Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQNEQJ3A9HAQJY9PNTRYT6

The rain came down in sheets, blurring the neon of Soho into watercolor smears of pink and green and gold. Detective Harlow Quinn's boots pounded against the wet pavement, each step sending up spray that soaked through her trousers to the knee. Thirty meters ahead, Tomás Herrera darted left down Frith Street, his Saint Christopher medallion catching the streetlight as he glanced back. Quinn put on a burst of speed. Her lungs burned, but eighteen years on the force had taught her how to ignore that particular discomfort. She'd been staking out The Raven's Nest for three weeks, watching the flow of people who entered through that distinctive green neon-lit entrance and never emerged through the front. When Herrera had slipped out a side door at half past eleven, medical bag clutched to his chest, she'd known he was her way in. "Metropolitan Police! Stop!" Her voice cut through the rain, but Herrera didn't slow. He turned sharply into an alley between a shuttered kebab shop and a bookmaker's. Quinn followed, her right hand hovering near her baton. The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for a single person, and it stank of piss and rotting food. Herrera's silhouette moved against the far opening like a shadow puppet. She emerged onto Dean Street and spotted him immediately. He was running flat out now, the medical bag bouncing against his hip. His olive skin gleamed with rain and sweat under the streetlights. Quinn checked for traffic—a black cab, a night bus—and sprinted across the road after him. Morris had been chasing a suspect the night he died. Three years ago, through streets not far from these. The official report said heart attack, sudden cardiac arrest, but Quinn had seen his face at the morgue. The expression frozen there wasn't pain or surprise. It was terror. Pure, primal terror. Herrera hooked right onto Greek Street, moving with the kind of speed that spoke of desperation rather than athleticism. Quinn was gaining ground. Her military training gave her an edge that natural talent couldn't match—controlled breathing, efficient stride, the ability to push past the body's protests. "Herrera! I just want to talk!" She didn't believe it would work, but it was worth trying. The man had no record, no warrants. Officially, he was just a former paramedic who'd lost his license over some bureaucratic irregularity. But bureaucratic irregularities didn't explain why he was making house calls at midnight with a bag full of supplies that smelled like ozone and copper when she'd gotten close enough to catch the scent. He didn't answer. Instead, he vaulted over a low railing and disappeared down a set of stairs that led below street level. Quinn reached the railing seconds later and peered down. The stairs descended into darkness, lit only by a faint blue glow from somewhere below. She took the stairs three at a time, her hand on the damp railing for balance. The walls pressed in close, covered in old show bills and graffiti tags that hadn't seen fresh paint in decades. The blue glow grew stronger as she descended, and with it came a smell she couldn't quite place—incense and iron, vanilla and something bitter like burnt almonds. The stairs ended at a corridor that shouldn't exist. Quinn had walked these streets for fifteen years, knew every building and basement and maintenance tunnel in Soho. There was no corridor here. There shouldn't be anything here but Victorian sewage pipes and electrical conduits. But here it was. The floor was old stone, worn smooth by countless feet. The walls were brick, ancient and crumbling in places. Strange symbols had been carved into them—not gang tags or modern graffiti, but something older, something that made her eyes hurt if she looked too long. Ahead, Tomás Herrera had stopped running. He stood fifty feet down the corridor, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. His curly dark hair was plastered to his skull by rain. When he looked back at her, his warm brown eyes held something Quinn couldn't immediately identify. Not fear. Warning. "Don't," he said between breaths. "Detective Quinn. Please don't." So he knew who she was. That complicated things. "I'm not here to arrest you, Herrera. I just have questions about the people you've been treating." Quinn kept her voice level, professional. She took a step forward. "About the clinic you're running out of that bar." "They're not criminals." He straightened up, one hand going to the scar on his left forearm. An old habit, Quinn noted. A tell. "They're just people who can't go to regular hospitals." "Because they're undocumented?" "Because they're not—" He stopped himself, seemed to choose his words carefully. "Because the NHS isn't equipped to help them." From somewhere deeper in the corridor came music. No, not music exactly—chanting maybe, or singing in a language Quinn didn't recognize. And beneath it, the sound of commerce. Haggling voices, the clink of coins or bottles, footsteps on stone. "What is this place?" Quinn asked. Herrera's jaw tightened. "Somewhere you shouldn't be. Somewhere your badge doesn't mean anything." "My badge means something everywhere in Greater London." "Not here. Not in the Veil Market." He said the name like it should mean something to her. Quinn's mind raced through her mental database of gang territories, black market operations, underground networks. Nothing matched. "The what?" "Go back, Detective. Forget you followed me. Forget you saw those stairs." His hand gripped the strap of his medical bag. "Some investigations lead places you can't come back from." Morris's face flashed through her mind again. That expression of terror. The official report that made no sense. The witnesses who'd seen him chasing someone into an alley and found him dead fifteen minutes later with no marks on his body except old scars from his years in uniform. Three years of questions. Three years of leads that evaporated. Three years of knowing in her gut that something was being hidden from her. The corridor ahead curved out of sight. The blue glow pulsed like a heartbeat. That strange smell grew stronger—now she could pick out individual notes. Sandalwood. Sulfur. Something organic and growing. Something metallic and wrong. Her worn leather watch showed 11:47 PM. In thirteen minutes it would be midnight. In thirteen minutes she would have been following Tomás Herrera for exactly one hour. Quinn touched the baton at her hip. Then she took another step forward. "I'm going to need you to come with me, Mr. Herrera. And I'm going to need you to show me what's down there." Tomás closed his eyes. When he opened them again, resignation had replaced the warning. "On your head, Detective. Whatever you see, whatever you learn—you chose this." He turned and walked deeper into the corridor. After only a moment's hesitation, Harlow Quinn followed him down into the dark.