Description
After my life imploded, messy divorce, career betrayal, the whole bloody circus, I’d engineered myself a nice quiet retreat into suburban safety. Predictable commute, boring government helpdesk job, no surprises. Me, Stephen Harris had my life properly firewalled.
Then came the call, it told me not to get on the tube. Probably saved my life. Twenty-seven people on that tube ended up sitting there like mannequins, breathing but completely gone. The news called it a gas leak, but I’d seen the footage before it got scrubbed—people just… switched off.
Turns out London’s been hiding things. Ancient forces stirring beneath the city’s streets, and my old knack for spotting system anomalies is apparently the key to understanding what’s now hunting in the shadows. I’ve been dragged into a world where civil servants fight impossible threats with methods that definitely aren’t covered in any health and safety training I’ve had to endure.
Now I’ve got a choice: go back to my safe, predictable life, or accept that London needs me for something far more dangerous than turning something off and on again.
I’ve always believed some mysteries are better left buried. This one just won’t stay down.
I knew the first time I met DC Janie "Jinx" Evans she'd be trouble. Not the bad kind, but the kind that drags you into a world you'd rather not know exists. She's the Met's go-to officer for "unusual incidents", the ones that get filed under vague classifications and hopefully forgotten by morning. You can see it in her watchful eyes—she's seen things.
She handles threats that most people can't even see with a casual confidence that's frankly terrifying. One minute she's making a joke with a dark cynical sense of humour, the next she's facing down a monster with nothing but a packet of god knows what and absolutely zero shits to give. I'm the one having a breakdown; she's the one taking notes.
The problem is, I'm the panicked IT nerd who stumbled into her world. Now she's stuck with me. Training someone to fight supernatural threats is hard enough, but I get the feeling I'm a special kind of project. She's not just my partner; she's my handler, my trainer, and probably my bloody babysitter.
With London's ancient defenses failing and something hungry stirring in the dark, her main job seems to be keeping me alive long enough to be useful. Some people are born ready. I'm the other kind. I'm getting my training on the job. Fast.
The first time you meet Inspector Sands, you'd think she was someone's kindly aunt. She has a neat grey bob, wears a sensible cardigan, and looks like she'd be more at home in Marks & Spencer than in a top-secret government bunker. You'd be dead wrong.
While other civil servants handle budgets and policy papers, her job is managing London's impossible problems. The ones that "officially never happened." Her department, PUREST, doesn't appear on government org charts, and her case files are classified at levels most ministers don't know exist. Her steady gaze misses nothing.
When my routine morning commute turned into a supernatural crisis, I became her problem. She had to recruit an untrained civilian—me—into an operation I was completely unprepared for. I get the feeling she doesn't like breaking procedure, but she knows London's ancient defenses are running out of time.
Most government departments fight paperwork. I've had the dubious honour of being recruited by the one that fights things that shouldn't exist.
I should have been one of them. I was almost on the Jubilee escalator at Waterloo, ready to board a morning tube service to Westminster with hundreds of other commuters. But a voice on the phone—a voice I'd never heard before—told me “Don’t get on the tube”. Minutes later, twenty-seven people on that train were found motionless with vacant eyes, breathing but gone.
The news called it a gas leak. The security footage was classified. I know it was a lie, because I saw a clip of it before it was scrubbed from the internet. I saw the woman who simply toppled forward onto the platform. I saw the passengers sitting like wax figures in their seats.
That phone call saved my life, but it also opened a door into a London I never knew existed. Some doors, once opened, can't be closed again.
I've worked government contracts. I know how the civil service works—budgets, policy papers, endless meetings. Some departments handle housing. Others manage transport. Then there's the department that handles the problems no one else will touch. PUREST.
Officially, they don't exist. Their recruitment methods are... unconventional. Mine involved a delayed train and some very strange phone calls.
I was just an ordinary consultant whose routine went sideways. Now I'm part of something that officially doesn't happen.
Some threats can be handled the traditional way. Others require departments that officially aren't there. I just wish I wasn't the one they'd decided to drag into the shadows.
