AI The green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest bled into the puddles, staining the Soho asphalt a sickly, electric emerald. Detective Harlow Quinn leaned against a brick facade across the street, the brim of her coat shielding her eyes from the steady London downpour. She checked the worn leather watch on her left wrist. Midnight. The salt-and-pepper strands of her cropped hair clung to her forehead, damp and cold.
A figure emerged from the bar’s shadow. Tomás Herrera pulled his collar up, but the flash of his curly dark hair and olive skin was unmistakable under the streetlights. He moved with a panicked fluidity that set off every alarm Quinn had honed over eighteen years.
"Herrera!"
The shout sliced through the rhythmic drumming of the rain. Tomás froze, his head snapping toward her. His eyes, warm brown and wide with terror, locked onto hers for a fraction of a second. He didn't wait for a second command. He bolted.
Quinn lunged into the street. Her boots splashed through the oily water, heavy and rhythmic . She didn't call out again; she saved her breath for the burn in her lungs. Tomás took the corner into a narrow alleyway, his silhouette blurring against the dark brick. Quinn followed, her sharp jaw set. She vaulted over a pile of sodden cardboard boxes, her movements calculated , military.
He was fast. The former paramedic navigated the urban labyrinth like he knew the weight of every loose stone. He hooked a sharp left, heading toward the heart of Camden. Quinn kept pace, the distance between them tethered by her stubborn refusal to let another one slip away. Three years since Morris died, and the world still felt like it was tilting on a hidden axis. Herrera was the link to the friction she felt in the shadows.
Rain lashed against her face. The scent of wet trash and ozone filled her nostrils. Tomás scrambled over a chain-link fence, the metal rattling violently. Quinn reached it seconds later, gripping the cold wire and heaving herself over. She landed hard on the other side, her knees absorbing the shock.
"Drop it, Tomás! There's nowhere to go!"
Tomás didn't look back. He sprinted toward the darkened mouth of an old Tube entrance, his Saint Christopher medallion swinging wildly outside his shirt, catching the stray light from a distant streetlamp.
The chase moved beneath the surface. The air turned stale, thick with the smell of iron and ancient dust. Their footfalls echoed off the tiled walls of the abandoned station. Quinn’s hand went to her belt, fingers brushing the grip of her radio, then her holster. This wasn't a standard patrol. She was deep in the red.
They descended deeper. The modern world vanished, replaced by the damp architecture of the 1940s. Tomás tripped, his palms skidding across the grit of a dead escalator. He scrambled up, his left forearm bared, showing the jagged white line of a knife scar.
"Leave it, Quinn!" Tomás’s voice cracked, echoing up the shaft. "You’re crossing lines you can't uncross!"
Quinn leaped down the final three steps, her boots thudding on the platform. "I crossed those lines when they buried my partner. Talk to me, or I take you in the hard way."
Tomás reached a heavy iron gate at the end of a maintenance tunnel. He didn't reach for a key. His hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out something small and white—a piece of polished bone. He pressed it into a knot in the ironwork.
A low, subterranean hum vibrated through the floorboards. The gate shivered. It didn't swing open; it dissolved, the metal bars twisting back like scorched paper to reveal a shimmering, torch-lit expanse beyond.
Quinn skidded to a halt five feet away. The air emanating from the opening was hot and smelled of exotic spices, scorched copper, and something sweet and rotting. This was the Veil Market. She had heard the whispers in the dim corners of the Nest, the tall tales of a place that moved with the moon.
Tomás stood at the threshold. He looked back at her, his expression a mix of pity and desperation.
"This is the end of the line for a badge," he shouted over the rising roar of the crowd within. "They don't like your kind in here."
He stepped through. The shimmer rippled around him like oil on water.
Quinn stood in the cold dark of the tunnel, the rain from the surface still dripping off her coat. The military precision of her thoughts warred with the primal instinct that screamed at her to turn back. Her watch ticked against her pulse . If she stepped through that gate, the Metropolitan Police might as well be on another planet.
She looked at the bone token still lodged in the iron. It glowed with a faint, pulsing light.
Quinn gripped the iron frame. The metal felt warm, almost organic. She thought of Morris, of the unexplained marks on his neck, and the way the file had been scrubbed by the higher-ups. She thought of the way the city hid its teeth at night.
She stepped forward, her shoulder breaking the plane of the shimmering air.
The transition hit her like a physical blow. The silence of the abandoned station was replaced by a cacophony of voices and the clatter of a thousand transactions. The Veil Market opened up beneath her, a sprawling cavern of stalls built from old train cars and scavenged timber.
Lanterns hung from the arched ceiling, casting long, flickering shadows. Figures draped in heavy cloaks moved between stalls piled high with jars of shimmering liquids, bundles of dried herbs that twitched on their own, and crates of tarnished silver.
Quinn kept her hand on her weapon, her eyes darting through the throng. The olive skin of Tomás’s neck was visible fifty yards ahead, weaving through a crowd of people whose proportions didn't quite match the human standard . A man with a jaw too wide and eyes like a goat turned to watch her pass, his nostrils flaring.
She pushed through the crowd, her presence a jagged rock in a moving stream. The inhabitants of the Market sensed the intruder. The air grew heavy.
"Tomás!" she yelled, but the sound was swallowed by the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer nearby—a hammer that struck sparks of blue fire from a blade of black glass.
Tomás ducked behind a stall selling caged birds that screamed in human voices. Quinn lunged after him, knocking aside a stack of wooden crates. A merchant with fingers like spindly twigs hissed at her, baring teeth filed to points.
"Out of the way," Quinn snapped, her voice carrying the cold authority of the precinct .
She rounded the corner of the bird-seller’s stall just as Tomás reached a central plaza where the cavern ceiling soared sixty feet high. He stopped by an old fountain that pumped a thick, silvery liquid.
"Stop running," Quinn said, her chest heaving . She didn't draw her gun, but her posture made it clear she was seconds from it.
Tomás turned, his hands raised. The Saint Christopher medallion was clutched in his right palm.
"You shouldn't have come here, Harlow. You really shouldn't have."
"Tell me about the shipments," Quinn demanded, closing the gap. "The crates moving through the docks. The ones with the same bone markings as that gate."
Tomás shook his head, a strand of dark hair falling over his eyes. "You think this is about smuggling? You're looking for drugs or guns. This is bigger than your jurisdiction. People here... they don't care about the Queen's law."
A shadow fell over them. From the darkness of a side tunnel, three figures emerged. They wore long, duster-style coats that masked their forms, but their movement was too synchronized , too predatory. Quinn’s instincts screamed. She shifted her stance, centering her gravity.
"Who are they, Tomás?" Quinn asked, her voice low .
"The Market’s muscle," Tomás whispered, his face pale . "They keep the peace. And the peace is broken by anyone who brings the outside world with them."
The lead figure stepped into the light. The face beneath the hood was a mask of pale leather, stitched together with silver wire. It carried a staff tipped with a jagged piece of obsidian.
Quinn's hand closed over the grip of her pistol. She didn't draw it, but she felt the cold steel against her palm.
"I'm a Detective with the Met," she said, her voice echoing with a forced confidence . "I'm here for a suspect. We leave, and you go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."
The masked figure didn't speak. It raised the staff. The obsidian tip began to glow with a dull, throbbing violet light.
Around them, the market began to go quiet. The merchants retreated into the shadows of their stalls. The birds stopped screaming.
Tomás took a step toward Quinn, his eyes darting between her and the enforcers. "Give me your hand," he hissed. "Now."
"What?"
"The medallion," he said, holding out the Saint Christopher charm . "It’s not just gold. It’s a pass. If they think you’re with me, they might let us reach the back exit."
The leather-faced enforcer took a step forward, the violet light from the staff casting long, distorting shadows across Quinn’s sharp jaw.
"I don't need a pass," Quinn said, her voice steady even as her heart hammered against her ribs. "I need answers."
The enforcer lunged. Quinn’s military training took over. She dived to the left as a burst of violet energy shattered the stone of the fountain behind her, sending silver liquid spraying into the air. She rolled, coming up on one knee with her weapon drawn.
"Freeze!"
The enforcer didn't freeze. It glided across the floor, the staff whistling through the air. Quinn fired once. The bullet struck the figure’s chest, but there was no spray of blood—only a puff of grey dust and a metallic clang. The figure didn't even flinch.
"Go!" Tomás grabbed Quinn’s arm, his grip bruising.
He pulled her toward a corridor lined with heavy velvet curtains. Quinn fired two more shots over her shoulder, the muzzle flashes illuminating the terrifying lack of expression on the masked faces of their pursuers.
They tore through the curtains, stumbling into a narrow passageway filled with the smell of incense and old paper. Behind them, the sounds of the Market were fading, replaced by a low, rhythmic thumping—the sound of the enforcers' boots on the stone.
"Where does this lead?" Quinn asked, her eyes scanning the dark .
"Nowhere you've ever been," Tomás said, his breath coming in ragged gasps .
They reached a wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Tomás threw his weight against it, and they spilled out into a smaller chamber, one filled with scrolls and stacks of ancient, yellowing maps.
Quinn slammed the door shut and bolted it. She turned to Tomás, her gun still raised, though it pointed at the floor.
"Start talking," she said, her voice a low growl . "Before I find a way to arrest you and everyone in this basement."
Tomás slumped against a table, his Saint Christopher medallion glowing faintly in the dim light of the room. He looked at Quinn, his brown eyes filled with an exhaustion that went deeper than the chase.
"You want to know about Morris?"
The name hung in the air , heavy and jagged. Quinn froze.
"He didn't die in a shootout, Harlow," Tomás said, his voice barely a whisper . "He saw something. Just like you're seeing it now. He saw the Veil."
Quinn stepped toward him, the intensity in her gaze enough to make him flinch. "What did he see?"
Before Tomás could answer, the wooden door shuddered. A long, silver wire began to thread its way through the gap between the door and the frame, glowing with that same violet light.
"We have to move," Tomás said, scrambling to his feet. "There's a way out through the old sewers, but we have to be fast."
Quinn looked at the door, then at the man she had been chasing through the rain for two hours. The world she knew was crumbling , replaced by a dark, shimmering reality she wasn't prepared for.
She holstered her weapon. "Lead the way, Herrera."
They moved deeper into the labyrinth, the shadows of the Veil Market stretching out to meet them. Quinn’s leather watch ticked on her wrist, a rhythmic reminder of the world she was leaving behind, one second at a time. The air grew colder, and the sound of rushing water echoed from the darkness ahead.
The violet light from the silver wire began to illuminate the edges of the room behind them, the enforcers' silent persistence a weight on the back of her neck. Quinn didn't look back. She kept her eyes on the olive-skinned man in front of her, the only guide she had left in a city that had suddenly become a stranger.