Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXGRZA25GNRR5AK1N652W

Rain slicked the cobblestones of Soho, turning the city into a blurred kaleidoscope of neon reflections and dark rushing water. Harlow Quinn didn’t feel the cold anymore. She was a machine of motion, her boots hammering a rhythmic, military-precise staccato against the pavement. Her lungs burned, a familiar fire, but she pushed it down, locking her gaze on the figure darting ahead. The suspect was a shadow in a trench coat, moving with an unnatural, fluid grace that Harlow had come to associate with the strange underbelly she’d spent the last three years trying to expose. He vaulted a turnstile meant to deter tourists, vanishing down a set of wet, concrete stairs leading toward the Thames. Harlow followed, clearing the barrier with a grunt. She hit the landing hard, her hand instinctively going to the worn leather watch on her left wrist. It wasn’t a conscious check, just muscle memory, a tick she’d developed since the night Morris died. “Stop! Metropolitan Police!” she shouted, her voice cracking against the damp brick walls. The suspect didn’t slow. He skidded around a corner, slipping into a service tunnel that Harlow knew led to the abandoned remnants of the old underground infrastructure. The air here changed. It grew heavier, thick with the smell of ozone, rotting vegetation, and something metallic, like old blood. She chased him deeper, the sounds of the city—the honking horns, the distant sirens—fading into a muffled silence. The tunnel opened up into a cavernous space beneath the foundations of Camden. It was a dead zone on the maps, a place where the London Underground didn't dare tread. Harlow skidded to a halt, her breath hitching. Before her lay the entrance to the Veil Market. It wasn't the den of filth she expected. It was a sprawling bazaar carved into the hollowed-out shell of an abandoned Tube station. Bioluminescent fungi clung to the vaulted ceilings, casting a pale, sickly light over stalls lined with jars containing things Harlow couldn't identify—floating eyes, herbs that smoked without fire, liquids that glowed with radioactive intensity. The market was shifting, alive. A woman in a silk veil haggled over a jar of teeth with a creature that looked half-man, half-crab. The noise was a low, thrumming murmur of a dozen different languages, some of which Harlow felt in her teeth rather than heard with her ears. Her suspect was stumbling toward a heavy iron door at the far end of the platform. He was hurt, clutching his side, leaving a trail of shimmering, silver fluid across the dirty floor. Harlow started forward, her hand drifting to the grip of her service weapon. She had jurisdiction over murder, over trafficking, over every broken law in London. But looking at this place, at the impossible geometry of the stalls and the non-human faces turned toward her, she felt a profound, shaking dissonance. Three years ago, she had watched DS Morris dissolve into shadows right in front of her. The official report said "undetermined causes." Harlow knew better. She had been hunting the cause ever since. This was it. The rabbit hole. She moved through the crowd, parting the sea of strange bodies like a ship through a dark sea. A tall man with horns curving from his forehead stepped in her path, his skin the color of bruised slate. He hissed, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. Harlow didn’t flinch. She stared him down, her brown eyes hard flint, her jawline set in a sharp, aggressive line. "Police," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "Get out of my way." The creature hesitated, smelling the lack of fear, and slunk away. She was gaining on the suspect. He reached the iron door, pounding on it with a frantic fist. A small slot slid open. “Let me in!” the suspect gasped. “I have the coin!” Harlow raised her weapon. “Step away from the door! Hands where I can see them!” The man froze. He turned slowly, his eyes wide and frantic, reflecting the pale blue light of the fungi. He looked human, mostly, but there was a ripple under his skin, like something swimming just beneath the surface. “You shouldn't have come here, Detective,” the man wheezed. He reached into his coat. “Gun!” Harlow shouted, dropping into a firing stance. “Drop it!” He pulled out a small, white object. A bone. Etched with runes. He slammed the bone into the slot in the door. The iron groaned, the metal shifting like liquid, sealing the door from the inside. “Damn it!” Harlow sprinted the last ten yards, holstering her weapon as she prepared to physically breach the door, but it was too late. The seal was solid. She slammed her fist against the cold iron, frustration boiling over. She looked around, desperate for another way, for leverage. That’s when she noticed the man hadn't run. He was slumped against the wall next to the door, the silver blood pooling beneath him. He wasn't looking at the door anymore. He was looking at her, resigned. And then, a new figure emerged from the shadows of a nearby stall. He was young, maybe late twenties, with olive skin and short, curly dark brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wore a white shirt stained with crimson and iodine, rolling up his sleeves as he walked. A glint of silver caught Harlow's eye—a Saint Christopher medallion swinging from his neck. Tomás Herrera. Harlow recognized him from the dossier she’d built on the clique’s associates. An ex-paramedic who lost his license for playing god with patients who weren't supposed to exist. “He’s dead, Detective,” Herrera said softly. He didn’t look like a criminal. He looked like a man who had been awake for three days straight. “There’s nothing you can charge him with now.” Harlow kept her gun trained on Herrera, though her finger hovered off the trigger. “Step back, Herrera. I’m taking you in.” Tomás ignored the weapon. He knelt beside the dying man, pressing two fingers to the carotid artery. He looked up at Harlow, his warm brown eyes filled with a weary pity. “You’re not here for me, Harlow. You’re here for the truth. But you’re not ready for what’s on the other side of that door.” “Open it,” Harlow commanded. “I can’t,” Tomás said. He touched the man’s forehead, whispering something in a language that tasted of ash and old Spanish. The man gasped, shuddered once, and went still. “You don't have a token. And even if you did... this place eats people like you. It eats certainty.” Harlow holstered her weapon, the adrenaline ebbing away to be replaced by a cold dread. She watched the blood—silver, not red—seep into the cracks of the station floor. The memory of Morris flickered in her mind again, the sound of his last breath, the way the shadows had stretched too long that night. She had spent three years trying to prove she wasn't crazy. Now, standing in the Veil Market, surrounded by monsters and magic, she realized she had succeeded. And the victory tasted like bile. “Who runs this place?” Harlow asked, her voice rougher than before. Tomás stood up, wiping the silver fluid from his hands onto a rag. He pulled a roll of bandages from his pocket, exposing a long, jagged scar running along his left forearm as he worked. He gestured to the hidden door. “That’s not for me to say. But if you go through there, chasing ghosts, you’re going to end up like Morris. Or worse.” Harlow looked at the door, then back at the tunnel she had come from. The rain was still falling above ground, a million miles away. She could leave. She could climb back up to the wet, grey streets of London, write this up as a chase gone wrong in the tunnels, and go back to being a detective in a world that made sense. But she looked at the medallion around Tomás’s neck, the symbol of a saint for travelers, and then she looked at the sealed iron door that kept the secrets of the city locked away. She wasn't a cop anymore. She was a trespasser. “Give me a token,” Harlow said. Tomás stopped wrapping a bandage he wasn't using. He stared at her, really looked at her, seeing the military bearing, the sharp jawline set in determination, and the exhausted desperation of a woman who had lost everything else. “You’re walking into hell, Quinn.” “I’ve been living in it for three years,” Harlow replied. She held out her hand. Tomás sighed, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a small, carved piece of bone, similar to the one the dead man had used. He hesitated, the bone hovering in the air between them. “The Market moves on the full moon,” he warned. “If you go in, you might not find the way out before it relocates.” Harlow grabbed the bone. It felt warm, uncomfortably so, pulsing against her palm like a second heartbeat. She turned toward the iron door, the sound of the hidden market thrumming behind the metal, waiting. “I’ll take my chances.” She slammed the bone into the slot. The door groaned, the metal melting away into darkness, and Harlow Quinn stepped into the unknown.