Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQVX4N8E3XNJ8TPENSPQRX

The rain fell in sheets, slicking the Soho pavement until it mirrored the bruised purple and garish neon of the night. Detective Harlow Quinn’s lungs burned, each breath a ragged tear in the cold, damp air. Her sensible brogues, worn to the shape of her feet over years of pounding these same streets, slapped a desperate rhythm against the wet flagstones. Ahead, a fleeting shadow, was Tomás Herrera. He was fast. Faster than his file suggested a paramedic should be. He moved through the labyrinth of late-night London with a fluid grace, vaulting a stack of overflowing bins, weaving through a clot of tourists huddled under a theatre marquee. Quinn saw the glint of the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat as he glanced back under the green neon glow of a bar sign—The Raven’s Nest. He knew these alleys. She knew them better. "Metropolitan Police! Stop now!" Her voice was raw, swallowed by the city's din—the hiss of tires on wet asphalt, the distant wail of a siren a world away from her chase. Herrera didn't slow. He cut left, down a narrow passage slick with grease and smelling of stale beer and fried onions. Quinn followed, her hand instinctively brushing the holstered Glock at her hip. The rain lessened in the tight confines, the roar of the city funnelling into a tight, echoing rush. Brick scraped her shoulder. She saw him ahead, a frantic silhouette against the brighter street at the far end. He fumbled with something—a key? No, a token. Small and pale. He jammed it into a slot beside a graffiti-covered steel door she’d passed a hundred times and never once noticed. The door clicked open. He was gone. Quinn reached the door a half-second later, slamming her palm against the cold metal. Locked. Solid. A wave of fury, hot and sharp, coursed through her. She rattled the handle, a useless, angry gesture. She took a step back, scanning the alley. No other exit. Through here, then. She drew her weapon, the familiar weight a small comfort, and with a grunt of effort, kicked the door just beside the lock. Metal shrieked and groaned, but held. Again. Her shoulder protested, but the frame splintered. A third kick and the lock assembly tore from the rotting wood. The door flew inward, banging against a wall in the sudden, echoing dark. The air that coiled out was different. Not the city's smell of rain and exhaust, but something older. Damp earth, ozone, and a faint, metallic tang like blood and old pennies. She clicked on the small torch attached to her firearm, its beam cutting a nervous path through the blackness. A steep flight of iron stairs descended into nothing. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic counterpoint to the slow, steady drip of water somewhere below. This was the point of divergence. The point where a chase became something else. Three years ago, she and Morris had followed a suspect into a place like this. A place that didn't feel right. She’d hesitated. He’d charged in. She was the one who came out. Quinn checked her worn leather watch. 01:17. Backup was ten minutes out, minimum, and she hadn't given them a precise location beyond the alley off Dean Street. She was on her own. The memory of Morris’s face, pale and surprised in the morgue, flashed behind her eyes. The coroner had called it an aneurysm. Quinn knew better. She just couldn't prove it. Herrera was connected. Not just to the off-the-books medical work, but to all of it. To the string of impossible occurrences she’d been quietly tracking since Morris’s death. He was a thread, and if she let him go now, he’d unravel back into the shadows and take her answers with him. She holstered her weapon, needing both hands for the descent. The iron rungs of the service ladder were cold and slick with condensation. Each step down took her further from the familiar world, the sounds of the city fading, replaced by a low, subterranean hum. It wasn't the rumble of the Tube. This was a different frequency, a thrumming that vibrated through the soles of her shoes and up her spine. She reached the bottom, landing softly on a disused service platform. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of strange spices and something that smelled like burnt sugar and sulfur. Her torch beam swept across tiled walls, their original white stained and cracked, covered in esoteric symbols chalked in vibrant colours. This was an abandoned station, Camden maybe, judging by the direction of the chase. But it wasn't empty. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a vast cavern, and the source of the humming became clear. It was people. A crowd. But the light wasn't the harsh fluorescent buzz of the Underground. It was a shifting, bioluminescent glow from dozens of stalls lining the wide, central platform. Quinn flattened herself against the cold tile of the tunnel wall, peering around the edge. It was a market. A bazaar of the impossible. A vendor with eyes that glittered with too many facets was haggling with a woman in a long velvet coat, gesturing with a six-fingered hand at a jar of swirling, captured starlight. Another stall held racks of what looked like shrunken heads, their mouths stitched shut, humming a discordant melody. The air was a cacophony of whispers in languages she didn't recognize, the chink of strange currency, and the bubbling of alchemical concoctions in twisted glass beakers. This was it. The place from the whispers and the dead ends of her investigation. The Veil Market. A place that shouldn't exist, thriving in the city's forgotten guts. She saw him then. Tomás Herrera. He was moving through the crowd, his pace still urgent but no longer a panicked flight. He was trying to melt into the strange tapestry of the market. She saw the familiar dark curls, the olive skin, the scar on his forearm as he pushed past a stooped figure cloaked in moss. He was heading for a stall at the far end of the platform, one shrouded in dark canvas and lit by a single, pulsing green lantern. Every instinct, every year of decorated service, screamed at her to call it in, wait for backup, contain the scene from the known world. But her sharp jaw tightened. Backup wouldn't know what to do with this. They’d blunder in, all shouts and standard procedure, and this entire mirage would vanish. And so would Herrera. So would her one chance to understand what happened to Morris. She felt the cold dread coiling in her stomach, the same dread she’d felt that night three years ago. The feeling of stepping off a map. But this time was different. This time, she wouldn’t hesitate. She took a deep breath, the alien air filling her lungs. She smoothed down her jacket, the picture of professional calm she no longer felt. Her salt-and-pepper hair was damp, plastered to her scalp, but her bearing was all military precision as she stepped out of the tunnel and onto the platform. The market’s low hum faltered. Heads turned. Faceted eyes and pale, luminous ones fixed on her. She was a foreign object here, her drab, practical clothes a stark contrast to the silks and leathers and things that shimmered around her. She was mundane. She was the threat. A ripple of silence spread from her position, a warning passing wordlessly through the crowd. Quinn ignored them. Her focus was a laser point on Herrera’s back. He hadn't seen her yet. She began to walk, her steps measured, deliberate. The concrete of the platform felt both solid and terribly thin, as if it were the only thing separating her from an abyss. With every step, she moved deeper into the world that had stolen her partner, the world she refused to fear any longer. The chase wasn't over. It had just begun.