Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXX8NSQ5GY40DPPSFA72V

The rain hammered against the pavement like a thousand tiny fists, turning the Soho streets into mirrors of neon and shadow. Harlow Quinn's leather watch caught rainwater as she sprinted past The Raven's Nest, its distinctive green sign bleeding color into the downpour. Somewhere ahead in the maze of narrow lanes, Tomás Herrera's dark jacket flashed between pedestrians ducking under awnings. She'd been trailing him for three days, watching him slip in and out of that dingy bar, carrying medical bags at odd hours, meeting with known associates of the clique she'd been investigating for months. Tonight he'd spotted her. Rookie mistake—she'd gotten too close when he emerged from an alley behind a shuttered pharmacy, and their eyes had locked for one fatal second before he bolted. Her shoes pounded wet concrete, her breath coming sharp and measured. Military precision, even in pursuit. Her partner Morris had always teased her about that, the way she could maintain perfect form even when— She shoved the thought away. Morris was gone. Three years gone, and the case that took him still had holes in it she couldn't fill, questions that circled back on themselves like möbius strips. Herrera cut left down a service alley, his Saint Christopher medallion catching streetlight as he glanced back. The scar on his forearm was visible even at this distance when he raised his hand to vault a low railing. Former paramedic, her files said. Lost his NHS license under circumstances that remained frustratingly vague in the official records. But her unofficial sources—the ones who spoke in careful whispers at precinct bars—had painted a different picture. Unauthorized treatments. Patients who shouldn't have survived their injuries. Medical interventions that defied explanation. The same pattern that surrounded Morris's death. Quinn's jaw tightened as she followed him over the railing, landing hard on slick cobblestones. The alley opened onto a quieter street where Victorian buildings leaned together like old conspirators. Herrera was faster than she'd anticipated, his olive skin barely visible in the shadows between streetlamps. She pushed harder, her calves burning, rain streaming down her face and into her collar. He disappeared down a set of worn stone steps. Quinn slowed at the top, one hand on the rusted railing. The steps descended into darkness, spiraling down past the normal depth of a basement entrance. Water rushed down them in small cascades, and somewhere below came the echo of Herrera's footsteps—or something else entirely. She pulled out her mobile. No signal. Of course. The smart play was to call for backup. Station units at street level, wait for Herrera to emerge, bring him in for questioning at the precinct where she had procedures and protocols and witnesses. The safe play. The by-the-book play. But she'd been playing it safe for three years, and Morris's file remained stamped with that clinical word: unexplained. Quinn descended. The steps were older than they'd appeared from street level, the stone worn smooth by centuries of feet. She kept one hand on the damp wall, her other hand near her extendable baton. The sounds of the city above faded with each step—first the traffic, then the rain, until only her breathing and the drip of water accompanied her descent. The stairs ended in a narrow tunnel. Emergency lighting flickered overhead at irregular intervals, the kind installed in old Tube stations decades ago and never upgraded. But this wasn't on any Underground map she'd memorized. Camden was above her, she was certain of that much, but this tunnel ran perpendicular to the Northern Line. She moved forward, her brown eyes adjusting to the dimness. The tunnel's walls were covered in tiles that might have once been white but had aged to the color of old teeth. Water pooled in depressions on the floor, and she picked her way carefully around them, trying to keep her footsteps quiet. Voices drifted from ahead. Multiple voices, speaking in languages she didn't recognize. And something else—a smell that didn't belong in an abandoned Underground station. Incense, maybe, mixed with ozone and something organic and earthy that reminded her of the evidence locker where they kept confiscated drugs. The tunnel opened into a platform, and Quinn stopped dead. The space had been an Underground station once. She could see the bones of it—the curved ceiling, the tile work, the alcoves where advertisements would have hung. But it had been transformed into something else entirely. Market stalls crowded the platform, each one lit by lanterns that gave off light in colors that hurt to look at directly. People moved between them, and Quinn's mind stumbled over the word "people" because some of them weren't, couldn't be, shouldn't be— She forced her gaze back to ground level, to the concrete reality of stalls and merchandise and customers. Herrera stood thirty meters away, his back to her, speaking with a woman whose silver hair fell to her waist. Between them on a makeshift counter sat vials of liquid that seemed to contain small storms, glass bottles stopped with wax, bundles of dried herbs she didn't recognize. This was the Veil Market. She'd heard whispers about it from informants who'd later recanted their statements. An underground bazaar that moved locations, that sold things which couldn't be sold, that existed in the spaces between official reality. The same market Morris had mentioned the day before he died. Quinn's hand moved to her watch, a habit born of eighteen years on the force. The worn leather was familiar beneath her fingers, grounding. She had three choices. Go back up those stairs, file a report about what she'd seen, and watch it get buried like every other report that touched on these questions. Wait here and observe, gather intelligence, build a case that would inevitably fall apart when witnesses recanted and evidence disappeared. Or step onto that platform and demand answers from Herrera about what he was doing, who he was treating, and whether any of it connected to Morris. Thunder rumbled somewhere above, muffled by meters of London clay and Victorian engineering. The market sounds continued—bargaining, laughter, the clink of glass and metal. No one had noticed her yet. She was still an outsider, still had the advantage of anonymity. But Herrera was moving now, accepting a small package from the silver-haired woman, tucking it into his jacket. In seconds he'd disappear into the crowd or through one of the tunnel exits she could see at the far end of the platform. Quinn checked her watch one more time, felt the weight of her badge in her pocket, thought of Morris and those damned unexplained circumstances. Then she stepped onto the platform and into the market's strange light.