “I’m with the Metropolitan Police. I need to speak with someone in charge.”
A low chuckle rumbled from the bouncer. “No token, no entry. That’s the only law here, copper.”
“My partner died because of what comes out of places like this,” she said, the words leaving her lips before she could stop them . It wasn’t procedure. It was just truth.
The bouncer’s amusement faded. He studied her, his gaze lingering on the sharp lines of her face, the determined set of her shoulders. “Lost someone to the deep, did you?” He sighed, a sound of vast indifference . “Wait here.”
He turned and lumbered into the market. Quinn stood, feeling the weight of a hundred unseen eyes upon her. She kept her hand near her weapon, her heart a hard, rapid beat against her ribs. After a minute, the bouncer returned, followed by a smaller man.
He was in his late twenties, with olive skin and short, curly dark brown hair. He wore a simple grey sweater, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing a long, pale scar running along his left forearm. A Saint Christopher medallion, twin to the one in her pocket, gleamed at his throat. His warm brown eyes took her in with a paramedic’s assessing calm.
“Detective,” Tomás Herrera said, his accent soft, Seville woven into the London vowels . “You are a long way from your jurisdiction.” He didn’t seem surprised to see her.
“You know who I am,” Quinn stated.
“I know you’ve been asking questions about the people who use my services,” he said. “I provide medical care. That is not a crime.”
“It is when you lose your license,” Quinn shot back. “And when your patients are involved in things that get people killed.”
Tomás’s expression was unreadable . “Your Runner, the boy with the fever? He is safe. He came for medicine I could not get him through your NHS. That is all this is, for most who come here. A chance to live.” He gestured to the market behind him. “But you did not come for him. You came for answers. They are here. But they are not free, and they are not safe.”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You have no token. I can vouch for you, once. But if you step through that arch, you step into my world. The rules you know mean nothing. Your badge means less. You will see things you cannot unsee. And you may not leave the same person.” He paused, letting the hum of the market fill the space between them. “Morris knew that. He was a good man. He came here once, asking similar questions.”
The name was a physical blow. Quinn’s breath caught. “You knew him?”
“I tried to treat him, after. It was too late.” Tomás’s eyes held a genuine sorrow. “The choice is yours, Detective. Go back to the rain. File your report. Live with the not-knowing. Or come inside, and learn why your partner really died.”
The rain seemed a thousand miles away, a memory of a simpler, colder world. Here, the air was thick with possibility and peril . Quinn looked past Tomás, into the labyrinth of light and shadow. She thought of Morris’s empty chair, his unfinished notes, the quiet horror of a death with no cause. She thought of the slow erosion of truth by bureaucracy.
She met Tomás’s gaze. “Lead the way.”