Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR0GYH9JVR3NFBWAC2GZZR

Rain slid off Detective Harlow Quinn’s close-cropped hair as she pressed herself into the shadow of a lamppost on Berwick Street. Her trousers clung to her legs, soaked through from the midnight cloudburst that hammered Soho without mercy, and her knuckles tightened around the weight of her Maglite torch. Ahead, a blur darted through puddles—her suspect, jacket flaring with every step, looked back just once before cutting right down an alley stinking of fryer oil and wet bins. Quinn didn’t pause. She forced her breath into the cadence of pursuit, boots splashing through puddles, eyes sharp beneath the green neon flicker of The Raven’s Nest sign. The familiar haunt—a bar with a dozen faces and one secret—filled her periphery with temptation. It wasn’t the bar’s warmth she wanted. It was the trail her suspect left in the fractured glass of the sidewalk, the sound of footfalls skipping steps in panic, the barest glimmer of knowledge that tonight, if she pushed hard enough, she just might break this case wide open. Rounding the corner, she caught a glimpse: a flash of olive skin, the glint of a medallion as the man barreled past an overflowing skip. Tomás Herrera. At least, that’s who she believed he was—ex-paramedic, Spanish accent soft around the edges even after years in London, now dangerous in ways no badge could protect against. Stories drifted: whispered medical miracles; wounds bound up in alleyways and not a stitch to show for it. She’d scented the rot beneath his kindness from the start. Now she just needed proof. The alley ended at a rusted service door tucked behind the Nest’s bottle bins. It juddered open, and Tomás disappeared inside. Quinn moved, keeping low, sliding along the brick until she reached the door. She listened, counting the echo of hurried footsteps as they tumbled down unseen stairs. The air here tasted old—like iron and mildew and secrets. She hesitated. Civilian property. No warrant. If she went in, she’d be alone. But she remembered Morris—his heavy hands, the last message he left her, the cold look in his eyes that last morning before he vanished into smoke and police tape. Sometimes you stepped over the line and couldn’t come back. Sometimes you owed it to the dead. Quinn slipped inside, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Bare bulbs flickered along a narrow concrete stairwell, steps shining slick where the rainwater puddled. She moved in silence, recalling the drill—heel, toe, weight low, keep the torch off until you need it. She fingered the worn leather strap of her watch, grounding herself in military clarity: eyes up, ears open, don’t lose the thread. The air grew colder the deeper she went. At the landing, she caught a shadow—a movement in her peripheral vision, then a muffled curse in accented English. The tunnel widened into a laden corridor, walls lined with crumbling Tube station tiles. Posters from another era, frayed and half torn, lingered under graffiti. The sign above a bricked archway read CAMDEN TOWN. The rest was obscured by grime. Quinn stepped softly. The corridor pulsed with an undercurrent—like footsteps stomping above but inverted, as if the city’s heart beat somewhere far beneath her feet. She pressed forward, chasing the shape of Tomás into the belly of abandoned infrastructure. The corridor opened onto a vast, shadow-filled hall. Here, the rain had become background noise, but the air vibrated with another kind of tension: the sussurous murmur of too many voices, blending languages she recognized with fragments of others she didn’t. Candlelight splashed along trestle tables, illuminating wares spread in reckless invitation—old books bound in skin, jars fizzing with trapped glimmers, knives that bristled with runes and blackmarket greed. The Veil Market. She’d heard legends—a market that slithered through London’s marrow, never settling, always one step ahead of the law. Some officers joked about it over late drinks, called it an urban myth. Quinn knew better. When Morris disappeared, whispers circled back here—an underground bazaar that traded in secrets and curses alike. Tomás paused by a table stacked with vials, his back to her, hand jammed deep in his jacket pocket. Quinn ghosted closer, heart battering her ribs. She reached for her badge before remembering: it was useless here. One misstep, one false move, and she’d be swallowed whole. A stallkeeper—a woman with knives for cheekbones and bracelets made from bitten silver—fixed Quinn with a knowing stare. “Lost, love?” she drawled. Quinn shifted her stance, giving nothing away. “Just looking for a friend.” “She’ll find you,” the woman said, and looked away. Quinn craned her neck, tracking Tomás as he circled the market’s edge. She glimpsed the jagged scar along his forearm, the flash of the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat. He slipped something—white bone, carved faint with glyphs—across another table. The vendor there, a stooped man with one blind eye, took the token and nodded him through a curtain of repurposed Tube seats. A bone token. The entry pass. Quinn pressed her palm to a Groves’ badge sewn inside her coat—a memento of authority that meant nothing in this place—and weighed her options. She could try to slip in behind Tomás. In the best-case scenario, she’d be noticed, blocked, hustled back to street level, case blown wide and gone. Worst-case, she’d vanish as Morris had. But the ache of unfinished business, and the pounding certainty of Tomás as her only thread to what lay beneath the city’s new infections, forced her hand. She brushed past the edge of a table heaped with broken gramophones and tarot cards. A boy, no older than ten, grinned up at her with fox-quick eyes. “You got a token, miss?” She held his gaze. “Is there another way in?” The boy jerked his head to the right—a maintenance shaft half hidden behind a stack of broken heaters. “Maybe. But you gotta pay, yeah?” Quinn fished into her inner coat pocket and pressed a crisp twenty into the boy’s palm. “Show me.” The shaft led into darkness, rank with mold. The boy scrambled ahead, light on his feet, and Quinn followed, torch now drawn and held close to chest. They emerged behind the veil of Tube seats. This passage was less market, more catacomb: air weighted with incense and the thrum of unsanctioned business. Tomás was already ahead, negotiating quietly with a figure in a hooded coat. Quinn caught pieces of the exchange—“Don’t want trouble,” and, “This’ll cover it.” Goods passed between hands: a vial, glinting green, and a slip of paper wax-sealed. Tomás turned, almost catching her eyes. Quinn ducked, pressing herself into the shadow of a pillar. She could still turn back—issue a pursuit call, wait for backup, pretend ignorance. She didn’t even know what exactly she’d find if she pressed on. But then she remembered Morris, and the file with the case that went colder every month, and she knew: she would either lose Tomás tonight, or she would finally find the seam in this city where reality split. Tomás moved, pocketing the vial and note. Quinn slipped after him, boots scuffing silently, breath held in a thin thread of hope. They passed faded murals—foxes and moons, winged eyes—and came to a crawlspace where candles guttered on cracked saucers. She stepped through. Her boot struck a loose tile. Tomás spun at the sound, eyes wide and wild in the flicker. He saw her, recognition sharpening into fear, then resolve. For a long moment, neither spoke. Rainwater dripped from her jaw, tickling her neck. She showed her palms—a gesture meant to disarm, or at least buy her a heartbeat. “Tomás,” she said quietly. “Let’s talk.” He shook his head. “It’s not safe. Not for you.” Quinn heard the weight of truth in his voice. She edged closer. The market’s heartbeat thrummed around them, urgent and strange. “You’re in over your head, detective.” She almost flinched at the word. Instead, she forced her breath slow. “That makes two of us.” Something moved deep in the crawlspace. Tomás glanced over his shoulder. “You should go back.” Quinn squared her shoulders, the sharp-jawed stubbornness that got her medals and enemies alike firing behind her eyes. “Not this time,” she said. And as the market’s shadows contorted and the walls pulsed with a hundred illicit trades, Detective Harlow Quinn understood she had crossed a threshold she could never uncross—and that, somewhere in the stink and strangeness, she’d either find her answers or join Morris in the dark.