Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTQSXZX7AZNZ85C4ZQXAV7K

The rain fell in icy sheets, turning the London pavements into mirrored surfaces reflecting the sodium glow of streetlamps. Detective Harlow Quinn’s breath came in sharp bursts, condensing in the frigid air. Her worn leather watch was slick against her wrist, the face smeared with rainwater. She kept her eyes locked on the figure thirty meters ahead—a man in a dark hoodie who’d bolted the moment she’d identified herself outside The Raven’s Nest. He’d been talking to someone near the green neon sign. Quinn hadn’t gotten a clear look at the other person, just a silhouette disappearing into the bar’s entrance. But this one had run, and that was enough. Her shoes slapped against wet concrete. She ignored the burn in her calves, the military precision of her stride eating up the distance. The man cut left into an alleyway behind a row of Chinese restaurants, steam rising from grates mingling with the downpour. Quinn followed, her sharp jaw set. The alley was narrow, cluttered with overflowing bins and broken pallets. She saw him scramble over a chain-link fence at the far end. He was fast, athletic. Quinn hauled herself over, the metal cold and slick under her fingers. She dropped down into a deserted service yard, puddles reflecting the single security light above a loading dock. He was already crossing the yard, heading for an unmarked metal door set into a brick wall. Quinn sprinted, her coat flapping behind her. “Metropolitan Police! Stop!” The man didn’t even glance back. He yanked the door open—a slice of darkness yawned—and vanished inside. Quinn skidded to a halt before the doorway. Rain dripped from the close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair plastered to her scalp. This wasn’t part of her patrol. This was off the grid. The door led down, a set of concrete stairs descending into gloom. A faint, unnatural odor wafted up—ozone and something else, something like burnt hair and old spices. Her hand went to her hip, finding the reassurance of her service weapon. Three years ago, she’d lost Morris on a night not unlike this. He’d followed a lead into a warehouse by the docks. They’d found his body two days later, no obvious cause of death, his face frozen in an expression of pure terror. The coroner called it a massive heart attack. Quinn knew better. She’d seen the symbols scrawled on the walls in a substance that wasn’t paint. She took the stairs. The air grew colder, damper. The sounds of the city faded, replaced by a low hum that vibrated in her molars. The stairs ended in a rough-hewn tunnel, brickwork giving way to older stone. Cables and pipes ran along the ceiling, dripping condensation. Strings of bare bulbs cast a flickering, uneven light. Up ahead, the tunnel opened into a cavernous space. Quinn slowed, moving to the side, using the shadows. She peered around the edge. The abandoned Tube station stretched out before her, platforms emptied of trains, the tracks silent and dark. But it wasn't empty now. Stalls made from repurposed shipping containers and draped fabric lined the curved walls. Lanterns with colored glass threw shifting patterns of violet, green, and amber light across the scene. A crowd moved through the space—a bizarre, whispered gathering. Quinn saw a woman with iridescent scales along her neck haggling over a vial of silver liquid. A man with eyes like molten gold examined a dagger that seemed to swallow the light around it. The hum was louder here, a mixture of murmured conversations in languages she didn’t recognize and the faint crackle of energy. The Veil Market. She’d heard whispers. An underground bazaar for things that didn’t belong in daylight. Decorated service or not, eighteen years on the force taught you about the cities beneath the city. Her target was there, halfway down the central aisle, pulling off his soaked hoodie. He was younger than she’d thought, early twenties, his face pale under the strange lights. He was talking urgently to a stallholder—an elderly individual with too many knuckles on each long-fingered hand. Quinn’s grip tightened on her weapon. She could step out. Announce herself. But this wasn’t her jurisdiction. This place hummed with a wrongness that set her teeth on edge, the same feeling she’d had outside that warehouse three years ago. The crowd, while quiet, had a dangerous cohesion. They were all here for the same reason: to operate outside the rules. If she went in, she went in alone. No backup would follow, not here. The man might lead her to something bigger—the clique she suspected was moving weapons, or worse, through these channels. Morris had died chasing shadows that bled into this world. But the stallholder was handing the young man something small and bone-white. A token. The man nodded, turned, and began walking swiftly towards the far end of the platform, where another dark tunnel mouth waited. Quinn watched him go. The bone token gleamed in his hand. He was leaving the market, heading deeper into the labyrinth. She could turn back. File a report no one would believe. Mark the suspect as lost. Go home to her quiet flat and the case files that never closed. Her left wrist, where the worn leather strap of her watch dug in, ached with a phantom pain. Morris’s face flashed in her mind. Not as he’d been in life, laughing over a bad coffee, but as she’d found him. Empty. She took a breath, the air tasting of magic and decay. Then she stepped out of the tunnel and into the colored light.