Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR2WGWGWFQ6N876FFDJT4D

The rain came down in sheets, turning the Soho streets into rivers of neon and shadow. Detective Harlow Quinn's worn leather watch read 11:47 PM when she spotted him slipping between the clusters of late-night revelers outside The Raven's Nest—a figure in a dark hoodie moving with the practiced ease of someone who knew he was being watched. She'd been staking the bar for three weeks, ever since the bodies started piling up. Four now, all marked with symbols she didn't recognize, all connected by a thread she couldn't quite grasp. The thread led here, to this den in Soho with its green neon sign and its carefully curated air of criminal nonchalance. She knew the owner, Silas. Everyone knew Silas. What they didn't know was what he did in the back rooms. The figure ducked left, away from the main pedestrian drag, and Quinn moved without thinking—eighteen years of muscle memory overriding caution. She was already across the street, her detective's coat flapping behind her like a dark wing, when he glanced back and saw her. He ran. Quinn's jaw tightened. She'd expected him to run. What she hadn't expected was how fast he'd move, weaving through the rain-slicked alleys with the desperation of someone who understood what capture meant. His trainers splashed through puddles, sending up spray that caught the amber glow of street lamps. Quinn kept pace, her breath controlled, her hand instinctively checking the warrant card in her pocket—a habit from a different time, when warrants meant something. The Soho streets narrowed, the buildings pressing closer, their Victorian facades dripping with rain and history. The figure ahead dove into an alley Quinn hadn't noticed before, the kind of space that London kept hidden from tourists and most residents—ancient and cramped and smelling of stone and old water. She followed, her eyes adjusting to the deeper darkness, her pulse steady but elevated. The alley ended. No exit. The figure pressed himself against the far brick wall, and Quinn advanced slowly, deliberately, her palms open in the universal gesture of someone trying to calm a trapped animal. "We just want to talk," she said, her voice carrying the weight of authority earned through two decades of interrogations. "About the murders. About what happened to those people." The figure's hood fell back. A young man, maybe twenty-five, with terror carved into every line of his face. His eyes were too wide, pupils dilated, and Quinn recognized the signs—he was under something. Drugs or something worse. In her experience, worse was becoming increasingly likely. "You don't understand," he gasped. "You can't stop it. None of you can." "Try me," Quinn said, moving closer. "What can't we stop?" He laughed—a sound like breaking glass—and suddenly he was moving again, not toward Quinn but toward the far wall. He pressed his palm flat against the wet brick, and something happened. The wall shimmered, like heat distortion, like the world developing a stutter. Quinn's hand went to her service weapon automatically, though she knew guns wouldn't help here. Guns hadn't helped three years ago, either. They hadn't saved DS Morris, hadn't explained the way he'd simply ceased to exist in the superintendent's office, hadn't given her any logical framework for what she'd seen—or thought she'd seen—in those final seconds before he vanished. The figure was disappearing into the wall. "Stop!" Quinn lunged, her hand catching fabric, and suddenly the world inverted. The brick dissolved around her, and they were falling through something that wasn't quite solid and wasn't quite liquid. Her instinct screamed at her to fight it, to resist, but years of police training kicked in—control what you can control, adapt to what you can't. They landed hard on a metal platform that rang like a bell. Quinn came up in a crouch, weapon drawn, years of weapon training overriding the unreality of her surroundings. The figure scrambled backward, eyes still wild, and she followed the movement rather than the man, taking in the space around her. An old Tube station. Camden, if her instincts were right, though the architecture seemed subtly wrong—the walls too smooth, the tiles arranged in patterns that made her eyes slide away if she looked too directly. The platforms extended impossibly far in both directions, lit by lanterns that burned without visible flame. And the smell—incense, copper, something medicinal and wrong all at once. "The Veil Market," the figure breathed, scrambling to his feet. "You've followed me to the Veil Market, detective. They'll kill you for this. They'll kill you the way they killed—" "Move," Quinn commanded, stepping toward him, but the words died on her tongue. Figures were emerging from the shadows. Not many—three or four at first, then more. They wore clothes that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at them, and their eyes held the calm of people who operated under rules Quinn didn't understand. One of them held a bone token, translucent and gleaming. The young man bolted deeper into the station, toward a corridor that led into darkness. Quinn watched him go, her weapon still drawn, her mind cycling through impossible scenarios. She had two choices: pursue the suspect into territory that belonged to no police jurisdiction she'd ever heard of, with rules she didn't comprehend and stakes she could only guess at. Or back away. Climb back through the dissolving brick and return to the rain-soaked streets where at least the laws of physics still applied. The figures moved closer. They weren't threatening—not yet—but there was a weight to their presence, a sense of infinite patience. One of them, a woman with eyes like old silver, smiled. "Detective," she said, her accent unplaceable. "You're very far from your precinct." Quinn's jaw clenched. She thought of DS Morris. She thought of the four bodies, all marked with symbols that no database could identify. She thought of the case files that went nowhere, the leads that evaporated, the superintendent suggesting early retirement. She lowered her weapon slowly, deliberately, and stepped toward the corridor where the figure had disappeared. "I'm exactly where I need to be," she said. The woman's smile widened. Behind her, the figures parted, creating a path deeper into the Market. Quinn walked through them, her worn leather watch ticking on her wrist, marking time in a place where time itself might not follow the normal rules. Somewhere ahead, the young man was running through impossible corridors. Somewhere ahead, answers waited in the dark. Quinn didn't hesitate. She'd stopped believing in turning back the day DS Morris vanished.