Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMXVRC3K8F9WAR2SPYB86PZ

Rain hammered the pavement with the persistence of a debt collector, turning the streets of Camden into a maze of shimmering reflections and dark corners. Detective Harlow Quinn pressed herself against the brick wall of a closed fishmonger's shop, her worn leather watch catching the occasional flash of neon from the late-night establishments still clinging to life. Water dripped from the brim of her coat's hood, each drop marking the seconds that had passed since she'd lost visual contact with her target. Tomás Herrera had been three blocks ahead when she'd first spotted him emerging from The Raven's Nest, that peculiar Soho bar where too many of her leads seemed to converge. His Saint Christopher medallion had caught the distinctive green glow of the bar's neon sign for just an instant before he'd vanished into the labyrinth of Camden's backstreets. Quinn had been tracking him for weeks—the former paramedic who'd lost his license under circumstances that the NHS refused to discuss in detail, who now seemed to appear at the periphery of every case that defied conventional explanation. The kind of case that reminded her of DS Morris and the night three years ago when everything she thought she understood about police work had crumbled like wet cardboard. Thunder rolled overhead, masking the sound of her footsteps as she moved from shadow to shadow. The rain had driven most pedestrians indoors, leaving only the desperate and the dangerous to navigate these streets. Quinn belonged to neither category, but she was beginning to wonder if that distinction mattered in whatever game Herrera was playing. She caught a glimpse of movement near the mouth of an alley that shouldn't exist—a narrow gap between two Victorian buildings that her mental map of the area insisted was solid wall. Herrera's silhouette flickered at its entrance, his olive skin pale in the intermittent streetlight, the scar along his left forearm visible as he pushed something aside. A gate, perhaps, or a door that had been painted to match the surrounding brick. Quinn's hand moved instinctively to the radio clipped to her belt, then hesitated. What would she tell dispatch? That she was pursuing a suspect into an alley that might not officially exist? That the former paramedic she'd been investigating had somehow opened a passage through solid masonry? The thought of explaining another impossible situation to her superiors made her jaw clench with familiar frustration. Morris would have understood. Morris had been with her that night when the rules of reality had proven more flexible than either of them had been prepared to accept. But Morris was gone, and Quinn was left to navigate these waters alone, her military precision the only anchor she had left. The alley swallowed Herrera's form completely. Quinn waited thirty seconds, counting each heartbeat, then followed. The passage was narrower than it had appeared from the street, forcing her to turn sideways in places where the walls seemed to press inward with deliberate malice. The brick was old, older than the buildings it connected, and covered with a film of moisture that felt too warm for rainwater. Symbols had been carved into the mortar at irregular intervals—geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly, as if they existed in more dimensions than her eyes were equipped to process. The alley terminated at a metal grate set into the ground, its bars bent outward as if something had forced its way through from below. The opening was just wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and recent scuff marks on the metal suggested frequent use. Quinn crouched beside it, her flashlight beam revealing a ladder descending into darkness that seemed to swallow the light before it could penetrate more than a few feet. The sound of voices drifted up from below—Herrera's accented English mixing with others she couldn't identify. The acoustics suggested a large space, possibly one of the abandoned Tube stations that honeycombed London's underground. She'd heard rumors of squatter communities in the forgotten corners of the transit system, but the voices below carried an undertone of commerce rather than desperation. Quinn gripped the twisted bars and lowered herself through the opening, her feet finding purchase on the ladder's rungs. The metal was slick with condensation, forcing her to move slowly to avoid losing her grip. With each step downward, the voices became clearer, revealing the unmistakable rhythms of negotiation and trade. The ladder ended at a platform that might have once served legitimate passengers. Tiles decorated with faded advertisements for long-forgotten products covered the walls, their cheerful messages rendered grotesque by decades of moisture damage and deliberate defacement. Emergency lighting had been strung along the ceiling, creating pools of harsh illumination separated by stretches of impenetrable shadow. But it was the market itself that stopped Quinn's breath in her throat. Stalls constructed from salvaged materials lined both sides of what had once been a passenger platform. Vendors hawked their wares from behind tables laden with objects that Quinn's rational mind refused to categorize—bottles filled with liquids that moved against gravity, mirrors that reflected spaces other than the one she occupied, books bound in materials that definitely weren't leather but might once have been skin. Herrera stood before one such stall, engaged in animated conversation with a vendor whose features seemed to shift whenever Quinn looked directly at them. The former paramedic held something small in his palm, offering it to the vendor for inspection. In the unsteady light, it looked like bone. A bone token, Quinn realized with the cold certainty that accompanies nightmares made manifest. The kind of currency that didn't exist in any official records, traded in markets that operated beyond the reach of conventional law enforcement. She pressed herself against the tiled wall, grateful for the shadows that concealed her presence. Around her, other transactions proceeded with the casual efficiency of any marketplace—if any legitimate marketplace dealt in the sort of merchandise that made her weapon feel inadequate and her badge seem like a quaint anachronism. This was the Veil Market. It had to be. Quinn had encountered references to it in case files that never seemed to lead anywhere, testimonies from witnesses who recanted their statements, evidence that disappeared from secured lockups. An underground economy that traded in impossibilities, accessible only to those who possessed the proper credentials. Credentials like the bone token Herrera was now exchanging for a small vial filled with liquid that pulsed with its own internal light. Quinn faced a choice that would define not just this investigation, but her entire understanding of the world she'd sworn to protect. She could retreat, climb back up that ladder and pretend she'd never found this place. File a report that would carefully omit the supernatural elements, stick to the facts that wouldn't destroy her credibility or her sanity. Or she could step forward into a marketplace that operated by rules she didn't understand, where her authority meant nothing and her weapon might prove worse than useless. Where answers to questions about Morris's death might finally be within reach, even if those answers came at a price she wasn't prepared to pay. The decision, when it came, felt like falling. Quinn stepped into the light.