Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTR9J8151F9FSMT1603QZP8

Boots slapped through water. Rain hammered everything, even the furious engine inside Harlow Quinn’s chest. Her torch beam snatched brief shapes out of the black: shattered umbrella, a scarf stuck to a drain, the vanishing slice of a leather jacket as her quarry ducked into an alley off Dean Street. She chased him, lungs burning, sharp jaw clenched in stubborn fury. A bus rumbled past and made her glimpse herself in a puddle—a wet outline in bad trousers, with the city’s filth on her shoes and her purpose gritted between her teeth. She gained on him near Bateman Street. The suspect—a thin man, faster than she’d predicted—slipped under a scaffolding canopy. She pushed through it, rain drumming on canvas inches above her head, her flashlight darting over slick brickwork. The radio hissed at her belt, but she ignored the dispatcher’s bark for backup. Too slow. She refused to let him vanish like the last one. Ahead, sudden laughter—no, shouts—spilled from the open door of The Raven’s Nest. Neon bled green across the pavement, pooling about wet cigarette ends and flickering umbrellas. She skidded past the entrance, ignoring startled drunks. No sign of him ducking inside. Onwards—less than half a block, then she glimpsed him again, running hard, coat flapping behind. She followed into an alley behind Greek Street, where the city thinned to shadows, steam rising from bins. Her right shoe slid in some unspeakable soup but she kept moving, torch jouncing light off closed doors and broken windows. He leapt over a toppled shopping trolley—she hurdled it, breath rasping. Then, as she passed a black door, something gleamed in rain among the grime: a staircase, slick and ancient, plunging down under a half-broken sign—PIE & EEL | Family Recipes. Her suspect dived down it. Quinn’s body moved before doubt reached her mind. Down after him into basement dark, boots catching on broken steps. She landed in a lightless tunnel that stank of centuries-old rust and wet stone. Her torch played over mossy bricks, shapes like old railway archways, graffiti etched high and low in tangled scripts. The air grew colder. Beneath the splash of her boots were hurried, smacking footfalls—he hadn’t gotten far. She passed a locked maintenance gate, a knackered fuse box. He’d tossed something behind—she nearly stopped to check, but that would mean losing him. Ahead, the passage bent hard left, then widened. Quinn slowed, pressing herself against damp brick, breathing through her nose, peering around the corner. A faint blue glow rose from deeper inside, unsteady and sickly. She moved forward, following the blue light, pulse prickling behind her eyes, rain forgotten. The tunnel bloomed into something impossible. An underground station, gutted, the old tiles patterned by moss and drip marks. Blue lanterns hung from crumbling supports, swinging in a wind she couldn’t feel. Stalls lined the platform edge: someone sold bird skulls threaded on twine, another displayed books with titles that shifted when she blinked. Huddled knots of figures—some masked, some shrouded, some all-too-normal—bargained with fast, furtive hands. The low hum of voices wound around the columns. Her suspect, that thin blue jacket, darted between a curtain of ratty rugs and a display case labelled"Amulets—Curses Removed (No Refunds)." Quinn stopped dead at the platform’s mouth—the Underground’s yellowed sign hanging over a booth that offered “Wormwood Gin (No Questions)”. A woman with eyes like candle flames flicked her gaze over Quinn’s rain-soaked form. "You lost something, love?" Quinn kept her badge inside her coat, index finger tapping her aching wrist where her old watch lay hidden under sodden sleeve. Blending in was hopeless; her haircut, her bearing, the tilt of her nose all marked her as foreign to this world. Still, she scanned the crowd for blue jacket—there, cutting towards a filthy sign scrawled on a battered sandwich board: ‘Entries for Next Market, This Way — Token Only’. She moved after him. The shadows behind the lanterns shifted suspiciously. No one smiled. Several watched her openly, as though weighing up what to offer for a slice of her unease. She caught movement at the edge of her vision—a set of pale knuckles, gripping rough bone tokens. They changed hands as fast as money. The suspect accepted one from a squat, bald merchant with a jacket lined in lizard skin. Quinn forced herself to keep walking as if she knew what she did, eyes ahead. Her mind calculated what she’d already learned—strange abductions, stories the brass in the station didn’t believe, people showing up half-mad with tales of monsters in tube tunnels. The suspect reached a rusted gate. A gaunt-faced guard leaned down, palm out. The suspect handed over the bone token and stepped through. The gate wheezed shut after him. She closed the gap, wiping away the rain from her forehead with a knuckle. “Visitors pass?” the guard asked, baring teeth filed almost neat. She felt the worn badge in her pocket—absolutely useless here. She couldn’t let him escape again. His file had only cryptic hints—two unsolved disappearances, found objects burnt to slag, a single word he’d scrawled on an interview room table: "Veil." "Left mine with the missus. She’ll kill me if I’m late for the Market," she replied, voice low, bluffing with the weary sarcasm of every copper who’s ever had the night shift. He scanned her in a way no constable ever had. His eyes stopped at her leather watch, then swept up to her cropped hair. “Don’t see you here before. Suppose you’re keen.” His voice caught on the last word, humid and soft. “Market’s dangerous for newcomers.” Quinn glanced back. The blue-jacketed bastard’s head bobbed behind another tent. He hadn’t noticed her hesitation—yet. “If you want to keep the queue moving, let me in. Or are you angling for a bribe?” She flashed a sharp-edged grin, as near to native as she got. Anticipation flickered over the guard’s face. He weighed her—watch, stance, crackle of silent command in her muscles. Then, with a grunt, he stepped aside, dragging the gate wide. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, officer.” The word hit her gut—had he guessed, had someone tipped him off? No time. She slipped through, pulse hammering now with a new note. The wet stone echoed every footstep. She pressed onwards, trailing through a maze of stalls where scabbed hands offered jars of something that moved and whispered, ashen faces bartered for locks of hair, and once—impossibly—a pair of empty red boots drifted five centimetres above cracked pavement. At a corner, a voice purred out: “You look lost, darling.” She didn’t look. Her focus had to narrow now—one man, blue coat, thinning hair, the back of his neck slick with sweat even in the chill. He turned a corner near a table that boasted pages torn from books, each sealed in wax. She followed, close enough to catch the scent of stale gin, then ducked behind a pillar slick with old posters. He knelt at another booth weighed down with black candles and silver objects. They exchanged rapid words—inaudible, but his agitation showed in the twitch of his hands. Quinn risked a glance, memorising the shape of the stallkeeper, the way his face seemed both old and brand-new in the lantern’s spectral wash. No visible weapon, no obvious way out—unless the tunnels ran deeper, which of course they must. “Don’t,” the suspect muttered as he caught her in the edge of his gaze, jolting upright. She feinted left, looping round a group arguing in agitated Polish over a box of feathers that squirmed. She almost lost him again; only the glimmer of his Saint Christopher medallion in the dim blue glow betrayed him as he turned, urgent, towards another, smaller archway choked with cobwebbed rope. Quinn shoved forward. Stalls grew stranger here, goods hidden behind thick curtains, soot-faced children bundled close to a man in red gloves. Echoes twisted in strange directions; somewhere music played on a tinny gramophone. Ahead, her quarry slipped past a curtain and vanished into gloom. Quinn forced herself not to slow or falter, ignoring the rising burn of fear in her throat. Her left hand dropped to her jacket for her torch, her right close to where she kept her badge. She stepped through the curtain. The market’s babble fell away. The space behind the drape narrowed to a plain corridor, dust softening the flagstones. The suspect jogged at the far end, pausing, wild-eyed, uncertain for the first time. He turned. Quinn held her ground. "You think you’re clever, ducking tunnels?" Her voice didn’t waver. He spat. "This isn’t for your lot, alright? Told you people to stay away—" She drew closer, notebook forgotten. "Still running means you’ve got something worth running for. Turn out your pockets." He hesitated, tension obvious in his hunched back and white-knuckled fists. “Could just let me go. Wouldn’t cost you—" She interrupted, three slow steps forward; her boots swallowed the silence. He bolted, twisting down another passage between storage crates marked in languages she didn’t recognise. She pressed on, grit scraping her words. “Stop! You’re not getting out of here that easy,” Distantly, vendors shouted, an alarm or a warning—Quinn’s heart gave an extra painful thud. She ducked around an overturned chair and gave chase into the deeper dark.