Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQGH6M8NHRDWQR50J5PJRM

The rain lashed down, a cold, unyielding curtain against the grime of Soho. Detective Harlow Quinn, her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair plastered to her scalp, pushed through the deluge, the city lights blurring into streaky halos. Her breath hitched, ragged and burning in her lungs. The worn leather watch on her left wrist, despite the downpour, read 1:17 AM. Too late for this, too late for anything but the chase. A shadow, brief and swift, darted ahead. Tomás Herrera. He was quick for a medic, too quick for someone who supposedly only dealt in sutures and splints. Quinn pushed harder, her military precision a honed instinct, even as her soaked trench coat clung to her, a sodden weight. Three years. Three years since Morris, since the inexplicable. She wouldn't lose another. Herrera cut down a narrow alley, the darkness absolute save for the occasional flash of a distant neon sign. Quinn followed without hesitation, her hand instinctively going to the Glock holstered at her hip. The air in the alley hung heavy with the smell of damp refuse and something metallic, faintly sweet. Blood, or the memory of it. She burst out onto a wider street, the roar of a passing taxi momentarily drowning out her labored breathing. Herrera was a block ahead, weaving through the sparse late-night foot traffic like smoke. His short, curly dark brown hair gleamed under the streetlights, his olive skin slick with rain. Around his neck, the glint of a Saint Christopher medallion. A good luck charm, or a desperate plea for protection? Quinn swore under her breath. He ducked into an entrance she hadn't noticed, a heavy, unmarked door swallowed by the shadows between a boarded-up takeaway and a seedy massage parlor. Quinn picked up her pace, her sharp jaw set, her focus absolute. This was it. The Nest. Or at least somewhere connected to it. Silas’ bar, the hub of this whole tangled mess. She yanked the door open. A steep, narrow staircase descended into the absolute blackness. No light, no sound, just the damp, earthy smell of old stone and something else, something she couldn't quite place. Not mold, not rot, but something ancient, sleeping. Quinn hesitated. Every instinct screamed caution. This wasn't standard procedure. But then, nothing about this case had been standard. Morris. The memory of his wide, uncomprehending eyes, of the impossible wound. She wouldn't back down. Not now. She drew her weapon, the cold steel a reassuring weight in her hand, and flipped on the tactical light. The beam sliced through the darkness, revealing a crumbling brick tunnel, the air thick with subterranean chill. The stairs were gone, replaced by a sloping, uneven path. Herrera was nowhere in sight. Her boots crunched on loose gravel and shards of broken glass. The tunnel twisted, a serpentine labyrinth, and Quinn pressed forward, her senses on high alert. The sounds of the city, the rain, had vanished, replaced by a faint, rhythmic thrumming, like a distant heartbeat. Then, something else: voices. A murmur, low and indistinct, growing steadily louder. The tunnel opened into a vast, cavernous space. Quinn stopped dead, her eyes widening. This wasn't an abandoned cellar. This was a market. The Veil Market. She’d heard the whispers, the rumors. An underground market that appeared and disappeared, selling... things. Impossible things. She’d dismissed them as urban legends, the ravings of the addled and the desperate. But here it was. The air hummed with a thousand different notes: the sizzle of unfamiliar foods, the clinking of metal, the hushed bartering of voices. Lanterns, some burning with a steady, golden light, others with an eerie, colored glow, illuminated a sprawling collection of stalls. Figures, some undeniably human, others… less so, moved through the throng. A creature with too many eyes bartered intently over a coil of iridescent rope. A woman with scales instead of skin polished a dagger that seemed to drink the light. The sheer, overwhelming strangeness of it all threatened to buckle Quinn’s resolve. The rational, ordered world of the Metropolitan Police felt a million miles away. This was not the London she knew, not the one she had sworn to protect. This was something else entirely. Then she saw him. Tomás Herrera, his olive skin now glowing faintly under the market’s strange lights, stood at a stall where glowing vials of liquid were displayed like jewels. He spoke with a tall, cloaked figure whose face was obscured by shadow. Quinn tightened her grip on her Glock. He was here. He was part of this. And Morris… Morris had stumbled into something like this, hadn’t he? Something beyond explanation, beyond the neat categories of police procedure. Her mind raced. Follow him? Charge in, weapon drawn, into this impossible, teeming crowd? What would she even say? "Metropolitan Police, you're all under arrest for… existing?" The thought was absurd, dangerous. She was alone, outnumbered, and utterly out of her depth. But the alternative? To turn back, to ignore this, to let Herrera slip away? That wasn't an option. Not for her. Not after Morris. Her gaze swept across the market again, taking in the impossible faces, the strange goods, the palpable sense of power and danger that permeated the air. Her military training kicked in, overriding the shock, forcing her to analyze, to plan. She couldn’t go in head-on. She needed to observe, to understand. She spotted a narrow alleyway between two stalls, shrouded in deeper shadow. A chance to get closer, unseen. She would fade into the current, become another unseen observer in a place where strangeness was the norm. The risk was immense. She knew that. If she was discovered, if she was identified as an outsider, a threat… she didn't want to think about the consequences. But the truth, the nagging, relentless ghost of Morris, pulled her forward. She couldn't walk away. She wouldn't. Taking a deep breath, Quinn holstered her weapon, melting into the shadows, a hunter in a wilderness she never knew existed. The hunt, she realized, had just begun. And the rules, she suspected, were entirely different here.