Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR810PWM36DKYAF4H8H43Q

The rain fell in sheets, blurring the green neon of The Raven's Nest into a smear of poison across the wet windscreen. Detective Harlow Quinn drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, a restless rhythm against the drone of the wipers. Eighteen years on the force had taught her patience, but tonight it wore thin, a threadbare coat against the London chill. The worn leather of her watch strap was damp against her skin. Six hours she’d been sitting here, nursing a thermos of bitter coffee and a growing certainty. The intel was good. The clique used this place. And Tomás Herrera was her way in. A figure finally pushed through the bar’s heavy oak door, head down, the hood of a dark jacket pulled low. Even in the gloom, Quinn recognized the build, the quick, deliberate way he moved. Tomás Herrera. He scanned the Soho street, a flicker of motion too sharp for a casual glance. He was spooked. Quinn killed the engine. Showtime. She gave him a twenty-yard lead before easing her door open, the click lost in the hiss of tyres on wet asphalt. The air was cold and heavy with the smell of rain, exhaust fumes, and fried onions from a nearby food stall. She pulled up the collar of her own coat and began to walk, her pace measured, her eyes locked on his back. She didn't run. Not yet. Running announced the chase. She preferred the silent, inexorable pressure of the hunt. Herrera cut down a narrow alley, his pace quickening. The last of the theatre crowd had dispersed, leaving the backstreets slick and empty. Quinn rounded the corner just as he broke into a sprint. The game was on. Her own feet pounded the pavement, her strides long and economical, a product of years of drills and pursuit training. The rain slicked the cobblestones, threatening to send her sprawling with one misplaced step. Ahead, Herrera vaulted a row of overflowing bins with a fluid grace she hadn't expected from a back-alley medic. He was younger, faster. But she was smarter. She knew this city's veins. He weaved through a warren of passages behind Shaftesbury Avenue, his goal to break line of sight, to lose her in the maze. A flash of his jacket disappeared around a corner. Quinn didn’t follow. She cut left, taking a parallel route she knew would intersect his path fifty yards ahead. The sound of her own breathing, harsh and controlled, filled her ears. The sharp line of her jaw was tight with concentration. She emerged from the passage just as he burst into the small courtyard, his eyes wide with momentary confusion before they landed on her. He'd expected to be free. Seeing her there, waiting, broke something in his composure. Panic edged out strategy. He reversed course, skidding on wet pavement, and darted towards the Camden-bound traffic of Charing Cross Road. A bus hissed past, its brakes squealing. Quinn dodged a black cab whose driver laid on the horn, the sound a dull blare in the downpour. Herrera was a ghost moving between the headlights, a desperate man running on pure adrenaline. He glanced over his shoulder, his olive skin slick with rain, his dark curls plastered to his forehead. For a second, Quinn saw the scar along his left forearm as he used a post box to swing himself onto the pavement. He was heading north. Towards Camden. This wasn't random. He had a destination. A bolthole. The chase stretched into a brutal marathon of asphalt and endurance. They ran past shuttered storefronts and bars spilling warm, yellow light onto the darkened streets. Quinn’s lungs burned, a familiar fire she pushed through. She focused on his rhythm, the cadence of his feet, matching it, waiting for him to tire. He was fuelled by fear, but fear was a fickle fuel. It burned hot and fast. Her fuel was colder, a slow-burning coal of duty and memory. He led her away from the main roads, into a derelict industrial area bordering the Regent's Canal. The air here tasted of rust and rot. He scrambled up a chain-link fence topped with rusted barbed wire. Quinn saw him tear his sleeve on the way over. She didn't bother with the fence, instead sprinting twenty yards down to where the fence ended in a crumbling brick wall, using the momentum to haul herself over. She landed with a jarring impact, her knees protesting, but she was still in the game. She was closer now. Herrera plunged into the mouth of a graffiti-covered service tunnel, a black square set into the embankment beneath the railway arches. A wave of cool, damp air washed over Quinn as she followed him into the darkness. Her hand went instinctively to the service weapon holstered at her hip. This was off-book. No backup, no comms. Just her and him in the guts of the city. The only light came from grates in the ceiling, casting long, distorted rectangles of grey onto the damp concrete floor. The only sound was the dripping of water and their ragged, echoing gasps for air. The tunnel twisted, a concrete intestine leading deeper underground. She could hear his footsteps ahead, splashing through unseen puddles. He was flagging. She could hear it in the heavy, stumbling sound of his flight. The tunnel opened abruptly into a vast, cavernous space. Quinn skidded to a halt, her senses overwhelmed. They were standing on the platform of an abandoned Tube station. The air was thick with the scent of ozone, damp earth, and something else… something strangely sweet and spicy, like a foreign market. Peeling posters from a forgotten era clung to the tiled walls, their colours faded to pastel ghosts. The vaulted ceiling was lost in shadow, but the platform ahead was lit not by harsh fluorescent strips, but by the flickering, unnatural glow of what looked like captured balls of light floating in glass jars and the deep, pulsing purple of strange crystals. A makeshift market sprawled across the tracks and the opposite platform. Stalls cobbled together from scrap wood and metal were crowded with figures cloaked and hooded, their faces hidden in shadow. The low hum of bartering voices buzzed in a dozen languages, none of which she recognized. This was no simple black market. This was something else entirely. Something other. Herrera was staggering towards a guarded barrier at the far end of the platform. Two broad-shouldered figures stood before an archway that shimmered, the air within it seeming to warp and twist. Herrera fumbled inside his jacket, his chest heaving. He pulled out a small object. It looked like a piece of carved bone, white and gleaming in the eerie light. He presented it to one of the guards. The guard nodded, a slow, reptilian movement, and stepped aside. Herrera shot one last, wild-eyed look back at Quinn. There was no defiance in it now, only raw, animal terror. Then he stumbled through the shimmering archway and was gone. Quinn stood alone on the empty platform, the sound of her own heartbeat a frantic drum against her ribs. The Veil Market. The name surfaced from a whisper she’d overheard on a wiretap, a fantasy she’d dismissed as underworld slang. In front of her was the impossible truth. A world hidden within her own, operating by rules she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Her training screamed at her. *Fall back. Call it in. Secure the perimeter.* This was beyond a simple collar. This was unknown territory, hostile and unpredictable. Going in alone was a suicide mission. But then, another memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome. The sterile quiet of a hospital room. The official report on her desk: *DS Morris, deceased. Circumstances under review.* The coroner’s confusion. The single, inexplicable clue left at the scene—an object that felt cold to the touch even in the summer heat, an object that the forensics lab couldn’t identify. The whispers from the brass about shelving the case. A loose thread. Unexplained. This place… this market… it hummed with that same wrongness. It felt like the source of that loose thread. Herrera was just a runner, a symptom of the disease she'd been chasing for three years. The cure, or at least an answer, might lie beyond that shimmering gate. Her hand hovered over the radio on her belt, her thumb tracing the familiar shape of the transmit button. Call it in. Follow protocol. Or go through the gate. Find out what happened to Morris. Find out what she was really up against. She lowered her hand. Her gaze fixed on the archway where Tomás Herrera had vanished. She drew her weapon, the click of the safety echoing softly in the cavernous silence. The hunt wasn't over. It had just begun.