Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT00219CD9REDJ8X7EZE5QK

Rain slicked the cobblestones of Camden High Street, turning the neon signs into smeared ribbons of electric blue and acidic green. Detective Harlow Quinn ducked under the yellow police tape, her boots striking the wet pavement with a rhythmic clack that cut through the low murmur of uniformed officers. She checked the time on her worn leather watch. 03:17. Too early for the morning commute, too late for the club crowd, yet the alley behind the abandoned Tube entrance buzzed with an unnatural energy. The scent hit her first. Not the copper tang of fresh blood or the stale reek of garbage typical for this part of London. This smelled of ozone, burnt sugar, and something ancient, like dust from a tomb sealed before the Romans arrived. "Quinn." PC Miller stepped into her path, his face pale under the strobe of the forensic lights. "You need to see this. It makes no sense." Quinn pushed past him without breaking stride. "Nothing here ever makes sense, Miller. That's why they pay me the big bucks." She stopped at the mouth of the alley. The crime scene lay ten yards in, bathed in the harsh glare of portable halogens. A man in a tattered Victorian-era coat lay sprawled on the ground. His eyes stared blankly at the brickwork above, wide and unblinking. No blood pooled beneath him. No wounds marred his skin. Yet, the body looked drained, desiccated as if every drop of moisture had been sucked from his cells in an instant. "Time of death?" Quinn asked, crouching beside the corpse. She kept her hands in her pockets, resisting the urge to touch the cold fabric of the dead man's sleeve. "ME says within the last hour," Miller replied, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "But look at the surroundings, Guv. No footprints in the mud except ours. No signs of struggle. The vic just... dropped." Quinn scanned the ground. The mud near the body remained undisturbed, a perfect, unbroken sheet of brown sludge. Not a single scuff mark suggested a fight. No drag marks indicated the body had been moved. It was as if the man had materialized out of thin air and collapsed. "Impossible," Quinn muttered. She leaned closer, her sharp jawline tight. "Everyone leaves a trace. Physics doesn't take a night off." "Maybe he had a heart attack?" Miller offered, voicing the theory the uniforms were already whispering. "Some kind of rare condition that causes rapid dehydration?" "Heart attacks don't turn a man into leather in sixty seconds," Quinn snapped. She stood up and brushed imaginary dirt from her trousers. Her gaze swept the alley walls. Graffiti covered the bricks, layers of tags and political slogans overlapping in a chaotic mess. But near the body, the paint seemed to have blistered and peeled away, revealing the raw brick beneath in a perfect circle six feet in diameter. "See that?" She pointed a gloved finger at the denuded wall. "Bleach maybe?" Miller squinted. "Cleanup crew?" "No one cleans up a murder before we arrive, Miller. And bleach doesn't eat through three layers of enamel paint in a geometric pattern." Quinn walked the perimeter of the circle. The air inside felt heavier, pressing against her eardrums. A low hum vibrated in her teeth, a frequency just below human hearing. She remembered DS Morris. Three years ago. Another body, another impossible scene. The file sat in her bottom drawer, untouched since the inquiry closed it as 'undetermined cause.' The same silence had hung over that alley. The same lack of evidence. "It's the Veil Market," a voice said from the shadows. Quinn spun around, hand instinctively hovering near her holster. Eva Kowalski stepped into the light, clutching a worn leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Her curly red hair frizzed in the damp air, and she tucked a stray lock behind her left ear, her green eyes wide behind round glasses. "Civilian area, miss," Miller barked, stepping forward. "You need to clear off." "She's with me," Quinn lied, though she hadn't seen Eva in weeks. "What do you know about the Veil Market, Kowalski?" Eva approached the body, stopping just outside the blistered circle. She didn't look at the dead man; she looked at the ground. "This isn't a murder scene, Detective. It's a spillage." "A spillage?" Quinn echoed. "The Market moves tonight," Eva whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "Full moon. It shifts locations. Sometimes... sometimes things fall through the cracks. Boundaries get thin." She opened her satchel and pulled out a small brass object. The Veil Compass. Verdigris coated its casing, and strange sigils etched the face. The needle spun wildly before locking onto the dead man's chest. "What is that?" Miller demanded, reaching for his radio. Quinn held up a hand. "Stay put." She watched the compass. The needle didn't point north. It vibrated, humming in sync with the pressure in her ears. "You think he came from there? From this 'Market'?" "I think he was trying to leave," Eva corrected. She knelt, careful not to touch the mud. "Look at his hands." Quinn dropped to one knee again. She grabbed a magnifying glass from her pocket and inspected the victim's fingers. Under the lens, the skin wasn't just dry; it was cracked like old parchment. And embedded in the creases of his knuckles were tiny specks of iridescent dust. "Glitter?" Miller scoffed. "Residual aether," Eva said, her tone gaining confidence. "And look at the soles of his shoes." Quinn tilted the man's foot. The bottom of the boot was caked in a substance that defied the grey London mud. It was violet sand, fine and glittering, mixed with shards of something that looked like obsidian glass. "He wasn't walking here," Quinn realized, the pieces clicking into place with the precision of a well-oiled machine. "He fell. From somewhere else." "The entry point is unstable tonight," Eva explained, tapping the compass face. "The portal shifted before he could fully cross. It shredded him. Not physically, but... essentially. The market took its toll the moment he breached the veil." Quinn stood up, her mind racing. The lack of footprints made sense now. The man hadn't walked into the alley; he had dropped out of the sky, or rather, out of a rift that had sealed itself the moment he landed. The blistered paint on the wall wasn't chemical damage; it was radiation from the crossing. "If this is a supernatural breach," Miller started, his voice rising in panic, "we need to call in the specialists. The government guys." "There are no government guys for this, Miller," Quinn said, her voice flat. "And if you put this in a report, they'll bury you in paperwork until you quit, or they'll lock you in a ward." She looked at Eva. The young researcher met her gaze, fear warring with determination in her freckled face. "You knew he'd be here," Quinn accused. "I knew the Market was moving," Eva defended, tucking her hair again. "I didn't know anyone would get stuck. The tokens... sometimes they malfunction." Quinn scanned the alley again, her detective's eye filtering out the impossible and focusing on the tangible. The violet sand. The iridescent dust. The perfect circle of damage. Evidence. Real, physical evidence that contradicted every textbook she'd ever studied. "Bag the sand from his boots," Quinn ordered, pointing at Miller. "Carefully. Don't mix it with the London dirt. And get a sample of that residue on the wall." "Guv, the lab will—" "The lab will do what I tell them to do," Quinn cut in. "Tell them it's a hazmat incident. Chemical spill. Unidentified industrial waste." She turned back to Eva. "You stay close. If this Market moves again, I want to know where it goes next." "It's not safe," Eva warned, gripping her satchel tighter. "Things come out when the veil is thin. Not just people." Quinn checked her watch again. 03:29. The hum in the air intensified, vibrating the fillings in her teeth. The rain seemed to avoid the center of the alley, curving around the invisible distortion. "Nothing is safe, Kowalski," Quinn said, her brown eyes hard as flint. "But I lost a partner to secrets three years ago. I'm not letting another one slide because the physics don't add up." A crackle of static erupted from the bricks behind the body. The violet sand on the victim's boots began to glow, pulsing in time with the spinning needle of Eva's compass. Quinn drew her torch, the beam cutting through the sudden fog that rolled into the alley, thick and smelling of ozone. "Miller, secure the perimeter. Double tape. No one in, no one out." "And if something comes through?" Miller asked, his hand shaking as he reached for his baton. Quinn stepped between the officer and the glowing sand, her stance wide, ready. "Then we arrest it."