Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR4MEC6HV37BGS1MGPXHSE

The rain came down in sheets, turning the London pavement into a mirror of neon and shadow. Detective Harlow Quinn's boots struck the wet cobblestones in a rhythm that matched the pounding of her heart, her breath coming in sharp white plumes against the February chill. Three years of chasing ghosts through this city, and tonight she'd finally caught one solid. Tomás Herrera rounded the corner ahead, his dark jacket swallowing the light from the streetlamp as he disappeared into the narrow mouth of an alley. Quinn didn't hesitate. She dug her heels in and pushed harder, the worn leather of her watch strap slapping against her wrist as she pumped her arms for speed. She'd first spotted him outside The Raven's Nest, that dim Soho bar with its distinctive green neon sign buzzing like a trapped fly. Herrera had been standing beneath it, one hand pressed flat against the brick wall as he caught his breath, his Saint Christopher medallion catching the light. Patron saint of travelers. She almost laughed. The man was certainly traveling now. The alley stretched ahead of her, a throat of ancient brick and rusted fire escapes. Water cascaded from a broken gutter, creating a curtain of silver that Herrera crashed through without slowing. Quinn followed, the cold spray shocking against her face, her brown eyes locked on the fleeing figure ahead. "Police!" she shouted, though she knew it wouldn't matter. Men like Herrera didn't stop for badges or authority. They stopped only when they had nowhere left to run. But he wasn't running blindly. She'd give him that. He moved with purpose, cutting left through a service passage, then right past dumpsters that stank of rot and old grease. He knew these streets better than she did—and that thought gnawed at her. Quinn had eighteen years on the force, three of them spent hunting the kind of criminals who operated in the spaces between the law's reach. She knew Soho, knew Camden, knew the winding arteries that connected them. But Herrera moved like a man following a map she couldn't see. The scar on his left forearm flashed as he grabbed a railing and vaulted over a low barrier. Quinn hurdled it seconds later, her military training rising up through the years of desk work and cold cases. DS Morris had always said she moved like a soldier, not a cop. Morris had been right about most things. Don't think about him. Focus. Herrera was slowing. She could see it in the slight hitch of his stride, the way his shoulders hunched with each breath. The man was twenty-nine, twelve years her junior, but she'd been running toward danger for nearly two decades while he'd spent his playing paramedic to things that shouldn't exist. The thought should have felt strange. It didn't. Not anymore. She cornered him near an abandoned Tube entrance, the old stairs descending into darkness behind a rusted gate. Camden. How had they crossed this far north? Her legs burned, her lungs ached, and the rain had soaked through her jacket to the cotton shirt beneath. But Herrera had stopped. He stood with his back to the gate, chest heaving, his warm brown eyes meeting hers across the ten feet of wet pavement between them. Rain plastered his short curly hair to his skull, and water ran in rivulets down his olive skin. "Detective Quinn." His voice was thick, accented. Spanish. Seville, according to her files. "I know you." "You've got that right." She moved forward slowly now, hand near her hip but not quite reaching for her weapon. She wanted him talking. "Tomás Herrera, I'm placing you under arrest for—" "For what?" A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Saving lives? Helping people the NHS won't touch?" "Practicing medicine without a license. Assault. Accessory to crimes I haven't even finished cataloging." She took another step, her sharp jaw set. "Pick your favorite." Herrera's hand moved to his chest, fingers closing around the Saint Christopher medallion. His eyes flicked to the gate behind him, then back to her. Measuring. Calculating. "You don't want to follow me," he said quietly. The playfulness had drained from his voice. "This isn't for you, Detective. This isn't your world." "My world is wherever criminals operate." She stopped five feet from him. Close enough to see the exhaustion carved into his features. Close enough to see something else in his expression—not fear, not guilt, but something closer to pity. "Whatever you're protecting down there, it ends tonight." "It's not what I'm protecting." Herrera's fingers dropped from the medallion. "It's what's protecting me." He moved fast—faster than she'd expected for a man who'd just run two miles through London's twisted streets. His hand found the gate, and it swung inward on silent hinges that had no business working on abandoned infrastructure. He slipped through the gap, and Quinn lunged after him, her hand catching only empty air and rain. She stood at the threshold, staring down into the black mouth of the stairwell. The darkness below wasn't complete—something flickered down there, a faint glow that pulsed like a slow heartbeat. The air rising from the depths smelled of copper and old stone, mixed with something else she couldn't name. Something that made the hair on her arms stand up beneath her wet sleeves. Quinn's hand went to her watch, thumb tracing the worn leather strap. A habit. Morris had worn one just like it, right up until the night he'd disappeared during a raid on a warehouse that shouldn't have been empty. Three years, and she still couldn't explain what had happened to him. The official report said structural collapse. Her memory said something else entirely—said shadows that moved against the light, said cold that sank past her bones and into something deeper. Herrera's footsteps echoed below, growing fainter. She had maybe thirty seconds before he was gone completely, before whatever trail she'd been following for three years vanished into whatever waited beneath the city. Her training said to call for backup. Wait for uniforms. Secure the perimeter. Follow protocol. But protocol had left Morris dead, or worse, and protocol had spent three years telling her she'd imagined what she'd seen that night. Quinn drew her weapon. The weight of it was familiar, steadying. She stepped through the gate. The stairs spiraled down farther than they should have, the old Tube station's architecture giving way to something older. Brick became stone. Electric lights gave way to torches that burned without flickering, their flames the color of old bone. She counted seventy-three steps before she reached the bottom, her boots silent on worn stone that bore the scuff marks of countless feet. The market spread before her like a fever dream. Stalls crowded the abandoned platform, their awnings strung between pillars carved with symbols she didn't recognize. The air was thick with incense and something sweeter—flowers, maybe, or decay. Vendors hawked their wares in low voices, their faces half-hidden by shadow and cloth. Glass bottles glittered with liquids in colors nature had never made. Jars contained things that moved sluggishly when she looked too long. And the people—she couldn't call them all people, not with the way some of them stood, the way some of them moved—milled between the stalls like this was any Sunday market. The Veil Market. She'd heard rumors for years. Stories that got cops laughed out of the precinct, transferred to desk duty, or worse. A market that moved with the moon, that appeared in places that shouldn't exist, that sold things no legitimate commerce would touch. She'd thought they were stories. Herrera stood twenty feet ahead, watching her. Waiting. His expression had changed again—resignation now, mixed with something that might have been concern. "I warned you," he said. His voice carried despite the crowd noise, as if the market itself had quieted to listen. "You don't have the token. You don't have the right." Quinn's grip on her weapon tightened. The faces around her had turned—dozens of eyes, some human, some distinctly not, all fixed on the woman who'd crashed through a door she was never meant to find. "Detective Harlow Quinn." She wasn't sure who spoke her name, but it rippled through the crowd like wind through wheat. "You've come a long way from the world you know." Three years ago, she would have turned back. Three years ago, she would have trusted the world to make sense, to follow rules she could write in reports and file in cabinets. But three years ago, she'd watched her partner vanish into shadows that shouldn't have existed, and she'd spent every day since then waiting for answers. She took a step forward into the Veil Market, and she didn't look back.