Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNEYXMGY2GVRPJ8VQ4C7NCN

The rain had been falling for three hours, turning London's streets into mirrors that reflected the sodium-orange glow of streetlights. Detective Harlow Quinn ran through slick pavements, her breath cutting short gasps into the cold air, her shoes slapping against puddles that soaked through to her socks. Eighteen years on the force had taught her body to move with efficiency, but the man ahead of her was fast—faster than expected for someone wearing a coat that heavy. She'd been watching the Raven's Nest for six nights. Tonight, finally, someone had emerged who matched the description: tall, pale, moving with the nervous energy of a man who knew he was being hunted. Quinn had followed him out of Soho and into the rain, calling it in on her radio as she went. The response had been garbled—something about unit availability, delayed response times, the usual cuts that came with budget shortfalls. She was on her own. The suspect ducked left into an alley, and Quinn adjusted her trajectory, fingers brushing the radio at her shoulder one more time before she let it go. No time. She could hear him ahead—footsteps echoing off brick, a door slamming, the distant rumble of a train arriving somewhere deep beneath the city. The alley dead-ended at a rusted gate, but the suspect wasn't stopping. He reached for something at his belt—a small object that caught the light—and pressed it to the gate's lock. There was no sound of mechanism, no click of tumblers. The gate simply swung open, and he vanished through. Quinn reached the gate seconds later, pulling up short. Beyond was a staircase descending into darkness, the air that rose from below carrying a smell she couldn't place: old stone, something chemical, and beneath it all, a faint sweetness like rotting flowers. "Police!" she shouted down the stairs. Her voice echoed and died. No answer. She pulled her torch from her belt and clicked it on, sweeping the beam down the concrete steps. They descended at a steep angle,墙壁上涂满了涂鸦 even as she watched, shifting like the images were alive, rearranging themselves into symbols she didn't recognize. The rain dripped down her collar, cold against her spine. Quinn had been a detective long enough to know when something was wrong. This was wrong. The man had done something to that lock—no ordinary lock worked without sound, without touch. And the symbols on the walls were wrong in a way that made her stomach tighten, a way that pulled at memories she kept locked in a box in the back of her mind. Three years ago. Morris. The case that had started as a missing persons and ended with her partner in the hospital, unconscious for two weeks, and Quinn herself waking up in an alley with no memory of how she'd gotten there and a scar on her palm that hadn't been there before. She'd never found out what really happened. The file had been sealed. Her superiors had looked at her with a particular expression—pity and caution mixed together—and told her the case was closed. Not solved. Closed. The stairs were still there. The darkness was still waiting. Quinn went down. The staircase wound deeper than seemed possible, passing through layers of the city she hadn't known existed. Old brick gave way to tile, then to something that looked like stone but felt wrong beneath her torchlight, too smooth, too uniformly grey. The air grew warmer as she descended, and the chemical smell grew stronger. At the bottom, she found a platform. The Tube station had been abandoned for decades—she could see the old signage still clinging to the walls, the faded cream and green of the Underground's early years. But it wasn't empty. Vendors had set up stalls along the platform, their wares illuminated by lanterns that burned with flames the wrong color: blue, violet, a green so dark it was almost black. People moved between the stalls, browsing, haggling, their voices forming a low murmur that somehow managed to feel secretive. Quinn had walked into the Veil Market. She'd heard rumors, of course. Eighteen years in Metropolitan Police gave a person ears for the impossible stories that circulated through certain circles—the bar in Soho where the maps on the walls were more than maps, the market that appeared and vanished, the people who weren't quite people. She'd dismissed them. She'd had to dismiss them, because believing meant acknowledging that the world was larger and stranger and more dangerous than the rules she'd built her life around. But here she was. And the rules didn't apply. A man approached her—young, olive-skinned, with dark curly hair and warm brown eyes. He was wearing a worn jacket and carrying a leather satchel, and he moved with the careful ease of someone used to dealing with trouble. Around his neck, a medallion caught the wrong-colored light: Saint Christopher, she realized. The patron saint of travelers. "You shouldn't be here," he said. His accent was faint, something continental—Spanish, maybe. "The Market isn't for outsiders." "I followed a suspect," Quinn said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "A man in a dark coat. He came through that gate." The young man's expression shifted—recognition, maybe, or concern. "You followed him down here? Alone?" "Where is he?" "You're not equipped for this." He said it not as an insult but as fact, his eyes moving over her torch, her empty holster—she'd left her weapon at the station, too many drinks after shift, a mistake she was now regretting. "Whatever you think he's done, let the Market handle it. The sellers have rules. The buyers have rules. The only rule for people like you is that you leave." "People like me?" "People who don't belong." Quinn looked past him, scanning the crowd. The stalls were selling things she couldn't identify—bottles of liquid that seemed to glow, bundles of herbs wrapped in paper that moved on their own, small boxes that whispered when she looked at them too long. And there, near the far end of the platform, she spotted him: the suspect, talking to a woman whose face was half-hidden by a hood. She pushed past the young man. "Wait—" He grabbed her arm. "You don't understand. Once you go further in, you're under the Market's protection, but you're also bound by it. If you touch anyone, if you interfere with a transaction—" "Then I'll deal with it." "You'll die," he said quietly. "Or worse. I've seen it happen. I've patched up the leftovers." Quinn paused. This man—his face, his voice, they were familiar. "Herrera," she said suddenly. "Tomás Herrera." He let go of her arm, his expression sharpening. "You know my name." "You worked for the NHS. You lost your license." She remembered the file, a footnote in a larger investigation into supernatural medicine. "You treat things that shouldn't exist." "I help people," he said. "Whatever they are." "Can you tell me who that man is? What he's buying?" Herrera hesitated. His eyes moved to the suspect, then back to Quinn, calculating. "That's Kavanagh. He deals in information—secrets, specifically. The kind that can ruin lives, end careers, start wars." He paused. "Whatever you're chasing him for, it's small change compared to what he sells." "I don't care about small change. I care about the law." "The law doesn't reach here, Detective." Quinn looked at the suspect—Kavanagh—again. He was completing his purchase now, handing over something small and bright to the hooded woman, receiving a folded piece of paper in return. Whatever secrets he'd bought, he'd have them soon. And then he'd vanish—through another exit, another gate, back into the city above where she'd never find him. Three years since Morris. Three years of closed cases and sealed files and nightmares she couldn't explain. Three years of feeling like the world had slipped out from under her and she'd never been able to find solid ground again. She stepped forward. "I'll reach him," she said. "You can come with me or you can get out of my way. But I'm not letting him walk out of here." Herrera stared at her for a long moment. Then he reached into his satchel and pulled out a small object—bone, white and smooth, shaped like a teardrop. "Put this in your pocket," he said. "It won't stop everything, but it will mark you as under someone's protection. Mine." He grimaced. "Morris was my friend, once. Before he stopped coming to me. Before the case that..." He trailed off, shook his head. "I don't know what happened to him. But if you're walking into this, I'm walking with you." Quinn took the token. It was warm against her palm, warmer than bone should be. Together, they moved into the market.