AI The sky over Soho didn't just leak; it collapsed. Cold, grey sheets of water hammered the asphalt, turning the streetlights into blurred smears of amber and white. Detective Harlow Quinn adjusted the collar of her wax coat, the stiff fabric scraping against her sharp jaw. Water dripped from her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, stinging her eyes, but she didn't blink. She kept her gaze fixed on the figure across the street.
Tomás Herrera stood under the distinctive green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest. The buzzing light cast a sickly hue over his olive skin, making him look like a ghost caught in mid-manifestation. He pulled his hood up, but not before Quinn saw the glint of the Saint Christopher medallion swinging against his chest. He checked his watch —a frantic, jerky movement—and then bolted.
Quinn moved. She didn't run yet; she drifted through the shadows of the doorways with a military precision that eighteen years on the force had etched into her marrow. Her boots splashed through a deep puddle, but she didn't break her stride. She focused on the rhythm of his retreat.
He’s spooked.
The chase led them away from the polished grit of the bar district and toward the jagged edges of Camden. The rain intensified, a relentless roar that drowned out the hum of distant traffic. Tomás took a sharp right into a narrow alleyway choked with overflowing bins and the stench of sodden cardboard. Quinn accelerated, her breath hitching in a controlled cadence.
She reached the mouth of the alley just as Tomás cleared a chain-link fence at the far end with the practiced ease of a man used to escaping.
"Police! Stay where you are, Herrera!"
Her voice cut through the downpour, hard and flat. Tomás didn't even look back. He dropped onto the other side and vanished into the darkness of an overgrown lot. Quinn hit the fence, her fingers catching in the cold wire. She hauled herself over, the leather strap of her watch snagging momentarily before she wrenched it free. She landed in the mud on the other side, her knees absorbing the impact, and surged forward.
He wasn't heading for the main roads. He was angling toward the old canal, toward the places where the city’s bones showed through the skin.
They tore through a graveyard of rusted shipping containers. Quinn saw the flash of his sneakers, the swing of his arms. He was younger, faster, but Quinn had the stamina of a predator . She knew how to track. She followed the sound of his heavy breathing and the rhythmic slap of his feet on wet stone.
Tomás lunged toward a corrugated iron shack tucked behind a row of Victorian warehouses. He didn't go through the door. He vanished behind it, into a gap in the foundation that shouldn't have been there.
Quinn reached the gap seconds later. It wasn't just a hole; it was the mouth of a concrete throat. A flight of stairs, slick with green algae and decades of filth, spiraled down into the earth. The air rising from the depths felt different—colder, charged with a static that made the hair on her arms stand up. It smelled of ozone and ancient, stagnant water.
"Don't do it, Tomás. There's nowhere to go down there."
Her voice echoed off the damp concrete. From the darkness below, the only answer was the fading scrape of boots on metal.
Quinn pulled her flashlight from her belt, clicking it on. The beam cut a narrow path through the gloom , illuminating the rusted remains of an old Tube station. This wasn't on the official maps. The walls were tiled in a cracked, Victorian white, stained with long streaks of rust that looked like dried blood .
She descended. Each step was a calculated risk. The temperature plummeted. Her breath began to bloom in front of her face in pale, ghostly clouds. At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opened into a wide platform. The tracks were long gone, replaced by a flooring of packed earth and jagged wooden planks.
Tomás stood fifty feet away, his back to a massive iron gate. He wasn't running anymore. He was fumbling with something in his pocket.
"Hands where I can see them!"
Quinn leveled her light at his face. He squinted, his dark curls plastered to his forehead. He looked less like a criminal and more like a man walking to his own execution. His hand came out of his pocket, clutching a small, white Object.
"You shouldn't be here, Detective. This isn't your jurisdiction."
"Everything in this city is my jurisdiction. Drop whatever's in your hand and move away from the gate."
Tomás looked at the heavy iron bars behind him. Beyond them, the tunnel glowed with a faint, flickering violet light. Figures moved in the haze—tall, distorted shadows that didn't pace like humans. The sound of a hundred muffled conversations drifted through the bars, a low, buzzing hum that vibrated in Quinn’s teeth.
"I can't do that. I have a patient. Someone who doesn't exist to people like you."
"I don't care about your off-the-books clinic, Tomás. I care about who’s paying you. I care about the people you’re protecting."
He raised the white object—a jagged piece of polished bone, etched with symbols that seemed to writhe under the beam of her flashlight .
"You want the truth about what happened to Morris? It’s through there. But you can't walk through without a price."
Quinn flinched at the mention of her partner’s name. The pain was sudden and sharp, a cold needle in her chest. She stepped forward, her boots crunching on something that sounded like glass but looked like teeth .
"You don't talk about him. You don't get to use his name."
"I'm the only one who knows where the pieces went, Quinn. He wasn't just killed. He was harvested."
Tomás slammed the bone token into a slot in the gate. The iron groaned, a sound of metal screaming against metal. The gates began to grind open, revealing the entrance to the Veil Market. The air that rushed out was hot and smelled of spices, sulfur, and something floral that made Quinn’s head swim.
Inside, the abandoned station had been transformed . Stalls draped in heavy silks lined the old tracks. Lanterns filled with glowing blue liquid hung from the ceiling. People—if they were people—haggled over jars of shimmering dust and crates of blackened iron. It was a subterranean hive of the impossible.
Tomás stepped over the threshold, his silhouette blurring as he entered the violet light. He turned back, his expression a mix of pity and warning.
"Once you go in, the Met can't help you. You leave the badge at the door, or you don't come back at all."
Quinn looked at the gate. Her hand went to her holster, the familiar weight of her sidearm offering no comfort here. The shadow of the Market stretched out toward her, beckoning with the promise of answers she had hunted for three years. The damp cold of the tunnel pressed against her back, urging her forward or pushing her away.
She looked at her watch . The leather was ruined , soaked through with rain and grime. The second hand ticked forward, relentless.
"I'm coming for you, Herrera."
She stepped to the edge of the light. The air felt thick, like water, resisting her entry. She forced her leaden legs to move, crossing the invisible line between the world she knew and the one that had swallowed her partner whole.
A man with skin like cracked parchment and eyes the color of milk stepped into her path, his hand extended.
"Token, traveler? Or perhaps a memory for the toll?"
Quinn didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on Tomás, who was disappearing into the throng of the Market. She reached into her pocket, her fingers brushing against a small brass button she had kept since Morris’s funeral.
"I'm not here to trade."
The man leaned in, his breath smelling of ozone.
"Everyone here trades, Detective. You just haven't realized what you've already spent."
He stepped aside, a mocking bow guiding her deeper into the labyrinth. The sounds of the Market surged around her—the clink of coins, the hiss of steam, and a low, melodic chanting that seemed to pulse from the very walls . Quinn pushed through a crowd of figures draped in heavy, hooded cloaks, her eyes darting between the stalls.
She lost sight of Tomás’s hood. The Market was a geographical impossibility, aisles stretching further than the station's footprint should have allowed. She passed a merchant selling rows of silver-stoppered vials. Inside the glass, shadows flickered and danced, clawing at the walls.
A hand caught her elbow. Quinn spun, her fist clenched , ready to strike.
"Easy, Harlow. You'll draw the wrong kind of attention."
She found herself staring into the face of a woman she didn't recognize, but the voice was familiar —a low, raspy tone she had heard in the background of a dozen wiretaps. The woman wore a mask carved from dark wood, the features frozen in a wide, toothy grin.
"Who are you?"
"A friend of the clique. And a fan of your persistence. But you’re a long way from the station house."
The woman pulled Quinn behind a heavy tapestry , into a small alcove lit by a single, guttering candle. The scent of jasmine was suffocatingly thick.
"Where is Herrera?"
"He’s heading for the Apothecary. He’s got delivery to make. Something fragile. Something that shouldn't be in this world."
Quinn adjusted her grip on her flashlight, using it as a baton.
"I'm taking him in. Him and whatever he's carrying."
The masked woman laughed, a dry, rattling sound.
"You'll take nothing but a shallow grave if you keep shouting. Look around you. Do you see any laws here? Do you see any handcuffs?"
Quinn peaked around the tapestry . Two figures in long, grey coats moved past, their faces obscured by shadows that didn't move with the light. They carried long staves tipped with glowing crystals. They didn't walk; they glided.
"The Wardens," the woman whispered. "They don't like trespassers. Especially ones with brass in their pockets."
"I don't care about the Wardens. I want Herrera."
"Then you’d better move. He’s almost at the Inner Circle. Once the gate closes for the lunar cycle, you’ll be trapped here until the next full moon. And trust me, Harlow, you don't have the constitution for a month in the Veil."
The woman pushed Quinn back out into the main thoroughfare. The crowd had thickened. A group of creatures with elongated limbs and skin like wet bark were hauling a heavy stone chest toward the center of the station. The violet light was pulsing faster now, a heartbeat in the dark.
Quinn saw a flash of olive skin. Tomás was climbing a set of stairs that led toward a raised platform where a man in gold-flecked robes waited. In Herrera's hand, the bone token was glowing with a fierce, white intensity .
She lunged forward, shoving past a group of cloaked figures.
"Herrera!"
Tomás froze at the top of the stairs. He looked down at her, his face a mask of desperation. The man in the gold robes reached out for the object in Tomás’s hand.
"Don't do it, Tomás! Whatever they promised you, it’s a lie!"
The Wardens turned. Their crystal -tipped staves began to hum, a high-pitched whine that set Quinn’s nerves on fire. They began to move toward her, their movements synchronized and terrifyingly fast.
Tomás looked at the object, then at Quinn, then at the man in the robes. He hesitated, his Saint Christopher medallion swinging wildly as he shook his head.
"It’s the only way to save her, Quinn! I’m sorry!"
He handed the bone to the robed man.
A shockwave of cold air ripped through the Market. The lanterns flickered and died, leaving the station in a terrifying, violet-tinged twilight. The Wardens accelerated, their staves flashing as they leveled them at Quinn’s chest.
She didn't retreat. She reached for the heavy brass button in her pocket, her fingers closing tight around the cold metal.
"The badge stays," she hissed to herself.
She ducked under the first swing of a Warden’s staff, the crystal whistling inches above her head. She drove her shoulder into the creature’s midsection. It felt like hitting a wall of iced smoke . The Warden didn't fall; it dissipated and reformed instantly, its grip tightening on the staff.
"Tomás! Stand down!"
But Tomás was already moving toward the back of the platform, vanishing through a heavy velvet curtain with the robed man.
Quinn scrambled up the stairs, her boots slipping on the smooth stone. The Wardens were right behind her, their presence a weight that made it hard to breathe. She reached the curtain and tore it aside.
The space beyond wasn't a room. It was another tunnel, narrower and darker, leading deeper into the Camden sewers. But the walls here weren't brick. They were lined with shelves, and on those shelves sat hundreds of jars.
Inside each jar, a small, pulsing light flickered . Some were blue, some were white. One, in the very center of the back wall, was a dull, aching red.
Quinn stopped. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. She knew that color . She knew the rhythm of that pulse .
"Morris?" she whispered, the name a ghost on her lips .
The red light throbbed in response.
From the shadows at the end of the tunnel, Tomás Herrera’s voice drifted back to her, hollow and broken.
"I told you, Quinn. He was harvested. Now do you want to see the rest of him?"
She stepped forward, the heat of the Market at her back and the cold of the grave ahead. The Wardens stopped at the entrance to the tunnel, their staves dimming. They didn't follow. They simply watched, their masked faces unreadable .
Quinn reached out a hand toward the red jar. The glass was warm. Beneath her fingertips, she felt a vibration, a low hum that synchronized with the ticking of her ruined watch .
"Harlow."
The voice didn't come from the jar. It came from the darkness behind her.
She turned, her flashlight beam cutting through the gloom . Standing at the entrance to the tunnel, his salt-and-pepper hair messy and his eyes wide with a fear she had never seen, was a man who looked exactly like the partner she had buried three years ago.
But he wasn't breathing . And he didn't have a shadow.
"Harlow, you shouldn't have come," the figure said, his voice overlapping with the hum of the jars . "You're not part of the trade."
"Morris?" Quinn’s voice broke. She didn't drop her guard, but the military precision of her stance wavered .
The figure stepped into the light. His clothes were the ones he had died in—the brown leather jacket, the faded jeans. But there was a hole in his chest where his heart should have been, and inside that hole, a faint, violet light mirrored the glow of the Market.
"The clique... they didn't just kill me, Harlow. They fragmented me. I'm the security for the shipment now."
Behind him, more shadows began to coalesce. The Wardens stepped back, bowing their heads. Something much larger was moving in the depths of the Market, something that made the ground tremble.
Tomás Herrera appeared beside the figure of Morris, his face pale and tear-streaked .
"I’m sorry, Detective. I really am. But the deal is struck."
He held up a second bone token, this one black and jagged. He pressed it against the wall of the tunnel, and the shelves began to retract, revealing a massive, iron-bound door that hummed with a power that made Quinn’s teeth ache.
"What's behind that door, Tomás?" Quinn demanded, her voice regaining its edge .
"The rest of the collection," Morris’s ghost answered.
The door began to creak open, and a blast of frigid, salt-scented air hit Quinn, carrying with it the sound of a thousand weeping voices.
Quinn looked at the jar in her hand, then at the man who wore her partner’s face. She didn't have a token. she didn't have a permit. All she had was a badge in her pocket and a debt that had gone unpaid for too long.
She stepped toward the open door.