Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQNZE0J011CNF3GBTP5F0Q

The rain in London didn’t fall so much as it dissolved, a cold, gray mist that clung to the wool of Harlow Quinn’s coat and turned the neon glow of Soho into a series of bleeding smears. At 2:00 AM, the city felt like a fever dream, but the man sprinting twenty yards ahead of her was very much real. Harlow’s breathing was a controlled, rhythmic hiss. Eighteen years on the force had taught her how to run without burning out, how to keep her center of gravity low on the slick cobblestones. Her leather watch strap chafed against her left wrist, a persistent reminder of the minutes ticking away since she’d spotted her mark stepping out from the shadows of The Raven’s Nest. The suspect was fast, dodging through the cluster of late-night revelers near the bar's distinctive green neon sign. Harlow didn't yell for him to stop. She knew the type. Yelling only gave them an adrenaline spike. Instead, she focused on the set of his shoulders and the way he favored his right side, weaving through the narrow alleys with a desperation that smelled like guilt. He blew past a stack of waterlogged crates and ducked into a side street that led toward the skeletal remains of a construction site. Harlow followed, her boots striking the pavement with military precision. She surged forward, closing the gap as they crossed into Camden. The air here was thicker, smelling of wet soot and old grease. She rounded a corner and saw him. He wasn't running anymore. He was kneeling by a rusted iron grate in the shadow of an overpass. "Police! Don't move!" Harlow’s voice was a whip-crack, level and dangerous. She didn't draw her sidearm yet, but her hand hovered near the holster. The man looked back. In the flickering light of a nearby streetlamp, she caught the glint of a silver medallion around his neck—Saint Christopher, the protector of travelers. It was Tomás Herrera. She’d seen his face in the grainy surveillance shots from the hospital's basement levels. A disgraced paramedic with a penchant for treating people who didn't exist on any census. "Detective Quinn," Tomás panted, his olive skin looking sallow under the harsh light. He gripped his left forearm, where a jagged scar peeked out from beneath his rolled-up sleeve. "You shouldn't be here. This isn't your jurisdiction." "Everything in this city is my jurisdiction, Herrera. Get up. Hands where I can see them." Tomás didn't comply. Instead, he fumbled with something in his pocket—a small, white object that looked like a bird’s knucklebone. He pressed it against a hidden recessed panel in the stone wall beside the grate. A heavy, mechanical groan echoed through the alley. The grate didn't just lift; it slid sideways, revealing a staircase that plummeted into the throat of the earth. A waft of air hit Harlow’s face—warm, stagnant, and smelling of incense and ozone. "You follow me down there, you won't like what you find," Tomás said, his warm brown eyes filled with a strange sort of pity. "There are rules in the Market, Harlow. Rules you don't know." "Then teach me," she snapped, lunging forward. Tomás was quicker. He slipped into the dark opening and vanished. Harlow reached the brink of the stairs just as the grate began to grind shut. She didn't hesitate. She threw her shoulder against the iron, sliding through the narrowing gap with inches to spare. She tumbled onto the stone landing, the sound of the grate sealing shut above her ringing like a funeral bell. She was in an abandoned Tube station, but it wasn't empty. The Veil Market sprawled out before her in the cavernous hollow of a platform that had been wiped from the official maps decades ago. Stall after stall lined the tracks, draped in heavy silks and rusted chainmail. Lanterns glowed with a flickering, bioluminescent blue, casting long, distorted shadows against the tiled walls. The air was a cacophony of sounds: the bubbling of glass vats, the frantic scratching of quills on parchment, and the low, guttural murmur of voices speaking languages that sounded like grinding stones. Harlow stood up, brushing the grit from her knees. Her sharp jaw tightened. She was a creature of logic, of evidence and procedure, but this place defied the manual. She saw a woman with eyes the color of mercury selling jars of shimmering dust. Closer to the tracks, a man with too many fingers was meticulously cleaning a set of iron surgical tools. "Looking for something, Detective?" The voice was cool and resonant. Harlow spun, her hand finally closing around the grip of her weapon. Tomás was standing ten feet away, leaning against a pillar decorated with faded posters from the 1940s. He wasn't running anymore. He looked at home. "You’re under arrest, Herrera," she said, though the words felt hollow in the belly of this impossible place. "Practicing medicine without a license, obstruction, fleeing a peace officer. Take your pick." Tomás stepped into the light of a nearby brazier. "I lost my license because I saved a girl whose blood was literal liquid gold. The NHS doesn't have a protocol for that. They called it 'unauthorized treatment.' I called it not letting a child die on a gurney because her biology was inconvenient." Harlow kept her eyes on him, but her peripheral vision was screaming. Shapes were moving in the shadows behind the stalls. Things that were too tall, or moved with too many joints. "I don't care about your excuses," Harlow said, her voice dropping an octave. She thought of DS Morris. Three years ago, they’d chased a lead into a basement in Deptford and only she had walked out. The coroner had called it a heart attack, but Morris had been thirty-two and a triathlete. She remembered the way the shadows in that basement had seemed to detach themselves from the walls. She remembered the smell of ozone—the same smell that saturated the air here. "I want to know who you're working for. The clique. What are they planning?" Tomás sighed, reaching up to touch the Saint Christopher medallion. "They aren't planning anything, Harlow. They're trying to survive. The world is getting smaller, and the people up there—people like you—are getting more curious. Curiosity is a death sentence down here." "Then let's go back up," Harlow countered. "Come in quietly. I can protect you." Tomás laughed, a short, bitter sound. "Protect me? Look around you. You're the one in danger. You brought a gun to a place where laws are written in blood and salt. You’re a ghost, Detective. A memory of a world that doesn't apply here." A low growl vibrated through the floorboards of the platform. It wasn't a train. From the darkness of the tunnel, something shifted—a mass of darkness that seemed to soak up the lantern light. Harlow felt the hair on her arms stand up. Every instinct honed over eighteen years told her to turn and run, to find the way back to the rain and the neon and the comforting weight of the Metropolitan Police code of conduct. But she looked at Tomás, then at the scarred forearm he gripped subconsciously, and she thought of Morris’s cold, still face in the morgue. "I'm not leaving without you," she said, her voice unshakable. Tomás looked toward the tunnel, his expression darkening. "Then you'd better keep your head down and your mouth shut. The Full Moon is in three days. After that, the Market moves. If you're still here when the anchors lift, you’ll never see the sun again." He turned and began to walk deeper into the subterranean bazaar, disappearing between a stall selling bottled whispers and one draped in black crow feathers. Harlow looked up at the ceiling, imagining the miles of earth and concrete and the indifferent city streets above her. She adjusted the leather strap of her watch, felt the cold steel of her badge in her pocket, and stepped into the crowd. She was a detective. She followed the trail, no matter where it led. Even if it led straight out of the world she knew.